Dean, Brownies Don't Taste Good Burnt
"Sam! Duck!"
Sam Winchester's chest hit white carpet, hard, seconds before a blur passed right over his shaggy head. Whatever it was, it disappeared underneath the Christmas tree, darting between presents to be never seen again.
"Sonofabitch!" Dean cursed, suddenly appearing at his brother's side. Lending Sam a hand up, he swore again, "Dammit! How the hell are we supposed to finish the job when we can't even lay a finger on it?"
Indeed, that was the question; for they had been playing catch the monster for the past two hours. They didn't even have anything to use as a net for cripe's sake. Dean had brought up the use of pillowcases earlier, but that idea had been nixed the moment the damn thing had ripped through them like so many leaflets of paper. Standing back to back now, empty hands poised in a defensive stance, Sam replied as both of their eyes nervously surveyed the quiet, red and white decorated living room around them, "I don't know about you, Dean, but I'm seriously getting freaked out here."
"Who're you telling?" Dean retorted back. It was worse than Children of the Corn and Dean seriously hated that movie.
The newspaper had said the Vargas family's oldest daughter—age eight—had died of blunt force trauma to the head. The babysitter had been found inches away with multiple stab wounds to the stomach, chest, and leg area. Lying on the floor, between them, had been the bloody pieces of a shattered snow globe. The part that had grabbed their initial attention as they had both been sitting in their motel room two states over was the fact that the ice pick—the weapon of choice that had killed the babysitter—had been found clutched in the hand of the 8-year-old girl.
Now here Dean was standing right where the two had been found. And— There was sudden movement out of the corner of his eye! Using two fingers, Dean quickly signaled to the area behind the couch that had hand-croqueted pillows depicting reindeer stuffed in its corners. The two Winchesters, silently taking a side, stepped toward the back of the beige piece of furniture with baited breath. On Dean's signal—a countdown on three fingers—the two rushed its corners, ready to pounce.
It all happened so fast that there wasn't time for either Dean or Sam to get out of harm's way. They both dived for their target—Dean for the monster and Sam for the screwdriver curled in its tiny, little hand. Unfortunately, the little bastard got away unscathed, darting out from under them seconds before the two landed on top of each other in a heap.
"Ow! Dammit," Dean yelled face-down, eating carpet. "Sam, get the hell off me!"
Sam did just that, making sure to put all of his weight on his hands as he used Dean's broad back for leverage. Dean gave him a glare in return and then quickly got to his feet. His face was all business, though, as he stalked toward the house's garland-hung front door with a growl.
"That's it!" Dean yelled in frustration—sanity barely hanging on by a thread. "I'm grabbing our shotguns from the trunk, Sammy! I say it's time to start capping some baddie ass here!"
Sam, thankfully, made it to him just in time, seconds before Dean was able to pry open the door. Pulling his older brother around by the arm, he reminded, "Dean! We can't just go blasting the thing! I don't know about you, but I don't want the death of an innocent hanging over my head."
"Neither do I!" Dean shouted back, yanking his arm out of his brother's grip. Then, after a moment of running his hands through his hair, he echoed much calmer, "Neither do I, Sammy. It's just that I don't know what to do here, man. I mean, we can't even shoot it for God's sake. The damn thing's hiding inside the Vargas' 9-month-old baby."
"I know," Sam replied, equally defeated. He seriously felt that if ever there was a time for Bobby to call them it was then and there.
As if God—or maybe Castiel—had been listening, the gritty sound of a guitar playing suddenly filled the air. Dean immediately took out his phone, flipped its top and said into its receiver, "Tell me you got something good, Bobby, 'cause I'm ready to pull out Sam's hair over here."
"I take it you two idjits got your hands full?" Bobby gruffly asked from his side of the line.
"Like you wouldn't believe," was Dean's answer. "It's in the Vargas' baby, Bobby. Salt rounds might just leave us adults a nasty bruise, but there's no telling what they'll do to babies."
"No kidding," Bobby agreed. "Well, I found something. Looks like Sam was right. It's a brownie. The Brothers Grimm may've pegged them as some kind of lucky rabbit's foot, but in parts of Scotland, they're called Bolges and are something more akin to mischievous poltergeists. "
"Great," Dean interjected as Sam suddenly pointed toward the kitchen with a nod of his head. "So how do we kill it without killing the kid?" he whispered, inching toward the next room with his brother in tow.
"Well, that's the tricky part, Son," Bobby sighed. "For it to've traveled so far, there's only one explanation I could come up with. Some idjit in a kilt must've tried to get rid of it by trapping it in somethin'. There's an old Scottish ritual that can be done, but it can only take place on, get this, Saint Patty's day. Dean, your best bet's to find its container and burn it. Bad thing is that the damn thing can be made out of anything and come in any shape or size."
"So what do you want us to do? Burn down the entire house?" Dean hissed, his back to the wall beside the open kitchen door—stomach clearly plummeting at the bad news he was hearing.
Bobby's grin could be heard clear through the line. "You could or you could just ask the parents if they've come into possession of anything of Scottish origin recently. My guess is, since the kiddies haven't been misbehaving till now, family must have opened some presents early this year."
Sam quirked a brow at the euphoric face his brother was currently pulling and even more so at Dean's heartfelt words.
"Bobby, I could kiss you."
"You do it," Bobby replied, "and I'll have your balls, boy."
"I'm looking for what again here?" Sam agitatedly questioned, fingers spreading fake tree branches with haphazard care. A plastic reindeer, hanging by a precarious looking hook, fell from its place. Sighing, since it was the 13th thing that had dropped in the last five minutes, Sam picked it up and stuck it on a random branch.
"A bell, Sam," Dean reminded with his own annoyance. In all honesty, when Mrs. Vargas had told them what to look for and where it was, he had thought finding it would be a piece of cake. That was until he actually took a long look at the Christmas tree stashed in the living room's corner. It looked like Santa and his reindeer had thrown up all over it. There wasn't a spot on it lacking in decoration. In fact, it was so heavily loaded with yellow and red garland, flashing lights, multicolored bulbs, and bowed ornaments that some of its poor branches wilted under the weight.
A blue bulb suddenly fell from the branch Dean had just moved. It hit the floor, rolling next to his shoe. After staring at it for a few seconds, Dean cut a quick glance to Sam who was directly across from him. Nonchalantly, he kicked the offending decoration to the dark depths underneath the Christmas tree—next to seven more of its fallen brethren. And, with a shrug at Sam's curious look toward the odd sound, Dean went back to bell picking duty like the good little soldier that he was. However, Sam wasn't completely blind.
"You could've just picked it up, you know."
Dean snorted, "Screw that. Things got enough crap on it."
Shaking his head with a lopsided grin, Sam went back to the business at hand. He only jumped once or twice as yet another knife blade became imbedded in the closed door behind him. The little monster had, indeed, made its way into the kitchen earlier, and that's where they intended it to stay until they found what they were looking for.
"You better behave yourself, young man!" Dean shouted in response to what sounded like something too short trying to jump and turn the door's knob. "Don't make me come in there!"
Sam halfheartedly laughed. "Yeah, well, not until we finish our business here at least."
Mrs. Vargas had said that the family had just recently taken ownership of a precious heirloom that had been in their family for ages. Apparently, their grandfather in Scotland passed away only three weeks before, bequeathing to the family the bolge infested item. The messed up thing was that either the old fool had forgotten that he had imprisoned a killer trickster in a bit of Christmas bling or he knew and had decided to knowingly pass his troubles to his least favorite kin. In the end, Sam didn't know what was worse—the bolge or the grandfather.
"Ha!" Dean suddenly yelled in triumph, holding a flat, brass bell up that read Merry Christmas 1929 on its front. Looking at its inscription he said, "Damn, that's old."
Sam sighed. "Who cares? Let's just throw it in the kitchen and wait for the thing to climb back inside."
"Calm down, Samantha," Dean teased, heading toward the kitchen door. "Just remember. After this is all over, you're buying the eggnog."
"Yeah, yeah," Sam groused with a put-upon face.
When Dean passed him, however, his lips twitched into a smile. Unlike the Vargas's who were spending the night over a relative's house-anxiously awaiting the return of their baby-Sam and his dear older brother had plans of their own for Christmas Eve. Well, other plans besides salting and burning a bell in the backyard that is.
"It bit me!" Dean shouted, holding a piece of gauze in place for his little brother to wrap on his forearm. "The damn thing bit me!"
"Hold still, you big baby," Sam chastised with a touch of humor.
He was trying to bandage up his whining big brother, who wouldn't sit still on his lumpy motel bed. Their job was done, but neither of them had come out unscathed. Like they had planned, they torched the bell the second the thing had crawled back into it in an attempt to recharge its spiritual batteries. It was just too bad that Dean's arm got bit the moment—like an idiot in Sam's opinion—he stuck his arm in the kitchen's cracked doorway to toss the bell on the floor.
Sam, on the other hand, felt that he couldn't have done anything to save his poor plaid shirt. Seriously, how was he to know the damn thing would pop out of the bell and jump on his chest all burning and shrieking the moment they lit the bell on fire? In Sam's opinion, he got it worse. That had been his favorite shirt. However, Dean continued to make it sound to the contrary.
"Dude, babies aren't supposed to even have teeth!" Dean continued to rage, "How the hell did it bite me?"
"Here," Sam said, handing Dean his half-empty bottle of beer not unlike a mother giving her fussy baby a bottle to quiet it.
"I probably got baby rabies or something now," Dean complained around the lip of the bottle. "Who knows where that thing's mouth's been."
Sam snorted, finishing up his nurse work, "It's a baby, Dean. And if anyone catches anything, it'll be the baby. Who knows where you've been."
"Hey," Dean pouted, resting the almost empty bottle on a thigh. "That hurts."
"Truth hurts sometimes," Sam smarmily grinned as he got up from the floor, emergency kit in hand.
"I'm just glad that job is over and done with," Dean admitted. "I mean, dude, you got a burnt shirt and I got a torn arm out of the deal and we're not even getting paid!" Much calmer, after a final swig of his beer, Dean added, "That reminds me. We need to hit up a bar tomorrow with a few good pool tables in it. After running to Wally-world and buying your shirtless ass new threads, we're kind of in the red. I figure a few games and we'll come out back on top, though, so no biggie."
"Hey, Dean," Sam said, putting away the emergency first aid kit in his bag on his bed. "Merry Christmas," he added with a cheshire grin as he pulled a newspaper wrapped box from its bottom.
Dean's face almost split in half from the wide smile he couldn't contain. He graciously took his present while shaking his head.
"Sammy, Sammy, Sammy," he sing-songed. "I should have known the price tag on your shirt wouldn't match the receipt." Placing the gift on his lap, he reached underneath his bed. "Here," he said, still smiling, while handing his baby brother a like wrapped gift.
"Dean," Sam replied in awe—having no idea how the other had pulled off such a feat without him knowing. "You shouldn't have."
"I know. Guess I'm just awesome like that," Dean retorted, before ripping into his own present like a starving wolf with a steak.
Soon an, "Oh man! This is awesome!" was traded for a, "Dude, how did you know?"
Now, a limited edition issue of Busty Asian Beauties and a bottle of Vidal Sassoon's newest hair gel wouldn't seem like real Christmas presents to the average Joe. And outdated seasonal movies in a crappy motel decorated with stolen lights and someone's filched Merry Christmas flag would be a poor excuse for holiday decor to most, but to the two Winchester boys, their presents were golden and the atmosphere was great. Even more so, the time they spent together that night was a little piece of heaven on earth that they sadly never got enough of.
Sam looked over to Dean hysterically laughing at something Bill Murray said on screen; Scrooged was his favorite holiday movie after all.
"Dude! That guy seriously has a direct line to my funny bone," Dean managed to croak while wiping at his eyes with the back of his bandage.
Sam just rolled his eyes. However, he couldn't keep the grin from showing on his face. Regretfully, it soon fell completely at the bad joke his dear older brother tried to spin.
"Hey, Sammy," Dean said trying not to laugh, all the while nudging his other half in the ribs on the tiny, little couch they were sitting on. "Do you think that brownie from earlier tasted any good?"
Sam, sitting far to the left so he wasn't completely sitting on Dean's lap, sighed, hung his head and seriously questioned how the two of them were related. But, in the end, he merely replied, giving into his brother's lame ass joke with his own.
"No, Dean, brownies don't taste good burnt."
He hated himself for saying it, but if it made Dean happy, he'd lower himself to that level. Turns out, Dean thought he was a genius.
"Dude!" Dean howled, holding a stitch in his side. "That was awesome!"
Yeah, Sam thought. If it makes him happy, I guess I'd do just about anything, huh?
"Hey, Sammy, pour me another drink, bitch."
Well, almost anything, Sam amended.
"Get your own, jerk," he replied, before settling back in his seat with crossed arms and a content smile.
Yeah, there were still monsters out there to hunt and things that went bump in the night after them, but none of that mattered in that moment. The Winchesters were taking a personal holiday. Evil could go screw itself for the night.
Thanks For Reading!