Twist and Shout [not mine]

Chapter 9

A Few Weeks, Probably Less

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They were seated at a small, crowded, Mexican restaurant, Dean debating on what to get. He wasn't especially hungry, and nothing looked especially good. He rubbed his eye and stared at the same thing over and over, rereading the same sentence by accident.

"I'd like to tell you we dated, but I'm not sure that was really what it was," Balthazar said suddenly, throwing his menu down, disgusted. Dean put his down as well, leaning back in his seat.

"You mind if I smoke?"

"Not at all."

Dean pulled a cigarette out of the pack and lit it, watching the blue smoke dissipate.

"I think he used me. To get over you," he said, barking a laugh. "How absurd that I should be telling you any of this."

"I appreciate it," Dean shrugged, "He can't tell me anything. Or he doesn't want to. I can't tell." He took a pull, and shook his head, exhaling rapidly. "I don't want to press him for anything anyway. Sometimes he coughs and..." He cut himself off, Balthazar fidgeting.

  "I'm the one who made him go to the hospital," Balthazar said softly, "It was like one day he woke up and... I don't know. He called me at work and I came over, and he said he had thrown up and he didn't know how it happened. He was in the middle of his living room, and there was..." Balthazar stopped and took a breath, "He'd gotten sick everywhere and he was in the middle of it - I thought he was dead. I really did. Wasn't the first time I'd thought that, either."

Dean tapped his ash into the tray, his stomach clenching and twisting itself into a fist.

"He'd been getting so thin; I thought it was stress, and then they started saying things around, you know, I had heard them saying something was going around, but I just waved it off. It was just stress, or something, but then I went in, and he said he couldn't breathe and he'd fainted. They diagnosed him with an upper respiratory infection, but it wasn't just that. He was hospitalized practically overnight with pneumonia. And then it all sort of fell apart so quickly."

"Was he sick before?"

"Not for years - not like that. There was one time, a year or two after we came, but that was just the 'flu."

The waitress interrupted them but Dean ended up only ordering more coffee, and Balthazar got some kind of combo.

"You can peck off it if you like," he'd said and Dean hadn't said anything in return.

"Did they tell you? About that pneumonia he has?"

"PCP."

"PCP," Balthazar said with a small laugh, "I looked it up at the reference library. It's nearly nonexistent. It's caused by a fungus that's everywhere and from what I gleaned, it never happens. We breathe the bacteria in every day and don't know it."

Dean tried not to think about it too much.

"What happened to him?" he asked after a long silence.

Balthazar shifted in his seat, sipping his water delicately. He set the glass back down and wiped the condensation it left on the table away.

"You," he said frankly.

Dean nodded.

"That's not fair though. I don't want to give you all the credit. A lot of things happened to him, but you, you were always it."

"If I had known..."

"But you didn't, and it's happening," Balthazar snapped, shaking his head, "I shouldn't be mean to you. You weren't there. You...you didn't see it."