This is a disclaimer.

AN: wenchpixie asked for 'Dean with wisdom teeth and not eating' OR 'Sam discovering Hitchhiker's and geeking out over it' for her birthday. I did both. Mwahahaha. Whaddaya mean, where's the title from? Barbarian.

I repeat, we have normality (anything you still can't deal with is therefore your own problem)

Cafeteria lunches have never been culinary masterpieces, but this particular one Dean was staring at was especially bad. It was steak, supposedly, with a side of fried potatoes that weren't meant to look like ordinary fries but did, and vegetables of course. When Dean poked at them with his fork, it went 'ping'.

In short, he was completely incapable of chewing anything on the plate. How utterly pathetic. There he was, Dean Winchester, at eighteen already a damn good hunter if he said so himself, with an assortment of scars and a skill-set that would probably make even a US Marine Corps recruiting office a little bit nervous if he put it in his CV (if he ever drew up a CV), being beaten by cafeteria food.

It was humiliating. And he was hungry, dammit.

"I'm telling you though, I'm with the computer," Sam said, dropping into a seat opposite him with lunch-tray piled high and a gleam in his dark eyes. Kid had this bad habit of seamlessly continuing a conversation begun and abandoned upon entering the school some four hours ago. What, you haven't been sitting around all this time waiting for me to come back and finish what I was saying?

"Computer?" Dean said blankly, trying desperately not to move his aching jaw as he spoke.

"Yeah, the one on the ship," Sam said cheerfully. "I mean, what is with the tea, anyway? What's so special about it, you know? I don't make that kind of fuss about any foodstuff."

"Yes, Sammy," Dean managed in the patient tones of one who has explained this particular circumstance to someone else many, many times before, but always to no avail. "That's because you have no soul."

Sam threw a not-fry at him and carried right on eating, the picture of floppy-haired culinary enjoyment.

Dean started to hate him at that point.

The worst thing was the way he couldn't leave it alone. Every time he stopped talking, got distracted, had nothing else to do, the tip of his tongue would inevitably make its way, entirely of its own accord and without even asking permission first, to the back of his mouth and start to poke. The 'height difference' between the teeth, his sore gums, the loose flap of flesh lying over it he could wiggle around... Wisdom teeth were a bitch.

Wisdom teeth had been invented by Satan himself and snuck into God's little mud statue of Adam while the old man wasn't looking. Dean curled himself into the armchair by the fireplace and cupped his jaw in his thankfully-warm left hand, but it wasn't really helping.

Pain he could deal with. He'd got a handle on that fairly early on in life, what with the training and the occasional fight at school – just to keep his hand in! – and stuff like vicious knife-wielding spirits that liked to try and carve their initials into the thighs of seventeen-year-old boys, but this constant dull ache was something else entirely. It was exactly this sort of thing that habitually drove people crazy, Dean was sure; this low-level but unceasing suffering couldn't possibly be good for the psyche.

On second thoughts, the worst thing was Sam, bouncing around the little house like a puppy on Ecstasy, shouting out random Hitchhiker's Guide quotes and giggling at everything and nothing. Most of the time he had the slim paperback tucked into the back pocket of his jeans, in reaching distance if he ever forgot a speech and had to look it up.

"You do know there's more than one, right?" Dean said irritably. It was bad enough he was being destroyed by toothache of all things. Now Sam had to come along and usurp his books?

There weren't many things besides the Impala... OK, there was practically nothing besides the Impala that Dean considered his own personal property, but his books were one of them. His books, his own little worlds he got to disappear into in the sure and certain knowledge that even if anyone else around him had already been to that world and experienced those adventures, they at least would have the decency to merely nod respectfully in passing and continue on, letting him explore uninterrupted.

Not so Sam. Sam had to go around proclaiming things. The whole world desperately needed to know that he could recite Vogon poetry, for fuck's sake.

"The library at school only stocks the first one," Sam explained now. "And I can't find the others in the bookstore. Unless you wanna drive me to –"

"Definitely not," Dean snapped. "It's bad enough you've read one. I can't even imagine how much more unbearable you're going to be once you've read the rest."

And he dropped his cutlery onto his untouched plate of congealing food and went to bed, resolutely ignoring the surprise and hurt on Sammy's face.

Wrong again. The worst thing, for real this time, the absolute worst thing, was the lack of food. It was the natural consequence of your mouth being too fucking sore to chew anything, and Dean hated it. Made him nervous. He'd gone hungry before and he would again, it was no big deal. A couple days on the bare minimum of foodstuffs was nothing, really. If there was no food in the house, then there was nothing else for it but to bite the bullet (hah!) and not eat.

Thing was, the house was full of food right now. It was everywhere: kitchen cupboards, the frigde, the freezer, the couch, Sam's bedroom, was, Dean actually, genuinely liked to eat. He wasn't fussy about whether it was a take-away or haute cuisine, he just... liked food.

And now he was literally incapable of eating any. That sucked ass.

School lunches were right out, obviously. So was most take-out, unless it was a really, really bad Chinese, all soft and soggy from floating in grease. Porridge, though... porridge was a wonderful invention. Porridge with slatherings of honey three times a day, whenever he got hungry. Dean alternated between feeling like Winnie-the-Pooh on a binge and trying not to think about Mom and how she'd make a big pot full of the stuff on winter mornings.

Tasted better microwaved anyway.

Sam, in the best tradition of little brothers everywhere, continued to be totally and happily oblivious to his older brother's torments; he had his head stuck in that book whenever he wasn't doing homework, so the fact that Dean wasn't eating completely escaped him. He'd also acquired the habit of calling things 'hoopy' rather than 'cool', and Dean felt that that more than anything was the final, damning proof of his gloomy suspicion that the kid was destined to die a virgin.

See, the problem was, Dean hated taking drugs. Loathed it. The excuse he commonly gave was that they 'messed with his head', i.e., dulled his reactions and made him slower, less observant, and frankly he couldn't afford that, not when it was just him and Dad wasn't around and he had to look after Sam. He needed to be on his game.

In actual fact, he hated taking pills. Just loathed it. His throat closed up in protest and he could feel the damn things slipping down it, a tiny alien in his own body making its way sluggishly into his stomach, pushing past the soft tissue of his throat. It had taken him a lot of self-control to get to the point where he could toss back a painkiller without throwing up all over the bathroom floor just from the idea of it, and he absolutely would not do it unless he absolutely had to.

At least, Dad was wont to remark wryly whenever Dean looked even more ill at the idea of swallowing pills, he'd always be sure of which drugs Dean wasn't taking.

So his wisdom teeth were fucking around. It hurt, sure, but it wasn't life-threatening and he wasn't in any immediate danger from which he had to extricate himself, thus requiring something that would dull the pain for long enough to allow him to concentrate.

Therefore, logically enough, he didn't take any.

Logic, as another British writer a twenty-two year-old Dean would discover in the back of a bookstore in upstate New York and instantly fall in love with once pointed out, is a wonderful thing. But it doesn't always beat actual thought.

Dad got back early on Friday morning, the truck pulling up just as the boys were heading out to school. Dean was about to go over to him, but John waved him off.

"I'm fine, kid. Go on, get. Pretend I'm not here."

"See you later, Dad!" Sam called. "Hey, do you take a towel on hunts? You should, you know. They're uncommonly useful."

*********

When they got back, Dad was poking around in the kitchen, preparing for a fry-up. Just looking at it made Dean's mouth hurt. And water. Simultaneously.

Sam started on Dad right away, ignoring the circles under his eyes and the weariness etched in every line of his face. Dad was brusque and monosyllabic and probably pretty much fed up with the kid, but the fight didn't start till he made Sam take the trash out.

Dean sat at the table, hunched over a history book, and pretended to be engrossed in the marital exploits of England's King Henry VIII. That chick Anne Boleyn had been somethin', same as her daughter, but the pounding in his jaw was making it hard to concentrate.

Then Sam slouched out, having lost the argument about the trash, and John sat down opposite him with a plate of bacon and eggs.

Dean looked up at him. "Everything go OK?"

"Everything went perfectly," John said tiredly. "Neat little exorcism. Jim wanted to leave it a couple days, make sure there was just the one, but I wanted to get back, so we pulled a couple all-nighters, and here I am. Slept most of the day, actually."

"Even you need to sometimes, Dad," Dean said with the pained grimace that had come to replace his grin over the last couple days. It was legend in the Winchester family's little circle of friends that John was always last to go to bed and first to get up, no matter whose house they were in or how safe his sons were.

John swallowed a bite of bacon and smirked back wryly. "It's my one great weakness, I know. You wanna tell me what you got?"

Dean stared. "What I got?" he said blankly.

"For the fight."

"What fight?" He was totally confused now.

"Dean," his father snapped. "You've never lied to me about this stuff before, don't start now. Your jaw's swollen up like a balloon, you don't move your mouth when you talk and when you tried to grin just now you looked like you were about ready to throw up. Now who was it and what happened?"

"I –" Dean said. "It is? I mean – there wasn't a fight, Dad."

John put his cutlery down. "Dean –"

"Dad, it's the truth! I haven't done anything. It's just – I've just –"

It wasn't even a real injury. He wasn't hurt or anything. It was totally embarrassing and so not anything Dad should be worried about – should even be hearing about – especially now he'd just got back from a hunt and anyway –

"Dean, out with it now, or so help me God..."

"Toothache," Dean blurted. "I mean, my wisdom teeth. Coming through. That's all."

John stared at him for a moment and then started to laugh. "Is that all? Thank God. The way you looked just now..."

"I'm glad it's amusing you," Dean snapped, squirming now. Great. Just great. Hadn't he said it was nothing?

"Hey," his father said, leaning towards him a little. "You ever heard of this wonder drug called ibuprofen? It's a painkiller? Stops swelling, too."

Dean squirmed more. "I. It."

"Dean. Go take some fucking pills and go to bed. I don't wanna see you out here before morning. Understand?"

Dean grimaced. "It's nothing. I mean."

John sighed. "Listen, kid. There's a difference between being strong enough to endure something because you have to and sittin' around wallowing in it. Either you take the damn pills, or I will hold you down and force you to swallow them. Clear?"

Crystal. John didn't make threats he wasn't prepared to keep; his sons had found that out the hard way. More than once.

Dean slouched into the bathroom and spent a torturous ten minutes swallowing two innocent-looking white tablets of ibuprofen. After that, he slouched into his bedroom and fell into bed. From the kitchen, he could hear Sam banging back in and Dad's voice raised in a snap at the noise. Dean, still sprawled face-down on the pillows, reached out a hand and fumbled around for a few minutes before finally finding the lamp-switch.

The next morning, Dad was already gone by the time Dean got up, doing research in the library in the next town. The note he'd left taped to the coffee machine had a postscript in Sam's neat handwriting informing his brother that he'd wheedled a ride out of John so he could buy the rest of the Hitchhiker's books and then catch the bus back here to go to school. Dean couldn't suppress a groan at that, and staggered across the kitchen as the machine started up.

There was a pot of porridge sitting on top of the oven, waiting for him.