You can't beat the phonetic alphabet if you have dogs. In our household, we always spell out the whiskey-word, otherwise the ensuing shenanigans is spectacular, and noisy. The German Shepherd learned what 'w-word' meant very early in the piece, but so far, whiskey-alpha-lima-kilo seems to be beyond her ken. So is bravo-alpha-tango-hotel, thankfully.

And srsly, Sam is right, there is no credible evidence that kombucha has any therapeutic properties, although if you go online you can find people who will claim that it is a 'superfood' (whatever the hell that is supposed to mean) that cures everything from bubonic plague to a seized engine. Drink it if you like the taste – it really is more sensible than soft drink or beer. Brewing your own is really easy, and fun, and you can learn it all from YouChoob. My scoby's name is Trevor. (scoby = symbiotic colony of bacteria & yeast. It looks like a giant booger, but it makes a tasty drink.)

Chapter Ten

When the brothers returned to their room, Dean was annoyed to see that he was at least as sweaty and out of breath as Sam, who had been running.

"So," asked Sam, around getting his breath back, "How did you go?"

"We went awesome," Dean told him disdainfully. "We did what you wanted, okay? We went for a... whiskey-word, and we went along the beach, chased some seagulls, well, the J-Man chased the seagulls, I collected more data on the bikini migration – no, I didn't leer, bitch – and we were out in the fresh air, and gettin' some of your beloved cardio exercise, and bein' in the natural sunlight, and getting' our heart rates elevated, and...'

"And eating ice-cream," Sam interrupted accusingly.

"What? No!" Dean insisted. "We did not eat ice-cream!"

"Really?" pressed Sam.

"Really," Dean stated firmly.

"In that case, one of those seagulls crapped on the front of your shirt."

"What?" Dean looked down. "Sonofabitch, I thought I was totally careful, I mean, it's not like I'd want a single drop of ice-creamy goodness go to waste... hey," he protested in the face of Sam's scowl of disapproval, "Ice-cream is good for me! It's got dairy in it, right? Calcium for strong bones, and healthy teeth, protein for muscles and brains..."

"Saturated animal fat," Sam cut in, "Highly processed milk components. Added milk fat, added sugar, lots of it, corn syrup, guaranteed to screw with your blood sugar, polysorbate, which when you get down to it is just a type of detergent – to get any benefit from the calcium or protein content, you'd have to eat half the damned truck!"

"After that non-breakfast you made me eat, I might just be able to manage that," Dean mused thoughtfully.

"Dean, ice-cream is not a sensible dietary supplement!" Sam spluttered in exasperation. "It's nutritionally unsound, and should only be an occasional treat, not a second breakfast!"

"Yeah?" Dean shrugged. "Good thing I only had two, then. How was your run, weirdo?"

"Oh, God..." Sam sighed. "Pretty good, actually. A gym chain had a promotion going in a park, and was inviting people to spin a giveaway wheel. I got this." He held up a small item.

"What is that?" asked Dean, peering at it, "A watch?"

"Nope. It's a tracker." In a businesslike fashion, Sam grabbed his brother's hand, and fastened it around Dean's wrist.

"Huh?" Dean blinked at the band. "What the fuck? You're not gonna track me, bitch, what am I now, some three-year-old who's likely to run off and eat ice-cream when Mommy isn't looking?"

"An activity tracker, Dean," Sam rolled his eyes, "It tracks your activity level. It records your steps, your exercise, your heart rate – it can keep track of what you do, so you can monitor your progress."

"Hey!" Dean snapped angrily, "In case you forgot, there's only one Big Brother here, and that's me, so you can stop channelling the Head Coach Within and take your tracker and shove it where it may record your steps even if it can't track just how funny you'll be walkin'..." His outrage petered out when he saw the look on his baby brother's face.

Sam was gazing forlornly at him with concerned puppy dog eyes.

"It's supposed to help you," he said quietly. "This whole try to be sensible about your health thing, I can see it's really hard for you. It's a completely alien concept, and it's getting you down. I thought, if this can help you keep tabs on what you're doing, it might help. Give you something concrete you can check on." He looked down at his own feet. "If you don't want it, you can sell it, they're expensive, I wouldn't even have suggested getting you one if I hadn't just won it in a giveaway, it'll fill the car's tank a couple of times, I guess, I've got the pack and stuff right here..."

"No, Sam," Dean sighed, resistance crumbling in the face of his baby brother's palpable worry. "You're probably right. It might help. I'll give it a try, and see how it goes. After all, it'll only be until I'm out of this Mr Average suit, and back into my own awesome body, right?"

"Awesome!" Sam gave him a dimpled smile, and headed for his laptop. "Why don't you call first on the shower, and I'll download the software while you clean up, then we can start getting data into it, it'll track your calorie intake and expenditure, too, and monitor your sleep quality..."

"Sure, Sam, you get right on that." Sighing inwardly, Dean headed for the bathroom. "Oh, hey, I can leave it with you while I'm..."

"It's cool, bro," Sam didn't even look up from the screen. "It's waterproof."

"That's... great."

In the shower, Dean took the opportunity to examine the tracker: it was unobtrusive, and at a casual glance would look like a watch.

"You might be trackin' me," he told the small device, "But just remember, I'm watchin' you – you snitch on me for eatin' ice-cream, and I'll use a hammer to give you a reprogramming you won't ever forget."

...oooooOOOOOooooo... ...oooooOOOOOooooo... ...oooooOOOOOooooo... ...oooooOOOOOooooo... ...oooooOOOOOooooo...

"Sam, what the hell is this?"

"It's your lunch, Dean."

"Yeah, but what the fuck is it?"

"It's a chicken and salad roll."

"It feels like a brick."

"It's not a brick, jerk!"

"Where's the chicken?"

"On the bottom, probably."

"Not it's not, there's just all this lawn clippings and stuff... is this more of that haloumi anti-bacon?"

"No, that's the chicken, you moron!"

"That aint chicken."

"Yes it is!"

"No it aint. Where's the crumbs? I've had chicken sandwiches before: you get a piece of chicken, with crumbs on it."

"That's a deep fried chicken schnitzel you normally get. This is poached."

"Poached? Poached? Again with the poaching?"

"Look, it's a more nutritionally sensible way of cooking chicken than deep frying it!"

"It looks anaemic."

"Chicken is a white meat, Dean."

"So, I got a brick, with lawn clippings and anaemic racist chicken. Be still my beating taste buds."

"Why don't you just try it before you complain about it?"

"Lookin' at it tells me everything I need to know. I mean, if I said to you, why don't you jump off that cliff, it might be fun, hey, don't knock it 'til you've tried it, would you do it?"

"That's a completely different thing! Look, it's just a damned sandwich!"

"Are you sure it's not mixed up with yours?"

"Yes."

"Bullshit, this is typical Francis food, you've mixed 'em up, gimme that box..."

"DEAN!"

"Aha! Something went crunch! You been holdin' out on me, Sam, you bitch."

"Dean, get your hands out of my lunch!"

"Ohhh yeah, Mr Nutritionally Sound has chips in his lunch! You hypocrite!"

"Dean, they're not exactly chips..."

"That's exactly what they are, Sam, and they're mine now, so you just eat your chicken brick, and I'll have crunchy snack goodness... kaaaaaaaark... pthaaaaaark"

"I warned you, bro."

"Jesus H. Christ, chaaaaark what the fuck is that?"

"Kale chips."

"Are they even legal? Aren't there international laws against chemical munitions?"

"Dean, stop being such a drama queen! It's food! It's nutritionally sound food! It's not deep fried, it's not full of corn syrup or saturated fat, it's actual real food! So shut up, and eat it."

"Yeah, yeah, right, okay, gimme my chicken brick."

"No way, you wanted mine, you've shoved your hands into it, and you just spat a mouthful of chewed-up kale chips into it. It's yours now."

"Oh, fuck, what the hell is it?"

"It's a chicken salad."

"We're talkin' poached chicken here, aren't we?"

"Yes, we are."

"What's that thing?"

"It's a chick pea. Fibre, protein and micronutrients. And they taste pretty good."

"This snow pea isn't cooked."

"You can eat 'em raw. They're better that way, sweet and crunchy."

"This won't be enough for me, I'll still be hungry afterwards!"

"Well, you can have a snack if you're still hungry later."

"You got snacks?"

"Yeah, Dean, I got snacks."

"Awesome! Hey, I'll start with snacks, then, if Mr Food Nazi doesn't mind."

"Go ahead, then."

"Oh, I will, little brother, I will, just let me... dafuq is this?"

"Snacks, bro. Apples, almonds and yoghurt."

"You are a great big gigantic weirdo freak and my stomach hates you."

"Whatever."

"My tastebuds hate you even more."

"Tell your tastebuds I don't give a fuck."

"You're stressing me out here, you know. Stressing people out can give them heart attacks."

"Dean..."

"I could have a kale-induced heart attack, and die."

"Dean..."

"How will you feel then, huh, knowing that you saladed me to death?"

"Well, I'll be devastated and emotionally wrecked to lose my big brother, I will barely be able to see through the tears as I tenderly convey your lifeless body back to Bobby's, and I will collapse with grief whilst building your pyre, and possibly lapse into a prolonged and inconsolable bereavement afterwards during which I will lie curled on the floor clutching your jacket and calling for my big brother – but on the upside, the only whining I'll have to listen to will be the sound of Jimi as he noses sadly at your vitamin-packed corpse, so there's a silver lining. And every year afterwards, on the anniversary of your death, I'll toast your memory with a bottle of kombucha."

"Bitch."

...oooooOOOOOooooo... ...oooooOOOOOooooo... ...oooooOOOOOooooo... ...oooooOOOOOooooo... ...oooooOOOOOooooo...

Later, as Dean fidgeted and watched some Dr Sexy reruns in order to help him 'recover from the mental trauma of so-called lunch', Sam was still peering at his screen, keys rattling.

"Fuck!" Sam suddenly sat up.

"What?" Dean looked up. "Sam, what's wrong?"

"Wrong?" Sam looked up at his brother, eyes wide. "Nothing's wrong, bro, something's... fuck, I don't believe it... I'm in."

"In? In what?" demanded Dean.

"The system. The database. The intranet. Whatever you want to call it, I'm in." He turned the computer around. "I had a background script running, something I've been messing around with, trying out random likely words, on the off chance that somebody doesn't think very much about their password, because there's nothing to lose, and, well, bingo. I'm in." He paused. "I don't believe it. It worked."

"Attaboy, Sammy," Dean grinned, "Your research fu comes through. We should go and get a drink to celebrate!"

"No," Sam stated, "If you want a cold drink, there's kombucha in the fridge."

"Sam, I can't drink that stuff! I looked it up. It's made by a thing that looks like a giant booger!"

"It's called a scoby," Sam didn't lift his eyes from the screen.

"Well, at the very least, you gotta eat," Dean pointed out. "C'mon, we gotta go out!"

"Dean, I've just managed to get into the database, where I can..."

"We've been cooped up in here all day," Dean complained.

"No we haven't – I went for a run, you went for a whiskey-alpha-lima-kilo with the delta-oscar-golf, we sat outside for lunch..."

"That doesn't count," Dean said promptly.

"Yeah it does."

"It wasn't a proper lunch anyway," Dean griped resentfully.

"Dean, you cannot go out drinking in that body, you know that. We can order something, and..."

"I don't wanna order in!" Dean came perilously close to whining. "I wanna go out!"

Sam looked at his brother. "You can't have cabin fever already," he mused aloud, "I know you have a short attention span, but we're working a job here, and..."

"There's no beer here!" Dean almost pouted.

"Like I said, there's drinks, if your thirsty."

"There's no pool tables here!"

"I really don't think hustling is a good idea until you're yourself again, bro, given what happened last time."

"There's no hot women here!" Dean burst out.

Sam blinked at him. "What?"

"There's no hot women," Dean repeated, "The hot women are all out there, Sam. There are none in here."

"Oh, God," Sam pinched the bridge of his nose, "Dean, you know what's going to happen if you use your usual approach to hot women while you're not exactly yourself: you'll get called a creep, you'll get slapped, you'll get punched, or you'll get arrested, or some permutation or combination of all three."

"But, but..." Dean looked forlorn, "How the hell do I engage in beautiful natural acts if I can't find a hot woman? A man has needs! I need to get laid, Sam!"

"You need to...?" Sam's look of incredulity morphed into a Bitchface #3™ (I Wish You'd Let Your Upstairs Brain Drive More Often). "Jesus, Dean, how old are you, nineteen?"

"This is serious, Sam."

"This is ridiculous, Dean."

"You'll pitch a bitch fit if I use your wash in the shower..."

"For the last time, human beings cannot die from lack of sex!" Sam snapped. "And stay the hell away from my stuff!"

"Ordinary human beings, maybe," Dean griped sullenly, "But the Living Sex God is not an ordinary man!"

"Right now, he is," Sam countered brutally, "Right now, he's Mr Joe Average, he's about as ordinary as it's possible to be, and unfortunately that means that no hot woman is going to be interested in a casual hook-up with you."

"But... I'm still me on the inside," Dean protested, "I'm still me in here, I know how to get the ladies where they want to go, just because I don't look like myself doesn't mean I'm not still myself inside..."

"They don't know that," Sam went on, stung into exasperation-powered frankness by his big brother's fornication fixation. "And they don't care. Getting to know somebody, talking to them, that's when what's on the inside matters. Casual hook-up? Come on, you know exactly how that works. You're looking for obligation-free mutual gratification, no strings attached."

"But how do they know who's able to provide that gratification just by looking?" demanded Dean.

"I have no idea," Sam shot back with a humourless smile. "I'm not a frisky woman looking for a one night stand. But apparently, being physically attractive on the outside is part of the fun of a fling. How do you pick a potential partner? You start with hotness, right?"

"Well, yeah, but..." Dean's voice petered out, and he looked bemused. "But... what about, you know, other guys? Guys who aren't as hot as me? Real me, I mean, not Mr Average me."

"I don't know, Dean!" Sam snapped, "I'm not an expert on casual sex! That's your area!"

"When I'm me, yeah, but right now I'm not!" Dean complained, "What I normally do doesn't work! So what do I do?"

"I – DON'T – KNOW!" Sam yelled, before taking a deep breath and visibly calming himself. "I don't know, Dean. You'd have to ask an average guy about it. Or observe one in the wild. I cannot help you with this." He saw the crestfallen look on his brother's face. "Look, the sooner we figure this out, the sooner you are back to yourself, the sooner you can get back to your beautiful natural acts with hot women, right?"

"Yeah," sighed Dean.

"So, the sooner we do that, the sooner you get laid, okay?"

"Yeah, yeah," Dean grumbled, starting up the other laptop.

"Right. Good. So, hey, connect to this router, the password was easy to guess and they've got really good speed..."

Dean sat, looking glum but determined, as he pecked at the keys. Taking pity on his brother, Sam ordered them pizza (although he vetoed stuffed crust, extra cheese and Meat Lovers).

Pizza seemed to improve Dean's mood, even if it was considerably less nutritionally unsound than what he usually preferred, and by the time the sun set, he was smiling again as he picked up his keys.

"I'm goin' out, Sammy, I may be some time."

"Dean," Sam eyed his brother warily, "Please tell me you're not going out to drink a bar dry."

"Not completely, I promise," his big brother grinned.

"Maybe I should come with you if you're determined to go hustling..."

"Nope," Dean cut him off, "Not tonight. I've been sensible all day, I deserve a little fun tonight. Don't wait up."

Sam heard the Impala start, and pull out of the lot. He exchanged a look with the dog.

"I don't remember anything about sudden cholesterol withdrawal affecting mental capacity, but I'm starting to wonder."

"Rumph," went Jimi, settling onto his blanket for some snoozing.

With a shrug, Sam turned back to his laptop – if the dog wasn't worried, he probably shouldn't be, either.

A short time later, wanting to cross-check something but not wanting to close the window he was looking at, he snagged the laptop Dean had been using. The last search Dean had performed was still on the screen.

"Oh, fuck, no..."

What is Dean up to? Do we want to know? If the answer is yes, send reviews to power little Beau-Ponty along! (If the answer is no, send reviews anyway).