Fool for Lesser Things (1/5)
1:Hodag
"Dude," Dean said, wiping at the back of Sam's jacket. "I can't believe that bitch exploded."
Sam squirmed out of the way, but not before he felt the green goo that coated his brother splatter across his back. "Knock it off!" He stumbled over a rock on the narrow shoulder of MacArthur Boulevard, the road that ran up against the edge of Glen Echo Park. "God, you smell worse than you did after Constance dumped you in the river."
Dean sniffed at his arm, eyebrows shooting up as his eyes squinted shut and he flinched away. "Gyuh." He put his hands against Sam's back again, pushing this time instead of wiping. "Hobble faster, man. We gotta get moving. Someone might see us."
"Uh." Sam shrugged away from him again, but obeyed. "I'm kind of hoping they do. The Impala's gotta be more than ten miles away."
"I can't believe that bitch carried us all the way down here."
"I can't believe you think the Snallygaster's female."
"I can't believe you got dragged around by a giraffe. Move."
"I'm moving, I'm moving!" And he was. He couldn't get away from Dean's stink fast enough. "What's the hurry, though, man? Sure, the Snallygaster got loud, but this close to the city, people have got to be used to ignoring strange noises at night. Besides, there's still that carousel to take care of."
"Yeah. About that," Dean said. Sam ignored him, hunching his shoulders and thinking out loud to take his mind off the throb of his head and ankle.
"Did you hear the laughter? That was a kid. I'm thinking the Snallygaster brought some of its prey there to feed, and the spirits stuck around to play with the old rides."
"Sure. But Sam --"
"The question is, how do we get rid of them? There's no guarantee they'll leave now that the Snallygaster's gone. And tracking down that many graves -- or even having any idea which missing kids the spirits might be -- is going to be a bitch. I guess we could destroy the carousel but that'd just --" Sam cut himself off when a hand connected with the back of his head, sending his already pounding headache into the stratosphere. "Ow! Dean!"
"Less talky, more walkie. We need to be outta here before anyone comes to check out the explosion."
"It was really more of a 'pop'."
"That's not the explosion I'm talking about."
Sam stopped dead by the side of the road and turned to face his brother, now silhouetted against the glowing neon park sign. "What did you do?"
Dean's teeth flashed pale in a grin, and the night was suddenly lit by a deafening explosion from behind him, flames shooting up into the air. Within moments, sirens could be heard closing in from all directions.
Sam stared at Dean. "You didn't. You -- the carousel?!"
"It tried to kill us."
"But -- but --"
"It's a public service."
"But -- it was -- that --"
"Get a move on, Sammy!" Dean shoved at Sam's shoulders, spinning him around and propelling him down the road, towards the guardrail.
"Are you kidding me?!"
"Nope."
Sam felt the first few patters of rain drops as he was shoved down behind a bush. A police car went whirring by. He crouched down next to his stinking, bloody, pyromaniac brother as the rain set in and tried to find the right words to express his incredulity.
Beside him, Dean started to sing quietly.
"Someone left the cake out in the rain."
"I hate you."
"And I'll never see that recipe again. Oh noooooo!"
* * *
Dean kept singing that damned cake song the entire time they were hiking their way into a nearby neighborhood to hotwire a car. And kept going for just about the entire drive back up to Frederick, Maryland, where they'd left the Impala. Sam did his best to try to ignore it, but there was just something so insidious about the nonsensical lyrics.
MacArthur Park is melting in the dark.
"How's your leg?" He asked, hoping to to redirect Dean's attention from whatever had him singing to something more important. Dean cut off mid-chorus -- it seemed all he knew of the song was that maudlin, impenetrable refrain -- and glanced over at Sam, tilting his head up, chin jutting out.
"It's like a cuddly hug that never ends, Sam, how do you think it is?"
"We'll get the tentacle off when we get to the hotel."
"Yeah, yeah." Dean sighed, lowering his chin and dropping his temple to toward the window. He leaned one elbow on the high edge of the door, the other arm stretched in front of him, gripping the wheel. "My foot's gone totally numb."
"You should've let me drive."
Dean snorted.
"Should've at least jacked an automatic."
A deeper snort. "Right. Because when you're dodging cops after blowing up a historical landmark, the first thing you do is check the transmission on the car you're stealing."
"I'm just saying."
"Well, don't."
Sam slid down best as he could in the cramped mid-sized sedan, finding himself in the unusual situation of dreaming fondly of the leg room of the Impala. Lord knew how Dean had managed to jam his tentacled leg into the car, much less use it enough to work the clutch. Of course, it helped that he'd kept roaring at over fifty miles per hour most of the drive, ensuring he wouldn't have to drop it out of fifth gear.
But, hey, they were almost to the Impala, and Dean had been distracted.
"Someone left the cake out in the rain."
Or not.
* * *
Considering the manic energy Dean seemed to be throwing into everything he'd done in the last, oh, six month or so, Sam had expected him to leap from the car when they made it back to the hotel, tentacle or no. They'd managed to ditch the stolen car, retrieve their weapons, and pick up the Impala without a hitch, and Sam himself was gearing up to give at least a vague showing of strength and wakefulness in the face of his headache -- head plus glass equaled concussion just as surely as head plus gravestone tended to -- and the persistent throb of his ankle. He caught himself halfway out the car door, getting re-drenched in the constant rain that had started just as they were leaving the park and followed them up the interstate, when he realized that Dean was still sitting in the driver's seat, his hand frozen on the keys, eyes staring straight ahead into so much nothingness through the windshield.
"Dean?"
For a moment, Sam found himself certain that his brother had quietly died sitting behind the wheel with his eyes open. It'd be just like him, really, to get through everything the two of them had survived -- or at the very least, continued moving after -- only to conk out in the parking lot of a civil war themed "no-tell" in the woods just south of the Mason-Dixon line, victim of, what, a concussion? Blood poisoning a la Snallygaster? Well, screw that. Sam was not going to be the only projectile in the universe's never-ending game of dodge ball. He reached out to poke Dean in the shoulder when his brother sighed.
And still didn't move.
Sam blinked rain out of his eyes, droplets on his lashes turning the edges of his vision blurry and twinkling. "Your leg okay?"
Dean turned his head to look at Sam and for a moment his expression was back to the way it had been for so long after Azazel had gone the way of the dodo. Jaw set, brows drawn, eyes wide and pleading. Lost and weary. Sam felt his lips tightening and hoped that the half-light of the motel refracting through raindrops into the car wasn't enough to illuminate the impatience on his face.
"Dude," Sam offered. "You just took out a dragon."
Dean blinked, his brows twitching, and the momentary melancholy vanished, replaced by a wide, childish grin. "I totally did."
Sam nodded, pulling the rest of the way out of the car and leaning against the rear passenger door. He rested there a moment, regathering his strength, then realized that Dean still hadn't moved. He leaned down.
"I know you don't wanna keep getting Snallygaster guts all over your upholstery."
Dean scowled. "Gimme a minute."
"You totally can't feel your leg, can you?" Sam's answer was a frustrated flapping of Dean's right hand. He took that as confirmation and started making his way around the car to the driver's side, rolling his eyes as he went. It was a little bit ridiculous just how used to this sort of thing they were by now, leaning against each other to limp towards a motel door, Dean's hair tickling the inside of Sam's ear as they tilted their aching heads against each other, hands fumbling without regard as to whose pocket was whose, trying to find the keys.
"So, seriously, just how far did that tentacle get?" Sam asked, once they were safely in the room and Dean was tilting towards the nearest bed in a way that always made Sam want to shout "timber!" Dean's landing raised a small cloud of dust from the motel's coverlet and he bounced once with a groan of springs. The leather jacket kept Sam from being able to make out whether or not Dean's ass was as . . . oddly shaped . . . as his leg currently was, and he was dreading cutting those jeans off and discovering just how kinky his brother's night might have been. Dean lifted one hand, middle finger extended.
"God, I hope that's not your answer." Sam plopped down on the mattress by Dean's boots and watched the room tilt on a lazy axis for a moment. Dean muttered something that sounded like a melodic "oh noooooooooo" into the pillow. Sam slumped down onto his side, one arm swinging like a pendulum to fumble for the spare first aid kit and a pair of six inch medical scissors. "I'll get your jeans off in a sec."
Dean let out a throaty snuffle, like he was preparing to spit. Or, more likely, starting to snore.
Sam sighed and debated whether or not to try and get the tentacle off by himself, or just leave his brother be. Of course, the thing was cutting off the circulation in Dean's foot, which was never a good thing. And if it was --
Right, no way to know but to look, right?
He didn't bother sitting back up, just rolled over, flailing his legs for a moment to get himself into a better position for jeans-surgery, glad that Dean wasn't aware enough to tease him about looking like a flipped turtle. He had far too much experience cutting clothing off his brother, even when said clothing was soaked with rain and entrails and stretched over a lumpy surface. He had the pant leg split open in moments, though he kind of wished he hadn't.
The tentacle, once green, was now the color of a rotting apple and giving off an odor not unlike mold and sour milk, with just a touch of "week-old chicken left at the bottom of a pile of dirty dishes". A scent Sam was far too familiar with, and not just from his early years on the road, before Dean realized that cockroach problems only became much, much worse if you didn't clean up after yourself. College freshmen weren't exactly known for being the neatest people on the planet, and as much as Sam had loved her, Jess hadn't been, either.
There was a reason why Sam didn't eat fettuccine alfredo any more.
Sam really, really wanted to just leave Dean to deal with this whenever he managed to wake his ass up. Sam could always sleep in the car. He would've, too, if it weren't for the flushed, almost purple shade of Dean's skin between coils of tentacle showing that, yes, his blood flow really was being obstructed, and as much of a pain in the ass -- neck, pain in the neck -- as Dean could be, he'd be a million times worse if he lost his foot because Sam was being a prissy bitch. Sam flopped his hand over the edge of the bed again, fishing around until he came up with one of Dean's t-shirts. He wrapped it around his hand and, turning his face away with a grimace, grabbed onto the spongy-yet-rigid tentacle and started to unwrap it.
He was very much relieved, a few minutes later, when he noted that the tapered end of the thing had only actually made it most of the way up Dean's thigh.
Some things really just didn't bear much thinking about.
* * *
When Sam looked up to see his brother limping his way into the diner the next morning, he wasn't surprised, either by the limp -- Dean's leg had turned some spectacular colors over night, marking the course of the tentacle in stark detail -- or the broad grin on his face.
"Dude, check it out." He tossed a newspaper down onto the table. Sam just barely managed to pull his short stack out of the way. "Front page!"
Sure enough, the story of the carousel's explosion had hit the front page of the Washington Post -- not the headliner by any means, but the teaser box in the bottom corner reading "Inside". The story itself was on the front of the Metro section, bearing before and after pictures of the carousel and the headline "Attack on Beloved Landmark; Terrorists Suspected". Sam groaned.
"Terrorists?"
Dean shrugged. "At least they're not connecting it to those two guys the FBI was chasing around a couple years ago?" And he winked. He actually winked.
Sam leaned forward, rubbing his forehead, still aching from the rough treatment the night before. "We have to get out of town. Like, now."
"Oh, come on. They'll never find us. Read the article. They figure it was either Al Qaeda or some local hooligans."
"Would you keep your voice down?" Sam pushed the paper to the side. "This isn't a joke, Dean, you didn't have to do that."
"Sucker was haunted. We did that park a favor."
"Yeah, well, we could have done them the favor without blowing up their priceless piece of history. We could be researching how to take care of it properly right now."
"No time. The sucker was angry. Who knew how many kids could get killed if it went nuts during the day?"
"Where did you find the stuff to blow it up with, anyway?"
"A master never reveals his secrets, Sammy."
"You're thinking magicians. Which you're not."
"Stop being such a bitch, dude. We took out a hundred year old dragon and a haunted carousel in one night. That's a total win."
"Yeah?" Sam scowled. "How's your ass feeling?"
Dean went from giddy to confused to annoyed in .06 seconds. He pushed himself back up from the table, snatched up the paper, and started for the door with affronted dignity.
And a limp.
Sam snorted and shook his head. For all his protests, especially about that poor carousel, he'd missed this. Dean's pyromaniacal enthusiasm, the banter, the complete lack of the weight of the entire world on their shoulders. For the first time in -- well, it had to be years, if not his entire life -- things were finally good.
If only it could last.
* * *
Sam tried to keep that good feeling -- and the image of the tentacle stopping several inches short of Dean's un-stretched, un-torn boxer-briefs -- in mind two weeks later in Minnesota, when Dean was still walking funny.
"What's up with you?"
Dean looked up from where he was awkwardly shoving himself into his jeans. For a moment, Sam was certain that Dean was going to deny everything and insist that he was just fine -- except that that hadn't been Dean's M.O. in a while now, and if Sam was really honest with himself, it'd never been Dean's M.O. in the first place, not when it really mattered. Dean was perfectly willing to point out his concussions, busted ribs, hell, even his fear of flying when the situation called for it. He seldom whined about it, but if Sam asked, Dean was usually pretty direct.
He wasn't so sure if Dean would be that direct when it came to the, er, sanctity of his ass. He'd never really had cause to wonder, before.
Dean shrugged, sucking in his cheeks in what Sam privately called his "Zoolander" face as he looked down at his legs. "Dunno. My knees are bothering me." He bent and straightened his legs a couple of times, rubbing at his thighs. "Stiff."
Sam looked down at Dean's legs, picturing the way he'd been walking, thinking about the length of time he'd spent in the shower. Dean had always been bowlegged. Maybe his odd gait was finally catching up with him?
Sam snorted, unable to keep back a smile, and he caught a glimpse of Dean's head jerking up in his peripheral vision. "What?"
"Maybe you're just getting old."
He didn't bother to try to dodge the damp towel Dean hurled in his direction.
* * *
Two days later in a diner -- Wisconsin, this time -- Sam found himself reconsidering his stance on the issue. There was definitely something strange going on with Dean, and it wasn't just walking funny any more. For one thing, Dean the Marathon Driver was insisting on more and more breaks from being in the car, lately. Sam had caught him flexing and stretching his legs when he thought Sam wasn't looking. His jeans seemed to be fitting a bit differently, too. Nothing huge, just subtle differences that were starting to get big enough for Sam to notice.
He wondered how long this had been going on, for.
Just then, there in that diner, Dean sat perched on the edge of his seat with his legs tucked in close under the table. Sam himself was sprawled out, leaning back against the booth with his arms along the back, his legs splayed under the table, his feet kicked up to rest on the heels of his boots. He wasn't sure if Dean's posture was a reaction to his, or if his was a reaction to Dean's, but it seemed like one of them must be overcompensating for something.
It didn't help that the staff at the diner was taking their dear, sweet time in getting their food out. Dean had, of course, ordered his usual "we don't need no stinking arteries" special, and Sam was about ready to head out back to see if they were slaughtering a fatted calf when Dean drew his attention again.
"What, are they flying to Belgium to beat someone to death with a waffle iron?"
Sam blinked. "What?"
"Your breakfast, princess."
Sam snorted. "Right. It's the waffles that are taking forever." He blinked, then sat up and leaned over the table a little. "Are you -- are you eating a napkin?"
Dean looked down at his hand as though just noticing that he had the torn up thing crumpled in his fist. ". . . No?"
Yeah, that would be more believable if there weren't a little bit of white paper stuck to Dean's lower lip.
"Dude, what the hell?"
Dean shrugged, gingerly depositing the half-eaten, abused napkin on Sam's side of the table. "I'm hungry."
"Enough to eat paper?"
Dean's mouth tightened, causing that little bit of paper to stand out as his lower lip slid forward. "So, about this hodag."
"Dude, a napkin."
"I stopped, Sam, now can we please focus here? There's a rhino-frog looking thing out there eating people, I think that's a little more important than me having a case of the munchies."
"Are you sure? I mean, weird cravings could mean that you're lacking some sort of vital nutrient in your diet." Or several vital nutrients. There was only so much fried meat and potato could offer a man, after all. "Or be linked to some sort of deep-seated psychological trauma."
Dean sat up straighter in his seat, one of his boots smacking against the linoleum as he adjusted his legs. "So now you're saying I'm crazy?"
"I -- no!" Sam shook his hands out in the air, shutting his eyes as he tried to reorder his thoughts. "You've been to Hell, Dean, it's possible that's having some sort of -- of unconscious effect on you, leading you to eat things that have zero nutritional value. . . ." Sam trailed off as he saw a flash of that faint, tragic melancholy steal over Dean's features again before he schooled them into something blank.
"Right." Dean nodded once. "So I'm allowed to have issues with my time in Hell now? 'Cause last I heard, you thought I was whining. Boo hoo."
Sam slammed his hand down onto the table, causing their water glasses to jingle and Dean to jump. "Dammit, Dean, that was more than a year ago. When are you going to drop it?!"
"Oh, sorry, am I whining about that, too?"
Sam shut his eyes, pulling his arms and legs in closer to his body as he tried to tamp down his frustration with his brother. "I don't want to argue with you."
There was silence from the other end of the table, and after a few moments, Sam looked up again, through the hair that had fallen in his face. Dean looked a little fuzzy from this angle, like an impressionist's rendition of a pensive jackass. He had his head turned to look out the window, one hand rubbing at his forehead, exhaustion once again settling into the set of his lips, the flare of his nostrils.
"Yeah, me neither." Dean dropped his hand and looked back, and Sam shook his hair out of his eyes and raised his chin. "It's just these gigs, you know? Snallygaster. Hodag. The freaking Leprechaun near the Canadian border."
Sam's lip quirked. "Yeah. I know what you mean."
"Who knew we'd actually miss the demons and angels and apocalypse crap?"
Sam tilted his head to one side and studied his brother for a moment. Dean had that wide-eyed, earnest "Ain't I cute?" look on his face, the one he usually reserved for police officers and occasionally Bobby. A sure sign he was trying to distract from some deeper issue. "Do you?"
"Hm?"
"Do you miss it? Miss . . . Castiel and things."
Dean shrugged. "Nah. I mean, okay, it was kind of nice knowing that they needed me for something, but I definitely don't miss the weight of the world and all that. These shoulders are nice and weight-free." He rubbed his forehead again, near his hairline. "Why, do you?"
Sam shook his head quickly. "No. Definitely not."
"Not even Ruby?"
Sam felt something twist in his gut. He did his best not to think about Ruby and the things they'd done together, these days. She was filed away in the back of his brain, opposite where he'd kept Jess for so long.
The whole deal with Ruby had been . . . complicated. Very, very complicated.
And, he had to admit, just this side of nauseating. Suddenly, those Belgian waffles weren't sounding as nice, any more.
"Finish your napkin."
* * *
And, okay, so the napkin thing was kinda funny. And later, when they'd finished up the hodag hunt -- things were fast, sure, and mean, but they weren't actually all that supernatural; they'd die just like anything else -- and Dean went into the bathroom for a shower, only to come out without a shirt, point to the little "happy trail" of fine, golden brown hair leading from his belly button down his waistband and demand "Have you been slipping me Rogaine or something?!", Sam couldn't help but snort and debate whether to tell Dean it was testosterone poisoning or congratulate him on finally reaching puberty. But then, in Michigan, Dean was rubbing at his forehead more and more often, and he started stalking around with an occasional wobble, like a frat pledge ordered to wear four inch heels. In Ohio he bought a new pair of sunglasses and some fancy insoles for his boots, and while Sam hadn't actually caught him having any more papery snacks, Dean did seem to be carrying around more motel stationary than he used to.
So Sam decided it was better safe than sorry and fired up his laptop. Eating paper meant pretty much what he thought, though Google did manage to narrow it down to a likely iron deficiency. He supposed that could lead into leg cramps and headaches, but he wasn't really sure about the hair growth. He needed to get Dean to a doctor for blood tests. This could be anything from diet related to a tumor making itself known, and he wasn't about to lose his brother again, not after the hell they both went through to get each other back, not just from death, but from the manipulative forces working against them. But while Dean could admit when something was wrong, he wouldn't want to go to an actual doctor without a good reason. Fake insurance, as he frequently pointed out, didn't come easy, and WebMD could supplement their first aid knowledge for most things. WebMD couldn't tell Sam how to perform a blood test with things they kept in their trunk, though. Or how to perform exploratory surgery for a cancerous growth without killing his patient. Sam needed a game plan, and he needed to come up with it fast.
In all of his planning, however -- which included such varied gems as sitting Dean down and lining up all his arguments in a row like the proper lawyer Sam had dreamed of being or beating Dean over the head with one of their guns and dragging him to the hospital -- none of them had included the possibility of Dean deciding to do something about whatever was going on, first. They also hadn't included the possibility that Dean's problem could be supernaturally influenced. After all, the demons and angels -- the heavy hitters -- were long gone, now. The war was over, and they were back to the simple, straight forward monsters and occasional homicidal ghosts. Nothing that could have cursed Dean or cast any sort of paper-eating spell on him, right?
But then Dean woke him up one morning, stepping out of the bathroom wearing a pair of Sam's sweatpants, his head bowed forward, his thumb and middle finger rubbing small circles above his eyes again.
"Sam, we've got a problem."
"Are those my sweatpants?"
Sam was never a hundred percent just after he woke up.
"Sam, listen to me. Something's wrong."
Sam sat up straight in the bed, pushing the covers aside. "We can go to the doctor. The emergency room. We'll use one of the credit cards to cover the cost of the tests and if they have to do anything really fancy we can get. . . ." Sam trailed off. Dean continued to stand just in front of the bathroom door, both hands on his head now, rubbing and rubbing and rubbing. He wasn't shaking his head, but his shoulders had come up, making their way towards his ears, and he shifted his weight back and forth in a way that didn't so much tell Sam his brother was trying and failing to be patient as shouted it. "What?"
Dean shrugged -- a nice trick when his shoulders were already so high up -- and looked over to the side, his hands and lashes masking his eyes. Then he stomped forward, his footsteps made heavy by that awkward gait, and leaned into Sam's personal space, staring into his eyes.
Sam sat for a moment and stared back. His brother was scared. No, scratch that, terrified. In a way he hadn't been since the war had ended and they'd discovered that neither of them was dead or evil or going to Hell, that they were both whole and while they might be tarnished by their experiences, they could move on. Get a little bit of their old selves back by throwing themselves into their old routines of bickering and hunting legends and not keeping the sorts of secrets that would get either of them killed or evil or sent to Hell. Sam stared into his brother's eyes and saw the man lying in the hospital bed after Alastair, the man standing beside him at the funeral for Pamela the psychic, the man who'd talked about angels and destiny and Hell like he was coming apart at the seams.
Sam couldn't stand seeing that man. He pulled back. "What?"
Dean frowned. He straightened a few inches and cast his eyes around at the motel room, glancing at the unlit lamp, the bathroom door, and the exterior window. Then he grabbed Sam's arm and leaned his whole weight into dragging Sam to his feet and out the motel room door.
Sam hissed and squinted against the brightness of the early morning in comparison with the gloom of the motel room, bringing a hand up to shade his eyes and tilting his head towards his brother to ask "what?" again. Dean grabbed his jaw before he could, dragging Sam's face down the few inches to be level with his own, and stared into his eyes again.
Sam sucked in a breath.
It hadn't been obvious in the room, where the light bleeding in from the bathroom had been dim at best and at Dean's back, but out here, in the light of the morning sun, Dean's pupils contracted and Sam could see what the problem was very clearly against the background of Dean's green irises.
Dean's pupils were rectangular. Like thick hyphens smudged onto his eyes. Over the two years that they'd spent hunting demons almost exclusively, Sam had seen a lot of weird eyes, from the solid black of the foot soldier to the yellow of Azazel, the red irises of the crossroads demon to the eyes-rolled-up white of Lilith and Alastair. Somehow, Dean's eyes were stranger.
"Holy shit."
Dean nodded, his head almost vibrating up and down. "That's not all."
"Isn't it enough?"
Dean rubbed his head, then fingered the spots that Sam had seen him rubbing, directly above his eyes near his hairline. He noticed they were flushed pink and starting to bulge. Dean's finger flicked over the center of the pink spot on the right and Sam leaned in to see the very tip of something dark, bony, and pointed breaking through the skin.
"Are you growing horns?"
Dean swallowed and grabbed the pant leg of his sweatpants. He tugged it up, and though Sam dreaded doing so, he looked down.
He thought he might throw up.
The hair growth wasn't limited to the line on Dean's stomach. His leg was now almost completely covered with fine golden hair, peppered here and there with thicker, darker strands. The hair extended down over his ankle and onto his foot, which had narrowed and lengthened. Which was strange enough, but not the worst of it. Dean's toenails had thickened and spread, starting to fuse together in the middle, forcing his toes to press together.
No wonder he was walking funny.
"Sammy," Dean said, more of an exhalation than a true word. His voice shook and he dropped the pant leg. Sam looked up again, into Dean's wide, alien eyes. He was on the verge of a panic attack, and Sam had to admit he wasn't a whole lot calmer.
"Sammy," Dean said again, a little bit stronger this time. "What the hell is happening to me?"
Sam could only shake his head, swallowing hard and pushing Dean back into the motel room.
WebMD did not cover this sort of thing.
* * *
Step one in this sort of situation -- had they ever encountered anything even remotely like one of them sprouting horns and furry legs and, Dean admitted, possibly a tail -- would be to call Bobby.
Unfortunately, Bobby wasn't answering his phone. His voicemail said he was working a gig "down south" and that if this was "the idjits", they'd just have to get their asses to his place and look whatever it was up their own damned selves. He'd be back at the end of the week.
It was Thursday. Even with Dean's extra stops, it wouldn't take them more than a day to make it to Bobby's in South Dakota. No matter which way they looked at it -- since Sam was really, really, really sure that there wasn't anything even remotely resembling what was going on with Dean in their personal library -- it was going to take more than a day to even get started on the research. Sure, there was the internet, but the internet, well. The internet could probably tell him a little bit about what Dean might be turning into. Maybe a word or two on what sort of diet he might need, or how those freaky eyes might work. But to get to that stuff, Sam would have to go through more links and pages than he wants to think about what sort of depraved, bizarre acts he could perform on whatever Dean might be turning into. So. More than a day with no answers, whatsoever.
Sam didn't like not having answers. He had a tendency, when he didn't have answers and couldn't get them, to start making them up. When he was young, before that fateful Christmas, that had meant deciding his father was a spy. Later, it meant deciding that everything wrong in his life was his father's fault. Then Jess had burned, and Sam had switched the scapegoating to himself. There had been a period the year before, unfortunately very brief, when he'd gotten to blame everything on God and the angels, but that was over now. They hadn't seen hide nor hair -- smoke nor feather -- of either side of the holy war in months, and John had been dead for years. He could blame the thing on Dean, but, well . . . he'd done a fair bit of that last year, too, and though he was still pretty sure he'd been right, it hadn't done either of them much more good than just making Dean even worse and pushing them farther apart.
So when faced with the mystery of his brother's slow transformation, Sam had only one way to turn.
"It's me, isn't it," he said, a few minutes after hanging up the phone from Bobby's voicemail. Dean was sitting on his bed, now, still dressed only in Sam's sweatpants, his legs folded up beneath him in a way that should have only been possible for a professional contortionist. At Sam's words, those strange eyes rolled down from where they were staring at the ceiling.
Weird pupils or no, though, Dean's "you're an idiot" expression was just as clear as ever.
"Yes, Sam," he said, his voice fairly dripping. "You're actually the one growing horns." He squirmed for a moment, face contorting as he reached behind him to scratch at the base of his spine. "This sucks. No one's gonna want to sleep with a guy with a hairy ass."
"Your priorities are seriously skewed."
Dean blinked innocently at him. "So's your face."
Sam couldn't help a snort of laughter, though he tried to drown it in a cough, rather than encourage his brother's lame sense of humor. "I'm serious, Dean. This is . . . this is exactly what I'm talking about."
"My hairy ass?"
Sam felt a growl try to rise in his throat and swallowed it down. "I think you're turning into a satyr."
Dean nodded the same way he had in Florida when Sam had been time-looped. It was the nod of "you're completely nuts, but that's okay. We can work with that."
Sam had gotten that nod a lot in his life.
"I'm not Greek, Sam."
"Neither are satyrs."
And that was when the "you're crazy" nod turned into the "you think I'm an idiot" head tilt. "Sam --"
Sam shook his head, holding his hands up to stop Dean before he launched into the full "I do read" speech again. "Yeah, okay, satyrs are, but there's stories about them -- or things like them -- all over the world. It's like saying a vampire is purely Romanian."
The indignation bled out of Dean's expression, leaving only the incredulity behind. "You think I'm turning into a goatman." His eyes widened and he leaned forward. "And you think it's your fault?"
Sam lowered his chin and glanced away.
"You been messing with some hocus pocus behind my back, Sammy?"
Sam looked back quickly and shook his head. "No!" He couldn't keep the slight tinge of bitterness from his voice, though. It wasn't too long ago that he had been fooling around behind Dean's back, for a damned good reason, too. The way it had all gone down -- right, focus here. His brother was becoming half-goat. Slightly more important than carrying a grudge from the darkest, weirdest time of their lives.
On the other hand, his brother was becoming half-goat.
Sam pinched at the bridge of his nose and let out a sharp breath, getting his impatience with Dean under control. "I'm not saying I'm doing it on purpose, just. . . ."
"Just what, Sam?"
Sam looked down at his hand, clenched around his phone, and spent a moment flicking at the cuticle of his thumb with his fingernails. "I haven't, you know, done anything with my powers in awhile. Maybe there's some bleed-over."
"Last I checked, your spooky mojo didn't include transformations."
Sam turned the phone over and over in his hands, not quite able to bring himself to look up.
"Sam, tell me your powers don't include transformations."
Sam shrugged. He wanted to deny it, but the truth was, he'd never tried to do anything like that. He'd spent his time with Ruby honing the demon-expelling and -killing and ignoring any other stuff, the psychic visions or the mind-control or the electro-kinesis or whatever that kid Scott Carey had had. He had no idea how far the scope of his abilities might extend.
It was the wrong answer, though, because Dean exploded up off the bed, pacing back and forth across the small motel room in awkward fury as he adjusted to walking on -- well, Sam suspected it was his developing hooves. "Jesus Christ, Sam!"
Sam opened his mouth to point out that, a) he hadn't actually said "yes" and b) considering their history, maybe they shouldn't be using that name as an expostulation any more, but Dean cut him off.
"Dammit, man, you're like a freaking anime character! Just when I think you can't get any more ridiculously powerful, your sword turns into a whip and starts shooting baboons!"
Okay, that was it. Sam pushed himself to his feet as well, grabbing onto Dean's bare shoulders to halt his progress and staring down into Dean's furious, rectangular eyes. "I didn't say I could, Dean! I said I don't know if I could!"
Dean shrugged out from under Sam's grip and stepped backwards, only to catch his foot -- hoof -- foot on the edge of the sweatpants and topple backwards onto the bed. Once there, he crossed his legs primly, as though to pretend he'd meant to sit down all along. He set his lips in a hard line. "You really think you're accidentally turning me into a goatman?"
Sam shoved his hands into his pockets. "You got any better ideas?"
Dean's brow went up. "Uh, yeah. How about the one where we get our asses over to South Dakota and do some actual research before we start laying blame?"
Wow. Sam really kind of hated it when Dean had a point like that. "Yeah. Okay." He held out his hand. "I'm driving."
Dean stared at Sam's palm like it had just killed his puppy -- or, if he really was turning into a goatman, as if Sam's palm had just stolen the puppy Dean had intended to kill. He opened his mouth to complain, but Sam cut him off.
"Dean, if this keeps going like I think it will, pretty soon you might not have ankles."
Dean let out a low groan, then grabbed his jacket off the dresser and handed over the Impala's keys. "Dude, this sucks." He started rooting through his duffel bag, then set about getting dressed. "If you are behind this, your subconscious has a sick sense of humor."
Sam shoved the keys in his pocket. "I know." He started packing up his backpack, then cast a glance at Dean over his shoulder. "Baboons?"
"Shut up."
"I thought you said you didn't watch Cartoon Network late at night, any more."
Dean flipped him off.
| Previous | Next |
| Master Post |
"Dude," Dean said, wiping at the back of Sam's jacket. "I can't believe that bitch exploded."
Sam squirmed out of the way, but not before he felt the green goo that coated his brother splatter across his back. "Knock it off!" He stumbled over a rock on the narrow shoulder of MacArthur Boulevard, the road that ran up against the edge of Glen Echo Park. "God, you smell worse than you did after Constance dumped you in the river."
Dean sniffed at his arm, eyebrows shooting up as his eyes squinted shut and he flinched away. "Gyuh." He put his hands against Sam's back again, pushing this time instead of wiping. "Hobble faster, man. We gotta get moving. Someone might see us."
"Uh." Sam shrugged away from him again, but obeyed. "I'm kind of hoping they do. The Impala's gotta be more than ten miles away."
"I can't believe that bitch carried us all the way down here."
"I can't believe you think the Snallygaster's female."
"I can't believe you got dragged around by a giraffe. Move."
"I'm moving, I'm moving!" And he was. He couldn't get away from Dean's stink fast enough. "What's the hurry, though, man? Sure, the Snallygaster got loud, but this close to the city, people have got to be used to ignoring strange noises at night. Besides, there's still that carousel to take care of."
"Yeah. About that," Dean said. Sam ignored him, hunching his shoulders and thinking out loud to take his mind off the throb of his head and ankle.
"Did you hear the laughter? That was a kid. I'm thinking the Snallygaster brought some of its prey there to feed, and the spirits stuck around to play with the old rides."
"Sure. But Sam --"
"The question is, how do we get rid of them? There's no guarantee they'll leave now that the Snallygaster's gone. And tracking down that many graves -- or even having any idea which missing kids the spirits might be -- is going to be a bitch. I guess we could destroy the carousel but that'd just --" Sam cut himself off when a hand connected with the back of his head, sending his already pounding headache into the stratosphere. "Ow! Dean!"
"Less talky, more walkie. We need to be outta here before anyone comes to check out the explosion."
"It was really more of a 'pop'."
"That's not the explosion I'm talking about."
Sam stopped dead by the side of the road and turned to face his brother, now silhouetted against the glowing neon park sign. "What did you do?"
Dean's teeth flashed pale in a grin, and the night was suddenly lit by a deafening explosion from behind him, flames shooting up into the air. Within moments, sirens could be heard closing in from all directions.
Sam stared at Dean. "You didn't. You -- the carousel?!"
"It tried to kill us."
"But -- but --"
"It's a public service."
"But -- it was -- that --"
"Get a move on, Sammy!" Dean shoved at Sam's shoulders, spinning him around and propelling him down the road, towards the guardrail.
"Are you kidding me?!"
"Nope."
Sam felt the first few patters of rain drops as he was shoved down behind a bush. A police car went whirring by. He crouched down next to his stinking, bloody, pyromaniac brother as the rain set in and tried to find the right words to express his incredulity.
Beside him, Dean started to sing quietly.
"Someone left the cake out in the rain."
"I hate you."
"And I'll never see that recipe again. Oh noooooo!"
* * *
Dean kept singing that damned cake song the entire time they were hiking their way into a nearby neighborhood to hotwire a car. And kept going for just about the entire drive back up to Frederick, Maryland, where they'd left the Impala. Sam did his best to try to ignore it, but there was just something so insidious about the nonsensical lyrics.
MacArthur Park is melting in the dark.
"How's your leg?" He asked, hoping to to redirect Dean's attention from whatever had him singing to something more important. Dean cut off mid-chorus -- it seemed all he knew of the song was that maudlin, impenetrable refrain -- and glanced over at Sam, tilting his head up, chin jutting out.
"It's like a cuddly hug that never ends, Sam, how do you think it is?"
"We'll get the tentacle off when we get to the hotel."
"Yeah, yeah." Dean sighed, lowering his chin and dropping his temple to toward the window. He leaned one elbow on the high edge of the door, the other arm stretched in front of him, gripping the wheel. "My foot's gone totally numb."
"You should've let me drive."
Dean snorted.
"Should've at least jacked an automatic."
A deeper snort. "Right. Because when you're dodging cops after blowing up a historical landmark, the first thing you do is check the transmission on the car you're stealing."
"I'm just saying."
"Well, don't."
Sam slid down best as he could in the cramped mid-sized sedan, finding himself in the unusual situation of dreaming fondly of the leg room of the Impala. Lord knew how Dean had managed to jam his tentacled leg into the car, much less use it enough to work the clutch. Of course, it helped that he'd kept roaring at over fifty miles per hour most of the drive, ensuring he wouldn't have to drop it out of fifth gear.
But, hey, they were almost to the Impala, and Dean had been distracted.
"Someone left the cake out in the rain."
Or not.
* * *
Considering the manic energy Dean seemed to be throwing into everything he'd done in the last, oh, six month or so, Sam had expected him to leap from the car when they made it back to the hotel, tentacle or no. They'd managed to ditch the stolen car, retrieve their weapons, and pick up the Impala without a hitch, and Sam himself was gearing up to give at least a vague showing of strength and wakefulness in the face of his headache -- head plus glass equaled concussion just as surely as head plus gravestone tended to -- and the persistent throb of his ankle. He caught himself halfway out the car door, getting re-drenched in the constant rain that had started just as they were leaving the park and followed them up the interstate, when he realized that Dean was still sitting in the driver's seat, his hand frozen on the keys, eyes staring straight ahead into so much nothingness through the windshield.
"Dean?"
For a moment, Sam found himself certain that his brother had quietly died sitting behind the wheel with his eyes open. It'd be just like him, really, to get through everything the two of them had survived -- or at the very least, continued moving after -- only to conk out in the parking lot of a civil war themed "no-tell" in the woods just south of the Mason-Dixon line, victim of, what, a concussion? Blood poisoning a la Snallygaster? Well, screw that. Sam was not going to be the only projectile in the universe's never-ending game of dodge ball. He reached out to poke Dean in the shoulder when his brother sighed.
And still didn't move.
Sam blinked rain out of his eyes, droplets on his lashes turning the edges of his vision blurry and twinkling. "Your leg okay?"
Dean turned his head to look at Sam and for a moment his expression was back to the way it had been for so long after Azazel had gone the way of the dodo. Jaw set, brows drawn, eyes wide and pleading. Lost and weary. Sam felt his lips tightening and hoped that the half-light of the motel refracting through raindrops into the car wasn't enough to illuminate the impatience on his face.
"Dude," Sam offered. "You just took out a dragon."
Dean blinked, his brows twitching, and the momentary melancholy vanished, replaced by a wide, childish grin. "I totally did."
Sam nodded, pulling the rest of the way out of the car and leaning against the rear passenger door. He rested there a moment, regathering his strength, then realized that Dean still hadn't moved. He leaned down.
"I know you don't wanna keep getting Snallygaster guts all over your upholstery."
Dean scowled. "Gimme a minute."
"You totally can't feel your leg, can you?" Sam's answer was a frustrated flapping of Dean's right hand. He took that as confirmation and started making his way around the car to the driver's side, rolling his eyes as he went. It was a little bit ridiculous just how used to this sort of thing they were by now, leaning against each other to limp towards a motel door, Dean's hair tickling the inside of Sam's ear as they tilted their aching heads against each other, hands fumbling without regard as to whose pocket was whose, trying to find the keys.
"So, seriously, just how far did that tentacle get?" Sam asked, once they were safely in the room and Dean was tilting towards the nearest bed in a way that always made Sam want to shout "timber!" Dean's landing raised a small cloud of dust from the motel's coverlet and he bounced once with a groan of springs. The leather jacket kept Sam from being able to make out whether or not Dean's ass was as . . . oddly shaped . . . as his leg currently was, and he was dreading cutting those jeans off and discovering just how kinky his brother's night might have been. Dean lifted one hand, middle finger extended.
"God, I hope that's not your answer." Sam plopped down on the mattress by Dean's boots and watched the room tilt on a lazy axis for a moment. Dean muttered something that sounded like a melodic "oh noooooooooo" into the pillow. Sam slumped down onto his side, one arm swinging like a pendulum to fumble for the spare first aid kit and a pair of six inch medical scissors. "I'll get your jeans off in a sec."
Dean let out a throaty snuffle, like he was preparing to spit. Or, more likely, starting to snore.
Sam sighed and debated whether or not to try and get the tentacle off by himself, or just leave his brother be. Of course, the thing was cutting off the circulation in Dean's foot, which was never a good thing. And if it was --
Right, no way to know but to look, right?
He didn't bother sitting back up, just rolled over, flailing his legs for a moment to get himself into a better position for jeans-surgery, glad that Dean wasn't aware enough to tease him about looking like a flipped turtle. He had far too much experience cutting clothing off his brother, even when said clothing was soaked with rain and entrails and stretched over a lumpy surface. He had the pant leg split open in moments, though he kind of wished he hadn't.
The tentacle, once green, was now the color of a rotting apple and giving off an odor not unlike mold and sour milk, with just a touch of "week-old chicken left at the bottom of a pile of dirty dishes". A scent Sam was far too familiar with, and not just from his early years on the road, before Dean realized that cockroach problems only became much, much worse if you didn't clean up after yourself. College freshmen weren't exactly known for being the neatest people on the planet, and as much as Sam had loved her, Jess hadn't been, either.
There was a reason why Sam didn't eat fettuccine alfredo any more.
Sam really, really wanted to just leave Dean to deal with this whenever he managed to wake his ass up. Sam could always sleep in the car. He would've, too, if it weren't for the flushed, almost purple shade of Dean's skin between coils of tentacle showing that, yes, his blood flow really was being obstructed, and as much of a pain in the ass -- neck, pain in the neck -- as Dean could be, he'd be a million times worse if he lost his foot because Sam was being a prissy bitch. Sam flopped his hand over the edge of the bed again, fishing around until he came up with one of Dean's t-shirts. He wrapped it around his hand and, turning his face away with a grimace, grabbed onto the spongy-yet-rigid tentacle and started to unwrap it.
He was very much relieved, a few minutes later, when he noted that the tapered end of the thing had only actually made it most of the way up Dean's thigh.
Some things really just didn't bear much thinking about.
* * *
When Sam looked up to see his brother limping his way into the diner the next morning, he wasn't surprised, either by the limp -- Dean's leg had turned some spectacular colors over night, marking the course of the tentacle in stark detail -- or the broad grin on his face.
"Dude, check it out." He tossed a newspaper down onto the table. Sam just barely managed to pull his short stack out of the way. "Front page!"
Sure enough, the story of the carousel's explosion had hit the front page of the Washington Post -- not the headliner by any means, but the teaser box in the bottom corner reading "Inside". The story itself was on the front of the Metro section, bearing before and after pictures of the carousel and the headline "Attack on Beloved Landmark; Terrorists Suspected". Sam groaned.
"Terrorists?"
Dean shrugged. "At least they're not connecting it to those two guys the FBI was chasing around a couple years ago?" And he winked. He actually winked.
Sam leaned forward, rubbing his forehead, still aching from the rough treatment the night before. "We have to get out of town. Like, now."
"Oh, come on. They'll never find us. Read the article. They figure it was either Al Qaeda or some local hooligans."
"Would you keep your voice down?" Sam pushed the paper to the side. "This isn't a joke, Dean, you didn't have to do that."
"Sucker was haunted. We did that park a favor."
"Yeah, well, we could have done them the favor without blowing up their priceless piece of history. We could be researching how to take care of it properly right now."
"No time. The sucker was angry. Who knew how many kids could get killed if it went nuts during the day?"
"Where did you find the stuff to blow it up with, anyway?"
"A master never reveals his secrets, Sammy."
"You're thinking magicians. Which you're not."
"Stop being such a bitch, dude. We took out a hundred year old dragon and a haunted carousel in one night. That's a total win."
"Yeah?" Sam scowled. "How's your ass feeling?"
Dean went from giddy to confused to annoyed in .06 seconds. He pushed himself back up from the table, snatched up the paper, and started for the door with affronted dignity.
And a limp.
Sam snorted and shook his head. For all his protests, especially about that poor carousel, he'd missed this. Dean's pyromaniacal enthusiasm, the banter, the complete lack of the weight of the entire world on their shoulders. For the first time in -- well, it had to be years, if not his entire life -- things were finally good.
If only it could last.
* * *
Sam tried to keep that good feeling -- and the image of the tentacle stopping several inches short of Dean's un-stretched, un-torn boxer-briefs -- in mind two weeks later in Minnesota, when Dean was still walking funny.
"What's up with you?"
Dean looked up from where he was awkwardly shoving himself into his jeans. For a moment, Sam was certain that Dean was going to deny everything and insist that he was just fine -- except that that hadn't been Dean's M.O. in a while now, and if Sam was really honest with himself, it'd never been Dean's M.O. in the first place, not when it really mattered. Dean was perfectly willing to point out his concussions, busted ribs, hell, even his fear of flying when the situation called for it. He seldom whined about it, but if Sam asked, Dean was usually pretty direct.
He wasn't so sure if Dean would be that direct when it came to the, er, sanctity of his ass. He'd never really had cause to wonder, before.
Dean shrugged, sucking in his cheeks in what Sam privately called his "Zoolander" face as he looked down at his legs. "Dunno. My knees are bothering me." He bent and straightened his legs a couple of times, rubbing at his thighs. "Stiff."
Sam looked down at Dean's legs, picturing the way he'd been walking, thinking about the length of time he'd spent in the shower. Dean had always been bowlegged. Maybe his odd gait was finally catching up with him?
Sam snorted, unable to keep back a smile, and he caught a glimpse of Dean's head jerking up in his peripheral vision. "What?"
"Maybe you're just getting old."
He didn't bother to try to dodge the damp towel Dean hurled in his direction.
* * *
Two days later in a diner -- Wisconsin, this time -- Sam found himself reconsidering his stance on the issue. There was definitely something strange going on with Dean, and it wasn't just walking funny any more. For one thing, Dean the Marathon Driver was insisting on more and more breaks from being in the car, lately. Sam had caught him flexing and stretching his legs when he thought Sam wasn't looking. His jeans seemed to be fitting a bit differently, too. Nothing huge, just subtle differences that were starting to get big enough for Sam to notice.
He wondered how long this had been going on, for.
Just then, there in that diner, Dean sat perched on the edge of his seat with his legs tucked in close under the table. Sam himself was sprawled out, leaning back against the booth with his arms along the back, his legs splayed under the table, his feet kicked up to rest on the heels of his boots. He wasn't sure if Dean's posture was a reaction to his, or if his was a reaction to Dean's, but it seemed like one of them must be overcompensating for something.
It didn't help that the staff at the diner was taking their dear, sweet time in getting their food out. Dean had, of course, ordered his usual "we don't need no stinking arteries" special, and Sam was about ready to head out back to see if they were slaughtering a fatted calf when Dean drew his attention again.
"What, are they flying to Belgium to beat someone to death with a waffle iron?"
Sam blinked. "What?"
"Your breakfast, princess."
Sam snorted. "Right. It's the waffles that are taking forever." He blinked, then sat up and leaned over the table a little. "Are you -- are you eating a napkin?"
Dean looked down at his hand as though just noticing that he had the torn up thing crumpled in his fist. ". . . No?"
Yeah, that would be more believable if there weren't a little bit of white paper stuck to Dean's lower lip.
"Dude, what the hell?"
Dean shrugged, gingerly depositing the half-eaten, abused napkin on Sam's side of the table. "I'm hungry."
"Enough to eat paper?"
Dean's mouth tightened, causing that little bit of paper to stand out as his lower lip slid forward. "So, about this hodag."
"Dude, a napkin."
"I stopped, Sam, now can we please focus here? There's a rhino-frog looking thing out there eating people, I think that's a little more important than me having a case of the munchies."
"Are you sure? I mean, weird cravings could mean that you're lacking some sort of vital nutrient in your diet." Or several vital nutrients. There was only so much fried meat and potato could offer a man, after all. "Or be linked to some sort of deep-seated psychological trauma."
Dean sat up straighter in his seat, one of his boots smacking against the linoleum as he adjusted his legs. "So now you're saying I'm crazy?"
"I -- no!" Sam shook his hands out in the air, shutting his eyes as he tried to reorder his thoughts. "You've been to Hell, Dean, it's possible that's having some sort of -- of unconscious effect on you, leading you to eat things that have zero nutritional value. . . ." Sam trailed off as he saw a flash of that faint, tragic melancholy steal over Dean's features again before he schooled them into something blank.
"Right." Dean nodded once. "So I'm allowed to have issues with my time in Hell now? 'Cause last I heard, you thought I was whining. Boo hoo."
Sam slammed his hand down onto the table, causing their water glasses to jingle and Dean to jump. "Dammit, Dean, that was more than a year ago. When are you going to drop it?!"
"Oh, sorry, am I whining about that, too?"
Sam shut his eyes, pulling his arms and legs in closer to his body as he tried to tamp down his frustration with his brother. "I don't want to argue with you."
There was silence from the other end of the table, and after a few moments, Sam looked up again, through the hair that had fallen in his face. Dean looked a little fuzzy from this angle, like an impressionist's rendition of a pensive jackass. He had his head turned to look out the window, one hand rubbing at his forehead, exhaustion once again settling into the set of his lips, the flare of his nostrils.
"Yeah, me neither." Dean dropped his hand and looked back, and Sam shook his hair out of his eyes and raised his chin. "It's just these gigs, you know? Snallygaster. Hodag. The freaking Leprechaun near the Canadian border."
Sam's lip quirked. "Yeah. I know what you mean."
"Who knew we'd actually miss the demons and angels and apocalypse crap?"
Sam tilted his head to one side and studied his brother for a moment. Dean had that wide-eyed, earnest "Ain't I cute?" look on his face, the one he usually reserved for police officers and occasionally Bobby. A sure sign he was trying to distract from some deeper issue. "Do you?"
"Hm?"
"Do you miss it? Miss . . . Castiel and things."
Dean shrugged. "Nah. I mean, okay, it was kind of nice knowing that they needed me for something, but I definitely don't miss the weight of the world and all that. These shoulders are nice and weight-free." He rubbed his forehead again, near his hairline. "Why, do you?"
Sam shook his head quickly. "No. Definitely not."
"Not even Ruby?"
Sam felt something twist in his gut. He did his best not to think about Ruby and the things they'd done together, these days. She was filed away in the back of his brain, opposite where he'd kept Jess for so long.
The whole deal with Ruby had been . . . complicated. Very, very complicated.
And, he had to admit, just this side of nauseating. Suddenly, those Belgian waffles weren't sounding as nice, any more.
"Finish your napkin."
* * *
And, okay, so the napkin thing was kinda funny. And later, when they'd finished up the hodag hunt -- things were fast, sure, and mean, but they weren't actually all that supernatural; they'd die just like anything else -- and Dean went into the bathroom for a shower, only to come out without a shirt, point to the little "happy trail" of fine, golden brown hair leading from his belly button down his waistband and demand "Have you been slipping me Rogaine or something?!", Sam couldn't help but snort and debate whether to tell Dean it was testosterone poisoning or congratulate him on finally reaching puberty. But then, in Michigan, Dean was rubbing at his forehead more and more often, and he started stalking around with an occasional wobble, like a frat pledge ordered to wear four inch heels. In Ohio he bought a new pair of sunglasses and some fancy insoles for his boots, and while Sam hadn't actually caught him having any more papery snacks, Dean did seem to be carrying around more motel stationary than he used to.
So Sam decided it was better safe than sorry and fired up his laptop. Eating paper meant pretty much what he thought, though Google did manage to narrow it down to a likely iron deficiency. He supposed that could lead into leg cramps and headaches, but he wasn't really sure about the hair growth. He needed to get Dean to a doctor for blood tests. This could be anything from diet related to a tumor making itself known, and he wasn't about to lose his brother again, not after the hell they both went through to get each other back, not just from death, but from the manipulative forces working against them. But while Dean could admit when something was wrong, he wouldn't want to go to an actual doctor without a good reason. Fake insurance, as he frequently pointed out, didn't come easy, and WebMD could supplement their first aid knowledge for most things. WebMD couldn't tell Sam how to perform a blood test with things they kept in their trunk, though. Or how to perform exploratory surgery for a cancerous growth without killing his patient. Sam needed a game plan, and he needed to come up with it fast.
In all of his planning, however -- which included such varied gems as sitting Dean down and lining up all his arguments in a row like the proper lawyer Sam had dreamed of being or beating Dean over the head with one of their guns and dragging him to the hospital -- none of them had included the possibility of Dean deciding to do something about whatever was going on, first. They also hadn't included the possibility that Dean's problem could be supernaturally influenced. After all, the demons and angels -- the heavy hitters -- were long gone, now. The war was over, and they were back to the simple, straight forward monsters and occasional homicidal ghosts. Nothing that could have cursed Dean or cast any sort of paper-eating spell on him, right?
But then Dean woke him up one morning, stepping out of the bathroom wearing a pair of Sam's sweatpants, his head bowed forward, his thumb and middle finger rubbing small circles above his eyes again.
"Sam, we've got a problem."
"Are those my sweatpants?"
Sam was never a hundred percent just after he woke up.
"Sam, listen to me. Something's wrong."
Sam sat up straight in the bed, pushing the covers aside. "We can go to the doctor. The emergency room. We'll use one of the credit cards to cover the cost of the tests and if they have to do anything really fancy we can get. . . ." Sam trailed off. Dean continued to stand just in front of the bathroom door, both hands on his head now, rubbing and rubbing and rubbing. He wasn't shaking his head, but his shoulders had come up, making their way towards his ears, and he shifted his weight back and forth in a way that didn't so much tell Sam his brother was trying and failing to be patient as shouted it. "What?"
Dean shrugged -- a nice trick when his shoulders were already so high up -- and looked over to the side, his hands and lashes masking his eyes. Then he stomped forward, his footsteps made heavy by that awkward gait, and leaned into Sam's personal space, staring into his eyes.
Sam sat for a moment and stared back. His brother was scared. No, scratch that, terrified. In a way he hadn't been since the war had ended and they'd discovered that neither of them was dead or evil or going to Hell, that they were both whole and while they might be tarnished by their experiences, they could move on. Get a little bit of their old selves back by throwing themselves into their old routines of bickering and hunting legends and not keeping the sorts of secrets that would get either of them killed or evil or sent to Hell. Sam stared into his brother's eyes and saw the man lying in the hospital bed after Alastair, the man standing beside him at the funeral for Pamela the psychic, the man who'd talked about angels and destiny and Hell like he was coming apart at the seams.
Sam couldn't stand seeing that man. He pulled back. "What?"
Dean frowned. He straightened a few inches and cast his eyes around at the motel room, glancing at the unlit lamp, the bathroom door, and the exterior window. Then he grabbed Sam's arm and leaned his whole weight into dragging Sam to his feet and out the motel room door.
Sam hissed and squinted against the brightness of the early morning in comparison with the gloom of the motel room, bringing a hand up to shade his eyes and tilting his head towards his brother to ask "what?" again. Dean grabbed his jaw before he could, dragging Sam's face down the few inches to be level with his own, and stared into his eyes again.
Sam sucked in a breath.
It hadn't been obvious in the room, where the light bleeding in from the bathroom had been dim at best and at Dean's back, but out here, in the light of the morning sun, Dean's pupils contracted and Sam could see what the problem was very clearly against the background of Dean's green irises.
Dean's pupils were rectangular. Like thick hyphens smudged onto his eyes. Over the two years that they'd spent hunting demons almost exclusively, Sam had seen a lot of weird eyes, from the solid black of the foot soldier to the yellow of Azazel, the red irises of the crossroads demon to the eyes-rolled-up white of Lilith and Alastair. Somehow, Dean's eyes were stranger.
"Holy shit."
Dean nodded, his head almost vibrating up and down. "That's not all."
"Isn't it enough?"
Dean rubbed his head, then fingered the spots that Sam had seen him rubbing, directly above his eyes near his hairline. He noticed they were flushed pink and starting to bulge. Dean's finger flicked over the center of the pink spot on the right and Sam leaned in to see the very tip of something dark, bony, and pointed breaking through the skin.
"Are you growing horns?"
Dean swallowed and grabbed the pant leg of his sweatpants. He tugged it up, and though Sam dreaded doing so, he looked down.
He thought he might throw up.
The hair growth wasn't limited to the line on Dean's stomach. His leg was now almost completely covered with fine golden hair, peppered here and there with thicker, darker strands. The hair extended down over his ankle and onto his foot, which had narrowed and lengthened. Which was strange enough, but not the worst of it. Dean's toenails had thickened and spread, starting to fuse together in the middle, forcing his toes to press together.
No wonder he was walking funny.
"Sammy," Dean said, more of an exhalation than a true word. His voice shook and he dropped the pant leg. Sam looked up again, into Dean's wide, alien eyes. He was on the verge of a panic attack, and Sam had to admit he wasn't a whole lot calmer.
"Sammy," Dean said again, a little bit stronger this time. "What the hell is happening to me?"
Sam could only shake his head, swallowing hard and pushing Dean back into the motel room.
WebMD did not cover this sort of thing.
* * *
Step one in this sort of situation -- had they ever encountered anything even remotely like one of them sprouting horns and furry legs and, Dean admitted, possibly a tail -- would be to call Bobby.
Unfortunately, Bobby wasn't answering his phone. His voicemail said he was working a gig "down south" and that if this was "the idjits", they'd just have to get their asses to his place and look whatever it was up their own damned selves. He'd be back at the end of the week.
It was Thursday. Even with Dean's extra stops, it wouldn't take them more than a day to make it to Bobby's in South Dakota. No matter which way they looked at it -- since Sam was really, really, really sure that there wasn't anything even remotely resembling what was going on with Dean in their personal library -- it was going to take more than a day to even get started on the research. Sure, there was the internet, but the internet, well. The internet could probably tell him a little bit about what Dean might be turning into. Maybe a word or two on what sort of diet he might need, or how those freaky eyes might work. But to get to that stuff, Sam would have to go through more links and pages than he wants to think about what sort of depraved, bizarre acts he could perform on whatever Dean might be turning into. So. More than a day with no answers, whatsoever.
Sam didn't like not having answers. He had a tendency, when he didn't have answers and couldn't get them, to start making them up. When he was young, before that fateful Christmas, that had meant deciding his father was a spy. Later, it meant deciding that everything wrong in his life was his father's fault. Then Jess had burned, and Sam had switched the scapegoating to himself. There had been a period the year before, unfortunately very brief, when he'd gotten to blame everything on God and the angels, but that was over now. They hadn't seen hide nor hair -- smoke nor feather -- of either side of the holy war in months, and John had been dead for years. He could blame the thing on Dean, but, well . . . he'd done a fair bit of that last year, too, and though he was still pretty sure he'd been right, it hadn't done either of them much more good than just making Dean even worse and pushing them farther apart.
So when faced with the mystery of his brother's slow transformation, Sam had only one way to turn.
"It's me, isn't it," he said, a few minutes after hanging up the phone from Bobby's voicemail. Dean was sitting on his bed, now, still dressed only in Sam's sweatpants, his legs folded up beneath him in a way that should have only been possible for a professional contortionist. At Sam's words, those strange eyes rolled down from where they were staring at the ceiling.
Weird pupils or no, though, Dean's "you're an idiot" expression was just as clear as ever.
"Yes, Sam," he said, his voice fairly dripping. "You're actually the one growing horns." He squirmed for a moment, face contorting as he reached behind him to scratch at the base of his spine. "This sucks. No one's gonna want to sleep with a guy with a hairy ass."
"Your priorities are seriously skewed."
Dean blinked innocently at him. "So's your face."
Sam couldn't help a snort of laughter, though he tried to drown it in a cough, rather than encourage his brother's lame sense of humor. "I'm serious, Dean. This is . . . this is exactly what I'm talking about."
"My hairy ass?"
Sam felt a growl try to rise in his throat and swallowed it down. "I think you're turning into a satyr."
Dean nodded the same way he had in Florida when Sam had been time-looped. It was the nod of "you're completely nuts, but that's okay. We can work with that."
Sam had gotten that nod a lot in his life.
"I'm not Greek, Sam."
"Neither are satyrs."
And that was when the "you're crazy" nod turned into the "you think I'm an idiot" head tilt. "Sam --"
Sam shook his head, holding his hands up to stop Dean before he launched into the full "I do read" speech again. "Yeah, okay, satyrs are, but there's stories about them -- or things like them -- all over the world. It's like saying a vampire is purely Romanian."
The indignation bled out of Dean's expression, leaving only the incredulity behind. "You think I'm turning into a goatman." His eyes widened and he leaned forward. "And you think it's your fault?"
Sam lowered his chin and glanced away.
"You been messing with some hocus pocus behind my back, Sammy?"
Sam looked back quickly and shook his head. "No!" He couldn't keep the slight tinge of bitterness from his voice, though. It wasn't too long ago that he had been fooling around behind Dean's back, for a damned good reason, too. The way it had all gone down -- right, focus here. His brother was becoming half-goat. Slightly more important than carrying a grudge from the darkest, weirdest time of their lives.
On the other hand, his brother was becoming half-goat.
Sam pinched at the bridge of his nose and let out a sharp breath, getting his impatience with Dean under control. "I'm not saying I'm doing it on purpose, just. . . ."
"Just what, Sam?"
Sam looked down at his hand, clenched around his phone, and spent a moment flicking at the cuticle of his thumb with his fingernails. "I haven't, you know, done anything with my powers in awhile. Maybe there's some bleed-over."
"Last I checked, your spooky mojo didn't include transformations."
Sam turned the phone over and over in his hands, not quite able to bring himself to look up.
"Sam, tell me your powers don't include transformations."
Sam shrugged. He wanted to deny it, but the truth was, he'd never tried to do anything like that. He'd spent his time with Ruby honing the demon-expelling and -killing and ignoring any other stuff, the psychic visions or the mind-control or the electro-kinesis or whatever that kid Scott Carey had had. He had no idea how far the scope of his abilities might extend.
It was the wrong answer, though, because Dean exploded up off the bed, pacing back and forth across the small motel room in awkward fury as he adjusted to walking on -- well, Sam suspected it was his developing hooves. "Jesus Christ, Sam!"
Sam opened his mouth to point out that, a) he hadn't actually said "yes" and b) considering their history, maybe they shouldn't be using that name as an expostulation any more, but Dean cut him off.
"Dammit, man, you're like a freaking anime character! Just when I think you can't get any more ridiculously powerful, your sword turns into a whip and starts shooting baboons!"
Okay, that was it. Sam pushed himself to his feet as well, grabbing onto Dean's bare shoulders to halt his progress and staring down into Dean's furious, rectangular eyes. "I didn't say I could, Dean! I said I don't know if I could!"
Dean shrugged out from under Sam's grip and stepped backwards, only to catch his foot -- hoof -- foot on the edge of the sweatpants and topple backwards onto the bed. Once there, he crossed his legs primly, as though to pretend he'd meant to sit down all along. He set his lips in a hard line. "You really think you're accidentally turning me into a goatman?"
Sam shoved his hands into his pockets. "You got any better ideas?"
Dean's brow went up. "Uh, yeah. How about the one where we get our asses over to South Dakota and do some actual research before we start laying blame?"
Wow. Sam really kind of hated it when Dean had a point like that. "Yeah. Okay." He held out his hand. "I'm driving."
Dean stared at Sam's palm like it had just killed his puppy -- or, if he really was turning into a goatman, as if Sam's palm had just stolen the puppy Dean had intended to kill. He opened his mouth to complain, but Sam cut him off.
"Dean, if this keeps going like I think it will, pretty soon you might not have ankles."
Dean let out a low groan, then grabbed his jacket off the dresser and handed over the Impala's keys. "Dude, this sucks." He started rooting through his duffel bag, then set about getting dressed. "If you are behind this, your subconscious has a sick sense of humor."
Sam shoved the keys in his pocket. "I know." He started packing up his backpack, then cast a glance at Dean over his shoulder. "Baboons?"
"Shut up."
"I thought you said you didn't watch Cartoon Network late at night, any more."
Dean flipped him off.
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