Mirror, Mirror on the Wall
Title: Mirror, Mirror on the Wall
Rating: PG-13
Wordcount: 3600
Disclaimer: Not my boys. Kripke broke them long before I ever got to them. I don't think the Brothers Grimm care about me abusing their ideas.
Summary: A waitress-turned-witch decides she wants Dean to play Snow White to her Evil Stepmother. Also, Sammy is dealing with teenager-dom.
*Fills 'Supernatural Poisoning and Weaknesses' for angst_bingo *
Written for the hoodie_time Writing Between the Lines Challenge for this Prompt by wynefred
Having a teenager for a younger brother is fun. No really it is. Dean doesn’t feel like strangling the little shit on a daily basis at all.
Turning thirteen apparently means that you’re too cool for life in general, especially life with your “weirdo, screwed up family of fucked up freaks.”
Dad tanned Sammy’s hide for that one, but good. Other than going from being vocal about his hatred to silent disdain, Dean hasn’t noticed any significant improvement though.
And now that Dad’s disappeared off to this gig hat suddenly turned up down in Sacramento and Sam doesn’t really have to answer to him anymore it’s more or less back to the vocal insults and complaints anyway. If it were anybody else, Dean would say the old man hasn’t found himself a hunt at all; he’s just hiding out from the raging hormones.
“This sucks,” Sam mutters sullenly, fixing his plate with a murderous glare. Dean wonders how the half eaten hamburger manages to not crumble under the almighty power of his brother’s bitch face.
“It’s diner food, Sam. And pretty good diner food at that.”
Actually, it tastes a lot like regurgitated gym socks, but Dean takes an extra large bite out of his own burger just out of spite.
“I’m not talking about the food, you moron,” Sam rolls his eyes. “It sucks having to eat here in the first place. Thanks again, by the way.”
Right. They have to eat out because something green and fuzzy has taken over the majority of the fridge back at the apartment. But Dean refuses to take the blame for that. There is no way Sam can prove the mold originated from his leftover Texican Cheese Balls.
“What’s so bad about eating at a diner all of a sudden?” Dean asks. He feels a migraine coming on, thinks he is too young for migraines.
“It’s bad,” Sam huffs, “because when we’re eating out I have to sit on my ass and watch you stuff your face for over an hour, which is totally unnatural and disgusting by the way, and now I’ll have to do my homework late at night when I’m supposed to be sleeping.” Sam sounds like he is explaining all of this to a mentally challenged dog or something. “And homework and sleep? Kinda important shit, y’know?”
“Watch your fucking mouth.” Dean mutters without enthusiasm. He almost tags on the recently antiquated Sammy but decides he doesn’t feel like having soggy French fries thrown at him.
“Wow,” Sam huffs. “Can you even say hypocrisy? Huhprobablynotseeingasyou’rewaytoostupidtoeven…” The last part is an unintelligible teenage sound and Dean decides to let it go, mostly because this migraine thing is getting more and more unbearable by the second and a knock-down-drag-out fight in the middle of the only diner in town doesn’t sound all that appealing right about now.
Dean wonders how Dad expects him to keep Sam safe when the little shit is actively trying to get himself murdered. Dean is about five seconds away from taking his cheap, plastic knife and stabbing his brother in the throat. Sure he would feel bad about it and the other patrons would probably freak at all the blood, but Dean is sure Dad would understand once he’d explained it all to him.
“I’m done,” Sam announces, pushing his burger across the table, making sure the plate crashes into Dean’s. “Can we go now?”
Dean flashes his brother a toothy, humorless grin, quickly plasters his fakest, most charming smile onto his face when he waves the matronly waitress over to their table.
“Excuse me, ma’am, do you serve pie by any chance?”
Out of the corner of his eye he can see Sam’s face turn a very pleasing shade of red. If the burgers are anything to go by, this place’s pie will taste like shit but Dean is willing to choke it down - as slowly as humanly possible - just to mess with his pain in the ass kid brother some more.
“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me,” Sam mutters once the waitress has taken off again with Dean’s order of an extra large helping of their homemade apple pie. Dean wonders when cursing at your older brother became socially acceptable.
Probably around the time Sammy became Sam. When school became more important than Latin and soccer became more important than crossbow hunting and Dean went from coolest big brother in the whole wide world to annoying safety Nazi.
They both keep glaring down at the plastic table. Dean figures Sam is entertaining similar thoughts of fratricide, but frankly, he doesn’t give a shit if the kid is pissed at him. Pissed has sort of become Sam’s default mode these days.
The pie arrives (“Now, you make sure you eat it all, honey.”) and Dean is fully prepared to go through the torture of choking down every last bite of it with a smile on his face, as long as it’ll get a rise out of Sam, when -
“Holy shit, this pie is amazing!”
He isn’t even lying or exaggerating or making a scene just for Sam. This is the most awesome apple pie in the history of forever. It has freaking ice cream on top. Dean makes some appreciative groaning sounds in the back of his throat. For a moment he forgets all about the teen drama and lets himself imagine a world where every food tastes like ‘Mamma McClain’s Homemade Apple Pie’, where every girl’s lips are this soft and sweet, where…
“Why don’t you and that pie get a room?”
And the teen drama is back. Oh, the joy.
“Y’know, I could show this pie a good time,” Dean drawls, letting the pieces of pie roll around in his mouth for all the world to see, because he knows it’ll gross Sam out.
“God, Dean, you’re so disgusting.”
Score!
Okay, so maybe Dean isn’t entirely innocent when it comes to Sam’s current mood. Mostly he blames the teenage hormone stuff though.
The pie disappears faster than he would have liked, but seriously, it’s just that good. Tomorrow he’ll pass on the burger and have about five pies instead.
He tells Sam he needs to hit the head before they get back home. Sam rolls his eyes and glares like Dean’s bladder has now made it onto his ever growing list of mortal enemies.
The moment Dean gets up he is hit with a wall of vertigo. The room starts graying out around the edges and that’s just weird. This supposed to happen when you’ve eaten too little, not too much, Dean knows from bitter experience.
Somehow he manages to stumble into the restroom before Sam has a chance to pick up on his moment of weakness. Little shit wouldn’t ever let him hear the end of it. Ooh, Dean-y’s about to swoon like a little girl.
The bathroom is about as run down as the rest of the diner; as the rest of the town. The doors to the stalls are hanging loosely from their rusty hinges, Dean's boots make a disgusting shluuuurp every time he lifts a foot off the sticky floor.
It’s one of those public bathrooms that have loudspeakers attached to the ceiling, filling the room with ‘relaxing’ soul music, complete with a husky female singer who is probably about to die of alcohol poisoning. It’s not quite as disgusting as the jingly, plink-plonk thing they kept playing at that Chinese place they went to a couple of years ago, but it’s still a significant assault on Dean's musical tastes.
A warm feeling starts spreading from his belly. Within seconds it takes over his entire body, turning him into a fuzzy, comfortable ball of warmth. When he topples over and hits the floor it isn’t cold and it isn’t disgusting anymore and that lovely apple pie aroma is all around him.
A niggling voice in his head tells him that he should be worried, that he should get up now and do something about this, that he should fight. But that voice sounds so distant, so tiny and unimportant. Right now, he's too comfortable, too content, to even consider moving. A lovely array of colors dance before his hooded eyes, weaving in pleasant harmony to the singing that carries him further into its warm caress.
00000
It takes Sam an entire day to figure out Dean isn’t coming back. He checked the bathroom, even snuck a quick peek into the ladies room, only to be thrown out of the diner by an irate waitress.
At first he figures it’s a prank. Dean’s annoying, imbecile way of getting back at Sam. Seriously, playing hide and seek in a semi public shithouse like some deranged three year old is right up his brother’s alley.
Sam figures Dean must have taken off through the window, probably went to the park to drink beer or smoke some of the pot they both pretend Sam doesn’t know about.
Well, joke’s on him because Sam sure as hell isn’t about to waste the rest of his night tearing up this Podunk hole instead of finishing his science project. If Dean wants to sit around, laughing up his sleeve, thinking he is pulling one over Sam then that's fine by him.
That night, having the entire apartment to himself, is amazing.
He can turn up the radio and nobody complains and calls him a girl when he blasts Human League and nobody gets on his case because his school books take up the precious gun cleaning space and when he finally settles on the couch, Dad doesn’t make him watch his documentary on mute and Dean doesn’t steal the remote control and switch to some stupid car show or - worse - porn.
All he needs is a dog and I’d be heaven.
00000
Dean tries to blink the darkness away.
The comfortable floating feeling from earlier is all but gone, nothing more than a distant memory in his stomach.
Forcing his eyes open he tries to assess his situation. He is still lying on the floor. Different floor though. His surroundings are still hidden behind that persistent gray, floating haze, the smell of overripe apples still heavy in the air.
Something - somebody - moves to his right but Dean can’t turn his head in the direction. Shit. Why can’t he move his head? A quick check tells him he can’t move his arms or legs or toes either.
For a minute he silently chants Please don’t let me be paralyzed, please don’t let me be paralyzed, pleasepleaseplease don’t let me be paralyzed, before he figures that the alternative of being cursed in some way is about a Billion times worse.
“Who’s there?” he shouts. At least his tongue is still working. Nothing ever managed to get his mouth under control. “Where’s Sammy?”
“You brother?” comes the chuckling reply. It’s a woman, Dean can tell. And she’s getting closer.
“You touch Sammy, I swear to God I’m gonna end you.”
“Huh, you sure didn’t seem all that fond of him back at the diner.”
“Well, that was before we were abducted by some crazy bitch.”
That’s when she suddenly appears in Dean’s line of vision. It’s the waitress from the diner. Only now instead of matronly and slightly chubby, she looks fierce and furious and fuck, she’s a witch. Dean just knows it. Dad warned them about the evil skanks.
“Now, now,” she coos with sich smile playing over her lips. “You were much more polite earlier. What happened to all the ma’am’s and please and thank you’s?”
Dean is about to grace that with the smart ass comment about where she can stick her demands for respect it deserves when a sharp pain shoots through his right arm.
What the…
She is biting him.
Sinking her teeth into the soft flesh of his forearm and…and…sucking his blood.
“What the fuck?!”
Dean tries to wrench his arm away from her, but the muscles refuse to move one bit. Crap-tastic, so she has paralyzed him without killing off his pain receptors. Real nice there, crazy witch waitress, real nice.
“Alright, that mouth?” she drawls, cocking her head slightly to the side like some deranged bird of prey. “I don’t like it. You need to be quiet.”
And all of a sudden she is straddling him and her lips and teeth crash against his and Dean really wants to clamp his mouth shut but he can’t. She is rutting against his helpless body and then she bites down on his tongue and the coppery taste of his own blood fills his mouth and she’s sucking again and if there was ever a time to figure out he really isn’t into blood play, it’s now.
Dean isn’t quite sure what happens next, or how it happens, but at some point she lets go of him and something about her has changed. The wrinkles around her eyes are less pronounced, the grey in her hair less noticeable. He wants to ask what the fuck just happened but he’s scared it will make her mad and he really never thought he was gonna say this, but Dean Winchester doesn’t want to make out with this chick ever again.
So he keeps his mouth shut.
“Now, little Dean-o.”
Fuck you.
“Aren't you just the fairest of all?"
What?
"You need to sleep and stay young and pretty for me.”
And before he knows it she bites into her own thumb and he watches in horrified fascination - fascinated horror? - as the thick drops land on top of the pie that has suddenly materialized in her hand (well, not actually materialized, she probably just picked it up from somewhere outside Dean’s line of vision but materialize has a much more dramatic ring to it). She pierces some of it onto one of the cheap, plastic diner forks and literally shoves it down Dean’s throat. He’s gagging like crazy, but eventually he feels it slide down and within minutes the warm, peaceful feeling from earlier returns.
00000
Sam is freaking out. He’s freaking. The fuck. Out.
He hasn’t seen Dean in 24 hours and even though his big brother can be a bully and a pain in the ass and clearly suffers from some mental condition where he thinks his retarded pranks are hilariously funny, he’d never leave Sam all on his own for this long without so much as a heads up.
Sam tries to call Pastor Jim and Uncle Bobby, but neither answers their phone. Sam wishes he could call Dad but the man is camped out somewhere in the wilderness and phones are stationary things. Not like you can just carry them around with you like some Star Wars gadget.
Sam tries to get himself to calm down, take some deep breaths; he even does a couple of pushups in a desperate attempt to get his brain back on track. All it does is make him sweaty and jittery though.
Try and find the anomaly. Find the pattern behind it. Figure out your enemy. Make a plan. Make a backup plan.
Sam hates his Dad. Really he does. The man is an obsessive tyrant and the moment Sam turns eighteen he’ll get as far away from him as possible. Earlier if he can pull it off.
But he also made sure Sam knew everything there is to know about researching and tracking and finding patterns.
Once he puts his mind to it it’s no problem at all.
00000
Dean isn’t really sure how long he’s been here. Could be a couple of hours, could be several years for all he knows.
It’s kinda hard telling time when you’re constantly blitzed out of your mind, tripping on blood soaked apple pie. It should be disgusting, but mostly it’s warm and nice and comforting.
Sometimes the witch coaxes him out of his cozy haze when she feeds on him, though judging from the sheer number of bite wounds he can feel all over his body, more often than not she just keeps him under.
Then, all of a sudden, there’s a hand on his face and Dean knows it’s one of the times where she wants to see the terror in his eyes to keep her company while she feeds.
“Dean, crap, Dean, wake up!”
That’s...Sammy? It kinda sounds like him.
“Goddamn fuck, c’mon you moron, open your eyes!”
Definitely Sam.
Slowly Dean blinks his eyes open and for the first time in forever he sees the cupboards and the stocks of packaged food around him instead of a grayish pink veil.
He turns his head - Moves. His. Head. - and takes in the form of his baby brother, sprayed with tiny drops of blood, the unmoving form of the witch at his feet, blood running freely out of a nasty cut at her temple.
Wait. What?
“Sammy?”
Sam answers with a choked up sound that’s probably supposed to be ‘Dean’.
“Hey, what- aaahoooww!”
Too late it occurs to Dean that talking with a swollen, battered tongue is about as stupid an idea as he’s ever had. He clamps his mouth shut, feels thin streams of fresh blood seep down his throat.
He cuts his eyes to the quite possibly dead body next to him, then back to Sammy, the Hey, what the fuck happened here? clear as if he’d spoken out loud.
Sam licks his lips nervously. Dean notices he’s holding a blood soaked napkin to a throbbing bite wound on his Dean’s left wrist. Must have come in right when she was feeding.
“I uhm…you didn’t come back from when you went to take a leak and I thought…oh my God, I thought you were just being an ass, but you were…” Sammy’s voice breaks. He looks like he is about five seconds away from a full blown freak out, shaking hands, red rimmed, watery eyes and all. “I…I figured out somebody must’a taken you and then I thought of that stupid pie and - damnit Dean, why do you always gotta eat pie?”
Dean snorts at that. A smile spreads across his face until it tears at his split, blood crusted lips, then he shuts it down. He jerks his head back in the direction of the body.
“She uhm…I figured she was the one who took you and I just sort of followed her and - ow!”
Dean glares at his brother and smacks his upside the head again for good measure. What sort of idiot just follows a witch into her lair?
“I was stealthy, okay?” Sam huffs, the earlier freaked out kid quickly disappearing behind the indignant teenager. Good. “She didn’t notice me or nothin’. I followed her in here. Storage room, by the way. And then she…bit you.”
Yup. The disgust in Sam’s voice is probably justified. God, Dean hopes the bitch didn’t have rabies or something.
“So I…I figured she’d be a witch, so I’d brought this hex bag thing, but uhm…I pretty much freaked when I saw what she was doing and sorta hit her over the head with the nearest can of soup.”
Sam tries to flinch away, probably expecting another smack, when Dean reaches up to ruffle his hair. Truth be told, Sammy can be kinda badass if he sets his mind to it. Death by soup can to the temple. Nice.
“I didn’t mean to kill her,” Sam whispers and Dean thinks back to last year, when he made his first kill. How could Sammy possibly be ready for that kinda shit at thirteen?
“Don’t think she’s dead.“ He forces his tongue to form the words. This is important. It’s very much possibly that witches are capable of breathing without expanding their chest. “Let’s get outa here before she wakes up.”
Dean gives his brother’s hand a quick squeeze - everything’s gonna be fine, Sammy - and they manage to pull off getting on their feet with Dean’s knees buckling and Sammy’s trembling arms not nearly supporting his almost dead weight and only collapsing once.
Dean figures it’s probably a better idea to disappear through the backdoor. Two blood soaked teens stumbling out of the diner a couple of minutes or hours or whatever before the police start a possible murder investigation doesn’t seem ideal. They should probably stick to dark back alleys until they both get changed and showered.
First they have to drag each other out the door, though.
“Dude, you realize she cast you as Snow White, right?” Sam snickers. His voice is still shaking and he’s still pale as a ghost, but the invite to the friendly banter is totally there.
Dean’s tongue is already swelling up in his mouth again after just uttering two sentences, so he answers with a hurt look.
Because really? Snow White? Yes, he may not have the dark tan Sam got from Dad and okay, his hair darkened out quite a bit from the girly blonde it was only a few years back, but he is nowhere near white as snow, black as ebony and his lips aren’t fucking red as blood, thank you very much.
Also, he isn’t a petite chick in an ugly yellow and blue dress with stupid puffy sleeves. The witch got it all wrong.
He bends down and pockets the bloody can on the ground. It’s probably got Sam’s prints all over it and they do need something to eat, because Dean has feeling that Sammy didn’t exactly spend the time Dean was missing cleaning the mildew out of the fridge.
“She thought you were a pretty girl,” Sam singsongs and Dean is so glad for that, he can’t even bring himself to whack him again.
Rating: PG-13
Wordcount: 3600
Disclaimer: Not my boys. Kripke broke them long before I ever got to them. I don't think the Brothers Grimm care about me abusing their ideas.
Summary: A waitress-turned-witch decides she wants Dean to play Snow White to her Evil Stepmother. Also, Sammy is dealing with teenager-dom.
*Fills 'Supernatural Poisoning and Weaknesses' for angst_bingo *
Written for the hoodie_time Writing Between the Lines Challenge for this Prompt by wynefred
Having a teenager for a younger brother is fun. No really it is. Dean doesn’t feel like strangling the little shit on a daily basis at all.
Turning thirteen apparently means that you’re too cool for life in general, especially life with your “weirdo, screwed up family of fucked up freaks.”
Dad tanned Sammy’s hide for that one, but good. Other than going from being vocal about his hatred to silent disdain, Dean hasn’t noticed any significant improvement though.
And now that Dad’s disappeared off to this gig hat suddenly turned up down in Sacramento and Sam doesn’t really have to answer to him anymore it’s more or less back to the vocal insults and complaints anyway. If it were anybody else, Dean would say the old man hasn’t found himself a hunt at all; he’s just hiding out from the raging hormones.
“This sucks,” Sam mutters sullenly, fixing his plate with a murderous glare. Dean wonders how the half eaten hamburger manages to not crumble under the almighty power of his brother’s bitch face.
“It’s diner food, Sam. And pretty good diner food at that.”
Actually, it tastes a lot like regurgitated gym socks, but Dean takes an extra large bite out of his own burger just out of spite.
“I’m not talking about the food, you moron,” Sam rolls his eyes. “It sucks having to eat here in the first place. Thanks again, by the way.”
Right. They have to eat out because something green and fuzzy has taken over the majority of the fridge back at the apartment. But Dean refuses to take the blame for that. There is no way Sam can prove the mold originated from his leftover Texican Cheese Balls.
“What’s so bad about eating at a diner all of a sudden?” Dean asks. He feels a migraine coming on, thinks he is too young for migraines.
“It’s bad,” Sam huffs, “because when we’re eating out I have to sit on my ass and watch you stuff your face for over an hour, which is totally unnatural and disgusting by the way, and now I’ll have to do my homework late at night when I’m supposed to be sleeping.” Sam sounds like he is explaining all of this to a mentally challenged dog or something. “And homework and sleep? Kinda important shit, y’know?”
“Watch your fucking mouth.” Dean mutters without enthusiasm. He almost tags on the recently antiquated Sammy but decides he doesn’t feel like having soggy French fries thrown at him.
“Wow,” Sam huffs. “Can you even say hypocrisy? Huhprobablynotseeingasyou’rewaytoostupidtoeven…” The last part is an unintelligible teenage sound and Dean decides to let it go, mostly because this migraine thing is getting more and more unbearable by the second and a knock-down-drag-out fight in the middle of the only diner in town doesn’t sound all that appealing right about now.
Dean wonders how Dad expects him to keep Sam safe when the little shit is actively trying to get himself murdered. Dean is about five seconds away from taking his cheap, plastic knife and stabbing his brother in the throat. Sure he would feel bad about it and the other patrons would probably freak at all the blood, but Dean is sure Dad would understand once he’d explained it all to him.
“I’m done,” Sam announces, pushing his burger across the table, making sure the plate crashes into Dean’s. “Can we go now?”
Dean flashes his brother a toothy, humorless grin, quickly plasters his fakest, most charming smile onto his face when he waves the matronly waitress over to their table.
“Excuse me, ma’am, do you serve pie by any chance?”
Out of the corner of his eye he can see Sam’s face turn a very pleasing shade of red. If the burgers are anything to go by, this place’s pie will taste like shit but Dean is willing to choke it down - as slowly as humanly possible - just to mess with his pain in the ass kid brother some more.
“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me,” Sam mutters once the waitress has taken off again with Dean’s order of an extra large helping of their homemade apple pie. Dean wonders when cursing at your older brother became socially acceptable.
Probably around the time Sammy became Sam. When school became more important than Latin and soccer became more important than crossbow hunting and Dean went from coolest big brother in the whole wide world to annoying safety Nazi.
They both keep glaring down at the plastic table. Dean figures Sam is entertaining similar thoughts of fratricide, but frankly, he doesn’t give a shit if the kid is pissed at him. Pissed has sort of become Sam’s default mode these days.
The pie arrives (“Now, you make sure you eat it all, honey.”) and Dean is fully prepared to go through the torture of choking down every last bite of it with a smile on his face, as long as it’ll get a rise out of Sam, when -
“Holy shit, this pie is amazing!”
He isn’t even lying or exaggerating or making a scene just for Sam. This is the most awesome apple pie in the history of forever. It has freaking ice cream on top. Dean makes some appreciative groaning sounds in the back of his throat. For a moment he forgets all about the teen drama and lets himself imagine a world where every food tastes like ‘Mamma McClain’s Homemade Apple Pie’, where every girl’s lips are this soft and sweet, where…
“Why don’t you and that pie get a room?”
And the teen drama is back. Oh, the joy.
“Y’know, I could show this pie a good time,” Dean drawls, letting the pieces of pie roll around in his mouth for all the world to see, because he knows it’ll gross Sam out.
“God, Dean, you’re so disgusting.”
Score!
Okay, so maybe Dean isn’t entirely innocent when it comes to Sam’s current mood. Mostly he blames the teenage hormone stuff though.
The pie disappears faster than he would have liked, but seriously, it’s just that good. Tomorrow he’ll pass on the burger and have about five pies instead.
He tells Sam he needs to hit the head before they get back home. Sam rolls his eyes and glares like Dean’s bladder has now made it onto his ever growing list of mortal enemies.
The moment Dean gets up he is hit with a wall of vertigo. The room starts graying out around the edges and that’s just weird. This supposed to happen when you’ve eaten too little, not too much, Dean knows from bitter experience.
Somehow he manages to stumble into the restroom before Sam has a chance to pick up on his moment of weakness. Little shit wouldn’t ever let him hear the end of it. Ooh, Dean-y’s about to swoon like a little girl.
The bathroom is about as run down as the rest of the diner; as the rest of the town. The doors to the stalls are hanging loosely from their rusty hinges, Dean's boots make a disgusting shluuuurp every time he lifts a foot off the sticky floor.
It’s one of those public bathrooms that have loudspeakers attached to the ceiling, filling the room with ‘relaxing’ soul music, complete with a husky female singer who is probably about to die of alcohol poisoning. It’s not quite as disgusting as the jingly, plink-plonk thing they kept playing at that Chinese place they went to a couple of years ago, but it’s still a significant assault on Dean's musical tastes.
A warm feeling starts spreading from his belly. Within seconds it takes over his entire body, turning him into a fuzzy, comfortable ball of warmth. When he topples over and hits the floor it isn’t cold and it isn’t disgusting anymore and that lovely apple pie aroma is all around him.
A niggling voice in his head tells him that he should be worried, that he should get up now and do something about this, that he should fight. But that voice sounds so distant, so tiny and unimportant. Right now, he's too comfortable, too content, to even consider moving. A lovely array of colors dance before his hooded eyes, weaving in pleasant harmony to the singing that carries him further into its warm caress.
00000
It takes Sam an entire day to figure out Dean isn’t coming back. He checked the bathroom, even snuck a quick peek into the ladies room, only to be thrown out of the diner by an irate waitress.
At first he figures it’s a prank. Dean’s annoying, imbecile way of getting back at Sam. Seriously, playing hide and seek in a semi public shithouse like some deranged three year old is right up his brother’s alley.
Sam figures Dean must have taken off through the window, probably went to the park to drink beer or smoke some of the pot they both pretend Sam doesn’t know about.
Well, joke’s on him because Sam sure as hell isn’t about to waste the rest of his night tearing up this Podunk hole instead of finishing his science project. If Dean wants to sit around, laughing up his sleeve, thinking he is pulling one over Sam then that's fine by him.
That night, having the entire apartment to himself, is amazing.
He can turn up the radio and nobody complains and calls him a girl when he blasts Human League and nobody gets on his case because his school books take up the precious gun cleaning space and when he finally settles on the couch, Dad doesn’t make him watch his documentary on mute and Dean doesn’t steal the remote control and switch to some stupid car show or - worse - porn.
All he needs is a dog and I’d be heaven.
00000
Dean tries to blink the darkness away.
The comfortable floating feeling from earlier is all but gone, nothing more than a distant memory in his stomach.
Forcing his eyes open he tries to assess his situation. He is still lying on the floor. Different floor though. His surroundings are still hidden behind that persistent gray, floating haze, the smell of overripe apples still heavy in the air.
Something - somebody - moves to his right but Dean can’t turn his head in the direction. Shit. Why can’t he move his head? A quick check tells him he can’t move his arms or legs or toes either.
For a minute he silently chants Please don’t let me be paralyzed, please don’t let me be paralyzed, pleasepleaseplease don’t let me be paralyzed, before he figures that the alternative of being cursed in some way is about a Billion times worse.
“Who’s there?” he shouts. At least his tongue is still working. Nothing ever managed to get his mouth under control. “Where’s Sammy?”
“You brother?” comes the chuckling reply. It’s a woman, Dean can tell. And she’s getting closer.
“You touch Sammy, I swear to God I’m gonna end you.”
“Huh, you sure didn’t seem all that fond of him back at the diner.”
“Well, that was before we were abducted by some crazy bitch.”
That’s when she suddenly appears in Dean’s line of vision. It’s the waitress from the diner. Only now instead of matronly and slightly chubby, she looks fierce and furious and fuck, she’s a witch. Dean just knows it. Dad warned them about the evil skanks.
“Now, now,” she coos with sich smile playing over her lips. “You were much more polite earlier. What happened to all the ma’am’s and please and thank you’s?”
Dean is about to grace that with the smart ass comment about where she can stick her demands for respect it deserves when a sharp pain shoots through his right arm.
What the…
She is biting him.
Sinking her teeth into the soft flesh of his forearm and…and…sucking his blood.
“What the fuck?!”
Dean tries to wrench his arm away from her, but the muscles refuse to move one bit. Crap-tastic, so she has paralyzed him without killing off his pain receptors. Real nice there, crazy witch waitress, real nice.
“Alright, that mouth?” she drawls, cocking her head slightly to the side like some deranged bird of prey. “I don’t like it. You need to be quiet.”
And all of a sudden she is straddling him and her lips and teeth crash against his and Dean really wants to clamp his mouth shut but he can’t. She is rutting against his helpless body and then she bites down on his tongue and the coppery taste of his own blood fills his mouth and she’s sucking again and if there was ever a time to figure out he really isn’t into blood play, it’s now.
Dean isn’t quite sure what happens next, or how it happens, but at some point she lets go of him and something about her has changed. The wrinkles around her eyes are less pronounced, the grey in her hair less noticeable. He wants to ask what the fuck just happened but he’s scared it will make her mad and he really never thought he was gonna say this, but Dean Winchester doesn’t want to make out with this chick ever again.
So he keeps his mouth shut.
“Now, little Dean-o.”
Fuck you.
“Aren't you just the fairest of all?"
What?
"You need to sleep and stay young and pretty for me.”
And before he knows it she bites into her own thumb and he watches in horrified fascination - fascinated horror? - as the thick drops land on top of the pie that has suddenly materialized in her hand (well, not actually materialized, she probably just picked it up from somewhere outside Dean’s line of vision but materialize has a much more dramatic ring to it). She pierces some of it onto one of the cheap, plastic diner forks and literally shoves it down Dean’s throat. He’s gagging like crazy, but eventually he feels it slide down and within minutes the warm, peaceful feeling from earlier returns.
00000
Sam is freaking out. He’s freaking. The fuck. Out.
He hasn’t seen Dean in 24 hours and even though his big brother can be a bully and a pain in the ass and clearly suffers from some mental condition where he thinks his retarded pranks are hilariously funny, he’d never leave Sam all on his own for this long without so much as a heads up.
Sam tries to call Pastor Jim and Uncle Bobby, but neither answers their phone. Sam wishes he could call Dad but the man is camped out somewhere in the wilderness and phones are stationary things. Not like you can just carry them around with you like some Star Wars gadget.
Sam tries to get himself to calm down, take some deep breaths; he even does a couple of pushups in a desperate attempt to get his brain back on track. All it does is make him sweaty and jittery though.
Try and find the anomaly. Find the pattern behind it. Figure out your enemy. Make a plan. Make a backup plan.
Sam hates his Dad. Really he does. The man is an obsessive tyrant and the moment Sam turns eighteen he’ll get as far away from him as possible. Earlier if he can pull it off.
But he also made sure Sam knew everything there is to know about researching and tracking and finding patterns.
Once he puts his mind to it it’s no problem at all.
00000
Dean isn’t really sure how long he’s been here. Could be a couple of hours, could be several years for all he knows.
It’s kinda hard telling time when you’re constantly blitzed out of your mind, tripping on blood soaked apple pie. It should be disgusting, but mostly it’s warm and nice and comforting.
Sometimes the witch coaxes him out of his cozy haze when she feeds on him, though judging from the sheer number of bite wounds he can feel all over his body, more often than not she just keeps him under.
Then, all of a sudden, there’s a hand on his face and Dean knows it’s one of the times where she wants to see the terror in his eyes to keep her company while she feeds.
“Dean, crap, Dean, wake up!”
That’s...Sammy? It kinda sounds like him.
“Goddamn fuck, c’mon you moron, open your eyes!”
Definitely Sam.
Slowly Dean blinks his eyes open and for the first time in forever he sees the cupboards and the stocks of packaged food around him instead of a grayish pink veil.
He turns his head - Moves. His. Head. - and takes in the form of his baby brother, sprayed with tiny drops of blood, the unmoving form of the witch at his feet, blood running freely out of a nasty cut at her temple.
Wait. What?
“Sammy?”
Sam answers with a choked up sound that’s probably supposed to be ‘Dean’.
“Hey, what- aaahoooww!”
Too late it occurs to Dean that talking with a swollen, battered tongue is about as stupid an idea as he’s ever had. He clamps his mouth shut, feels thin streams of fresh blood seep down his throat.
He cuts his eyes to the quite possibly dead body next to him, then back to Sammy, the Hey, what the fuck happened here? clear as if he’d spoken out loud.
Sam licks his lips nervously. Dean notices he’s holding a blood soaked napkin to a throbbing bite wound on his Dean’s left wrist. Must have come in right when she was feeding.
“I uhm…you didn’t come back from when you went to take a leak and I thought…oh my God, I thought you were just being an ass, but you were…” Sammy’s voice breaks. He looks like he is about five seconds away from a full blown freak out, shaking hands, red rimmed, watery eyes and all. “I…I figured out somebody must’a taken you and then I thought of that stupid pie and - damnit Dean, why do you always gotta eat pie?”
Dean snorts at that. A smile spreads across his face until it tears at his split, blood crusted lips, then he shuts it down. He jerks his head back in the direction of the body.
“She uhm…I figured she was the one who took you and I just sort of followed her and - ow!”
Dean glares at his brother and smacks his upside the head again for good measure. What sort of idiot just follows a witch into her lair?
“I was stealthy, okay?” Sam huffs, the earlier freaked out kid quickly disappearing behind the indignant teenager. Good. “She didn’t notice me or nothin’. I followed her in here. Storage room, by the way. And then she…bit you.”
Yup. The disgust in Sam’s voice is probably justified. God, Dean hopes the bitch didn’t have rabies or something.
“So I…I figured she’d be a witch, so I’d brought this hex bag thing, but uhm…I pretty much freaked when I saw what she was doing and sorta hit her over the head with the nearest can of soup.”
Sam tries to flinch away, probably expecting another smack, when Dean reaches up to ruffle his hair. Truth be told, Sammy can be kinda badass if he sets his mind to it. Death by soup can to the temple. Nice.
“I didn’t mean to kill her,” Sam whispers and Dean thinks back to last year, when he made his first kill. How could Sammy possibly be ready for that kinda shit at thirteen?
“Don’t think she’s dead.“ He forces his tongue to form the words. This is important. It’s very much possibly that witches are capable of breathing without expanding their chest. “Let’s get outa here before she wakes up.”
Dean gives his brother’s hand a quick squeeze - everything’s gonna be fine, Sammy - and they manage to pull off getting on their feet with Dean’s knees buckling and Sammy’s trembling arms not nearly supporting his almost dead weight and only collapsing once.
Dean figures it’s probably a better idea to disappear through the backdoor. Two blood soaked teens stumbling out of the diner a couple of minutes or hours or whatever before the police start a possible murder investigation doesn’t seem ideal. They should probably stick to dark back alleys until they both get changed and showered.
First they have to drag each other out the door, though.
“Dude, you realize she cast you as Snow White, right?” Sam snickers. His voice is still shaking and he’s still pale as a ghost, but the invite to the friendly banter is totally there.
Dean’s tongue is already swelling up in his mouth again after just uttering two sentences, so he answers with a hurt look.
Because really? Snow White? Yes, he may not have the dark tan Sam got from Dad and okay, his hair darkened out quite a bit from the girly blonde it was only a few years back, but he is nowhere near white as snow, black as ebony and his lips aren’t fucking red as blood, thank you very much.
Also, he isn’t a petite chick in an ugly yellow and blue dress with stupid puffy sleeves. The witch got it all wrong.
He bends down and pockets the bloody can on the ground. It’s probably got Sam’s prints all over it and they do need something to eat, because Dean has feeling that Sammy didn’t exactly spend the time Dean was missing cleaning the mildew out of the fridge.
“She thought you were a pretty girl,” Sam singsongs and Dean is so glad for that, he can’t even bring himself to whack him again.