Supernatural: Between Scylla and Charybdis [Part 1/2]
Title: Between Scylla and Charybdis
Fandom: Supernatural
Characters/Pairings: Sam/Dean
Rating: NC-17 for explicit sexual content by which I usually mean tentacle porn
Word Count: 12,413
Author’s Note: This is my first of two wonderful spn_reversebang prompts I was lucky enough to claim for this round. I collaborated with the wonderfully talented sillie82, whose drawn art I have admired for years and who, it turns out, is a SUPER FANTASTIC crocheter (um…crochet person? SHE DOES GREAT CROCHET) as well. I saw this prompt and the lil' tentacles, and, well. I guess no one is surprised I had to have it. Thank you so much to sillie82 for your patience, enthusiasm, and putting up with me constantly wanting to put tentacles in someone's butt. Everyone must go check out this prompt!!! It makes me happy clap with gleeeee! Thank you, also, to my lovely beta, oddishly who did that awful thing some betas do where she was honest and forced me to address the problems in my fic, ugh. And to the mods of this, my very favorite challenge of the year. As promised on Twitter, here's a shout out to clex_monkie89 for naming the bar the boys go to. I hope you guys enjoy the story!
Summary: To save a young girl, Dean insists on rushing into a job before they really know what they're hunting. They just barely make it out intact: one small injury, a bite to Dean's neck, and as far as Sam's concerned they got lucky. At least until they find out the bite they'd thought was no big deal is slowly changing Dean into a lake monster. Now Sam has to decide between killing his brother and risking that Dean will turn him next.
ART POST
AO3 // PDF
"So, what do you think?"
Dean grins at him, flourishing two guns in each hand and a utility belt stocked with knives of varying lengths and metals. They'll be lucky if he doesn't take a leg off-either one of his own or one of Sam's-just getting in the car.
He wants to know what Sam thinks. Well, he asked for it.
"I think you're an idiot," Sam replies frankly. Dean opens his mouth as if to reply, but Sam's not done yet. Oh, is he ever not done. "I think we need to do more research. I think we're about to barge into this hunt with almost no useful intel. I think we're going to get ourselves killed."
"You about finished?" Dean asks.
Sam takes a few seconds to breathe angrily, but he has to give Dean this one. "Yeah, that pretty much covers everything."
"Good," Dean says, pulling out a couple of stakes and tucking one into each of his jacket's side pockets. He slams the trunk closed just a little harder than he normally would, which is the only sign he's not as infuriatingly nonchalant in the face of Sam's response as he's trying to seem. "Let's go then."
"Dean," Sam says, reaching out to catch Dean by the arm and pull him in before he can open the Impala. He crowds in, kissing his brother as a peace offering before insisting, "We're not ready to hunt this thing."
"Sammy. We've got a rough idea of what we're dealing with." Sam huffs, but Dean ignores it. "One of these weapons is bound to gank it. You know this thing doesn't play with its food. If we don't strike now, it'll kill Mandy Bilson."
Sam's jaw tightens, but he doesn't say the thing they're both thinking. Mandy's brother Fred had called over an hour ago to tell them his sister hadn't come home. She'd been determined to prove Fred had only imagined what he told the cops-and subsequently Sam and Dean-he saw attack his friends during their camping trip the week before, and apparently nothing anyone could say would talk her out of going out to the lake. They don't know what it is or how it kills exactly, but one thing is obvious: the monster can rip through a human body without much effort. The coroner told them it had probably taken about five minutes for each victim to die, less in some cases.
Dean liked Mandy; she was stubborn and headstrong, like Sam had been at her age, Dean said, but she was quick as a whip and funny. After their first interview, Dean had gotten back in the car, still laughing from her parting shot, and told Sam she'd make a hell of a hunter. Sam had agreed at the time, and he liked her too.
But that doesn't change the ugly fact that she's very likely dead by now.
"Dean," he says again, softer.
His brother turns his face away from the kiss this time. "Don't say it. We're gonna save her. If that means charging in half-cocked, so be it. Let's go."
It's easy for Dean to slip Sam's grip after that. Sam's not holding too tight, because Dean's probably right, and even if he weren't, there's no way to talk him down at this point. The best Sam can do is go along with it. That way, if Dean is wrong, he at least won't be up against whatever this thing is alone.
Sam opens the shotgun door and slides in, a universal sign of his deciding to let Dean have his way, and Dean grins as he plants himself in the driver's seat.
"Alright," he says, the Impala's engine roaring over him. "Run me through what we do know. Maybe we'll catch something we missed on the way over."
Sam throws out a put-upon sigh just for the sake of appearances, which only makes Dean's smile spread. "Unidentified monster. Lives in the woods around the lake. Has taken 12 campers in the last six or seven months. Local talk says it's Bigfoot, though of course no one's ever seen it take anyone until-"
"Fred Bilson last week," Dean says. "And he didn't get a good look. Skip to the M.O., Sammy, it's not a long drive."
"You said you wanted to hear what we know," Sam responds. "I assumed that meant everything."
Dean snorts. "How could I forget you'd get bogged down in the details? Nerd."
"Jerk." Sam rolls his eyes, then picks back up on the job. "Alright. Now, your werewolf theory worked with the campers last week because of the full moon."
"But not if Mandy got taken by the same thing today."
Sam nods. "Exactly."
"Black dog's still my best bet," says Dean. "Bodies that have been recovered all looked snacked on pretty good, and black dog kills usually look like werewolves but sloppier."
"Yeah," Sam answers, not convinced. "The bodies have the right bite marks, but there's still too many other things not explained. Those round bruises wrapping around some of the victims, the dislocated body parts. It looked like they'd been trying to fight out of restraints. I'm thinking we're dealing with something more intelligent than a wild animal attack."
"No, no way." Dean's shaking his head, his fingers tapping along to the Zeppelin humming in the background. "I know a chew toy when I see one, man. Whatever it is-shifter, black dog, were, it's in that family, and that means one good silver bullet in the right place and we're done. We don't have to know exactly what it is to take it down."
"But it's only a guess that it's even related, Dean." Sam pulls their file on the case out of his backpack and flips to the autopsy photos he's spent the last two days completely stumped by. "There's still the blood to think about. We've never seen anything like that."
Dean barely glances over, but Sam knows he's been far more thrown by the bright blue color of all the victims' blood than he's letting on. "We've gotta try the silver," is all he says, and then his foot presses harder on the gas.
_______________________________________________________________
Sam's holding his breath. Listening to the crunch of dry twigs and leaves under his feet as he and Dean plunge through the woods, trying to draw the creature out. He can't hear anything yet, and from the crime scenes they've observed so far, this monster should not be able to step lightly. The tracks it leaves look like someone dragged an elephant around.
"Man, this is stupid," Dean says after a while, and Sam can't help being inclined to agree with him. "Maybe we're in the wrong-"
There's a soft sound of shuffling, and Dean goes quiet. Sam waits to hear the rest of the sentence, then turns to see what shut his brother up. He's expecting Dean to be flat on his ass, maybe, tripped on a pile of mulch.
What he's not expecting to see is Dean, wheezing as he grabs at a bright blue tentacle, trying to loosen its grip on his neck. Right, tentacles. That explains the weird sucker-like marks on the victims, as well as the dislocated limbs from trying to escape being tied up.
"Dean!" Sam yells, and Dean continues to kick in the monster's grasp, his mouth moving in a pattern that looks like it might say something about Sam being an idiot and 'get me out of here.'
The way the creature's holding Dean, it's hard to get a shot off without risking that the bullet will land in his brother's brain instead of the one he's aiming for. Sam can't even see what the monster is or what it looks like, except for the outlines of a vaguely humanoid blue body and a mass of squiggling limbs. Dean is right in front of it, and it's only a little bigger than him.
Priority right now is getting Dean free, so Sam shoots what he knows he can hit. The silver bullet sinks into the limb wrapped around Dean's neck and the monster cries out, releasing its hold just long enough for Dean to take one gasping breath and get a knife out.
That's the good news. The bad news is that the shot seems to have done little more than piss the thing off. It's gushing blue blood, but there's no burning reaction to the silver, and it isn't slowing down. So there goes Dean's theory.
"Dammit, Dean, I told you we should figure out what it is before we-"
"Time and place, Sammy," Dean yells back, his voice hoarse. He tries to stab at the monster, and it easily whacks his knife away with one of its many limbs. "You can say I told you so when I'm not balls deep in tentacles."
Sam has no idea what they're up against or where he should shoot to properly kill it, but it's pretty clear they're going to need to hack their way through all those limbs if they want to have any chance at all.
He drops his gun and opens his duffel, digging through it for something a little better at chopping off body parts. He's hoping for a machete, but Dean packed, so of course the first thing he sees is a sword.
Dean is on his back on a pile of leaves, the beast hovering just a few feet above him, and it looks like it's about to strike. Sam doesn't have time to be picky.
He grabs the sword and charges forward, yelling to try and distract the monster away from his brother. It doesn't work, and Sam watches as it goes down for the kill, Dean disappearing under a curtain of tentacles. Dean cries out in pain-it's not the worst sound Sam has ever heard from his brother, not by a lot, but the fact that he can't see what's causing it has him even more on edge.
His stomach drops, and he loses all sense, plunging the sword into what seems to be the creature's head as soon as he's close enough.
Sam doesn't hack into a brain and cause it to die on impact like he was maybe sort of hoping he would, but at least the monster raises its head until it's looking at Sam with two perfectly round big blue eyes, pupils the size of a grape. He can see Dean on the floor now, clutching at his neck and rolling in pain, but he looks mostly okay, so Sam decides killing the thing should be priority. Then he'll check Dean's wound.
"C'mon, you big ugly bastard," Sam says, holding its gaze. Anything to keep its attention off Dean. "Come on. Try something. I dare you."
It doesn't move, just stays in place, hovering over Dean like a mother protecting her young. It's not until Dean holds his hand out and Sam tries to pull him up that it hisses, a mouth suddenly appearing on its jelly blue face, rows and rows of sharp teeth inside.
He doesn't even think, just plunges the sword right in, feeding it so far down the monster's throat that Sam's whole arm is going to be missing if it bites down. Luckily it doesn't; it screams loudly, reeling back as Sam pulls the sword out. It takes a few big, faltering steps away from them before it begins to thrash wildly, a gargling sound letting Sam know it's choking on its own blood.
"Sick," Dean says, still holding his hand to his neck, but he's grinning now as he sits up to watch the monster die. Then he turns to face Sam, and his eyes go wide. "Sammy, behind you!"
Sam turns just in time to see another equally blue tentacle monster rearing up, its jaw unhinging like it's planning to swallow Sam in one bite. It's obviously about to chomp down, so Sam moves quickly, pointing the sword directly up above his head. The creature doesn't react in time to change its attack and impales itself on the sword, this time pulling up and back so fast and so hard that Sam has to let go of his weapon, leaving it lodged in the creature's throat, in order to avoid behind dragged along for the ride.
He watches the monster fall back on itself, spitting up blue blood for about a half a minute before he sinks to his knees next to Dean. The first creature has stopped moving altogether, and Sam's pretty confident they're both goners.
"Dean, you okay?" Sam asks, his hands moving over Dean's face, his chest, his legs, trying to check for damage. He doesn't find anything, at least nothing but the neck bite that Dean is still pressing his hand against.
"It bit me," Dean says, releasing the cut so Sam can get a look at it. "Since when do octopuses bite, Sam?"
"Since they come up a third of a mile on land and are actually weirdo blob monsters instead of octopuses." Sam puts a hand on Dean's shoulder and helps him sit up more comfortably. "It doesn't look that bad."
"It's the principle of the thing," Dean insists. "It molested me."
"Question is, why didn't it eat you?" Dean narrows his eyes at Sam and glares for a long minute before Sam rolls his eyes and explains, "No, seriously. It could have chewed through your organs in the time it took me to get to you. It just sat there instead of attacking. The bodies we found all looked like it had worked way faster than that."
Dean coughs and turns his head away. "It was petting me."
"What?"
He looks up, clearly pissed that Sam is making him clarify. "When it had me down on the ground. It wasn't trying to hurt me. It was, like, stroking me with its tentacles. It was weird, Sam. I don't feel clean."
Sam manages not to laugh, not yet anyway. "What about the bite then?"
"I didn't really get a chance to ask." Dean shrugs. "When it first caught me, it wasn't trying to choke me. It was trying to get me in a place where it could bite. But the bite was all it was trying for, I think. I mean, it didn't do anything else to me after."
"Weird," Sam says.
"Really weird." Dean starts to get up, and Sam stands, helping him. "I need a shower. And to never talk about this again."
"We got off lucky," Sam replies, giving Dean a reassuring pat once he's on his feet. "That doesn't even need stitches. We could have died. You at least definitely should have died."
"You're a bucket of sunshine, aren't ya?" Dean groans, turning his head from side to side to test his injury. "You know, this is your fault. You said there was no way it was a lake monster."
"Well, I've never seen any kind of lake monster that can leave its lake. Let alone go up to a mile on shore like these must have to get those campers last week. So maybe next time I say let's do more research, let's do more research."
Sam tries to push past him, but Dean catches his shoulder, and when Sam turns, he's making one of those faces it’s hard to stay mad at. "You were right, Sammy. This was stupid. I should have listened to you."
He makes a disbelieving face, and Dean inclines his head back at the two corpses on the ground behind them. "Remember Mandy's tattoo?"
Sam sees then what's got Dean so upset, and he frowns. "Shit."
"Yeah," Dean answers. "Saw it when that arm was trying to choke me."
Now that Dean has pointed it out, it's easy to identify the discolored markings on the tentacle Sam shot. It was a branch and some orange flowers on Mandy's arm. Now it's a brown line and a greenish patch of color, but it's clearly the same design, stretched out and dyed blue.
"I'm sorry," Sam says. "I know you liked her."
Dean nods but tries to swallow it down as always. Stay professional. "So what, it eats people and then takes their skin off?"
Sam shakes his head. "I don't know. I mean, I don't think so? The other bodies weren't missing any skin, but then, it clearly changed its M.O. between attacking them and attacking you."
"It didn't kill her. It turned her." He points to the corpse of the first of the two monsters. "That's her. We killed her."
"Dean, she was about to eat you. What was I supposed to do?"
He shakes his head. "Nothing. But if we'd gotten here faster-"
"We came as fast as we could. You made sure of that." Sam squeezes Dean's shoulder and gives him a small smile. He hopes Dean's wrong about the monster being Mandy, but he's not sorry. She would have killed Dean. "Help me gather some of these branches, huh? We'll give her a hunter's funeral. The other one, too. God knows who it was before…"
"If that thing turned Mandy, do you think there's another one? Something must have turned it, right?"
"We'll keep an eye out and come back if it looks like there's still something hunting," Sam says. "But judging from the size of it, there haven't been nearly enough deaths for two of them to have been feeding this whole time."
"Right," Dean replies, obviously still put out. "Let's just get this over with."
_______________________________________________________________
Sam knows better than to argue when Dean suggests they go out for drinks a few hours later. His brother's mood had been gloomy since the hunt, and if he thinks alcohol is going to help him cope with the fact that they couldn't save Mandy, the best Sam can do is be there to carry his drunk ass home.
Surprisingly, Dean is almost his usual self by the time they’re parking and heading into The Glory Whole, a bar so seedy it's a dive even for them, but it's reasonable walking distance from their motel, and Dean insisted the name was too good to pass up.
"That thing was weird," Dean's saying, for the millionth time, as he holds the door open for Sam. "What even were they? I've never seen anything like it."
"Nothing in Dad's journal, either," says Sam. "I called Bobby and told him everything we know. He said it was new to him, too, but he's looking into it. Maybe next time we'll actually be ready to fight it."
"Hey, we didn't do too bad," Dean replies with a grin.
Sam doesn't bother replying, just gives the ace bandage on Dean's neck a pointed look.
Throwing his head back, Dean laughs fully, and Sam's so relieved to see the easy smile-booze free, even-that he squashes the nagging little voice that tells him Dean is going to pull off the adhesive on the bandage moving like that. "Aww, c'mon, Sammy. A man's gotta have his battle scars. How else will the womenfolk know I'm a badass?"
"Did you just say womenfolk?" Sam asks, choosing not to take the bait.
Dean nods. "Don't worry, you're still my best girl. Well, after Baby. And that nurse in San Diego with the dungeon. She was wild."
He narrows his eyes at his brother, then huffs as he turns his attention to the bar instead of Dean. "We'll have two beers."
The bartender, a short, round guy with about seven orange hairs left on his shiny head nods, but Dean holds his arm out to stop him. Sam's stomach clenches, assuming Dean's about to order something stronger, that he's not over the hunt the way he's pretending to be.
But what Dean says instead is, "Actually, can I just get a water? With salt."
Looking from Dean to Sam and then back to Dean, the bartender raises an eyebrow. "Is that…a joke?"
"There a problem?" Dean replies, cold as ice, and the man shrugs. Dean motions him back as he tries to leave to get Sam's beer, says, "Extra salt, yeah?"
Again, the bartender slides a glance to Sam, but Sam can't imagine he looks any saner than Dean does right now, not with how confused he is by Dean's drink order.
They get their drinks and carry them off to a poorly lit corner table. Sam sits, watching Dean closely as he slides in and puts an arm around the back of their seat.
And takes a huge, hungry sip of his salt water, swishing it from one side of his mouth to the other before attacking the salt shaker and emptying half of it into his glass. He looks up once he's satisfied, raising the glass to his lips, and then stops.
"What?" he asks. "Why that face?"
"Dean, you're drinking saltwater." Dean makes a 'well, duh' face, and Sam tilts his head to one side. "You chose to drink saltwater instead of beer."
"I can't change it up a little now?"
Sam scratches his cheek. "You know that enough of that will kill you, right?"
Dean takes a long sip and grins at Sam. "So I won't drink enough of it."
"Who drinks saltwater?" Sam asks. "Since when do you drink saltwater?"
"I dunno," Dean replies, apparently completely unphased by his own weird behavior. "Don't want me to go and get too drunk to pound your ass later, huh?"
Dean gives Sam a smarmy wink, and Sam just shakes his head, smiling against the lip of his bottle. He doesn't need to act cocky; they both know who will actually be pounding whose ass by the end of the night.
Dean finishes one more disgusting glass of water before he gives Sam a dirty smirk. "Hey, Sam. Let's go back to the room."
"We just got here half an hour ago," Sam tells him, checking his phone. "Coming here was your idea."
Dean's hand slips between Sam's thighs and he leans in, whispering, "Changed my mind. I'm bored. Let's go back to the room."
Sam gulps down the rest of his beer in record time, drops enough cash on the table to cover his beer and a generous tip to make up for Dean's funky order, and they're on their way out in minutes. They make it as far as the Impala before Dean's head is in Sam's lap, and Sam forgets about the saltwater.
_______________________________________________________________
Their next case is a standard salt-and-burn, open and close within a day. Research on who they're hunting until the sun sets, a quick trip to the local cemetery after sun down, and nothing more dangerous than a flickering ghost of someone's angry ex-wife to ward off.
It's Dean's turn to dig up the grave, so as soon as they get home, he heads straight for the bathroom. Sam's a little bruised from the ghost roughing him up, so he decides to skip Dean's offer to join in favor of ordering some Chinese while his brother scrubs the dirt and sweat off.
He waits forty-five minutes after the food arrives, and Dean's still in the bathroom. Even when the grime is caked on, Dean's too well-trained from the army showers Dad made them take to spend more than a quarter of an hour in the shower.
Sam knocks on the door and calls out, "Dean, are you alright? Did you drown in there?"
"I'm fine," Dean yells back.
"Are you sick or something? Need me to run to the store for some-"
"Nah, I said I'm fine."
Sam can hear the splashing from inside, and that's when he realizes what's going on. "Dude, are you taking a bath?"
"Yeah, so?"
"I don't think you've ever taken a bath in your life." Sam's nose scrunches up. "Man, who bathes in a motel bathroom? Did you even clean it first?"
"Quit bitching and let me live my life, Sam," Dean replies.
"There's Chinese food and it's gonna get cold," Sam says, trying his last card.
"I'll be out in a bit." Sam shrugs, about to start in on his own meal when Dean calls him back. "Oh, hey, and Sammy?"
"Yeah?"
"Can you bring me some salt?"
_______________________________________________________________
By the time Dean is done with his salt water bath, the food has all gone cool and unappealing. True to himself, Dean eats his own meal and the leftovers of Sam's orange chicken in about ten minutes anyway.
The TV is on but no one's watching it. Sam is sorting through a pile of articles he printed out in the motel's business center while Dean was busy soaking himself, weighing the merits of each.
Dean is straddling his lap, grinding against him and sucking at his ear, his still pruny fingers snaking up Sam's shirt, his thumb rubbing over the slip of skin he can reach at this awkward angle.
"We've got what looks like a ghoul hunt in Macon, Georgia, another salt-and-burn in Jacksonville, and this bizarre string of murders in Little Rock-not definitely our kind of thing but-ah. Dean," Sam groans, dropping his hand to the mattress, letting go of the research, and pressing his palms against each side of his brother's hips instead, "you're distracting me."
"Mmm," Dean says. Sam feels a smile against the shell of his ear just before Dean bites it, then licks it to soothe the pain. "And about time, too."
"Seriously," Sam insists. "We gotta pick a job before we-"
"Ghouls, Sammy," Dean answers, his nose trailing down the skin between Sam's ear and neck. Then he's shoving the collar of Sam's shirt aside, sucking on his shoulder. "You know I always vote for ghouls."
"Oh-okay," Sam stutters, finally letting himself get dragged into Dean's rhythm. "Whatever you say."
"I say you fuck me," Dean whispers. "And then maybe after we can cuddle."
Sam breaks out laughing so hard that Dean falls off his lap.
He gives Sam an affronted look, like he can't figure out what's so funny. And it's not that they don't cuddle. It's just, well. "Dude, did you just say you wanted to cuddle?"
Dean's face changes immediately, from insulted to stunned. He blinks a few times, and Sam thinks he looks more than a little like a dear caught in headlights. "Oh my god, I did, didn't I?
"Yeah," Sam replies, wiping at the tears gathering in his eyes from laughing so hard. "You totally did."
"Shut up!" Dean orders.
That only makes Sam double over with another fit of laughter, until finally he's laughed so hard for so long that he has to slow down for no other reason than because he needs to breathe.
Dean smacks him with a pillow, and Sam's still chuckling a little as he drags Dean down on top of him. "Now you wanna talk about what's going on?"
"Going on with what?"
"With you. First the saltwater at the bar. Then the bath. And now…" Sam's face contorts, and he tries to school himself so he doesn't start laughing again.
"Say it and I will desecrate your grave, Sam. I will outlive you just to pee on your headstone, got me?"
"Aww," Sam says in a baby voice. "Is somebody cranky without his hugs?"
Dean narrows his eyes, but after a moment he sighs and says, "I don't know what's up. I mean, it's no big deal. I feel fine. Pretty good, actually. Just…I really like saltwater all of a sudden." He grins and takes his bottom lip between his teeth the way he knows drives Sam insane. "And I'm really horny. You wanna help me out with that?"
So Sam does.
When they're both fucked out, Dean shaking loose after riding Sam, infuriatingly slow and teasing for the better part of an hour, Sam pulls Dean down into his arms. "You wanna cuddle now?"
Dean pushes him in the side as he gets comfortable, resting his head on Sam's chest. "No, shut up." He coughs and then nuzzles in closer. "I just wanna wrap myself around you a little, is all. In a manly, non-cuddling kind of way."
Sam's too tired to really crack up again, but his lips curl into a grin. Dean slaps his stomach. "I hate you."
"Night, cuddle muffin." Sam yawns and tightens his arm around Dean, and there's no denying that Dean lets out a soft, satisfied little sound.
_______________________________________________________________
The ghoul hunt takes nearly two days and doesn't exactly go off without a hitch. Of course, the most worrying thing about it is Dean.
"Should have made the connection sooner," Sam says, passing a cotton ball soaked in Jim Beam over the cut on Dean's right shoulder. The cut that is oozing bright blue blood. "The saltwater, I mean, how obvious could it have been?"
He breaks from cleaning out Dean's wound to take a hearty swig from the bottle. "This is bad, Dean. This is really bad."
"It might not be that bad!" Dean says. He pokes the injury and beams at himself in the mirror as more blue ooze drips out, then looks up at Sam like he's about to share some truly brilliant insight. "It's the first time I've ever been a blue blood, huh Sammy?"
"Incredible," Sam deadpans, standing up to pace the room.
"Aww, don't get mad, sweetheart," Dean jokes, reaching out for Sam to come back.
"Dean, quit making light of this. You're about to turn into a-into whatever those things were!"
"There's gotta be a catchier title for that." Sam glares, and Dean sighs. "Maybe not, Sam. Maybe I'm just getting a few weird traits or something. I mean, think about it. Mandy was only gone for a few hours and she was full on Octopussy by the time we arrived. It's been days, if I was gonna turn, don't you think I would have already?"
"I have no idea!" Sam snaps. "I have no idea because we don't know anything about what that thing was. Because you insisted we charge in ignorant, and now-"
"And now I'm the one being punished for it. Kind of poetic."
"Please take this seriously," Sam says.
"It's not that big a deal," Dean insists yet again, and yet again, Sam thinks he might throttle him. "I don't think it's gonna get any worse."
"And if it does?"
"We'll figure it out," Dean answers. "Like we always do."
Not always, Sam thinks, but he pushes that away. This isn't going to be another time he loses Dean. Not over something this stupid. No way.
"Sam," Dean says in a pacifying tone. "Come on, whatever this is, it's happening slowly. We have time to figure it out. In the meantime, it's a little blue blood, okay? We've seen worse. I don't know what you're so freaked out about."
"Today, you jumped between me and a ghoul and spent half a minute hissing at it before you shot it."
"He deserved it! He was trying to bite your fingers off," Dean replies. He waggles his eyebrows. "I need those fingers."
"My point is, he could have killed you."
"He didn't." Dean gestures to the cut on his shoulder. "This is barely a scratch. We've had way closer calls than this."
"That's not the point! The point is we don't know what's going on and you're acting unpredictably on hunts."
Dean reaches out and pulls Sam in, putting his hands on Sam's hips and looking up from where he's sitting. "Hey. I get it, okay? We'll figure this out. We'll do some research. That'll make you feel better, huh? A little research?"
Sam couldn't feel more like a petulant child being soothed by his big brother, but he gives a sour nod and maybe even stops pouting a little.
ON TO PART TWO
Fandom: Supernatural
Characters/Pairings: Sam/Dean
Rating: NC-17 for explicit sexual content by which I usually mean tentacle porn
Word Count: 12,413
Author’s Note: This is my first of two wonderful spn_reversebang prompts I was lucky enough to claim for this round. I collaborated with the wonderfully talented sillie82, whose drawn art I have admired for years and who, it turns out, is a SUPER FANTASTIC crocheter (um…crochet person? SHE DOES GREAT CROCHET) as well. I saw this prompt and the lil' tentacles, and, well. I guess no one is surprised I had to have it. Thank you so much to sillie82 for your patience, enthusiasm, and putting up with me constantly wanting to put tentacles in someone's butt. Everyone must go check out this prompt!!! It makes me happy clap with gleeeee! Thank you, also, to my lovely beta, oddishly who did that awful thing some betas do where she was honest and forced me to address the problems in my fic, ugh. And to the mods of this, my very favorite challenge of the year. As promised on Twitter, here's a shout out to clex_monkie89 for naming the bar the boys go to. I hope you guys enjoy the story!
Summary: To save a young girl, Dean insists on rushing into a job before they really know what they're hunting. They just barely make it out intact: one small injury, a bite to Dean's neck, and as far as Sam's concerned they got lucky. At least until they find out the bite they'd thought was no big deal is slowly changing Dean into a lake monster. Now Sam has to decide between killing his brother and risking that Dean will turn him next.
ART POST
AO3 // PDF
"So, what do you think?"
Dean grins at him, flourishing two guns in each hand and a utility belt stocked with knives of varying lengths and metals. They'll be lucky if he doesn't take a leg off-either one of his own or one of Sam's-just getting in the car.
He wants to know what Sam thinks. Well, he asked for it.
"I think you're an idiot," Sam replies frankly. Dean opens his mouth as if to reply, but Sam's not done yet. Oh, is he ever not done. "I think we need to do more research. I think we're about to barge into this hunt with almost no useful intel. I think we're going to get ourselves killed."
"You about finished?" Dean asks.
Sam takes a few seconds to breathe angrily, but he has to give Dean this one. "Yeah, that pretty much covers everything."
"Good," Dean says, pulling out a couple of stakes and tucking one into each of his jacket's side pockets. He slams the trunk closed just a little harder than he normally would, which is the only sign he's not as infuriatingly nonchalant in the face of Sam's response as he's trying to seem. "Let's go then."
"Dean," Sam says, reaching out to catch Dean by the arm and pull him in before he can open the Impala. He crowds in, kissing his brother as a peace offering before insisting, "We're not ready to hunt this thing."
"Sammy. We've got a rough idea of what we're dealing with." Sam huffs, but Dean ignores it. "One of these weapons is bound to gank it. You know this thing doesn't play with its food. If we don't strike now, it'll kill Mandy Bilson."
Sam's jaw tightens, but he doesn't say the thing they're both thinking. Mandy's brother Fred had called over an hour ago to tell them his sister hadn't come home. She'd been determined to prove Fred had only imagined what he told the cops-and subsequently Sam and Dean-he saw attack his friends during their camping trip the week before, and apparently nothing anyone could say would talk her out of going out to the lake. They don't know what it is or how it kills exactly, but one thing is obvious: the monster can rip through a human body without much effort. The coroner told them it had probably taken about five minutes for each victim to die, less in some cases.
Dean liked Mandy; she was stubborn and headstrong, like Sam had been at her age, Dean said, but she was quick as a whip and funny. After their first interview, Dean had gotten back in the car, still laughing from her parting shot, and told Sam she'd make a hell of a hunter. Sam had agreed at the time, and he liked her too.
But that doesn't change the ugly fact that she's very likely dead by now.
"Dean," he says again, softer.
His brother turns his face away from the kiss this time. "Don't say it. We're gonna save her. If that means charging in half-cocked, so be it. Let's go."
It's easy for Dean to slip Sam's grip after that. Sam's not holding too tight, because Dean's probably right, and even if he weren't, there's no way to talk him down at this point. The best Sam can do is go along with it. That way, if Dean is wrong, he at least won't be up against whatever this thing is alone.
Sam opens the shotgun door and slides in, a universal sign of his deciding to let Dean have his way, and Dean grins as he plants himself in the driver's seat.
"Alright," he says, the Impala's engine roaring over him. "Run me through what we do know. Maybe we'll catch something we missed on the way over."
Sam throws out a put-upon sigh just for the sake of appearances, which only makes Dean's smile spread. "Unidentified monster. Lives in the woods around the lake. Has taken 12 campers in the last six or seven months. Local talk says it's Bigfoot, though of course no one's ever seen it take anyone until-"
"Fred Bilson last week," Dean says. "And he didn't get a good look. Skip to the M.O., Sammy, it's not a long drive."
"You said you wanted to hear what we know," Sam responds. "I assumed that meant everything."
Dean snorts. "How could I forget you'd get bogged down in the details? Nerd."
"Jerk." Sam rolls his eyes, then picks back up on the job. "Alright. Now, your werewolf theory worked with the campers last week because of the full moon."
"But not if Mandy got taken by the same thing today."
Sam nods. "Exactly."
"Black dog's still my best bet," says Dean. "Bodies that have been recovered all looked snacked on pretty good, and black dog kills usually look like werewolves but sloppier."
"Yeah," Sam answers, not convinced. "The bodies have the right bite marks, but there's still too many other things not explained. Those round bruises wrapping around some of the victims, the dislocated body parts. It looked like they'd been trying to fight out of restraints. I'm thinking we're dealing with something more intelligent than a wild animal attack."
"No, no way." Dean's shaking his head, his fingers tapping along to the Zeppelin humming in the background. "I know a chew toy when I see one, man. Whatever it is-shifter, black dog, were, it's in that family, and that means one good silver bullet in the right place and we're done. We don't have to know exactly what it is to take it down."
"But it's only a guess that it's even related, Dean." Sam pulls their file on the case out of his backpack and flips to the autopsy photos he's spent the last two days completely stumped by. "There's still the blood to think about. We've never seen anything like that."
Dean barely glances over, but Sam knows he's been far more thrown by the bright blue color of all the victims' blood than he's letting on. "We've gotta try the silver," is all he says, and then his foot presses harder on the gas.
_______________________________________________________________
Sam's holding his breath. Listening to the crunch of dry twigs and leaves under his feet as he and Dean plunge through the woods, trying to draw the creature out. He can't hear anything yet, and from the crime scenes they've observed so far, this monster should not be able to step lightly. The tracks it leaves look like someone dragged an elephant around.
"Man, this is stupid," Dean says after a while, and Sam can't help being inclined to agree with him. "Maybe we're in the wrong-"
There's a soft sound of shuffling, and Dean goes quiet. Sam waits to hear the rest of the sentence, then turns to see what shut his brother up. He's expecting Dean to be flat on his ass, maybe, tripped on a pile of mulch.
What he's not expecting to see is Dean, wheezing as he grabs at a bright blue tentacle, trying to loosen its grip on his neck. Right, tentacles. That explains the weird sucker-like marks on the victims, as well as the dislocated limbs from trying to escape being tied up.
"Dean!" Sam yells, and Dean continues to kick in the monster's grasp, his mouth moving in a pattern that looks like it might say something about Sam being an idiot and 'get me out of here.'
The way the creature's holding Dean, it's hard to get a shot off without risking that the bullet will land in his brother's brain instead of the one he's aiming for. Sam can't even see what the monster is or what it looks like, except for the outlines of a vaguely humanoid blue body and a mass of squiggling limbs. Dean is right in front of it, and it's only a little bigger than him.
Priority right now is getting Dean free, so Sam shoots what he knows he can hit. The silver bullet sinks into the limb wrapped around Dean's neck and the monster cries out, releasing its hold just long enough for Dean to take one gasping breath and get a knife out.
That's the good news. The bad news is that the shot seems to have done little more than piss the thing off. It's gushing blue blood, but there's no burning reaction to the silver, and it isn't slowing down. So there goes Dean's theory.
"Dammit, Dean, I told you we should figure out what it is before we-"
"Time and place, Sammy," Dean yells back, his voice hoarse. He tries to stab at the monster, and it easily whacks his knife away with one of its many limbs. "You can say I told you so when I'm not balls deep in tentacles."
Sam has no idea what they're up against or where he should shoot to properly kill it, but it's pretty clear they're going to need to hack their way through all those limbs if they want to have any chance at all.
He drops his gun and opens his duffel, digging through it for something a little better at chopping off body parts. He's hoping for a machete, but Dean packed, so of course the first thing he sees is a sword.
Dean is on his back on a pile of leaves, the beast hovering just a few feet above him, and it looks like it's about to strike. Sam doesn't have time to be picky.
He grabs the sword and charges forward, yelling to try and distract the monster away from his brother. It doesn't work, and Sam watches as it goes down for the kill, Dean disappearing under a curtain of tentacles. Dean cries out in pain-it's not the worst sound Sam has ever heard from his brother, not by a lot, but the fact that he can't see what's causing it has him even more on edge.
His stomach drops, and he loses all sense, plunging the sword into what seems to be the creature's head as soon as he's close enough.
Sam doesn't hack into a brain and cause it to die on impact like he was maybe sort of hoping he would, but at least the monster raises its head until it's looking at Sam with two perfectly round big blue eyes, pupils the size of a grape. He can see Dean on the floor now, clutching at his neck and rolling in pain, but he looks mostly okay, so Sam decides killing the thing should be priority. Then he'll check Dean's wound.
"C'mon, you big ugly bastard," Sam says, holding its gaze. Anything to keep its attention off Dean. "Come on. Try something. I dare you."
It doesn't move, just stays in place, hovering over Dean like a mother protecting her young. It's not until Dean holds his hand out and Sam tries to pull him up that it hisses, a mouth suddenly appearing on its jelly blue face, rows and rows of sharp teeth inside.
He doesn't even think, just plunges the sword right in, feeding it so far down the monster's throat that Sam's whole arm is going to be missing if it bites down. Luckily it doesn't; it screams loudly, reeling back as Sam pulls the sword out. It takes a few big, faltering steps away from them before it begins to thrash wildly, a gargling sound letting Sam know it's choking on its own blood.
"Sick," Dean says, still holding his hand to his neck, but he's grinning now as he sits up to watch the monster die. Then he turns to face Sam, and his eyes go wide. "Sammy, behind you!"
Sam turns just in time to see another equally blue tentacle monster rearing up, its jaw unhinging like it's planning to swallow Sam in one bite. It's obviously about to chomp down, so Sam moves quickly, pointing the sword directly up above his head. The creature doesn't react in time to change its attack and impales itself on the sword, this time pulling up and back so fast and so hard that Sam has to let go of his weapon, leaving it lodged in the creature's throat, in order to avoid behind dragged along for the ride.
He watches the monster fall back on itself, spitting up blue blood for about a half a minute before he sinks to his knees next to Dean. The first creature has stopped moving altogether, and Sam's pretty confident they're both goners.
"Dean, you okay?" Sam asks, his hands moving over Dean's face, his chest, his legs, trying to check for damage. He doesn't find anything, at least nothing but the neck bite that Dean is still pressing his hand against.
"It bit me," Dean says, releasing the cut so Sam can get a look at it. "Since when do octopuses bite, Sam?"
"Since they come up a third of a mile on land and are actually weirdo blob monsters instead of octopuses." Sam puts a hand on Dean's shoulder and helps him sit up more comfortably. "It doesn't look that bad."
"It's the principle of the thing," Dean insists. "It molested me."
"Question is, why didn't it eat you?" Dean narrows his eyes at Sam and glares for a long minute before Sam rolls his eyes and explains, "No, seriously. It could have chewed through your organs in the time it took me to get to you. It just sat there instead of attacking. The bodies we found all looked like it had worked way faster than that."
Dean coughs and turns his head away. "It was petting me."
"What?"
He looks up, clearly pissed that Sam is making him clarify. "When it had me down on the ground. It wasn't trying to hurt me. It was, like, stroking me with its tentacles. It was weird, Sam. I don't feel clean."
Sam manages not to laugh, not yet anyway. "What about the bite then?"
"I didn't really get a chance to ask." Dean shrugs. "When it first caught me, it wasn't trying to choke me. It was trying to get me in a place where it could bite. But the bite was all it was trying for, I think. I mean, it didn't do anything else to me after."
"Weird," Sam says.
"Really weird." Dean starts to get up, and Sam stands, helping him. "I need a shower. And to never talk about this again."
"We got off lucky," Sam replies, giving Dean a reassuring pat once he's on his feet. "That doesn't even need stitches. We could have died. You at least definitely should have died."
"You're a bucket of sunshine, aren't ya?" Dean groans, turning his head from side to side to test his injury. "You know, this is your fault. You said there was no way it was a lake monster."
"Well, I've never seen any kind of lake monster that can leave its lake. Let alone go up to a mile on shore like these must have to get those campers last week. So maybe next time I say let's do more research, let's do more research."
Sam tries to push past him, but Dean catches his shoulder, and when Sam turns, he's making one of those faces it’s hard to stay mad at. "You were right, Sammy. This was stupid. I should have listened to you."
He makes a disbelieving face, and Dean inclines his head back at the two corpses on the ground behind them. "Remember Mandy's tattoo?"
Sam sees then what's got Dean so upset, and he frowns. "Shit."
"Yeah," Dean answers. "Saw it when that arm was trying to choke me."
Now that Dean has pointed it out, it's easy to identify the discolored markings on the tentacle Sam shot. It was a branch and some orange flowers on Mandy's arm. Now it's a brown line and a greenish patch of color, but it's clearly the same design, stretched out and dyed blue.
"I'm sorry," Sam says. "I know you liked her."
Dean nods but tries to swallow it down as always. Stay professional. "So what, it eats people and then takes their skin off?"
Sam shakes his head. "I don't know. I mean, I don't think so? The other bodies weren't missing any skin, but then, it clearly changed its M.O. between attacking them and attacking you."
"It didn't kill her. It turned her." He points to the corpse of the first of the two monsters. "That's her. We killed her."
"Dean, she was about to eat you. What was I supposed to do?"
He shakes his head. "Nothing. But if we'd gotten here faster-"
"We came as fast as we could. You made sure of that." Sam squeezes Dean's shoulder and gives him a small smile. He hopes Dean's wrong about the monster being Mandy, but he's not sorry. She would have killed Dean. "Help me gather some of these branches, huh? We'll give her a hunter's funeral. The other one, too. God knows who it was before…"
"If that thing turned Mandy, do you think there's another one? Something must have turned it, right?"
"We'll keep an eye out and come back if it looks like there's still something hunting," Sam says. "But judging from the size of it, there haven't been nearly enough deaths for two of them to have been feeding this whole time."
"Right," Dean replies, obviously still put out. "Let's just get this over with."
_______________________________________________________________
Sam knows better than to argue when Dean suggests they go out for drinks a few hours later. His brother's mood had been gloomy since the hunt, and if he thinks alcohol is going to help him cope with the fact that they couldn't save Mandy, the best Sam can do is be there to carry his drunk ass home.
Surprisingly, Dean is almost his usual self by the time they’re parking and heading into The Glory Whole, a bar so seedy it's a dive even for them, but it's reasonable walking distance from their motel, and Dean insisted the name was too good to pass up.
"That thing was weird," Dean's saying, for the millionth time, as he holds the door open for Sam. "What even were they? I've never seen anything like it."
"Nothing in Dad's journal, either," says Sam. "I called Bobby and told him everything we know. He said it was new to him, too, but he's looking into it. Maybe next time we'll actually be ready to fight it."
"Hey, we didn't do too bad," Dean replies with a grin.
Sam doesn't bother replying, just gives the ace bandage on Dean's neck a pointed look.
Throwing his head back, Dean laughs fully, and Sam's so relieved to see the easy smile-booze free, even-that he squashes the nagging little voice that tells him Dean is going to pull off the adhesive on the bandage moving like that. "Aww, c'mon, Sammy. A man's gotta have his battle scars. How else will the womenfolk know I'm a badass?"
"Did you just say womenfolk?" Sam asks, choosing not to take the bait.
Dean nods. "Don't worry, you're still my best girl. Well, after Baby. And that nurse in San Diego with the dungeon. She was wild."
He narrows his eyes at his brother, then huffs as he turns his attention to the bar instead of Dean. "We'll have two beers."
The bartender, a short, round guy with about seven orange hairs left on his shiny head nods, but Dean holds his arm out to stop him. Sam's stomach clenches, assuming Dean's about to order something stronger, that he's not over the hunt the way he's pretending to be.
But what Dean says instead is, "Actually, can I just get a water? With salt."
Looking from Dean to Sam and then back to Dean, the bartender raises an eyebrow. "Is that…a joke?"
"There a problem?" Dean replies, cold as ice, and the man shrugs. Dean motions him back as he tries to leave to get Sam's beer, says, "Extra salt, yeah?"
Again, the bartender slides a glance to Sam, but Sam can't imagine he looks any saner than Dean does right now, not with how confused he is by Dean's drink order.
They get their drinks and carry them off to a poorly lit corner table. Sam sits, watching Dean closely as he slides in and puts an arm around the back of their seat.
And takes a huge, hungry sip of his salt water, swishing it from one side of his mouth to the other before attacking the salt shaker and emptying half of it into his glass. He looks up once he's satisfied, raising the glass to his lips, and then stops.
"What?" he asks. "Why that face?"
"Dean, you're drinking saltwater." Dean makes a 'well, duh' face, and Sam tilts his head to one side. "You chose to drink saltwater instead of beer."
"I can't change it up a little now?"
Sam scratches his cheek. "You know that enough of that will kill you, right?"
Dean takes a long sip and grins at Sam. "So I won't drink enough of it."
"Who drinks saltwater?" Sam asks. "Since when do you drink saltwater?"
"I dunno," Dean replies, apparently completely unphased by his own weird behavior. "Don't want me to go and get too drunk to pound your ass later, huh?"
Dean gives Sam a smarmy wink, and Sam just shakes his head, smiling against the lip of his bottle. He doesn't need to act cocky; they both know who will actually be pounding whose ass by the end of the night.
Dean finishes one more disgusting glass of water before he gives Sam a dirty smirk. "Hey, Sam. Let's go back to the room."
"We just got here half an hour ago," Sam tells him, checking his phone. "Coming here was your idea."
Dean's hand slips between Sam's thighs and he leans in, whispering, "Changed my mind. I'm bored. Let's go back to the room."
Sam gulps down the rest of his beer in record time, drops enough cash on the table to cover his beer and a generous tip to make up for Dean's funky order, and they're on their way out in minutes. They make it as far as the Impala before Dean's head is in Sam's lap, and Sam forgets about the saltwater.
_______________________________________________________________
Their next case is a standard salt-and-burn, open and close within a day. Research on who they're hunting until the sun sets, a quick trip to the local cemetery after sun down, and nothing more dangerous than a flickering ghost of someone's angry ex-wife to ward off.
It's Dean's turn to dig up the grave, so as soon as they get home, he heads straight for the bathroom. Sam's a little bruised from the ghost roughing him up, so he decides to skip Dean's offer to join in favor of ordering some Chinese while his brother scrubs the dirt and sweat off.
He waits forty-five minutes after the food arrives, and Dean's still in the bathroom. Even when the grime is caked on, Dean's too well-trained from the army showers Dad made them take to spend more than a quarter of an hour in the shower.
Sam knocks on the door and calls out, "Dean, are you alright? Did you drown in there?"
"I'm fine," Dean yells back.
"Are you sick or something? Need me to run to the store for some-"
"Nah, I said I'm fine."
Sam can hear the splashing from inside, and that's when he realizes what's going on. "Dude, are you taking a bath?"
"Yeah, so?"
"I don't think you've ever taken a bath in your life." Sam's nose scrunches up. "Man, who bathes in a motel bathroom? Did you even clean it first?"
"Quit bitching and let me live my life, Sam," Dean replies.
"There's Chinese food and it's gonna get cold," Sam says, trying his last card.
"I'll be out in a bit." Sam shrugs, about to start in on his own meal when Dean calls him back. "Oh, hey, and Sammy?"
"Yeah?"
"Can you bring me some salt?"
_______________________________________________________________
By the time Dean is done with his salt water bath, the food has all gone cool and unappealing. True to himself, Dean eats his own meal and the leftovers of Sam's orange chicken in about ten minutes anyway.
The TV is on but no one's watching it. Sam is sorting through a pile of articles he printed out in the motel's business center while Dean was busy soaking himself, weighing the merits of each.
Dean is straddling his lap, grinding against him and sucking at his ear, his still pruny fingers snaking up Sam's shirt, his thumb rubbing over the slip of skin he can reach at this awkward angle.
"We've got what looks like a ghoul hunt in Macon, Georgia, another salt-and-burn in Jacksonville, and this bizarre string of murders in Little Rock-not definitely our kind of thing but-ah. Dean," Sam groans, dropping his hand to the mattress, letting go of the research, and pressing his palms against each side of his brother's hips instead, "you're distracting me."
"Mmm," Dean says. Sam feels a smile against the shell of his ear just before Dean bites it, then licks it to soothe the pain. "And about time, too."
"Seriously," Sam insists. "We gotta pick a job before we-"
"Ghouls, Sammy," Dean answers, his nose trailing down the skin between Sam's ear and neck. Then he's shoving the collar of Sam's shirt aside, sucking on his shoulder. "You know I always vote for ghouls."
"Oh-okay," Sam stutters, finally letting himself get dragged into Dean's rhythm. "Whatever you say."
"I say you fuck me," Dean whispers. "And then maybe after we can cuddle."
Sam breaks out laughing so hard that Dean falls off his lap.
He gives Sam an affronted look, like he can't figure out what's so funny. And it's not that they don't cuddle. It's just, well. "Dude, did you just say you wanted to cuddle?"
Dean's face changes immediately, from insulted to stunned. He blinks a few times, and Sam thinks he looks more than a little like a dear caught in headlights. "Oh my god, I did, didn't I?
"Yeah," Sam replies, wiping at the tears gathering in his eyes from laughing so hard. "You totally did."
"Shut up!" Dean orders.
That only makes Sam double over with another fit of laughter, until finally he's laughed so hard for so long that he has to slow down for no other reason than because he needs to breathe.
Dean smacks him with a pillow, and Sam's still chuckling a little as he drags Dean down on top of him. "Now you wanna talk about what's going on?"
"Going on with what?"
"With you. First the saltwater at the bar. Then the bath. And now…" Sam's face contorts, and he tries to school himself so he doesn't start laughing again.
"Say it and I will desecrate your grave, Sam. I will outlive you just to pee on your headstone, got me?"
"Aww," Sam says in a baby voice. "Is somebody cranky without his hugs?"
Dean narrows his eyes, but after a moment he sighs and says, "I don't know what's up. I mean, it's no big deal. I feel fine. Pretty good, actually. Just…I really like saltwater all of a sudden." He grins and takes his bottom lip between his teeth the way he knows drives Sam insane. "And I'm really horny. You wanna help me out with that?"
So Sam does.
When they're both fucked out, Dean shaking loose after riding Sam, infuriatingly slow and teasing for the better part of an hour, Sam pulls Dean down into his arms. "You wanna cuddle now?"
Dean pushes him in the side as he gets comfortable, resting his head on Sam's chest. "No, shut up." He coughs and then nuzzles in closer. "I just wanna wrap myself around you a little, is all. In a manly, non-cuddling kind of way."
Sam's too tired to really crack up again, but his lips curl into a grin. Dean slaps his stomach. "I hate you."
"Night, cuddle muffin." Sam yawns and tightens his arm around Dean, and there's no denying that Dean lets out a soft, satisfied little sound.
_______________________________________________________________
The ghoul hunt takes nearly two days and doesn't exactly go off without a hitch. Of course, the most worrying thing about it is Dean.
"Should have made the connection sooner," Sam says, passing a cotton ball soaked in Jim Beam over the cut on Dean's right shoulder. The cut that is oozing bright blue blood. "The saltwater, I mean, how obvious could it have been?"
He breaks from cleaning out Dean's wound to take a hearty swig from the bottle. "This is bad, Dean. This is really bad."
"It might not be that bad!" Dean says. He pokes the injury and beams at himself in the mirror as more blue ooze drips out, then looks up at Sam like he's about to share some truly brilliant insight. "It's the first time I've ever been a blue blood, huh Sammy?"
"Incredible," Sam deadpans, standing up to pace the room.
"Aww, don't get mad, sweetheart," Dean jokes, reaching out for Sam to come back.
"Dean, quit making light of this. You're about to turn into a-into whatever those things were!"
"There's gotta be a catchier title for that." Sam glares, and Dean sighs. "Maybe not, Sam. Maybe I'm just getting a few weird traits or something. I mean, think about it. Mandy was only gone for a few hours and she was full on Octopussy by the time we arrived. It's been days, if I was gonna turn, don't you think I would have already?"
"I have no idea!" Sam snaps. "I have no idea because we don't know anything about what that thing was. Because you insisted we charge in ignorant, and now-"
"And now I'm the one being punished for it. Kind of poetic."
"Please take this seriously," Sam says.
"It's not that big a deal," Dean insists yet again, and yet again, Sam thinks he might throttle him. "I don't think it's gonna get any worse."
"And if it does?"
"We'll figure it out," Dean answers. "Like we always do."
Not always, Sam thinks, but he pushes that away. This isn't going to be another time he loses Dean. Not over something this stupid. No way.
"Sam," Dean says in a pacifying tone. "Come on, whatever this is, it's happening slowly. We have time to figure it out. In the meantime, it's a little blue blood, okay? We've seen worse. I don't know what you're so freaked out about."
"Today, you jumped between me and a ghoul and spent half a minute hissing at it before you shot it."
"He deserved it! He was trying to bite your fingers off," Dean replies. He waggles his eyebrows. "I need those fingers."
"My point is, he could have killed you."
"He didn't." Dean gestures to the cut on his shoulder. "This is barely a scratch. We've had way closer calls than this."
"That's not the point! The point is we don't know what's going on and you're acting unpredictably on hunts."
Dean reaches out and pulls Sam in, putting his hands on Sam's hips and looking up from where he's sitting. "Hey. I get it, okay? We'll figure this out. We'll do some research. That'll make you feel better, huh? A little research?"
Sam couldn't feel more like a petulant child being soothed by his big brother, but he gives a sour nod and maybe even stops pouting a little.
ON TO PART TWO