Author's Note:
Thanks to Steve Carlson and Jensen Ackles for giving us the song 'Come Around More Alabama'. Apologies for its abuse herein. Couldn't resist. (And I just wanted to finally get the phrase "fake shemp" into a story!)
ONE
"Sam, hold still," Dean huffed for the third time.
"It's hard to stay still with you jabbing that thing in me!"
"Well if you'd stop moving for just two minutes, I could get on with it."
"It hurts. You're not doing it right."
"I am! I have done this like a thousand times, just shut the hell up."
"On girls," Sam protested.
"Well that's where you're lucky then," Dean replied caustically.
"Jerk," Sam muttered. "Ow! You did that on purpose! You're enjoying this!"
"Yeah, right! You think this is how I want to spend my afternoon? There are better things I could be doing than bending over you and the mess you're making, Sam."
"Just hurry up and pull it out."
"Well if you had a little less hair, Mr Wannabe Werewolf, I could do this a lot quicker."
"Just get it over with," Sam said, gritting his teeth.
"Look, you're gonna have to bend over a little further, you're dripping on the floor," Dean tutted.
"If I bend over much further I'm gonna pass out," Sam snapped.
"Fine!" Dean exploded, letting go of Sam's neck and slamming the tweezers down on the bedside table, "You get the damned glass out yourself!"
He turned away and walked across the motel room, plonking himself down in the wooden chair under the window and looking at Sam's laptop. He spared his woozy brother a glance before huffing to himself and putting his hand out to the keyboard, pressing the spacebar to cancel the screensaver.
"Dude," Sam managed, putting a hand out to the rickety chest of drawers and straightening slowly, feeling his wet scalp with the other, "it's still bleeding."
"What do you want me to do, kiss it better?" Dean growled. "For Christ's sake Sammy, I try to get it out and all you do is piss and moan! Do it yourself!"
"I will," Sam grunted, snatching up the tweezers and walking into the bathroom. "Of course," he called through the mostly closed door, "if you hadn't shot the thing, it wouldn't have pushed me through a plate glass door."
"If I hadn't shot the thing? If I hadn't shot the thing we'd be knee-deep in corpses. You want to explain that to the local PD?" Dean shot back. He looked back at the laptop and paused, reading.
"Ow!" Sam hissed, and Dean hesitated. He flicked his view up to the bathroom door, then back at the laptop. He read impatiently for half an hour while he listened to Sam ouch, hiss and swear from beyond the door.
Why do I have to listen to all his friggin' noise? He huffed, determined not to listen. But there was a persistent, unpleasant after-thought: Cos I was the one who didn't protect him. I wasn't doing my job. That's why he's bleeding and swearing all over yet another motel bathroom.
"Goddamn it!" the younger sibling hissed abruptly, and Dean's patience snapped.
He slapped the laptop shut, got to his feet and marched over to the bathroom. He pulled the door open and simply walked over, snatching the tweezers from his brother's bloodied and trembling hand and pushing him toward the shower.
"Bend over, shut up, and think happy thoughts," he bit out, pushing at his shoulder.
Sam did as told, putting his hands on his knees and closing his eyes. Dean pulled at the matted, bloodied hair at the back of the crown of Sam's head and rifled through it slowly. He found the small shiny offender and scraped at it with the tweezers.
"Look, Dean," Sam tried.
"Hold still."
"Really, man," he hissed through clenched teeth, "I know you're angry, but it's not your fault it got away."
"Well we were the only two there, Sam. So either it was your fault or it was mine. Now just stop talking," he grunted.
Sam opened his mouth to answer, then just decided to let it go. Suddenly he felt pressure on the back of his head and he screwed his face up, determined not to make a noise. There was a slight squelching sound, and then Dean let go of his cranium.
"Got it. It's tiny," he said, surprised. Sam straightened and turned to him, but wobbled slightly. He put a hand out to the glass shower frame to steady himself. "Woah," Dean said, looking past the glass lump in the tweezers. He put his hand to his dizzy brother's arm, steadying him. He let his gaze flick over his grazed, cut face and then looked away quickly. "Wash that blood off, get to bed," he ordered, turning and walking out of the bathroom, still carrying the tweezers and the rescued glass.
"Ooh yes sir," Sam said, trying to be annoyed. But he put his hands to his t-shirt and pulled it off quickly, glad to be rid of the damp cotton that smelled so strongly of copper.
Dean walked back to the laptop, opening it up again and waiting for it to come off its slam-induced standby. He rubbed an eye, pausing to find the back of his hand smeared with a little blood, and sighed. He sat back, looked over at the bathroom door, then up at the ceiling.
Abruptly an image of the hugely stocky, almost man-like creature they had attempted to kill that afternoon flashed in front of his eyes. He remembered the long, wolf-like jaws, the smell of warm fur, the strangely thick limbs. The sound of his gun firing, the smell of the expulsion, the satisfaction at seeing the thing take a bullet and fall over backwards; it all came back.
But it had got up again. It had grabbed the nearby Sam and hurled him at the glass doors. And then it had turned its back and run, not stopping to check about whom Dean was more concerned.
He heard the shower start and shook his head, looking back at the laptop. The RSS feed that Sam had set up – before moaning about the non-stop bleeding from his head – updated itself and Dean blinked at the news tag. He clicked on it to bring up the attached police statement. His eyes shifted abruptly from weary jade to angry emerald.
"Son… of… a… bitch," he breathed to himself, already reaching for Sam's notebook.
-------------------------------------------------
Sam came out of the bathroom and crossed to the bed, reaching for his duffle and pulling it open.
"Look, all we have to do is find this thing and use bigger rounds next time," he said patiently.
"I noticed," Dean said, sounding pre-occupied, and Sam looked over. Dean was still at the laptop, reading and scribbling.
"You're writing in my notebook?" Sam asked lightly.
"I'm writing in your notebook," Dean admitted, not looking up from his notes.
"You're writing in my notebook," Sam reiterated flatly.
"Yup. Still."
"Dude, you're writing in my note-"
"Yeah! I get it!" Dean interrupted. "What?"
"No offence man, but you can't spell. And your notes don't make sense."
"They do to me. Think that's why they're called 'notes', Sam," he said firmly.
"And you can't even name stuff!" Sam continued, up-ending his duffle and letting his clothes pile out onto his bed.
"Yeah I can," Dean said defensively.
"Oh yeah? So what was with the 'creepy-assed human-wolf-thing' description?" he accused.
"Come on Sam, it was like a human, but a bit like a wolf, and it was… kinda creepy," he admitted, looking over at him. "What would you have called it, college boy?"
"I would have called it an erythrocyte-dependent homo-lupo-form," replied pointedly. Dean looked at him – just looked. Sam sighed. "A wolf-like man-creature that appears to drink red blood?"
"I knew that," Dean scoffed, turning back to his notes.
"Yeah, right," Sam muttered. Dean turned in the chair to look at him.
"Look man, just cos I don't use big words every five minutes like someover-privileged kids do, don't mean I don't know 'em," he said haughtily. Sam smiled unexpectedly.
"Oh yeah?" he said slyly. "Give me one."
"What?" Dean asked, looking back at the laptop quickly.
"I said tell me a big word. Come on, should be easy," he teased.
"How about you shut your piehole and get to bed before I swing for you, cos I have primogeniture here," his big brother said irritably.
Sam blinked and thought about it. "You have what?"
"Primogeniture," Dean said simply, looking at him again. "Don't tell me you don't know what 'primogeniture' means," he grinned suddenly, and Sam looked back at his pile of clothes. Dean laughed abruptly. "It means I'm the oldest, and I come first in everything," Dean added smugly, and Sam looked back at him.
"Fine. Just… be careful with my computer," he said easily, but there was perhaps the tiniest amount of annoyance in there too.
Dean smiled and shook his head, looking back at the screen and reading.
-------------------------------------------------
Sam opened his eyes and had to admit, his head felt a lot better for having had a nap. He yawned and stretched, sniffing to himself and rolling onto his left side. He looked at the weak early evening sun still trying to come through the motel curtains. He took in the laptop by the window, Dean's black jacket on the back of the chair still, and the rather large Starbuck's take-out cup with lid next to him on the side table.
He smiled, sitting up slowly and reaching for it. It was little more than luke-warm but he shrugged it off, pulling off the lid and finding the coffee warm enough inside.
"Thanks, man," he called at the bathroom door. He pushed himself out of bed and walked to the laptop, noticing it was still on the screensaver. He pressed at the spacebar to see it had been left in the act of displaying a news story, updated an hour ago, from the local town online magazine. He blinked and yawned, then bent over to read it. "Aw shit," he muttered, suddenly troubled.
He looked up and at the bathroom door. "Dean! Looks like our creepy-assed human-wolf-thing has struck again. It's killed a little girl, her father's–." He hesitated as he realised there was no reply from the only other place in the motel room from which it could have come.
He put the cup down and padded to the bathroom door. He pushed it open.
It was empty.
He turned and looked around, uncomfortable.
"This isn't good," he muttered to himself. "Please tell me you didn't–"
He crossed to the windows quickly, pulling back the curtain and looking out.
The parking lot looked the same. Except the Impala was gone.