Fic: The Kin of Cain, FOB x SPN, 1/3
Title: The Kin of Cain
Author: matchsticks_p
Summary: The lives of Fall Out Boy and the Winchester brothers collide as they travel down the highways of America under the watchful gaze of an ancient monster…
Rating: R
Warnings: VIOLENCE, coarse language
Pairings: gen for SPN, non-explicit Pete/Patrick for FOB
Length: 23,000 words
Notes: set during FOB's van days and during season 3 of SPN. No familiarity with Fall Out Boy is necessary to understand the story-you can see them as a case of the week that happens to play in a band. The only knowledge of SPN needed to understand the story is this: Dean and Sam Winchester are brothers who hunt monsters and have issues with their now-deceased father. They drive a '67 Impala.
Disclaimers: Not true, not paid, not affiliated, no harm meant.
* * * * *
“Jesus Christ, Sammy, are you playing that teenaged girl music again?”
He was. Despite his clumsy attempts to explain that it wasn’t what it looked like, he so totally was. After shutting the door behind him, Dean spent the next five minutes ridiculing Sam’s testosterone levels while Sam just waited him out, bitch-face in place.
“Are you done now?” he asked in a deadpan when Dean’s manful mocking finally began to wind down.
“Sure, sure-here’s your breakfast.” Dean tossed him a paper bag across the motel table.
Sam looked inside and then raised his eyebrow. “A bacon cheeseburger? For breakfast? Really?”
“It’ll put some hair on that nelly chest,” Dean said gruffly. On the table, Sam’s laptop continued to spew out punchy guitars and a smooth voice yelped about how there was a light on in Chicago. Dean muttered something about shitty boy-bands and slapped the laptop shut, cutting off the song before they could find out what the colours of the street signs reminded the singer of.
“Hey, I’m researching a case!” Sam protested, batting Dean’s hand away.
“What, you think they’re banshees driving people to death with their voices?” Dean considered it. “Might be something in that, actually.”
“No,” Sam said, rolling his eyes. “Something weirder.” He lay his greasy half-eaten burger to the side and flipped his laptop back open. “Get this: two weeks ago, this band called Fall Out Boy played at a club in Dayton, Ohio. Three nights later, there’s a massacre at the same club. Police reports are light on the details, but it’s basically a bloodbath-we’re talking full-on carnage, limbs ripped off, body parts everywhere, and forensics suggests some victims were eaten. They’re calling it a cougar attack. In Ohio.”
“Okay, sounds suspicious,” Dean agreed. “Still don’t see how that crappy music is connected, though. Anything could’ve happened in the three days in between.”
“Yeah, but then Fall Out Boy played another show in Springfield, Missouri later that week, and two nights after that another attack happened at the venue they played. Exact same M.O as Ohio. And just this past Tuesday, they were in Ogallala, Nebraska, and guess what happened. Attack on the bar they played, this time just one night after. See the pattern here?”
In spite of popular opinion, Dean was in fact capable of counting down from three, thank you very much. He ignored the pattern question and said instead, “So either something’s following this band, or the band itself is causing the attacks.” He frowned. “What the hell goes around killing bars full of people and eating them?”
“Wendigos?” Sam suggested.
“We’ve dealt with those mofos before,” Dean replied, “and they’ve never behaved like this.”
“Yeah, but the general details are basically the same: eating people, killing for pleasure, going way overboard with violence. Wendigos are the only thing I can think of off the top of my head. We should check out the scene in Nebraska, see if we can find any clues.”
“Alright,” Dean agreed, “but we should also be there for the next Fall Out Boy show, because if the pattern holds, the next attack is going down the night of. When’s the next time they play?”
Sam poked around on his laptop for a few minutes. Then, his head snapped up and his wide-eyed look caught Dean’s. “It’s tomorrow.”
“Where?”
“Utah,” Sam replied glumly. “Shit, we have to drive all the way from here to Nebraska and then back around to Utah in time for the concert.” He groaned while Dean grinned.
“Suck it up, Sammy. We’ll just have to drive through the night to make it. I call driving day shifts.”
They packed up within an hour, cleaning up the salt-lines and protection symbols drawn in chalk until it was as if the hideous room never had two hunters inside it. Sam jokingly called shotgun as they tossed their duffels into the trunk, as though anybody else would compete for the lone seat next to Dean. Dean pretended to shoot him a withering look, but mirth danced behind his eyes. The Impala pulled out onto the open road, leaving a blaring echo of Metallica in its wake, Nebraska-bound.
* * * * *
“But I’ve already spoken to the sheriff’s office,” the owner of the Ogallala Wreck Room said with a puzzled frown.
Dean took a quick glance to make sure he’d pulled out the right fake ID. Yep. “We’re with the state wildlife department, Mr. Jones,” he said with a winning combination of authority and respect. “We just need to find out all we can about the animal or animals responsible so we can catch and properly dispose of it.”
Jones did not look entirely convinced, but he grudgingly asked, “Whaddaya need to know?”
“Was there anything special going on that night? Any festivities that might have attracted a wild animal?”
“No, just the usual Wednesday drink specials. We did have a band come in the night before, though, some guys from Chicago. Real popular with the kids-drew quite a crowd.”
“Did any of those band members seem unusual to you, sir, in any way?” Sam interjected.
“Son, they’re all unusual to me these days, with their makeup and their tattoos and their piercings where God never intended needles to go.”
Dean stifled a smile while Sam remained professional. “Right, well, would you mind if we took a look around? See if we can find any…animal tracks or things like that?”
“Sure,” Jones answered, “but the police already came and scoured the place. I don’t see how you’re gonna find anything different.”
“All the same, we’d like to investigate, just in case something was missed,” Sam said, gently propelling Jones toward the back of the venue with a hand on his back. He half-escorted, half-coerced Jones into his office, then returned to find Dean already down to business.
“Check out the door,” Dean said, nodding towards the entrance.
It was as busted as everything else inside the bar, but rather than being deliberately destroyed, it looked burst-the sides were crunched outwards, and the beam across the top splintered up, as though something much larger than the opening had wedged its way through.
“Still think it’s a wendigo?” Dean asked.
“According to some Ojibwa legends, wendigos can become giants, swollen with their evil,” Sam replied, just pulling this information from memory like the geekboy he was.
Emergency services had cleaned all the blood from the scene, but there were still long scratches in the wall, deep gouges along the bar top, and footprints with claw marks dug deep into the floor, unlike any a cougar ever made.
“I don’t know about this,” Dean said, squatting down to get a closer look at one of the claw prints. “I don’t think this is anything we’ve ever dealt with before.” He got up and dusted off his haunches, then flashed Sam a grin. “But it’s business as usual, right? We figure out what it is, and then we figure out how to kill it.”
They took cell phone pictures of each mark for later reference, thanked Mr. Jones for his time, and were driving out of Ohio by midnight. At 3:00 a.m. though, Sam insisted he couldn’t drive anymore and pulled into a rest stop.
“Dude, it’s your shift, you’re supposed to drive,” Dean pointed out.
“I can’t keep my eyes open, and if we have to fight some unknown monster tomorrow, I don’t want to be half-asleep for it,” Sam argued back.
They ended up camping out in the Impala like they did when they ran low on cash, sleeping stretched out with Dean in the roomier back seats because he was a jerk and he called dibs on them even though he knew Sam was taller and could’ve used the extra leg room. By the time they pulled into the parking lot of the Utah venue, all the lights were out and it looked as though Fall Out Boy’s show was long over.
“You’re the pussy who wanted to sleep,” Dean reminded Sam as they grabbed their guns from the trunk. “We missed the party and now you don’t get hear your emo band play. That’s all on you.”
Sam grimaced as they entered the bar, because the scene before their eyes was kind of on him, too. The place was painted with blood, ceiling to floor, like a large balloon filled with guts had popped in the centre of the room and splattered its contents everywhere. Here and there lay a few bone fragments, some tatters of clothing, a stray limb or two, but no complete bodies.
Dean winced, not so much for the victims as for what he had said to Sam just moments before. “Hey, come on. We wouldn’t have been able to stop this no matter how early we got here,” he told Sammy, fighting against the guilt complex that so often turned his brother’s eyes to stone.
“Right,” Sam answered, in the dully defeated tone Dean had grown to recognize and hate.
They cast around for any clue that could possibly tell them what the hell they were tracking here, but before they could find anything they heard a rustle from upstairs. They froze.
Dean jerked his head toward the only flight of stairs in the room, signalling for Sam to cover him. They crept up the steps, Dean facing forward and Sam behind him, their backs against each other and shotguns cocked. At the top of the stairs was a small landing and two doors. One was open, the other shut. On an unspoken count of three, they swung into the open room first, guns at the ready. It was only an empty bathroom, and they cleared its dark shadows quickly. They moved on to the other room.
Behind the closed door lurked the unmistakable sound of heavy breathing, crude and animalistic. Sam and Dean took a few seconds to take some deep breaths of their own, gearing themselves up for the confrontation. And then, through the same silent system of communication they’ve used since their dad deemed them old enough to hunt, Dean kicked down the door while Sam simultaneously squeezed the trigger of his gun.
Sam based his estimation of the creature’s size on the damage it had managed to cause the Ogallala Wreck Room; he then based his aim on the estimated head height of said creature. Therefore, his shot went quite harmlessly over the furious, snarling dwarf that leapt onto Dean, brandishing a mic stand.
The assailant made what sounded like dinosaur roars, straddling Dean’s chest with short legs clad in some obnoxiously bright red pants. It smashed at Dean’s face using its mic stand as a cudgel, its biceps rippling beneath ink-illustrated skin. Another troll-like creature, this one with a wild head of curly hair, was rushing forward to help it subdue Dean, while two others huddled further back in the room. Dean protected his face with his forearms, fending off blows and finding it surprisingly difficult to get the dwarf the fuck off him.
“Shoot it, Sammy!”
But Sam wouldn’t, because he recognized these tattooed things. “…Fall Out Boy?”
The dwarf sitting on top of Dean paused in mid-strike. “You know us?”
Dean took the opportunity to shove his attacker off and flip himself up in one smooth motion. The dwarf landed hard on its back.
“Hey!” The troll with crazy hair raised his fists to defend his comrade’s honour, but Sam raised his gun pointedly.
Dean picked up the gun he’d dropped when the dwarf tackled him, and together the brothers clearly had the advantage over the unarmed…well, Dean guessed he should stop calling them “creatures,” because they were quite obviously boys. Sweaty, scared, and strung-out boys. All four of them put their hands up in the universal sign for surrender in the face of a loaded weapon.
“We, uh, may have gotten off on the wrong foot,” Sam said sheepishly.
Ten minutes later, what Sam and Dean had learned was this: the short growly dwarf who had jumped Dean was named Pete Wentz, and the troll-man was Joe, their guitarist. The quiet one with long hair was Andy, the drummer, and anybody who accidentally aimed their gun at the chubby little singer, Patrick, got a face full of Pete’s anger control issues. They were Fall Out Boy, and they had no more idea what the fucking hell had happened downstairs than the Winchesters did.
Alarms began to sound in the distance right when the introductions had gotten to Dean's least favourite part: convincing the civilians that he and Sam hunted monsters for a living.
"You're what?" Pete demanded.
"Hunters," Sam repeated, always having more patience than Dean for these things.
The four boys looked understandably sceptical, but the far-off wail of sirens pre-empted Sam from explaining further.
"You called the cops?" Dean asked accusingly.
"Obviously we called the cops!" Joe said, big hair and long arms waving hysterically. "A hundred people just got killed out there, and we were holed up in here just waiting to die. Why wouldn't we call the cops?!"
Dean and Sam exchanged a look, made a decision.
"Okay, everybody out to the parking lot," Dean said, holding his gun in a way that wasn't exactly threatening, but still implied he wasn't entirely opposed to using it.
Three of them moved towards the stairs, but Patrick refused to budge. "You're taking us hostage?" he said incredulously.
Pete took him by the elbow and murmured, "Look, they obviously know more about what's going on than we do-"
"For all we know, that might be because they're responsible for this!" Patrick hissed back. They broke into a furious war of whispers.
Dean shuffled impatiently as the sirens got closer. He considered just cocking the gun to get them all downstairs, worry about appeasing them later, but from what he'd seen intimidation would probably just lose the cooperation of their stubborn asses. They needed a different tactic. "Hey, how about we argue while we walk?" he suggested. "It's not gonna look good for any of us if the police find us all standing around a crime scene talking about our feelings. Let's get a move on, and we'll explain as soon as we get somewhere safe."
Joe looked ready, Pete looked dubious but seemed like he'd do it for lack of a better plan, and Patrick looked immeasurably suspicious but willing to tag along for now if only to keep an eye on Pete. There was no way at all to tell what the quiet one, Andy, was thinking by how he looked.
Sam and Dean bundled three of them into their van, packed the inscrutable Andy into the back of the Impala for collateral. They ripped out of the parking lot minutes ahead of the police, were out of town and a good distance down the highway within the hour.
* * * * *
Andy didn't say anything, which Dean appreciated. Maybe he was just trying to stay alive by keeping himself unnoticed, but his breathing was calm and even and he looked out passively at the dark shapes whizzing past the rear side windows without a single word.
The silence was too good to last. Dean knew this and Sam knew this. You couldn't just hijack a mildly popular band from their tour with no questions asked. Eventually, they'd have to deal with explications and alibis, persuasion and perjury, on top of figuring out how to stop the next attack from happening.
Their peace and quiet ran out at the next truck stop, when Fall Out Boy's nondescript white van hung a sharp right and screeched to a dusty halt. It was four a.m., and the glowing red buzz of the roadside motel sign announced NO VACANCY.
"Here we go," Dean muttered, putting the car into reverse and driving next to where Joe had unceremoniously parked their van. He killed the engine.
Patrick spilled out of the van, murderous eyes in an angelic face. He stalked toward the Impala.
"You don't even know the half of it," Andy said to Dean, the first thing he's uttered since beginning his coerced road trip. It was an inside joke, maybe, or a warning.
Patrick stomped over to the driver's side door, yanked it open, and pulled Dean out bodily by the collar. He was a little guy, but his size belied him. Before Dean or Sam could react, he had managed to throw Dean back onto the hood of his own car and loomed over him, demanding "What. The fuck. Is going on."
"Stand down, tiger," Dean said easily, with a smirk.
This only served to make Patrick's face redder. He glared down at Dean, pulled his arm back and wound up for a punch.
As far as freaked-out civilian reactions went, Dean had seen worse. He was prepared to take the hit just so the kid could get it out of his system and they could all move on. He braced himself for the blow, squaring his jaw and keeping his tongue well away from his teeth, watching the blur of Patrick's fist as it came closer and closer…but it never landed.
Pete's hand materialised on Patrick's shoulder, and then the rest of him appeared behind Patrick, holding him back from doing any damage.
"Let go of me," Patrick said through gritted teeth.
"No," Pete replied.
"I'm not going anywhere with these lunatics unless-"
"Patrick, I don't think this-"
"Well you're not thinking clearly! Your new meds can temporarily impair cognitive-"
"I haven't been taking them," Pete said quietly.
The air changed. All three of them were pressed real close into each other, sandwiched up against Dean's car. But before Dean could crack a joke about how cozy they all were together, Patrick flipped on Pete.
Patrick was definitely stronger than he looked. Within mere seconds, he was off Dean and on Pete, hands going to Pete's neck with enough momentum to propel them backwards into a service station gas pump. Pete's spine hit the pump with a loud crack, and Patrick's fingers tightened around his throat.
Years of surviving on the road had taught Dean how to recognise when a fight was about him and when it wasn't. This wasn't. In his peripheral vision, Dean saw Sam step forward with the intent to intervene, then saw Andy telling him it was in his best interests to stay out of it.
Joe took the long way around the van to join Andy and the brothers, giving his bandmates' scuffle a wide berth. "So," he said with his hands in his pockets.
"So," Andy agreed.
The four of them leaned against the Impala and waited, just outside of coherent hearing range. They watched as Patrick alternately screamed until he was red in the face and then got screamed at right back by Pete, whose throat was hoarse from the recent strangling he received. Dean could understand it, a little. Not the argument or the motivations for it, but the fact of the argument itself, the fact that you can't share the road and every intimacy of it with someone else for weeks on end without blowing up eventually. But Pete and Patrick fought in ways that Dean and Sam didn't. They were hysterical, emotional, exposing their deepest feelings through violent yells. Tears flew as thick as punches. Dean couldn't figure out if this was healthy or not, if this was the type of relationship he and Sam were supposed to have if only they were normal.
When Pete and Patrick were all fought out, they sank against each other in a broken facsimile of hugging.
They returned to the rest of the group with streaked faces and raw voices.
"So how do we know you're not the bad guys?" was the first thing Pete said as soon as they were close enough to be heard, like the rest of them didn't just witness something shockingly private between him and Patrick.
Joe and Andy took it in stride, turned expectantly to the Winchesters for an answer to that question they had all been waiting to ask. Dean cleared his throat, embarrassed, unable to shake the feeling that he'd just walked in on his parents having sex or something. Next to him, Sam cleared his throat too and Dean read the same exact same embarrassment on his face. They pulled themselves together awkwardly, Dean gesturing to the trunk of the Impala and saying, "Tell 'em, Sammy."
Sam circled around to pop the trunk and came back with a fistful of research. "Dayton, Ohio," he said, tossing some newspaper clippings at Pete. "Springfield, Missouri. Ogallala, Nebraska."
Pete's brow furrowed as he read what he was given. The other three boys crowded around him, faces darkening as realisation dawned.
"Tonight," Sam added, with no more supporting evidence to throw at them besides what they'd seen with their very own eyes. "Something's following you, killing as it goes. The authorities can't help because they can't wrap their heads around what it could be-they're calling it animal attacks, but we all know no animal can do this."
"What is it, then?" Joe asked.
"That we don't know yet," Sam answered. He broke out their dad's journal, showed them relevant entries as to what the monster could be, showed them the trunk full of the tools of their trade, told them stories of what they'd dealt with in the past. "If there's anyone who can find out and put a stop to it, it's us," Sam concluded.
Patrick sat down heavily onto the curb. Pete immediately sat down next to him, slinging an arm around him. "I'm okay. It's just a lot to take in," Patrick said, voice small. Pete pressed his forehead to Patrick's shoulder and murmured his agreement.
"So what should we do now?" Andy asked, in a voice just as small and scared as Patrick's.
"We need to keep moving," Dean said. "Whatever it is, it's obviously following you so we shouldn't stop unless we need to. Cancel all your concerts for the next little while and keep to places with small populations to minimize civilian casualties."
Joe, Andy, and Patrick all looked to Pete, their de facto leader.
Pete sighed heavily. "Okay, I'll call Korean Tom Cruise as soon as he wakes up in the morning and tell him something came up. He'll take care of it."
"Korean Tom Cruise?" Sam asked.
"He's our tour manager," Andy explained. "We'll have to make up a good excuse because he doesn't cancel shows come hell or high water, supernatural massacres or not."
"We'll come up with a cover, don't worry," Dean assured him. "Sammy and I can fake every regional and federal agency working in the continental US." Dean flashed them the smile he liked to think of as "roguishly charming." Andy just looked disturbed.
With the formalities finally out of the way, they prepared to get back on the road. Andy started returning to his previous seat in the back of the Impala, but Joe grabbed his arm and yanked him back. "No fuckin' way, you're driving the van this time," Joe said.
A minor scuffle ensued, with Joe muttering something about needing a break from the dynamic duo and how he had no qualms about ripping the covers off all of Andy's comic books if he didn't trade spots with him. Andy shoved him in reply, and for one horrifying second Dean and Sam thought they would have to witness another unsettlingly personal fight between the other half of the band.
The moment passed, thankfully, when Andy relented before it came to blows. Joe pulled open the Impala's side door with a triumphant grin, paused to say "By the way, dude? This is one sweet ride," before clambering into the back seat.
Dean caught Sam's eye. "I like this kid," he said, jerking his thumb at Joe before opening the driver's door. Sam shook his head with a rueful chuckle and got in on the other side.
* * * * *
Dean really, really, really liked that kid. He was almost ready to use the word "love" at this point. He would ask Sam to switch places with the kid so Joe could sit up front next to Dean, if he didn't know the bitch face he'd get from his brother for the next few days.
They had been driving for hours, straight through dawn and right past sunrise, putting as much distance as they could between themselves and the last scene of attack. Dean had put Best of Led Zeppelin on repeat. Not only had Joe not voiced a single complaint for the duration of the drive, he had been singing along. To each and every song. And even air-guitared to some of Dean's favourite solos.
A vein in Sam's temple twitched every time Joe reached for a falsetto high note.
"How about we stop for breakfast at the next exit?" Sam suggested with only very slightly gritted teeth. "I could use a break. And some coffee. Lots of coffee."
"Good idea," Joe chirped. "I need some waffles."
Dean felt his love for the boy spike into levels he never even thought possible. "Syrup or fresh fruit on top?" Dean asked, just to test him.
"Bacon on top and maple syrup all over, the Canadian lumberjack way," Joe answered. "Fuck fruit."
Dean had to grip the steering wheel extra hard just to stop himself from proposing to Joe then and there. Sam made a gagging noise that may or may not have been a dramatic gesture. Dean stuck his arm outside the window and waved at the Fall Out Boy van to pull up beside them.
"Hey, let's get some rest at the next diner we see," he yelled to Patrick, who had rolled down one of van's tinted windows. "Breakfast is on Sam."
Patrick flashed him a thumbs up.
The next diner they saw turned out to be called Betty Lou's, and it was the type of place with napkins that can fold out into bibs. Dean and Joe slid into one end of a large booth with eager appetites. Sam sat opposite them, and the rest of Fall Out Boy trailed in through the door after them.
"Coffee," Andy managed to croak at the waitress who came up to take their orders. He rubbed his bloodshot eyes and groaned.
"Coffee," Sam agreed, feeling the past two nights catching up to him.
Pete ordered banana cream pie and a soda for breakfast, of all things. Patrick attempted to request nothing but tea, but Pete frowned at him and forcibly ordered jam and toast for him. Dean and Joe placed their orders for cardiac arrest waffles and Dean asked for extra butter on the side.
Everybody but Patrick inhaled their food when it came. Patrick nursed his cup of tea and eyed his toast with deep distrust, nibbling at a corner of crust when Pete turned a baleful eye on him.
"Why do you care about what those kids said, anyway?" Pete hissed at him, in what Dean assumed was supposed to be a whisper but was really loud enough for everybody at the table to hear. "Those kids were idiots. What the fuck do they know about being a lead singer? Your job is to sing. You sing. Beautifully. Fuck what your belly looks like. Which, for your information," Pete added in the same bad whisper, "I also think you rock beautifully."
Patrick blushed a scarlet red from his neck to the brim of his ever-present hat. Dean remembered from last night that it probably meant anger more than embarrassment.
"Thanks, Peter," Patrick snarled sarcastically. "Why don't we air out all of my personal issues for everyone at the table? Fuck it, why stop at the table? Why don't we climb on top of it and announce all of our humiliating secrets to everyone in the whole damn restaurant?" Rather than doing that, though, Patrick took an extra-large, pointed bite of his toast and chewed furiously. "There. Happy?" Crumbs sprayed.
Sam edged away from them and met Dean's eyes across the table. Jesus Christ, his expression said, Are they always like this? Dean's small shrug in reply translated to, All the more reason for us to finish this job as quickly as possible.
Andy and Joe, meanwhile, continued to engulf their breakfasts placidly, taking no notice of a scene they were completely used to.
When Patrick was done his toast, he turned once again to Pete and began to ask, "Hey, have you-"
"No, I haven't taken the goddamn pills yet," Pete replied irritably, now taking his turn as the irrationally angry person of their odd-couple fight. "They have to be taken on a full stomach. I promised I'd take them, okay? Stop nagging like you don't trust me."
Patrick bit his lip, looking for all the world like a puppy wrongly rebuked. Even knowing the kind of vicious rage Patrick was capable of, Dean couldn't help but feel an urge to pat him on the head. "I was just going to ask if you had phoned Korean Tom Cruise yet," Patrick said quietly. He looked down at his tea and didn't look up again.
Pete clamped his mouth shut and looked properly chastised. "No, I haven't," he said. "What should I tell him?"
Patrick shrugged. "Dunno," he told his tea.
"Tell him we got into an accident," Joe suggested. "Tell him we're okay but the van got a little banged up, and we have to wait for repairs before we can get going again."
"How much time could that buy us?" Pete asked doubtfully.
"Some of these small-town garages don't keep a lot of parts," Dean said, supporting Joe's idea. The kid thought fast. "It could take weeks to order and ship them from out of town. Especially since your van's an older model."
"We could draw up an accident report for you," Sam added, jumping on board. "We can even pretend to be cops if you need to get your story corroborated."
Sam and Dean coached Pete on what to say, and when he was able to recite it to a convincing degree, he called Korean Tom Cruise.
It turned out that KTC did have a heart, hidden somewhere beneath all the robot parts. He asked after them and sounded relieved when Pete said no one was hurt. He said he would move their next ten gigs, and try to get their label to cover their losses if any of the shows couldn't be rescheduled. "Stay safe, guys," he said on the speakerphone. "And don't trash anything else. And if you run out of clean clothes, don't start wearing the merch. We have to sell those shirts to make up for your losses in case you aren't covered. Plus you'll look like douches if you wear your own band shirt."
"Yeah, okay, thanks Mom," Pete said. "Bye, dude. We'll keep you updated." He hit the button to end the call.
"That went so much better than I thought it would," Andy said, finishing the last of his second coffee. The rest of his band agreed.
"So what's next?" Pete asked the brothers. "We've cleared the next few weeks. What's the plan now?"
"First, we stop at the next motel and get some sleep," Sam said, slapping down some money on the table for their breakfast. "And then we try to identify what's following you."
"And then we kill it," Dean finished with perfect certainty, just like Sam knew he would.
* * * * *
On their third day of travelling with Fall Out Boy and seeing no sign of monsters, Sam pulled Dean aside to discuss a possibility.
"That's crazy," Dean said, zipping his fly.
At the urinal next to him, Sam said, "Is it? Think about it, Dean-the attacks were following a steady pattern until we showed up. Nothing else has changed. We're driving all day and stopping in mid-sized towns in the evening, just like they've been doing all along. And there have been no attacks. Because we've been keeping an eye on them."
"You're crazy," Dean repeated, washing his hands. "Lots of things have changed. They're not playing shows at dive bars anymore. They're surrounded by charms and weapons now. They're lying to their manager every day. There are plenty of new variables. There's no reason to think one of them's a shapeshifter. Your Lois Lane theory is too simple."
"Lois Lane theory?"
"Have you ever noticed how Superman and Clark Kent are never in the same place at the same time?" Dean recited this in his breathy female impersonator voice.
Sam winced; that voice disturbed him on multiple, deep-seated levels. "Bad example," he countered, "because Lois Lane was right. Clark Kent is Superman."
"What, and you really think Joe is the monster?"
Joe had been riding in the back of the Impala with them for most of the past 72 hours, and even Sam was starting to succumb to his inexplicable charm. "Maybe not Joe," Sam relented, "but Andy? He's quiet, could be hiding something. Or Patrick-I've never seen anyone flip from calm to insane that quickly. Could be an indication of some demonic rage."
Dean gave Sam one of his myriad of I-am-disgusted-with-you looks. "Andy doesn't eat meat, and either Pete or Patrick would notice if the other one turned into a monster when the lights go out, if you know what I mean." Dean unlocked the main entrance of the truck stop restroom, which he'd locked earlier after Sam had made sure no one else was inside. "There's absolutely no reason to suspect any of them of being a shapeshifter, aside from the fact that you can't think of a smarter explanation."
Dean pushed the door open and stepped out.
"Do you have a better explanation?" Sam demanded, following him. They lowered their voices, the subjects of their discussion filling up on gas only a few yards away.
"Sure," Dean said to Sam. "The monster's pattern got disrupted by all those changes I mentioned. But a monster's gotta eat, so eventually it'll have to start up again. We wait, we stick with the band, and when it comes back we get that son of a bitch."
Sam flexed his jaw in annoyance. Yes, technically, he didn't have proof of any shapeshifting activities beyond a hunch. But he wished Dean would at least be on his guard for clues, on the off chance Sam was right.
Dean, meanwhile, had returned to the refuelled Impala and began lovingly cleaning her windshield. Fall Out Boy were gathered around their van, doing what Sam assumed were band things. Joe and Patrick were tuning guitars, Andy was airing out t-shirts and then neatly folding them back into boxes marked MERCHANDISE, and Pete was…spray-painting a hoodie?
"Hey guys," Sam said, somewhat awkwardly. Over the past few days, Dean had, in his Dean way, struck up an easy friendship with the boys. Maybe that was why he wasn't willing to entertain Sam's very plausible hypothesis. Sam wasn't as close to them, and sometimes distance gave insight.
Joe, Patrick, and Andy murmured greetings in return. Pete was busy concentrating on stencilling something in bright pink paint onto a black hoodie. "What are you doing?" Sam asked.
"Hang on, I'm almost done," Pete said without looking up. When he was finished, he gingerly picked up the sweater by the shoulders and presented it with a flourish. On one side of the chest was a badly-painted alien creature behind bars. On the other side was stencilled the words "Monster Jail Bait."
Patrick groaned.
"Don't boo my artistic creation!" Pete admonished. "It's for you."
Patrick grumbled something about how their situation wasn't funny, people had died, but he still laid his guitar aside and put the hoodie on, even though it reeked of fresh paint.
Sam squinted at Pete with a peculiar expression.
"Can I help you?" Pete asked, peering up across their vast height difference through his swooshy emo hair.
Sam couldn't tell if Pete was trying to sound confrontational, facetious, cute, or genuinely inquiring. The uncertainty put him ill at ease. He fumbled for a reply, trying to think of something that might get Pete to reveal himself if he really was a secret shapeshifter, yet not too direct in case he wasn't. Patrick saved him from this fruitless mental exertion by tugging on Pete's shirt. Pete immediately turned his attention from Sam to Patrick.
"Listen to this," Patrick said, and started to strum a melody Sam couldn't quite hear.
Sam left them to it. Dean was right, at least about waiting. There was nothing else they could do for now, besides wait. Until they knew for sure that the monster wasn't in their midst, Sam would just have to be doubly vigilant for both of them.
* * * * *
Later that night, they set up camp at some place called the Imperial Motel.
"Imperial" was definitely, definitely not the first adjective anyone in their right mind would use to describe this establishment. It was easy on the wallet, though, and Joe assured Dean that they had slept in far worse places before.
"There were shopping carts, once. A friend of ours didn't leave his basement key under a brick on his porch like he said he would, so we slept in the alley behind his house in some shopping carts lined with blankets."
The reaction on Dean's face could only be described as admiration. "Dang," he said. "Why didn't you sleep in the van?"
"Well, Pete did. Pete had a girl with him-this was before Patrick banned Pete from even glancing at girls under the age of sixteen. Those were heady days."
Dean and Joe were leaning against the hood of the Impala, parked a few spots away from the van. Dean looked over at Pete, who was helping Patrick and Andy unload their bags from the back of the van. "Dang," he said again, quietly this time.
Sam returned from the motel office with three keys attached to large, vomit-coloured tags. He gave one to Patrick, then tossed one to Joe and said, "You and Andy." Sam pocketed the third key and said to Dean, "You ready to turn in yet?"
"Nah, man. Let's go grab some burgers."
Joe and Andy decided to join them at the greasy spoon, but Pete and Patrick had already shut themselves up in their room before they could be invited for dinner.
While waiting for their food at the motel diner, Dean delicately asked, "Are those two banging?"
Andy slanted his eyes at Dean. "No," he said flatly. "They're writing songs."
"Is that what they're calling it these days?" Dean replied, waggling his eyebrows.
Joe giggled, but when Andy frowned at him, he said, quite sincerely, "Hey, don't knock it. They're song-writing geniuses. They're our golden ticket."
Their fries arrived then, and all conversation was dropped in favour of devouring the hot potatoes set before them.
Afterwards though, when supper was long over and Dean was already sprawled stomach-down on his bed, snoring, Sam remembered what Joe said. Sam was freshly showered and in his sweatpants, sitting on top of the hideous bedspread, sleepy but not quite ready to make the effort of crawling under the blankets. He leaned against the headboard, eyes half closed. Through the wall behind his head, he could hear Pete and Patrick, very faintly. Pete was reciting poetry, or something that sounded like it. Patrick was singing. Golden ticket. Sam's eyes slid shut.
Sam jolted awake, gun in his hand before his brain had even formed a coherent thought. He looked around the dark room and couldn't place what woke him, at first. Dean was in the bed next to him, awake as well, with a big-ass knife in his right hand. And then Sam realised he could hear screaming.
Sam and Dean were on their feet in seconds, moving to the door in tandem, one of them reaching out to open it while the other prepared to attack what might be on the other side. Their door swung inwards to reveal the badly-lit motel lot, with guests spilling out of their rooms and running for their cars, screaming bloody murder. The door of the check-in office was nothing but the rubble of broken glass, and crimson splatters streaked across its windows. Whatever had struck the office wasn't in there any longer, though. Without having to discuss it aloud, both Sam and Dean knew that their primary objectives were to locate their band members and locate the monster.
They stepped out of their room in SWAT formation, making sure their blind spots were covered at all times. Joe and Andy's room was to their left, and their door was already opened a slight crack when Sam and Dean approached.
"Joe?" Dean bellowed.
Joe's eye appeared at the crack. Their security chain was still on, an illusionary defence against the violent force at work.
"You guys okay?"
"We're alive," Joe affirmed.
"It's that thing, isn't it?" Andy asked, muffled through the mostly-closed door. "From before. I recognize the sounds."
Dean couldn't tell if Andy was right, since they hadn't found the monster yet, assuming it was even on site still. He briefly thought about ordering them to stay in the room and lock the door, but then he remembered that every room had a large main window as well as a smaller window in the bathroom. Without knowing the monster's whereabouts, he was uneasy to let them be sitting ducks. He told them to exit their room, carefully. Sam and Dean rearranged themselves so that Joe and Andy were sandwiched between them. The boys hindered their movements and would be no good in a fight, but Dean didn't trust either of them to handle a gun. As much as they were starting to grow on him, right now they were a deadweight burden.
They made their way to Pete and Patrick's room. The screams were subsiding, not because people were any less terrified but because there were fewer and fewer people left. Most had floored it out of there as soon as they reached their cars. Others…it was hard to tell in the dim light provided by the motel lamps, but Dean could see pulverized doors and broken windows in many of the suites.
Pete and Patrick's door was shut tight. Dean pounded on it with the hand not holding a shotgun. A terrified looking Pete peered out gingerly.
"Where's Patrick?" Sam asked roughly, still not entirely convinced that it hadn't been a shapeshifter all along.
Pete bared his teeth at his tone. Sam stepped closer and saw that Patrick was behind him, cowered down so that he looked even tinier than he already was. Pete put a shoulder between Patrick and the door in an unmistakably protective gesture.
"He's right here," Pete growled.
Dean rolled his eyes at Sam, but now was really not the best time for an I-told-you-so.
The tension between them was cut by, of all things, a loud thump against the other side of the wall, so forceful that they felt the rock of its vibration. This was followed by a strangled scream that broke off into a wet gurgle.
Fuck. It was in the room right next to them. Dean shoved Joe and Andy, unresisting and eyes wide as saucers, into Pete and Patrick's room and told them to barricade the door with all the furniture they could move. "Escape out the other window if it climbs in one of them," Dean instructed before slamming the door.
And then he and Sam spared no further thought to their safety. They couldn't afford to, with the creature so close. They approached the next room efficiently, every nerve at the ready. The door was ripped off its hinges and reduced to shards, as per the monster's MO. They stormed in and hit the lights, and immediately wished that they hadn't.
The room was destroyed, doused in blood just as the bar had been back in Utah. The furniture looked as though some careless giant had upset the interior of a dollhouse, along with twenty gallons of scarlet paint. Whoever the occupants had been a few minutes ago, they were merely body parts now-strewn about, half-eaten and discarded in a hurry, with veins and arteries hanging out of the ragged ends like useless strings. The claw marks left everywhere were identical to all the ones they had examined at the other crime scenes. There was no doubt that this was the thing they had been waiting for.
And yet there was no other sign of it, no actual presence itself. Just when Dean and Sam were ready to berate themselves for another failure, they heard something huge stir in the bathroom. Sam was off like a shot before Dean could stop him.
"Sam! Sammy! Goddammit," Dean swore, bolting after his brother. He heard shots ring out, thanked a god he didn't believe in when he saw Sam still standing, pointing a smoking gun at the massive hole where a window used to be.
"Did you get it?"
"Obviously not," Sam said, edgy with adrenaline. "It just…disappeared into the night. Not like a metaphor. It literally melted into the dark as soon as it got out. But I did get a good look at it."
"And?"
"Dean. I think it's a dragon."
* * * * *
continue to part two
Author: matchsticks_p
Summary: The lives of Fall Out Boy and the Winchester brothers collide as they travel down the highways of America under the watchful gaze of an ancient monster…
Rating: R
Warnings: VIOLENCE, coarse language
Pairings: gen for SPN, non-explicit Pete/Patrick for FOB
Length: 23,000 words
Notes: set during FOB's van days and during season 3 of SPN. No familiarity with Fall Out Boy is necessary to understand the story-you can see them as a case of the week that happens to play in a band. The only knowledge of SPN needed to understand the story is this: Dean and Sam Winchester are brothers who hunt monsters and have issues with their now-deceased father. They drive a '67 Impala.
Disclaimers: Not true, not paid, not affiliated, no harm meant.
* * * * *
“Jesus Christ, Sammy, are you playing that teenaged girl music again?”
He was. Despite his clumsy attempts to explain that it wasn’t what it looked like, he so totally was. After shutting the door behind him, Dean spent the next five minutes ridiculing Sam’s testosterone levels while Sam just waited him out, bitch-face in place.
“Are you done now?” he asked in a deadpan when Dean’s manful mocking finally began to wind down.
“Sure, sure-here’s your breakfast.” Dean tossed him a paper bag across the motel table.
Sam looked inside and then raised his eyebrow. “A bacon cheeseburger? For breakfast? Really?”
“It’ll put some hair on that nelly chest,” Dean said gruffly. On the table, Sam’s laptop continued to spew out punchy guitars and a smooth voice yelped about how there was a light on in Chicago. Dean muttered something about shitty boy-bands and slapped the laptop shut, cutting off the song before they could find out what the colours of the street signs reminded the singer of.
“Hey, I’m researching a case!” Sam protested, batting Dean’s hand away.
“What, you think they’re banshees driving people to death with their voices?” Dean considered it. “Might be something in that, actually.”
“No,” Sam said, rolling his eyes. “Something weirder.” He lay his greasy half-eaten burger to the side and flipped his laptop back open. “Get this: two weeks ago, this band called Fall Out Boy played at a club in Dayton, Ohio. Three nights later, there’s a massacre at the same club. Police reports are light on the details, but it’s basically a bloodbath-we’re talking full-on carnage, limbs ripped off, body parts everywhere, and forensics suggests some victims were eaten. They’re calling it a cougar attack. In Ohio.”
“Okay, sounds suspicious,” Dean agreed. “Still don’t see how that crappy music is connected, though. Anything could’ve happened in the three days in between.”
“Yeah, but then Fall Out Boy played another show in Springfield, Missouri later that week, and two nights after that another attack happened at the venue they played. Exact same M.O as Ohio. And just this past Tuesday, they were in Ogallala, Nebraska, and guess what happened. Attack on the bar they played, this time just one night after. See the pattern here?”
In spite of popular opinion, Dean was in fact capable of counting down from three, thank you very much. He ignored the pattern question and said instead, “So either something’s following this band, or the band itself is causing the attacks.” He frowned. “What the hell goes around killing bars full of people and eating them?”
“Wendigos?” Sam suggested.
“We’ve dealt with those mofos before,” Dean replied, “and they’ve never behaved like this.”
“Yeah, but the general details are basically the same: eating people, killing for pleasure, going way overboard with violence. Wendigos are the only thing I can think of off the top of my head. We should check out the scene in Nebraska, see if we can find any clues.”
“Alright,” Dean agreed, “but we should also be there for the next Fall Out Boy show, because if the pattern holds, the next attack is going down the night of. When’s the next time they play?”
Sam poked around on his laptop for a few minutes. Then, his head snapped up and his wide-eyed look caught Dean’s. “It’s tomorrow.”
“Where?”
“Utah,” Sam replied glumly. “Shit, we have to drive all the way from here to Nebraska and then back around to Utah in time for the concert.” He groaned while Dean grinned.
“Suck it up, Sammy. We’ll just have to drive through the night to make it. I call driving day shifts.”
They packed up within an hour, cleaning up the salt-lines and protection symbols drawn in chalk until it was as if the hideous room never had two hunters inside it. Sam jokingly called shotgun as they tossed their duffels into the trunk, as though anybody else would compete for the lone seat next to Dean. Dean pretended to shoot him a withering look, but mirth danced behind his eyes. The Impala pulled out onto the open road, leaving a blaring echo of Metallica in its wake, Nebraska-bound.
* * * * *
“But I’ve already spoken to the sheriff’s office,” the owner of the Ogallala Wreck Room said with a puzzled frown.
Dean took a quick glance to make sure he’d pulled out the right fake ID. Yep. “We’re with the state wildlife department, Mr. Jones,” he said with a winning combination of authority and respect. “We just need to find out all we can about the animal or animals responsible so we can catch and properly dispose of it.”
Jones did not look entirely convinced, but he grudgingly asked, “Whaddaya need to know?”
“Was there anything special going on that night? Any festivities that might have attracted a wild animal?”
“No, just the usual Wednesday drink specials. We did have a band come in the night before, though, some guys from Chicago. Real popular with the kids-drew quite a crowd.”
“Did any of those band members seem unusual to you, sir, in any way?” Sam interjected.
“Son, they’re all unusual to me these days, with their makeup and their tattoos and their piercings where God never intended needles to go.”
Dean stifled a smile while Sam remained professional. “Right, well, would you mind if we took a look around? See if we can find any…animal tracks or things like that?”
“Sure,” Jones answered, “but the police already came and scoured the place. I don’t see how you’re gonna find anything different.”
“All the same, we’d like to investigate, just in case something was missed,” Sam said, gently propelling Jones toward the back of the venue with a hand on his back. He half-escorted, half-coerced Jones into his office, then returned to find Dean already down to business.
“Check out the door,” Dean said, nodding towards the entrance.
It was as busted as everything else inside the bar, but rather than being deliberately destroyed, it looked burst-the sides were crunched outwards, and the beam across the top splintered up, as though something much larger than the opening had wedged its way through.
“Still think it’s a wendigo?” Dean asked.
“According to some Ojibwa legends, wendigos can become giants, swollen with their evil,” Sam replied, just pulling this information from memory like the geekboy he was.
Emergency services had cleaned all the blood from the scene, but there were still long scratches in the wall, deep gouges along the bar top, and footprints with claw marks dug deep into the floor, unlike any a cougar ever made.
“I don’t know about this,” Dean said, squatting down to get a closer look at one of the claw prints. “I don’t think this is anything we’ve ever dealt with before.” He got up and dusted off his haunches, then flashed Sam a grin. “But it’s business as usual, right? We figure out what it is, and then we figure out how to kill it.”
They took cell phone pictures of each mark for later reference, thanked Mr. Jones for his time, and were driving out of Ohio by midnight. At 3:00 a.m. though, Sam insisted he couldn’t drive anymore and pulled into a rest stop.
“Dude, it’s your shift, you’re supposed to drive,” Dean pointed out.
“I can’t keep my eyes open, and if we have to fight some unknown monster tomorrow, I don’t want to be half-asleep for it,” Sam argued back.
They ended up camping out in the Impala like they did when they ran low on cash, sleeping stretched out with Dean in the roomier back seats because he was a jerk and he called dibs on them even though he knew Sam was taller and could’ve used the extra leg room. By the time they pulled into the parking lot of the Utah venue, all the lights were out and it looked as though Fall Out Boy’s show was long over.
“You’re the pussy who wanted to sleep,” Dean reminded Sam as they grabbed their guns from the trunk. “We missed the party and now you don’t get hear your emo band play. That’s all on you.”
Sam grimaced as they entered the bar, because the scene before their eyes was kind of on him, too. The place was painted with blood, ceiling to floor, like a large balloon filled with guts had popped in the centre of the room and splattered its contents everywhere. Here and there lay a few bone fragments, some tatters of clothing, a stray limb or two, but no complete bodies.
Dean winced, not so much for the victims as for what he had said to Sam just moments before. “Hey, come on. We wouldn’t have been able to stop this no matter how early we got here,” he told Sammy, fighting against the guilt complex that so often turned his brother’s eyes to stone.
“Right,” Sam answered, in the dully defeated tone Dean had grown to recognize and hate.
They cast around for any clue that could possibly tell them what the hell they were tracking here, but before they could find anything they heard a rustle from upstairs. They froze.
Dean jerked his head toward the only flight of stairs in the room, signalling for Sam to cover him. They crept up the steps, Dean facing forward and Sam behind him, their backs against each other and shotguns cocked. At the top of the stairs was a small landing and two doors. One was open, the other shut. On an unspoken count of three, they swung into the open room first, guns at the ready. It was only an empty bathroom, and they cleared its dark shadows quickly. They moved on to the other room.
Behind the closed door lurked the unmistakable sound of heavy breathing, crude and animalistic. Sam and Dean took a few seconds to take some deep breaths of their own, gearing themselves up for the confrontation. And then, through the same silent system of communication they’ve used since their dad deemed them old enough to hunt, Dean kicked down the door while Sam simultaneously squeezed the trigger of his gun.
Sam based his estimation of the creature’s size on the damage it had managed to cause the Ogallala Wreck Room; he then based his aim on the estimated head height of said creature. Therefore, his shot went quite harmlessly over the furious, snarling dwarf that leapt onto Dean, brandishing a mic stand.
The assailant made what sounded like dinosaur roars, straddling Dean’s chest with short legs clad in some obnoxiously bright red pants. It smashed at Dean’s face using its mic stand as a cudgel, its biceps rippling beneath ink-illustrated skin. Another troll-like creature, this one with a wild head of curly hair, was rushing forward to help it subdue Dean, while two others huddled further back in the room. Dean protected his face with his forearms, fending off blows and finding it surprisingly difficult to get the dwarf the fuck off him.
“Shoot it, Sammy!”
But Sam wouldn’t, because he recognized these tattooed things. “…Fall Out Boy?”
The dwarf sitting on top of Dean paused in mid-strike. “You know us?”
Dean took the opportunity to shove his attacker off and flip himself up in one smooth motion. The dwarf landed hard on its back.
“Hey!” The troll with crazy hair raised his fists to defend his comrade’s honour, but Sam raised his gun pointedly.
Dean picked up the gun he’d dropped when the dwarf tackled him, and together the brothers clearly had the advantage over the unarmed…well, Dean guessed he should stop calling them “creatures,” because they were quite obviously boys. Sweaty, scared, and strung-out boys. All four of them put their hands up in the universal sign for surrender in the face of a loaded weapon.
“We, uh, may have gotten off on the wrong foot,” Sam said sheepishly.
Ten minutes later, what Sam and Dean had learned was this: the short growly dwarf who had jumped Dean was named Pete Wentz, and the troll-man was Joe, their guitarist. The quiet one with long hair was Andy, the drummer, and anybody who accidentally aimed their gun at the chubby little singer, Patrick, got a face full of Pete’s anger control issues. They were Fall Out Boy, and they had no more idea what the fucking hell had happened downstairs than the Winchesters did.
Alarms began to sound in the distance right when the introductions had gotten to Dean's least favourite part: convincing the civilians that he and Sam hunted monsters for a living.
"You're what?" Pete demanded.
"Hunters," Sam repeated, always having more patience than Dean for these things.
The four boys looked understandably sceptical, but the far-off wail of sirens pre-empted Sam from explaining further.
"You called the cops?" Dean asked accusingly.
"Obviously we called the cops!" Joe said, big hair and long arms waving hysterically. "A hundred people just got killed out there, and we were holed up in here just waiting to die. Why wouldn't we call the cops?!"
Dean and Sam exchanged a look, made a decision.
"Okay, everybody out to the parking lot," Dean said, holding his gun in a way that wasn't exactly threatening, but still implied he wasn't entirely opposed to using it.
Three of them moved towards the stairs, but Patrick refused to budge. "You're taking us hostage?" he said incredulously.
Pete took him by the elbow and murmured, "Look, they obviously know more about what's going on than we do-"
"For all we know, that might be because they're responsible for this!" Patrick hissed back. They broke into a furious war of whispers.
Dean shuffled impatiently as the sirens got closer. He considered just cocking the gun to get them all downstairs, worry about appeasing them later, but from what he'd seen intimidation would probably just lose the cooperation of their stubborn asses. They needed a different tactic. "Hey, how about we argue while we walk?" he suggested. "It's not gonna look good for any of us if the police find us all standing around a crime scene talking about our feelings. Let's get a move on, and we'll explain as soon as we get somewhere safe."
Joe looked ready, Pete looked dubious but seemed like he'd do it for lack of a better plan, and Patrick looked immeasurably suspicious but willing to tag along for now if only to keep an eye on Pete. There was no way at all to tell what the quiet one, Andy, was thinking by how he looked.
Sam and Dean bundled three of them into their van, packed the inscrutable Andy into the back of the Impala for collateral. They ripped out of the parking lot minutes ahead of the police, were out of town and a good distance down the highway within the hour.
* * * * *
Andy didn't say anything, which Dean appreciated. Maybe he was just trying to stay alive by keeping himself unnoticed, but his breathing was calm and even and he looked out passively at the dark shapes whizzing past the rear side windows without a single word.
The silence was too good to last. Dean knew this and Sam knew this. You couldn't just hijack a mildly popular band from their tour with no questions asked. Eventually, they'd have to deal with explications and alibis, persuasion and perjury, on top of figuring out how to stop the next attack from happening.
Their peace and quiet ran out at the next truck stop, when Fall Out Boy's nondescript white van hung a sharp right and screeched to a dusty halt. It was four a.m., and the glowing red buzz of the roadside motel sign announced NO VACANCY.
"Here we go," Dean muttered, putting the car into reverse and driving next to where Joe had unceremoniously parked their van. He killed the engine.
Patrick spilled out of the van, murderous eyes in an angelic face. He stalked toward the Impala.
"You don't even know the half of it," Andy said to Dean, the first thing he's uttered since beginning his coerced road trip. It was an inside joke, maybe, or a warning.
Patrick stomped over to the driver's side door, yanked it open, and pulled Dean out bodily by the collar. He was a little guy, but his size belied him. Before Dean or Sam could react, he had managed to throw Dean back onto the hood of his own car and loomed over him, demanding "What. The fuck. Is going on."
"Stand down, tiger," Dean said easily, with a smirk.
This only served to make Patrick's face redder. He glared down at Dean, pulled his arm back and wound up for a punch.
As far as freaked-out civilian reactions went, Dean had seen worse. He was prepared to take the hit just so the kid could get it out of his system and they could all move on. He braced himself for the blow, squaring his jaw and keeping his tongue well away from his teeth, watching the blur of Patrick's fist as it came closer and closer…but it never landed.
Pete's hand materialised on Patrick's shoulder, and then the rest of him appeared behind Patrick, holding him back from doing any damage.
"Let go of me," Patrick said through gritted teeth.
"No," Pete replied.
"I'm not going anywhere with these lunatics unless-"
"Patrick, I don't think this-"
"Well you're not thinking clearly! Your new meds can temporarily impair cognitive-"
"I haven't been taking them," Pete said quietly.
The air changed. All three of them were pressed real close into each other, sandwiched up against Dean's car. But before Dean could crack a joke about how cozy they all were together, Patrick flipped on Pete.
Patrick was definitely stronger than he looked. Within mere seconds, he was off Dean and on Pete, hands going to Pete's neck with enough momentum to propel them backwards into a service station gas pump. Pete's spine hit the pump with a loud crack, and Patrick's fingers tightened around his throat.
Years of surviving on the road had taught Dean how to recognise when a fight was about him and when it wasn't. This wasn't. In his peripheral vision, Dean saw Sam step forward with the intent to intervene, then saw Andy telling him it was in his best interests to stay out of it.
Joe took the long way around the van to join Andy and the brothers, giving his bandmates' scuffle a wide berth. "So," he said with his hands in his pockets.
"So," Andy agreed.
The four of them leaned against the Impala and waited, just outside of coherent hearing range. They watched as Patrick alternately screamed until he was red in the face and then got screamed at right back by Pete, whose throat was hoarse from the recent strangling he received. Dean could understand it, a little. Not the argument or the motivations for it, but the fact of the argument itself, the fact that you can't share the road and every intimacy of it with someone else for weeks on end without blowing up eventually. But Pete and Patrick fought in ways that Dean and Sam didn't. They were hysterical, emotional, exposing their deepest feelings through violent yells. Tears flew as thick as punches. Dean couldn't figure out if this was healthy or not, if this was the type of relationship he and Sam were supposed to have if only they were normal.
When Pete and Patrick were all fought out, they sank against each other in a broken facsimile of hugging.
They returned to the rest of the group with streaked faces and raw voices.
"So how do we know you're not the bad guys?" was the first thing Pete said as soon as they were close enough to be heard, like the rest of them didn't just witness something shockingly private between him and Patrick.
Joe and Andy took it in stride, turned expectantly to the Winchesters for an answer to that question they had all been waiting to ask. Dean cleared his throat, embarrassed, unable to shake the feeling that he'd just walked in on his parents having sex or something. Next to him, Sam cleared his throat too and Dean read the same exact same embarrassment on his face. They pulled themselves together awkwardly, Dean gesturing to the trunk of the Impala and saying, "Tell 'em, Sammy."
Sam circled around to pop the trunk and came back with a fistful of research. "Dayton, Ohio," he said, tossing some newspaper clippings at Pete. "Springfield, Missouri. Ogallala, Nebraska."
Pete's brow furrowed as he read what he was given. The other three boys crowded around him, faces darkening as realisation dawned.
"Tonight," Sam added, with no more supporting evidence to throw at them besides what they'd seen with their very own eyes. "Something's following you, killing as it goes. The authorities can't help because they can't wrap their heads around what it could be-they're calling it animal attacks, but we all know no animal can do this."
"What is it, then?" Joe asked.
"That we don't know yet," Sam answered. He broke out their dad's journal, showed them relevant entries as to what the monster could be, showed them the trunk full of the tools of their trade, told them stories of what they'd dealt with in the past. "If there's anyone who can find out and put a stop to it, it's us," Sam concluded.
Patrick sat down heavily onto the curb. Pete immediately sat down next to him, slinging an arm around him. "I'm okay. It's just a lot to take in," Patrick said, voice small. Pete pressed his forehead to Patrick's shoulder and murmured his agreement.
"So what should we do now?" Andy asked, in a voice just as small and scared as Patrick's.
"We need to keep moving," Dean said. "Whatever it is, it's obviously following you so we shouldn't stop unless we need to. Cancel all your concerts for the next little while and keep to places with small populations to minimize civilian casualties."
Joe, Andy, and Patrick all looked to Pete, their de facto leader.
Pete sighed heavily. "Okay, I'll call Korean Tom Cruise as soon as he wakes up in the morning and tell him something came up. He'll take care of it."
"Korean Tom Cruise?" Sam asked.
"He's our tour manager," Andy explained. "We'll have to make up a good excuse because he doesn't cancel shows come hell or high water, supernatural massacres or not."
"We'll come up with a cover, don't worry," Dean assured him. "Sammy and I can fake every regional and federal agency working in the continental US." Dean flashed them the smile he liked to think of as "roguishly charming." Andy just looked disturbed.
With the formalities finally out of the way, they prepared to get back on the road. Andy started returning to his previous seat in the back of the Impala, but Joe grabbed his arm and yanked him back. "No fuckin' way, you're driving the van this time," Joe said.
A minor scuffle ensued, with Joe muttering something about needing a break from the dynamic duo and how he had no qualms about ripping the covers off all of Andy's comic books if he didn't trade spots with him. Andy shoved him in reply, and for one horrifying second Dean and Sam thought they would have to witness another unsettlingly personal fight between the other half of the band.
The moment passed, thankfully, when Andy relented before it came to blows. Joe pulled open the Impala's side door with a triumphant grin, paused to say "By the way, dude? This is one sweet ride," before clambering into the back seat.
Dean caught Sam's eye. "I like this kid," he said, jerking his thumb at Joe before opening the driver's door. Sam shook his head with a rueful chuckle and got in on the other side.
* * * * *
Dean really, really, really liked that kid. He was almost ready to use the word "love" at this point. He would ask Sam to switch places with the kid so Joe could sit up front next to Dean, if he didn't know the bitch face he'd get from his brother for the next few days.
They had been driving for hours, straight through dawn and right past sunrise, putting as much distance as they could between themselves and the last scene of attack. Dean had put Best of Led Zeppelin on repeat. Not only had Joe not voiced a single complaint for the duration of the drive, he had been singing along. To each and every song. And even air-guitared to some of Dean's favourite solos.
A vein in Sam's temple twitched every time Joe reached for a falsetto high note.
"How about we stop for breakfast at the next exit?" Sam suggested with only very slightly gritted teeth. "I could use a break. And some coffee. Lots of coffee."
"Good idea," Joe chirped. "I need some waffles."
Dean felt his love for the boy spike into levels he never even thought possible. "Syrup or fresh fruit on top?" Dean asked, just to test him.
"Bacon on top and maple syrup all over, the Canadian lumberjack way," Joe answered. "Fuck fruit."
Dean had to grip the steering wheel extra hard just to stop himself from proposing to Joe then and there. Sam made a gagging noise that may or may not have been a dramatic gesture. Dean stuck his arm outside the window and waved at the Fall Out Boy van to pull up beside them.
"Hey, let's get some rest at the next diner we see," he yelled to Patrick, who had rolled down one of van's tinted windows. "Breakfast is on Sam."
Patrick flashed him a thumbs up.
The next diner they saw turned out to be called Betty Lou's, and it was the type of place with napkins that can fold out into bibs. Dean and Joe slid into one end of a large booth with eager appetites. Sam sat opposite them, and the rest of Fall Out Boy trailed in through the door after them.
"Coffee," Andy managed to croak at the waitress who came up to take their orders. He rubbed his bloodshot eyes and groaned.
"Coffee," Sam agreed, feeling the past two nights catching up to him.
Pete ordered banana cream pie and a soda for breakfast, of all things. Patrick attempted to request nothing but tea, but Pete frowned at him and forcibly ordered jam and toast for him. Dean and Joe placed their orders for cardiac arrest waffles and Dean asked for extra butter on the side.
Everybody but Patrick inhaled their food when it came. Patrick nursed his cup of tea and eyed his toast with deep distrust, nibbling at a corner of crust when Pete turned a baleful eye on him.
"Why do you care about what those kids said, anyway?" Pete hissed at him, in what Dean assumed was supposed to be a whisper but was really loud enough for everybody at the table to hear. "Those kids were idiots. What the fuck do they know about being a lead singer? Your job is to sing. You sing. Beautifully. Fuck what your belly looks like. Which, for your information," Pete added in the same bad whisper, "I also think you rock beautifully."
Patrick blushed a scarlet red from his neck to the brim of his ever-present hat. Dean remembered from last night that it probably meant anger more than embarrassment.
"Thanks, Peter," Patrick snarled sarcastically. "Why don't we air out all of my personal issues for everyone at the table? Fuck it, why stop at the table? Why don't we climb on top of it and announce all of our humiliating secrets to everyone in the whole damn restaurant?" Rather than doing that, though, Patrick took an extra-large, pointed bite of his toast and chewed furiously. "There. Happy?" Crumbs sprayed.
Sam edged away from them and met Dean's eyes across the table. Jesus Christ, his expression said, Are they always like this? Dean's small shrug in reply translated to, All the more reason for us to finish this job as quickly as possible.
Andy and Joe, meanwhile, continued to engulf their breakfasts placidly, taking no notice of a scene they were completely used to.
When Patrick was done his toast, he turned once again to Pete and began to ask, "Hey, have you-"
"No, I haven't taken the goddamn pills yet," Pete replied irritably, now taking his turn as the irrationally angry person of their odd-couple fight. "They have to be taken on a full stomach. I promised I'd take them, okay? Stop nagging like you don't trust me."
Patrick bit his lip, looking for all the world like a puppy wrongly rebuked. Even knowing the kind of vicious rage Patrick was capable of, Dean couldn't help but feel an urge to pat him on the head. "I was just going to ask if you had phoned Korean Tom Cruise yet," Patrick said quietly. He looked down at his tea and didn't look up again.
Pete clamped his mouth shut and looked properly chastised. "No, I haven't," he said. "What should I tell him?"
Patrick shrugged. "Dunno," he told his tea.
"Tell him we got into an accident," Joe suggested. "Tell him we're okay but the van got a little banged up, and we have to wait for repairs before we can get going again."
"How much time could that buy us?" Pete asked doubtfully.
"Some of these small-town garages don't keep a lot of parts," Dean said, supporting Joe's idea. The kid thought fast. "It could take weeks to order and ship them from out of town. Especially since your van's an older model."
"We could draw up an accident report for you," Sam added, jumping on board. "We can even pretend to be cops if you need to get your story corroborated."
Sam and Dean coached Pete on what to say, and when he was able to recite it to a convincing degree, he called Korean Tom Cruise.
It turned out that KTC did have a heart, hidden somewhere beneath all the robot parts. He asked after them and sounded relieved when Pete said no one was hurt. He said he would move their next ten gigs, and try to get their label to cover their losses if any of the shows couldn't be rescheduled. "Stay safe, guys," he said on the speakerphone. "And don't trash anything else. And if you run out of clean clothes, don't start wearing the merch. We have to sell those shirts to make up for your losses in case you aren't covered. Plus you'll look like douches if you wear your own band shirt."
"Yeah, okay, thanks Mom," Pete said. "Bye, dude. We'll keep you updated." He hit the button to end the call.
"That went so much better than I thought it would," Andy said, finishing the last of his second coffee. The rest of his band agreed.
"So what's next?" Pete asked the brothers. "We've cleared the next few weeks. What's the plan now?"
"First, we stop at the next motel and get some sleep," Sam said, slapping down some money on the table for their breakfast. "And then we try to identify what's following you."
"And then we kill it," Dean finished with perfect certainty, just like Sam knew he would.
* * * * *
On their third day of travelling with Fall Out Boy and seeing no sign of monsters, Sam pulled Dean aside to discuss a possibility.
"That's crazy," Dean said, zipping his fly.
At the urinal next to him, Sam said, "Is it? Think about it, Dean-the attacks were following a steady pattern until we showed up. Nothing else has changed. We're driving all day and stopping in mid-sized towns in the evening, just like they've been doing all along. And there have been no attacks. Because we've been keeping an eye on them."
"You're crazy," Dean repeated, washing his hands. "Lots of things have changed. They're not playing shows at dive bars anymore. They're surrounded by charms and weapons now. They're lying to their manager every day. There are plenty of new variables. There's no reason to think one of them's a shapeshifter. Your Lois Lane theory is too simple."
"Lois Lane theory?"
"Have you ever noticed how Superman and Clark Kent are never in the same place at the same time?" Dean recited this in his breathy female impersonator voice.
Sam winced; that voice disturbed him on multiple, deep-seated levels. "Bad example," he countered, "because Lois Lane was right. Clark Kent is Superman."
"What, and you really think Joe is the monster?"
Joe had been riding in the back of the Impala with them for most of the past 72 hours, and even Sam was starting to succumb to his inexplicable charm. "Maybe not Joe," Sam relented, "but Andy? He's quiet, could be hiding something. Or Patrick-I've never seen anyone flip from calm to insane that quickly. Could be an indication of some demonic rage."
Dean gave Sam one of his myriad of I-am-disgusted-with-you looks. "Andy doesn't eat meat, and either Pete or Patrick would notice if the other one turned into a monster when the lights go out, if you know what I mean." Dean unlocked the main entrance of the truck stop restroom, which he'd locked earlier after Sam had made sure no one else was inside. "There's absolutely no reason to suspect any of them of being a shapeshifter, aside from the fact that you can't think of a smarter explanation."
Dean pushed the door open and stepped out.
"Do you have a better explanation?" Sam demanded, following him. They lowered their voices, the subjects of their discussion filling up on gas only a few yards away.
"Sure," Dean said to Sam. "The monster's pattern got disrupted by all those changes I mentioned. But a monster's gotta eat, so eventually it'll have to start up again. We wait, we stick with the band, and when it comes back we get that son of a bitch."
Sam flexed his jaw in annoyance. Yes, technically, he didn't have proof of any shapeshifting activities beyond a hunch. But he wished Dean would at least be on his guard for clues, on the off chance Sam was right.
Dean, meanwhile, had returned to the refuelled Impala and began lovingly cleaning her windshield. Fall Out Boy were gathered around their van, doing what Sam assumed were band things. Joe and Patrick were tuning guitars, Andy was airing out t-shirts and then neatly folding them back into boxes marked MERCHANDISE, and Pete was…spray-painting a hoodie?
"Hey guys," Sam said, somewhat awkwardly. Over the past few days, Dean had, in his Dean way, struck up an easy friendship with the boys. Maybe that was why he wasn't willing to entertain Sam's very plausible hypothesis. Sam wasn't as close to them, and sometimes distance gave insight.
Joe, Patrick, and Andy murmured greetings in return. Pete was busy concentrating on stencilling something in bright pink paint onto a black hoodie. "What are you doing?" Sam asked.
"Hang on, I'm almost done," Pete said without looking up. When he was finished, he gingerly picked up the sweater by the shoulders and presented it with a flourish. On one side of the chest was a badly-painted alien creature behind bars. On the other side was stencilled the words "Monster Jail Bait."
Patrick groaned.
"Don't boo my artistic creation!" Pete admonished. "It's for you."
Patrick grumbled something about how their situation wasn't funny, people had died, but he still laid his guitar aside and put the hoodie on, even though it reeked of fresh paint.
Sam squinted at Pete with a peculiar expression.
"Can I help you?" Pete asked, peering up across their vast height difference through his swooshy emo hair.
Sam couldn't tell if Pete was trying to sound confrontational, facetious, cute, or genuinely inquiring. The uncertainty put him ill at ease. He fumbled for a reply, trying to think of something that might get Pete to reveal himself if he really was a secret shapeshifter, yet not too direct in case he wasn't. Patrick saved him from this fruitless mental exertion by tugging on Pete's shirt. Pete immediately turned his attention from Sam to Patrick.
"Listen to this," Patrick said, and started to strum a melody Sam couldn't quite hear.
Sam left them to it. Dean was right, at least about waiting. There was nothing else they could do for now, besides wait. Until they knew for sure that the monster wasn't in their midst, Sam would just have to be doubly vigilant for both of them.
* * * * *
Later that night, they set up camp at some place called the Imperial Motel.
"Imperial" was definitely, definitely not the first adjective anyone in their right mind would use to describe this establishment. It was easy on the wallet, though, and Joe assured Dean that they had slept in far worse places before.
"There were shopping carts, once. A friend of ours didn't leave his basement key under a brick on his porch like he said he would, so we slept in the alley behind his house in some shopping carts lined with blankets."
The reaction on Dean's face could only be described as admiration. "Dang," he said. "Why didn't you sleep in the van?"
"Well, Pete did. Pete had a girl with him-this was before Patrick banned Pete from even glancing at girls under the age of sixteen. Those were heady days."
Dean and Joe were leaning against the hood of the Impala, parked a few spots away from the van. Dean looked over at Pete, who was helping Patrick and Andy unload their bags from the back of the van. "Dang," he said again, quietly this time.
Sam returned from the motel office with three keys attached to large, vomit-coloured tags. He gave one to Patrick, then tossed one to Joe and said, "You and Andy." Sam pocketed the third key and said to Dean, "You ready to turn in yet?"
"Nah, man. Let's go grab some burgers."
Joe and Andy decided to join them at the greasy spoon, but Pete and Patrick had already shut themselves up in their room before they could be invited for dinner.
While waiting for their food at the motel diner, Dean delicately asked, "Are those two banging?"
Andy slanted his eyes at Dean. "No," he said flatly. "They're writing songs."
"Is that what they're calling it these days?" Dean replied, waggling his eyebrows.
Joe giggled, but when Andy frowned at him, he said, quite sincerely, "Hey, don't knock it. They're song-writing geniuses. They're our golden ticket."
Their fries arrived then, and all conversation was dropped in favour of devouring the hot potatoes set before them.
Afterwards though, when supper was long over and Dean was already sprawled stomach-down on his bed, snoring, Sam remembered what Joe said. Sam was freshly showered and in his sweatpants, sitting on top of the hideous bedspread, sleepy but not quite ready to make the effort of crawling under the blankets. He leaned against the headboard, eyes half closed. Through the wall behind his head, he could hear Pete and Patrick, very faintly. Pete was reciting poetry, or something that sounded like it. Patrick was singing. Golden ticket. Sam's eyes slid shut.
Sam jolted awake, gun in his hand before his brain had even formed a coherent thought. He looked around the dark room and couldn't place what woke him, at first. Dean was in the bed next to him, awake as well, with a big-ass knife in his right hand. And then Sam realised he could hear screaming.
Sam and Dean were on their feet in seconds, moving to the door in tandem, one of them reaching out to open it while the other prepared to attack what might be on the other side. Their door swung inwards to reveal the badly-lit motel lot, with guests spilling out of their rooms and running for their cars, screaming bloody murder. The door of the check-in office was nothing but the rubble of broken glass, and crimson splatters streaked across its windows. Whatever had struck the office wasn't in there any longer, though. Without having to discuss it aloud, both Sam and Dean knew that their primary objectives were to locate their band members and locate the monster.
They stepped out of their room in SWAT formation, making sure their blind spots were covered at all times. Joe and Andy's room was to their left, and their door was already opened a slight crack when Sam and Dean approached.
"Joe?" Dean bellowed.
Joe's eye appeared at the crack. Their security chain was still on, an illusionary defence against the violent force at work.
"You guys okay?"
"We're alive," Joe affirmed.
"It's that thing, isn't it?" Andy asked, muffled through the mostly-closed door. "From before. I recognize the sounds."
Dean couldn't tell if Andy was right, since they hadn't found the monster yet, assuming it was even on site still. He briefly thought about ordering them to stay in the room and lock the door, but then he remembered that every room had a large main window as well as a smaller window in the bathroom. Without knowing the monster's whereabouts, he was uneasy to let them be sitting ducks. He told them to exit their room, carefully. Sam and Dean rearranged themselves so that Joe and Andy were sandwiched between them. The boys hindered their movements and would be no good in a fight, but Dean didn't trust either of them to handle a gun. As much as they were starting to grow on him, right now they were a deadweight burden.
They made their way to Pete and Patrick's room. The screams were subsiding, not because people were any less terrified but because there were fewer and fewer people left. Most had floored it out of there as soon as they reached their cars. Others…it was hard to tell in the dim light provided by the motel lamps, but Dean could see pulverized doors and broken windows in many of the suites.
Pete and Patrick's door was shut tight. Dean pounded on it with the hand not holding a shotgun. A terrified looking Pete peered out gingerly.
"Where's Patrick?" Sam asked roughly, still not entirely convinced that it hadn't been a shapeshifter all along.
Pete bared his teeth at his tone. Sam stepped closer and saw that Patrick was behind him, cowered down so that he looked even tinier than he already was. Pete put a shoulder between Patrick and the door in an unmistakably protective gesture.
"He's right here," Pete growled.
Dean rolled his eyes at Sam, but now was really not the best time for an I-told-you-so.
The tension between them was cut by, of all things, a loud thump against the other side of the wall, so forceful that they felt the rock of its vibration. This was followed by a strangled scream that broke off into a wet gurgle.
Fuck. It was in the room right next to them. Dean shoved Joe and Andy, unresisting and eyes wide as saucers, into Pete and Patrick's room and told them to barricade the door with all the furniture they could move. "Escape out the other window if it climbs in one of them," Dean instructed before slamming the door.
And then he and Sam spared no further thought to their safety. They couldn't afford to, with the creature so close. They approached the next room efficiently, every nerve at the ready. The door was ripped off its hinges and reduced to shards, as per the monster's MO. They stormed in and hit the lights, and immediately wished that they hadn't.
The room was destroyed, doused in blood just as the bar had been back in Utah. The furniture looked as though some careless giant had upset the interior of a dollhouse, along with twenty gallons of scarlet paint. Whoever the occupants had been a few minutes ago, they were merely body parts now-strewn about, half-eaten and discarded in a hurry, with veins and arteries hanging out of the ragged ends like useless strings. The claw marks left everywhere were identical to all the ones they had examined at the other crime scenes. There was no doubt that this was the thing they had been waiting for.
And yet there was no other sign of it, no actual presence itself. Just when Dean and Sam were ready to berate themselves for another failure, they heard something huge stir in the bathroom. Sam was off like a shot before Dean could stop him.
"Sam! Sammy! Goddammit," Dean swore, bolting after his brother. He heard shots ring out, thanked a god he didn't believe in when he saw Sam still standing, pointing a smoking gun at the massive hole where a window used to be.
"Did you get it?"
"Obviously not," Sam said, edgy with adrenaline. "It just…disappeared into the night. Not like a metaphor. It literally melted into the dark as soon as it got out. But I did get a good look at it."
"And?"
"Dean. I think it's a dragon."
* * * * *
continue to part two