tarotgal

5.

At the sound of the hiss, Sam sprinted from the room, pulling the heavy door closed behind him. Stopping in the middle of the bunker’s hallway, Sam lifted his arm and coughed into the crook. Dean emerged from another room, on high alert. “Where?” he asked, looking around.

Still coughing, Sam pointed down the hall. “Third… door…” he managed in-between coughs. “I set off a bomb. Don’t go in there.”

Dean nodded approvingly. “How many bombs do we have left?”

“Not enough.” Sam cleared his throat. “Not nearly enough. This place is enormous.”

“Yeah,” Dean agreed. “But it’s ours now. And if we’re gonna live here, I want to be able to… able… abe-hehhh…” He pressed his nose into his shoulder, which did him absolutely no good. “hehhh-EHhihshhhhh!” He wiggled his nose and sniffled. “I want to be able to do it without sneezing.”

Catching his breath, Sam brandished the dust rag he held in one hand and the can of pledge in the other. A bag of Lysol bombs hung off one shoulder. “I’m ready. But I don’t feel like we’re much of a match for the decades upon decades of dust that accumulated here.”

Dean holds up the old vacuum cleaner he had been lugging from room to room. It had been a while since he last vacuumed, but he didn’t remember the thing being so heavy and clunky and hard to use. He also has to empty it frequently, which gets dust absolutely everywhere. “Yeah. This thing kicks more dust into the air than it sucks up. I cah… cahhh… cahh-hahhh-h’IHTschhhhh! Snrfff! Can’t stop sneezing. God, my nose itches!” He scrubs his wrist back and forth over his nose, sniffling. “You got a tissue on you or anything?”

Sam shakes his head. “Used my last one up a couple rooms back. But we can check the supply closet. Bet the Men of Letters were prepared and well stocked.”

As it turned out, they weren’t. Maybe cleaning wasn’t their forte either, or maybe they just had more important things to worry about, but there was only a single tissue box in the closet. And it was half empty already. The fact that Dean pulled out tissues by the handful didn’t help it last. By the time both brothers were done with another room each, the supply was dangerously low. An hour later, Dean was blowing his nose into his last two soggy tissues, hoping that somehow they would magically last the rest of the day.

There was still a lot of cleaning left to do, and it wasn’t as though they could call a cleaning service in.

“ihhhSchhhh! Heh-IHShhhh! Ihhshii!” Emerging from rooms on their respective sides of the hallway, Dean met Sam in the hallway. Sam was covered in dust from floppy hair to steel-toed boot as if he’d disturbed something somehow taller than he was that had rained dust all over him. “Sabby? I hahhh… I hahhh-hahh-IHSHhhhhhh! Ihttschhh! Hihtchhhh!”

Sam looked back at his brother and nodded, open mouthed. “B’me too,” Sam agreed. “ahhh-KIHTCHAHHH!” Dust fell from him as he shook from the force of the sneeze, getting absolutely everywhere and making Dean’s nose tickle even more.

“ihhShii! Hihshhiih! Ihhhschhhhhh! Ihhhshihhh!” Dean snuffled against the back of his hand, dragging his fingers against his runny, twitchy, itchy nose. “We have… ihhhshhhh! We have to… to… ihh… hihhh-Ihchiii!”

“I dknow,” Sam snuffled. “We gotta bmadn ub add… add… hh’KIHShhhooo! KEHShooo! Keebp cleadnidg. Kahhh-HIHSHooo! I’ll try.”

Dean shrugged. He was going to suggest they take a break, but now that Sam’s mentioned manning up, Dean can’t exactly wimp out on him now. “Right. Just let be go get bore tissues at the store.” The thought in his mind isn’t of cleaning, but of rolling down the windows of the Impala and letting his nose clear out there in the fresh air. He felt like he couldn’t possibly clean one more room without some nice, soft tissues for his itchy nose. “Okay?”

Sam barely got a nod of agreement out before he had to bury his face in the crook of his arm again. “hkk’kshmmmphhh! KShhmpmphh!” He lifted his head, eyes watery and nostrils flaring. “While you do that, I dneed a shower.”

Dean lifted his arm and gestured down the hallway. “I saw ode id that directiod earlier. Cub od.” He grabbed Sam’s arm to pull him forward and dislodged a small cloud of dust that had been clinging to Sam’s thick, flannel shirt. There wasn’t even time to register it before they were both coughing and sneezing and scrubbing at their noses without stop. And without tissues.


1.

Somehow, the guns seemed heavier than normal as he packed them into duffle bags. And he seemed to be moving slower as well. Maybe his cold was slowing him down, or maybe his cold just skewed the passage of time? Either way, he’d already lost track of what they were bringing on the hunt. Hell, he could barely remember what they were supposed to be hunting.

“Think this is enough for one nest?” Sam asked, looking at the bulging bags before them.

Vampires. Right. That was it. Dean closed his eyes and rubbed his forehead. How could he have forgotten? “hehhh-EHTschhhh! HEHtschhhhh!”

“Go lie down, Dean.”

His eyes flew open. His mom was standing right in front of him, assessing him the way Sam had looked at the bags of weapons. “What?”

She reached out, stroking his upper arm and looking at him sympathetically. “You’re sick. You should go lie down. I’ll bring something warm to you there before we leave. And I’ll get you some tissues.”

His ears perked up at this, but he still felt confused. “What?” Did she mean he should lie down in the backseat of the car? “I don’t…”

“Your brother and I can handle the hunt, just the two of us. It’s just one nest. There’s no reason for you to go out if you’re feeling sick. In fact, it would be one less thing for us to worry about if you stayed here and rested.”

Sam nodded along as he slipped a knife into his belt. “She’s got a point there, Dean. Maybe you should take it easy until you get over being sick.”

Dean nodded back. His instincts told him to man up and fight through the cold like he always did, but he forced himself to entertain the suggestion. What they said made sense. Having another hunter on the team had its benefits. Besides, he did feel pretty terrible. “All right. So long as there are tissues.”

And there were tissues. He wasn’t in bed five minutes when Mary Winchester arrived with a tray that had everything he could want. There were pills in a blister pack, a bottle of water, a bowl of steaming tomato soup, and a brand new, never-before-opened box of Kleenex. Immediately, Dean tore open the Kleenex box, pressed at least a half dozen tissues to his nose, and blew to great relief. Dean was so grateful he didn’t even think to ask why there wasn’t any rice in the soup.

While enjoying the soup, he popped a movie into a laptop and snuffled his way through it. Every time his nose even started feeling ticklish or a little bit runny, he’d grab a tissue and wipe or blow his nose or maybe both. The level of tissues in the box dropped steadily. Eventually, the cold medicine knocked Dean out, and he didn’t wake up again until the evening.

Stomach rumbling, he set his sights on rooting through the freezer for a quick meal. Dean emerged from his room to find the Bunker pretty much were it had been before he’d fallen asleep, complete with his family members standing around several packed duffle bags. “Mom? Sam? Why haven’t you left yet?” Confused, he checked the time, but the clock on the wall agreed that it was a quarter past seven. “What about the vamps? Shouldn’t you be out hunting vamps before the sun sets?” They’d just about missed their window for the day.

“We got them already. Every single one of them.” Mary came over and stroked Dean’s forehead. “You don’t feel like you’re running a fever. Hungry?” Dean nodded against her touch, feeling her fingers brush his cheek soothingly. It might have taken more than thirty years for him to realize it, but absolutely no one could make him feel better when he was sick the way his mom could. “You’ve got a constitution like your father, don’t you?”

“Oh, Dean’s always hungry. Even when he’s sick,” Sam chuckled.

“How about a soup and sandwich then?” Without waiting for an answer, Mary was already heading toward the kitchen. Her boys both followed.

With a full belly but, sadly, an even fuller nose, Dean headed back to his room. He crawled under the covers and then immediately reached for the tissue box. He expected it to be significantly depleted or even empty, but he found it was as full as if it had just been opened. Knowing it couldn’t have magically refilled itself, he could only guess that Sam or his mom had brought him a new one. Frankly, Dean was feeling too sneezy to care which had done it; he was just grateful to have another tissue. “hihhh… IHSchuhhh!”