Title: A Lingering Fringe

Author: pink_bagels

Chapter: one

Rating: PG-13

Characters: Dean/Castiel-ish, Bobby, Sam

Spoilers: end of season four--If this ever freakishly became canon (checks mirror--Nope, still not Kripke), it would hover somewhere in the middle of season five.

Summary: What happened in Vegas refused to stay there. There are consequences to every decision, to every destiny. The pattern is in the fallout.

(notes: This is going to be a biggie, and if anyone reads my lj regurlarly you know I will finish it :D)

a lingering fringe--chapter one

The weirdest thing was, they still looked like the Sam and Dean he knew. Bobby let out a low whistle, and adjusted his dusty cap, a layer of sweat plastering the blue plastic clasp close against the back of his skull. What made the whole thing weirder still was how they didn't even have to change clothes, since everything sort of still fit the same. Same hair, same expressions, same shape of the eyes, ears, nose, mouth. If Bobby had to pinpoint exactly how they had changed, other than the obvious, it would be a certain overall softening of their rougher edges, with their muscles slightly less defined. Smoother skin. A diminished broadness in the shoulders. Good looking, though, but this was more a testament to family resemblence. Just more proof that John and Mary Winchester had mighty strong genes.

Dean tossed the demon knife onto the table, and gestured angrily at it. "If you think we're demons, go ahead and use it."

"Dean, come on," Sam protested.

"No," Dean firmly asserted. "If Bobby thinks we're hellspawn, even after us proving over and over that we aren't, then I guess he can do what he needs to do." Dean's jaw was set firm. "Right, Bobby?"

Bobby sat on the edge of the motel bed, his rough hands rubbing the shock from his system as he massaged his neck. He cracked it, getting out the last, unwelcome kink. "You been like this how long?" he asked.

"A week," Sam quietly said.

"You gotta help us, Bobby," Dean said, grabbing a beer from the mini-fridge, and tossing one to Bobby who caught it with one fat hand. "I can't live like this. I mean, seriously, put a silver bullet in me, something, just undo this!"

Sam sighed. "You're being a drama queen. It's not that bad, there's way worse that could have happened."

Dean seethed in fury over this. "You've got to be kidding me. You would actually be okay living like this? For the rest of your life?"

Sam let out a frustrated hiss. "For God's sake, Dean, it's not like we were turned into toads or given horns. We look normal."

"That's not the point!" Dean shouted.

Bobby gave them both a level glare, his fingers nervously brushing the tip of his ballcap, his mind shrugging around different hexes and spells that could be used to break whatever it was that had been done to Sam and Dean. "So, like you said before, you tried the alchemical formations of Althazar, but they didn't work. You tried drinking salted holy water, no go." Bobby shrugged. "What about mandrake tea, you tried that?"

"First thing we thought of," Sam said.

"Then I don't know what to tell you," Bobby said, the air between them thick with disappointment. "What does Castiel think of all this?"

"Cas," Dean spat the angel's name. "Yeah. Some help he is."

"It's not his fault, Dean," Sam said. "He tried every archaic symbol he knew, nothing worked. Look, don't get too flustered about this, okay? He said he's working on it."

"Yeah, well it's hardly a tall priority for him, Sam. Frankly, his whole angelic innocence thing is getting real old, fast," Dean muttered. "Of course he's not too worried, he doesn't see a problem at all. In fact, he's so gender glaucomic, if I stood naked in front of him he'd be asking me to pass the salt for his damned chips!"

"We really have to get him to improve his diet," Sam agreed. "The human body can't live on french fries morning, noon and night."

"It's the only thing he's learned how to eat," Dean reminded Sam. "Have you forgotten that incident with the burrito? Man, I never knew somebody could choke on a black bean."

'It wasn't a black bean," Sam said, making a face. "Trust me, I'm never eating a burrito again, either."

The motel door swung open, putting everyone in the room on high alert. Bobby stood up in deference to the being who had managed to snatch Dean Winchester out of the clutches of Hell. No matter if he were fallen or not, it had to be a good plan to keep an angel on your side, a fact Dean was forgetting. Castiel held two large paper bags in his arms, his expression blank as he noted the worried frowns directed his way. "Greetings, Bobby," he said.

"Hey there yourself," Bobby replied. He studied Castiel as the fallen angel placed the paper bags of groceries on the table in the kitchenette. The items that had been purchased were taken out with great care, as though even the roll of toiletpaper was at risk of smashing like glass at his touch. Castiel looked drawn, Bobby noted, his cheeks hollow, his skin pasty. Being human wasn't doing him much good.

Dean dug into the grocery bags, roughly pushing Castiel and his careful movements aside as the contents were tumbled loudly onto the table. "Where are they?" Dean shouted. A small red bottle rolled along the surface of the table, nearly toppling off only to be rescued by Dean's quick reflex. Dean read the bottle's label and nodded. "Advil. Extra-Strength. Good. Now, where's that other stuff I asked for?" Dean's face paled, a stack of picnic napkins in a white knuckled grip. The soft paper cloths had pictures of frolicking bunnies stamped on them, the sale sticker proclaiming, in big orange numbers, $1.99. "What the hell is this?"

Castiel shrugged, not understanding. "You told me to get napkins."

"Not these kind," Dean furiously growled through clenched teeth.

The package was thrown at Castiel, hitting him in the face. Dean had a death grip on the bottle of Advil, and after a torrent of furious curses Dean stormed into the bathroom, the door slammed shut, the lock loudly bolted into place. Bobby winced at the ensuing din. Either the walls of this particular motel room were exceptionally thin, or Dean's howling sobs really were that hystrionic.

"I don't understand what I did wrong," Castiel said, his wounded expression turned on Sam.

"It's nothing," Sam quickly assured him, "It's just, you know, human body stuff. To do with the endochrine system." Castiel's confusion didn't abate, and Sam instantly went into Discovery channel mode. "See, once a month there's these hormonal changes and while it's only been an issue for Dean and I for a week, Dean was unlucky enough to get stuck on this natural cycle when we were..."

"I have never observed either you or Dean having this particular issue before," Castiel blandly interjected.

"Well...Uh...Considering recent events and the changes that have happened, it's all perfectly normal. Even if how we got this way isn't, the symptoms and the physiology are definitely medically sound." Castiel's wounded expression now had a further confused aspect to it that pulled harshly on Sam's clinical resolve. "You have to appreciate, Cas, that this is a very difficult thing to explain to someone who has never had a corporeal body before."

Bobby picked up the package of picnic napkins, letting out a low whistle as he noticed the tiny bunnies printed on the surface were chasing birds and bees.

"What purpose does this physiological cycle serve?"

"Oh God. I can't have this conversation with you right now, Cas," Sam said, voice hovering on panic. "Just, never mind, you don't need to think about it. It's, uh..."

"Girl stuff," Bobby interjected, much to Sam's equal parts mortification and relief.

"Yeah," Sam said. "Thanks, Bobby."

"Oh," Castiel said, brought into instant clarity. "This is that problem you and Dean have said you have been experiencing."

"Obviously," Sam said.

"Like a Mac truck in the face, obvious," Bobby added. Angel or not, Castiel was clearly not going to be much help in this situation. Heck of a problem they had here. Bobby took a long swig of his beer, its cold comfort doing little to ease his anxiety as he thought on his good friend John Winchester and the pride he'd held in his boys. He was sure that pride would have extended just as much to daughters. Maybe even more so, who knows?

Castiel was at the bathroom door, his hand halted in mid knock, unsure of whether or not it was safe to persue the matter. Bobby set his jaw at this, not liking the feel of it. Seemed a strangely intimate gesture for a supposed angel of the Lord to be making. He glanced back at Sam, who was morosely poking at the keyboard of her laptop, her bottom lip cutely bitten as she studied the words she'd conjured up on Google. The newly delicate features of her face were brought into relief by the light of the laptop, and for a moment a sudden surge of fatherly protectionism welled inside of Bobby, one that wasn't easy to swallow with a good gulp of brew. Sure, they still knew how to protect themselves, and he shouldn't really have to be concerned, but certain societal norms had been taught to him way before he'd ever become a hunter. Damn, John Winchester had to thank Heaven that he'd only seen sons. These girls of his would have given him one hell of an extra, unwelcomed worry.

"Start all over at the beginning," Bobby said to Sam. "I can't say it'll make any difference, but you never know. Sometimes it's good to hear a story twice, three times, hell twenty, if only to find a detail that weren't there before. So start slow, and make sure you don't leave nothing out."

"I didn't," Sam insisted.

"Then you won't mind reciting it again," Bobby sternly told her.

Sam groaned in impatience and shut her laptop with a soft click. The anti-hexing design on its surface seemed to mock her with its efficiency.

"We were going after a job in Vegas," she began. "But unlike the ad says, nothing stayed there."

///

one week earlier

"Oh, man." Dean's eyes were lit up like he'd been presented with a gift from the magi. "Vegas. I love Vegas!"

Sam ignored Dean's excited fidgeting in the driver's seat, opting instead to concentrate on the notes he'd gleaned from Bobby. He earned a harsh punch in the shoulder from his brother. "Come on, Sam! Loosen up! Check it out, this place is awesome! Busy streets, lots of people partying." Their car pulled up alongside a convertable practically bursting with blonde, bikini-clad women. They gave Dean's smiling interest a collection of giggling waves before speeding off ahead as soon as the light turned green. "All the bustle, people winning, people losing. All that adrenaline. Man. It's like I can *taste* it, you know? Life. Busy, noisy, dirty, flashy life."

Sam wasn't so convinced. He glanced up at the streaks of neon, their overdone glamour making him wince. "I don't know. It's just so fake."

"The lights are beautiful."

Castiel's observation was one of tantalized wonder, and Dean couldn't help but bite back on his grin. "See Sam? Even the angels love Vegas."

Sam closed his notebook, a familiar annoyance welling within him. "Those lights are manmade," Sam said to Castiel. "God's got nothing to do with them."

"I can't wait to hit the casinos," Dean said, sharply turning a corner and catching a glimpse of some very busty ladies of the evening. One particularly gold glittered sweetheart blew him a kiss, and Dean's joy was set to burst. "Oh yeah, I'm hitting this place first!" He hung his head out the window of the Impala. "I'll be back for you in an hour, gorgeous!"

He got a tantalizing wave in reply, along with a few smirking nods of interest from that gold draped beauty's friends. Dean hit the steering wheel with his wrists, beating out the drum beat off The Who's 'Pinball Wizard' as it shouted out of the radio. "Woo! We are going to have fun tonight--You got to admit, we damn well deserve this."

"Watching you pick up some crab infested skank, get wasted drunk and puke your guts out on or just outside the bathroom floor, along with losing all the money in your pocket, thus depleting our emergency cash flow, is hardly my idea of a good time."

"Fine," Dean said, still drumming along on his steering wheel. "I'll drop you off at the library for that free showing of Grey Gardens, it starts at eight. Or maybe you'd rather hang out at the horticultural centre, I hear they've discovered a new breed of orchid. Your pick, Sammy, you can go wherever it is that men with no dicks go."

Sam scowled at his brother. "We're doing our job and we're leaving."

Dean scoffed at this. "Says you."

Sam wanted to argue the point further, but Castiel leaned forward, his head neatly tucked between them as he read off of what looked to Sam to be an index card. " 'Does this establishment have bathing facilities?' Did I say that correctly?"

Sam took the index card from Castiel and puzzled over it. "What is this?"

"Yeah, Cas was wanting to be the one to rent the hotel room, this time," Dean said. "And, you know, since he's been having some issues with interacting with people like a normal guy I made up some cue cards to help him along." Dean turned down the car stereo. "I mean, he can't be going up to complete strangers saying 'The glorious might of Heaven shall smite Lucifer this day' when a simple 'Raining again? Bummer' would do. Not to mention little things, like going on a beer run and knowing how much change to get back. Or, as in this case, knowing how to book a room."

"That was kind of you," Sam evenly said. He pointed at the stack in Castiel's grip. "Let me see those."

He had to hand it to Dean, he'd certainly made the instructions clear. Every step of every action was neatly categorised, ensuring that Castiel couldn't slip up:

1: Walk to counter

2: Smile and say hello and not in your usual Zombie Angel Your Face Is Fascinating kind of way. Just a simple nod, a simple hello. Very little eye contact. Srsly.

3: Ask for a room, preferably two bedrooms, definitely two beds. Like I said before I'M NOT SHARING.

4: Make sure there's a shower. Ask 'Does this establishment have bathing facilities?' You'll totally sound like a hopeless, misplaced tourist (hopeless tourist=no one remembers you and that's a GOOD THING)

5: Hand them the Visa (a small diagram illustrated this), sign the paper and you're done. No intense, uncomfortable blessings, no eye smoochies or questioning if anyone has seen Demonic Activity or Sam.

"This must have taken you some time," Sam observed.

"Just helping out a pal," Dean said, grinning.

Sam wasn't so sure when he came to the pile marked 'relationships'. "Dean, there's stuff in here on how to pick up women."

"I told you, anything for a friend."

"Friends don't let friends use your crappy pick up lines."

He handed the cards back to Castiel. "I'd be exercising caution with these if I were you." Castiel held Sam's gaze for an inordinate amount of time, forcing Sam to remember, yet again, that newly fallen angels had issues with the subtlties of personal space. "You know what, just use the one for booking the hotel. Word for word."

Castiel slumped into the back seat, the index cards still in his grip as he shuffled the deck and puzzled over their contents. "Why is it significant I never mention a woman's weight?" he asked. He frowned, reading the rest of the hastily scrawled instructions on the card. "What does it mean here, when it says I should insist I like big butts?"

Sam bit his bottom lip, his smirk only slightly derailed. "You are so going back to Hell, Dean."

Dean gave his younger brother a wide grin in reply. "Yeah. I know."

///

"I sex chicks for a living."

Dean raised a brow at this, the pencil he was using as he pretended to take false notes in Sam's notebook arrested in mid-doodle. The young man standing before them went by the name of Josh Horihito, and it was he who called in the calvary to deal with mysterious goings on at the Upper Country Hatchery where he worked. "Look, like I said to Bobby, it was just a false alarm." He crossed his arms, the Hawaiian shirt he was wearing now a collection of folded fans and pineapples. "I was just going by what the grapevine's been telling me. Keep an eye out for weird shit and pass it along." He glanced shiftily from side to side, as though fearful a demon was going to crawl out of the desert sand and nail him. A valid fear, it had nearly happened once before. "You guys aren't on the popular list right now. Word is, the Winchester boys are set to get smoked for going darkside and kudos goes to the first hunter who makes it happen."

"So how come you're not on the bashing bandwagon?" Dean asked.

Josh's shifty gaze was making everyone nervous. "I don't care how the popularity machine works with your people, I just know that if you hadn't of exorcised that thing out of my sister my family would be nothing but a big pile of wasted guts and greasy BBQ ribsteaks. I saw what you did to that flesheater--I know you two wouldn't go darkside, like they're saying." Josh's shifty glance coursed over the plain, yellow building to his right. "There was some weird shit happening at the hatchery up until yesterday."

"Certainly smells like it," Sam said, filtering the air through the sleeve of his jacket. "God, that's *rank*."

"Don't you mean *fowl*," Dean said, grinning.

Neither Sam nor Josh even so much as groaned at Dean's lame attempt of a joke. With the latter, it only earned Dean impatience. "Like I said, I sex the chicks. I make sure which ones are female, and send them off down one chute to grow into big, strong, egg laying cluck machines. The fellas go down the other chute."

"The 'other' chute?" Dean asked. "What happens to them?"

Josh shrugged. "They get ground up into organic cat and dog food. A good marginal profit niche, actually."

"Damn," Dean said, looking decidedly green. "It really sucks to be a rooster."

"Hey man, don't go getting all PETA on me, I'm just doing this job to get through college and finish off my masters." Josh's Hawaiian shirt was caught in the desert breeze, rustling pineapples competing with open fans. "You want to do the right thing and be kind to a chicken? Eat a damn egg so it never becomes a chicken. End of story."

"So what was this unusual phenomenon you were experiencing?" Sam asked, bringing Josh back on track.

"It's nothing," Josh said, his shoulders hunched in apology. "About a week ago, I'm sexing chicks, and then I start noticing that there's more males than females. Which isn't odd all by itself. Only, a few days later, we start getting more and more of them. A *lot* more. Like 80%. There's never odds like that--It's usually 60-40 in favour of hens." Josh Horihito looked over his shoulder, as though fearful this information was going to cost him his very future. A small snack truck drove into the hatchery laneway, parking only twenty feet from where they were standing. Josh eyed it with suspicion before continuing. "Then, as though that wasn't weird enough, by the third day, we're getting chicks I just can't sex at all. The fluffy little yellow fuckers don't even have assholes, you get what I'm saying?"

Dean tapped the tip of his pencil on the cover of Sam's notebook. "So...What chute would *they* go down?"

"It freaked me out, okay?" Josh said, his shoulders hunched tight, as though afraid Sam and Dean were going to reprimand him, maybe turn his Hawaiian shirt into pulpy fruit juice. "A good 90% of the chicks that week went into the grinder." He ignored Dean's choke of disgust. "Sure, it's not a seven foot monster cooking your dad on an open fire pit, with a side of mom salad waiting, but this was serious business for the hatchery. Stuff like that can put everything out of whack. We don't produce enough eggs, the company doesn't make enough profit, they have to lay people off, I lose my job, my masters degree is put on hold. It all can spiral out into bigger and bigger things, just from something so small and so...so *wrong*." Josh's worry pleaded for understanding. "If you want things to turn out the way they're supposed to, you have to keep a record of the balance. You got to pay attention."

"All right, I'll bite," Sam said, his eyes watering from the foul smell that continued to waft towards them from the hatchery. "I agree, a buttless chicken can pose a problem. What do you want us to do about it?"

"Nothing. I got a hold of Bobby this morning to call the hunt off," Josh said, his face reddening in embarassment. "Turns out the temperature meters on the incubators was off. One or two degrees difference can affect the sex of the chicks. As for the lack of everything, well, these chickens aren't exactly from a wide gene pool. It was probably just a mutation caused by inbreeding."

"So we're talking science here," Sam said.

"Yeah, just science," Josh replied, his pineapples crushed, his fans limp. "Nothing at all to do with demons." He gestured to the hatchery. "I got to get back to work. Sorry for dragging you guys out here for nothing."

"No problem, Josh. Good luck with college," Sam said.

"And say hi to that hot little sister of yours," Dean said, winking.

Josh gave them both a sad nod, and left them at the side of the road, the Nevada desert curling around the slightly frayed hem of their jeans. There was the sound of shuddering steel as the snack cart set up for the afternoon shift's break, the smell of stale hamburgers and grease competing with the stench of chicken crap. "Poor kid," Sam added when Josh was well out of earshot. "I guess having a run in with a flesheater like he did is enough to make anyone paranoid."

"Yeah," Dean agreed. He shaded his eyes from the sun and took a long look down the dusty horizon. "I'm starving," he said. He eyed the rusty hull of the snack wagon, and without a second thought he headed for it, the low murmer of his stomach cancelling out the arguments against salmonella poisoning.

"How can you even have an appetite?" Sam asked, dry heaving, his sleeve stubbornly cemented against his mouth and nose. Dean shrugged, and glanced over at the Impala, his brow creasing as he took in Castiel's bent posture and his dishevelled appearance in the back seat. "He's probably not eaten a thing all day," Dean reminded Sam. "We have to get something in him just in case he passes out from hunger."

"Maybe you should have written *that* on a notecard," Sam harshly replied, following his brother to the fly infested snack wagon. "A few words about nutrition couldn't hurt."

"Sam, you said it yourself, Cas doesn't have the first clue how the human body works." Dean rubbed his hands together in hungry glee at the rather limp offerings that were on display. "Yo, padre--two egg salad sandwiches." Sam kicked up a layer of dust behind him. "Come on, Sam, you heard what Josh said--I'm just doing my part for the fight against animal cruelty."

"You'd better not be ordering fries for him," Sam said, casting a worried look Castiel's way. "Ever since he fell out of Heaven's favour it's all he's lived on. He's going to start losing teeth to scurvy."

"I'm way ahead of you," Dean cheerfully replied. He flashed two dollar bills at the dour snack wagon owner. "Bean burrito. Heavy on the salsa." Sam's disapproval put Dean immediately on the defensive. "Salsa is chock full of veggie goodness," he protested.

"I swear you think cardboard is a food group," Sam replied.

"I don't know what you're so worried about," Dean complained. "For all we know he doesn't need to eat, even if he has fallen. I don't know if you noticed, but he didn't come with a manual."

"Figures," Sam said, taking the egg salad sandwich offered to him with some trepidation. He sniffed at it suspiciously while Dean barely had the plastic wrap off before he devoured half of his. "The Winchester clan's guardian angel came off the celestial Wal-Mart's clearance isle. With a final sale warning and a big orange $1.99 sticker stuck on his wing."

"That's not fair, and you know it," Dean sternly warned his younger brother.

Sam sighed, and bit into his egg salad sandwich. He chewed reluctantly. "This tastes funny."

But Dean wasn't concerned about the varieties of intestinal disquiet that were destined to be set upon them. His own stomach was lined with iron and a good portion of nuclear fortitude thanks to years of eating greasy rotgut. The closest Dean had ever come to eating salad was a limp piece of lettuce on a hamburger back in 1998, and he hadn't enjoyed the experience.

Dean slid into the driver's seat of the Impala, tossing the burrito to Castiel who ignored the offering as it dropped on the seat next to him. "Okay, here's the plan," Dean said, the Impala's engine purring to life as he fired up the ignition. "We head down to the strip, we send Cas to get us a room, while you and I head straight for the busiest casinos. How can we lose, Sam? We got our get out of Hell free cards and an angel at our shoulders. We're totally going to go high roller!"

Sam sulked in the passenger seat, a half-eaten egg salad sandwich still in his hand. He took very unhappy bites out of it at sporadic intervals, swallowing clearly an effort.

"I hate egg salad," Sam whined.

///

Bobby roughly rubbed his five o'clock shadow with his palm. "So, you figure it was the eggs?"

"We weren't sure at first," Sam said. "It wasn't until we got to the casino when things got really weird."

"Luck be a lady, that's what they always say." Dean quietly made her way out of the bathroom, collapsing onto the thick, red silk covers of the double bed, a limp pillow hugged tight as she curled into a foetal position.

Castiel, perhaps seeking martyrdom as a way of reclaiming the good graces of Heaven, placed a reassuring hand on her shoulder.

"Don't you fucking touch me!" Dean shouted, shoving him off and nearly sending the angel to the floor. "Freak!"

"I don't understand what I have done to offend you," Castiel evenly replied to Dean. "None of this was an issue for you yesterday."

Bobby raised a brow at Sam who, to Bobby's now hyperdrived fatherly worry, actually blushed at the scrutiny.

"It's been a whole week, Bobby. Stuff gets, you know, complicated," Sam tried to explain.

She drummed her fingers on the surface of her laptop. Her nails flushed pink.

"Like I said before...Everything got real weird at the casino."