SPN/DA Fic: Aftershock Twelve
And #2 from the poll w1nz! :D (with the rat coming in on a close second...)

Title: One, Two, Three, Four, Five, Six, Seven, Eight, Nine, Ten, Eleven - Aftershock Twelve - Thirteen, Fourteen, Fifteen & Sixteen
Also: Minor Tremors parts One & Two
accompaniment(s) to: With a Bang
Author: Mink
Rating: SPN/DA Crossover - PG - Gen – AU in the year 2020
Spoilers: General (for all aired episodes)
Disclaimers: SPN & DA & characters are owned by their various creators.
Summary: Dean POV. Dean-n-Alec have another tear jerking moment but this time it's Alec who knows what the fuck he's talking about.



Being on a doctor’s table never failed to piss Dean off.

He wasn’t sure if it was being forced to enjoy the nautical themed watercolors and or all the outdated child care magazines. Maybe it was the partial nudity and people causally sticking needles into his arms while they talked about the weather. Whatever it was, the entire process left him feeling like a violated little kid.

Putting his shirt and jacket back on, he tried to decipher what the doctor was saying. It was hard to tell half the time. All communication had to get through the filter of excessive age, rampant alcoholism and a German accent that was only a few symbols away from the actual language. Leaving Dean alone to gather his things, the doctor wished him a very nice day before taking off to the next patient.

Dean snagged a few pairs of latex gloves on his way out.

“He said you need to make another appointment next week,” the equally old broad at the front desk was filing her pink manicure. “We can make it the same time and day.”

“It's a date.”

The weather had turned cold and wet a few nights back and it wasn’t letting up for nothing. Zipping up his jacket, Dean ducked his head down and didn’t run to the car. Running just got you wetter. Besides, there was a pleasant belief that the rainwater was rinsing off a few layers of doctor office from his skin.

If he had been paying attention he would have noticed someone sitting on the hood with no umbrella.

“Hi, Alec,” Dean dug for the keys. “How are you doin’?”

Giving no response, Alec continued to get as wet as the black paint.

“You could have come inside you know,” Dean said. “It’s a lot drier.”

“They don’t allow visitors into the examining room.”

“I meant the waiting area but—“

“Why are you here?”

Dean let out a controlled sigh.

He actually wanted to ask the kid the same damn question. There were only three doctors in town and this was one on the edge of city limits behind the train tracks. You had to drive an extra five miles off the main drag just get close to it and it was only open when the doc was sober enough show up.

“What’d you do, Alec? Follow me? Do you need a morning after pill? What’s the deal?”

“I could hear the freight train on the phone when you called in late at the shop,” Alec’s fixed gaze flickered over at the tracks behind them. “Kind of sloppy if you ask me but that’s not really the point.“

“I’m here for a checkup. Happens every year just like everyone else.”

Alec slid off the hood and Dean suddenly realized the kid was maybe even more angry than he was.

“You’ve been here three times in two weeks!” Alec shoved him back a step. “That’s no checkup.”

“So you have been following me,” It would have felt better when Alec fell on the hood if Dean hadn’t known that the kid let him to do it. “Look… I’m gonna tell you right now that none of this is a big deal.”

“Oh yeah?” Alec picked himself up. “Then why doesn’t Sam know you’re here either?”

Dean opened his mouth and shut it again.

“Come on,” Alec’s annoyance shifted to bewildered frustration. “Why doesn’t Sam even know?”

“Well, for starters it’s none of his freakin’ business.”

“This town doesn’t use computers for anything!” Alec threw up his hands. “And your doctor’s handwriting is total bullshit.”

“What?”

“I spent most of Saturday trying to find your file,” Alec said. “It figured it was filed under P.”

“W-Wait, yer the one that broke their lock last week?”

“You wanna know what the P stood for?”

“No, not really.”

“Pastor’s Brother. But like I said your physician writes like a brain damaged monkey so it was a total waste of time all ‘round.”

“All right, I’m leaving now.”

“Wait…. what is that?”

“What is what— shit.”

Dean hadn’t even felt Alec remove the slip of paper from his jacket pocket.

“Toprol-XL, 60 tablets.” Alec read the prescription. “Isn’t that a brand name for metoprolol succinate?”

Dean didn’t hear a thing when he turned the key in the ignition. Not even a courtesy choke rattling the muffler. He tried to ignore Alec lean down in the open driver’s side window.

“That’s a beta-blocker,” Alec said. “It’s used to regulate heart function.”

Dean snatched the prescription and crumpled it back into a pocket.

“What’s wrong with your heart?”

Spotting pieces of his engine and all the spark plugs laying in a neat row on the sidewalk, Dean kicked the door open. Jacking the transmission to guarantee a conversation wasn’t exactly foolproof. The road was nothing but one washed out trench of rainwater but it was a great day for a hike.

Alec fell in a few steps behind him

“Dean, what’s wrong with your heart?“

“It’s not my heart,” Dean mumbled. “And before you ask any more questions, let me remind you what I said about it being none of no one’s business.”

“It’s your blood pressure then isn’t it?”

Dean tensed before he could stop himself.

“Why didn’t you say so in the first place?” Alec squelched faster behind him in the mud. “That’s a common condition that’s easily managed with lifestyle and the proper medication—“

He swung around fast enough to catch the kid off guard. “You follow me here. You screw up my car. Now yer gonna tell me all about my problems too?”

“G-Good recap,” Alec had been momentarily startled but he didn’t step back. “But Dean, you have to understand…. as we age, we tend to find our bodies may start to change in ways we never expected.“

“I didn’t change,” Dean got back to walking. “The job did. Everything is just different.”

“You’re tellin’ me,” Alec breathed a laugh. “You should have seen me back in the day.”

The words made Dean slow his pace a little. The kid hadn’t brought up anything about Manticore in any shape or form since Seattle. For a while it had been easy to help maintain the illusion that everything before the gate had been just a bad dream. If ignoring it completely counted as a form of help.

“Did you know that I had my very own doctor until I was ten?”

In all honesty, Dean had blocked out most of the intel they’d dug up on Alec’s incarceration. Mostly because he hadn’t been able to handle the perfectly worded typeface that described one clinical procedure after another. Report after report, page after page, disc after disc…

“I don’t mean like I had one doctor, I mean that’s all this guy did. His job was me. I was on so many drugs he needed an assistant to keep my regiment straight,” Alec forced another laugh. “Blood pressure, heart rate, lung capacity, muscle growth hormone, name it and I was popping some pill or getting a shot in the ass.”

Dean stared down at the potholes as he moved in an even steady pace.

“So one day I said screw all this,” Alec said. “It was before the Pulse hit so things were still running a little slack around there anyway.”

Dean wondered what ‘slack’ in a place like that could possibly mean.

“I stopped taking the drugs. I flushed the pills, I puked up the hormone smoothies and the shots were tough but I figured out how to be late for check-ins a lot. Man oh man, I thought I had it all worked out.”

Dean took a deep breath and slowly let it go. Smarts or not, it was hard to predict the effect withdrawal could have on the system. Especially when the genius rolling the dice was a frustrated ten-year old kid.

“So I was out in the practice yard and the next thing I knew I was on the ground with full blown cardiac arrest,” Alec’s hand moved absently over his chest. “I remember waking up the next morning in the infirmary and being really… disappointed.”

Dean slowed even further until they were walking side by side again.

“You’d think you’d be able at least to count on your own body, right?” Alec tried to smile. “If you aren’t on your own side and what do you have left.”

There was nothing else said about the paper Dean had crumpled in his pocket. He waited for some more questions about the state of his vascular system or his average blood volume, but there were none of those either. Walking with a quiet but anxious presence at his shoulder reminded Dean a lot of taking walks with someone else.

“It could be worse tho, right?” Alec asked. “At least you don’t have to take male enhancement drugs.”

Dean’s grip on the keys got painful.

“A least not yet,” Alec added. “But I should warn you that blood pressure medication can totally mess with the plumbing.”

“I have an idea, Alec.”

Alec waited dutifully as he swiped away the rainwater from his eyes.

“Why don’t you run on back,” Dean suggested. “Fix the car and then drive off a cliff.”

“In Minnesota?” Alec returned the grin. “I guess I could build one out of a bunch of lemon curd bars.”

“Now yer thinkin’.”






go to part 13