This chapter was fun to write! Action is hard to get right, but I enjoy it very much. Doing a little research to get the quotes right, I was reading the transcript for Red Meat, season 11, episode 17, from Super-wiki. It was a pretty straight-forward, basic description of the action and reporting all the words said. Then at the end, when Sam has shot Corbin it says SAM FRIGGIN WINCHESTER, and it made me laugh, so I totally stole the concept for the title of this chapter.
Do I make the boys larger than life? Yup. Am I sorry? Nope. *grin*
Shazza19: I'm so glad you like these! And I'm grateful for your comments.
CHAPTER 17: The Friggin' Winchester Brothers
It was the most hunters Sam or Dean had ever seen in one place, and both were seriously excited, though at 15 and 19, they were much too self-conscious to show it. Still, every once in a while, they'd catch the other's eye and a small smirk would creep out on both faces. Each time, it was a silent conversation something like, Dude, can you believe we're part of this big hunt? I know, how awesome is this?!
Even cooler, they were hunting a nest of imps, something that was almost never seen in North America. They were sneaky, clever little things, all scrawny arms and legs and sharp teeth. They usually only snatched children, but they could swarm an adult and strip it to the bone in twenty minutes if motivated. Bobby called them supernatural rats. Luckily, they were very susceptible to iron.
Bobby, John, and the boys were helping a group of half a dozen other hunters to take out a whole colony that was terrifying the local town. They would grab a single person or pet and disappear beneath the dunes that peppered the area. They were getting so brazen that eventually, someone was going to catch one on video, so it was all hands on deck.
Combing the dunes under the morning sun – when the imps were least active – wasn't fun or exciting, but the teens' excitement didn't wane. Like all of the hunters, each carried an iron spike and had an iron bullet in his gun.
As the group crested a huge dune, the ground exploded with creatures so black and skinny that they resembled giant, 4-legged spiders with big teeth. They had timed their attack well, coming up in the center of the group so the side of the dune collapsed and only the two hunters who'd been at the back retained their feet. The force of it sent the other hunters flying to the sides, except Sam and Dean, who fell all the way to the bottom of the dune. Dean ended up buried almost to his knees in loose sand, leaning on his palms. Sam ended up completely prone and ten feet farther down, a fine layer of sand covering him.
The hunters who had been thrown out to the sides, including Bobby and John, found themselves in an immediate fight for their lives, in the thick of the swarm. The two above them hustled to get to them as fast as possible, hampered by the new steepness and instability of the slope. At the bottom, Dean struggled to get his legs loose as three imps ran at him.
"Dean!" shouted Sam. Rolling to his back and using that momentum, he threw his spike to Dean, who swung it like a baseball bat, smashing the head of one leaping imp. Pulling his left leg completely free, he kicked the next in the face and ducked under the jump of the third. He got his other leg loose and grabbed his own spike before straightening again.
By this time, Sam had gained his feet. Dean tossed one spike his way, and Sam grabbed it, but allowed it to keep moving to stab into the belly of a rabid attacker. Another tried to latch onto his leg as he pulled his weapon free, so he shook it off and punted it. "Dean!" he yelled again, since it was flying his way. Dean swung like he was teeing off and tore it almost in half.
Though only a few seconds had passed, the imps on the dune had started to stream downhill. It may have been their plan, or simple expedience, or that the eight older hunters were making too big a dent in their ranks, but the teens were quickly surrounded by over half of the teeming mass.
The imps were far nimbler on the sand than the men, who were fighting their way down. Bobby and John were like men possessed. Neither felt fear often, but both knew its bite now.
The brothers were back to back now. They both swung their spikes in a waist-high clockwise arc as if they'd planned it that way, clearing the closest wave. Sam dropped into a crouch and stabbed one ugly face as Dean carried his swing all the way through a circle over his brother's head.
Sam kicked two imps away as he rose to his feet, but the motion unbalanced him and he tipped backwards. But Dean was there, solid, and Sam steadied himself against his brother's shoulder. Dean was still facing the dune and the most dense grouping, and one made it through his guard to latch onto his left shoulder. Sam's spike was already engaged – stuck in the belly of his latest victim, so he pulled his gun with his left hand and fired at Dean's attacker point blank. It only clicked, probably full of sand.
Dean grunted in pain and knocked down an imp coming from his other side, so Sam just dropped his own gun, pulled his brother's gun, and tried again. This time it blew apart with an oddly satisfying splat. Two imps hit Sam in the back, and clung there as he finally got his spike free. He extended the hand holding the gun, and Dean took it, spun and shot them off in quick succession.
The older hunters were finally thinning their attackers and making progress, but the teens were still isolated. It was such close fighting Dean couldn't find a second to use his last three bullets. So instead, he brought the butt down on an imp's head even as he knocked the legs out from another with the spike. In the small part of his brain that wasn't totally caught up in his own fight, he noticed Sam had managed to pull his boot knife.
Dean saw the motion coming and leaned back so Sam could complete a slash to nearly decapitate an especially high-jumping monster. He also backhanded one right into Sam's line-of-sight to get caught on the end of the blade. He didn't even consciously register the spray of black blood across his face and neck, already spiking another through the brain.
Sam made a pained sound as razor sharp teeth closed on his leg just above the right knee and began to gnaw. Dean swung the gun around but two imps grabbed the arm and hung from it, making it hard to maneuver. Gritting his teeth, Dean managed to get the gun around anyway and shoot the effer off Sam's leg.
Sam saw Dean's problem and slashed out with the spike to knock down his two hangers-on, but not before one bit down on Dean's wrist until he dropped the gun. They turned back to back again and Sam kicked two away as his brother bent to pull his own knife.
The second wave reached the boys and they found themselves slashing, punching, stabbing, elbowing everything with no end in sight. Then with a ringing boom one imp disappeared from right in front of Dean's face. Then another boom, another gone. And another. Bobby had reached a good vantage point, and was picking off as many as he could. A minute later, the cavalry arrived in the form of John, closely followed by the other hunters.
It wasn't long until they were surrounded by more than a hundred hideous black corpses. Everyone was worse for the wear, and wearing a fair amount of sticky black blood, but none of the others were anything like Sam and Dean. For a long moment, the two stood, still breathing hard. They had no idea just how badass they looked. Their clothes were drenched in imp blood, with healthy amounts on their faces and even in their hair. More dripped from the weapons they held in each hand.
Sam had plenty of his own blood on his right leg, his pants there a mangled mess, blood running all the way down to his foot. He also had three gashes starting at the corner of his left eye and going back to disappear into his hair. Dean's shoulder and wrist were bleeding freely. He had a line of blood from one corner of his mouth and a split bottom lip. Both boys' bare forearms were covered in scratches and everywhere there wasn't blood, there was sand.
John was breathing hard too as he looked over his boys. Then, satisfied, he nodded his approval. "Good work. You boys alright?"
Both younger Winchesters grinned. "Yes, sir!"
"Holy shit," whispered a hunter named Tristan to the guy next to him. "You ever see anyone fight together like that before?"
"Hell no," admitted Hank, the oldest hunter around. He'd seen it all, killed it all, and wasn't impressed by much. "It was like a friggin' dance."
Bobby half-ran, half-slid past them to grab both boys with an arm around each for a quick second. "Nice fightin' boys," he praised. "I'm glad you're okay, but we should probably look at those bites." He turned away, hiding a moment of emotion. He and John shared a look of relief, John's eyes conveying his thanks the only way he knew how.
Tristan, Hank, and two other hunters who'd missed the worst of the fighting volunteered to stay and torch the bodies so everyone else could head back and treat their injuries. It was a triumphant but tired and sore group that limped back to the vehicles.
Back at the hotel, both boys were given a shot of whiskey, and a shot shot of morphine and antibiotics. Between John and Bobby, both were soon cleaned up and sowed up too. And when they slept, John stayed on the couch instead of going to his own room. He'd fought like a madman and hardly had a scratch, but just for tonight, he needed to be close to the boys. He didn't notice the heartbreak in Bobby's eyes as the latter left, wishing he, too, had a claim to stay.
The gun had been so loud in the small cabin as the werewolf, the one that Dean was supposed to kill (and wouldn't THAT haunt him), grabbed Sam's gun off the floor. Sam's look of surprise and pain burned itself into Dean's retinas even as he killed the shooter. They were supposed to be the unstoppable team, the legendary Winchester brothers. Hell, a few weeks earlier, they'd killed an unkillable monster in Michigan, a monster that even Bobby and Rufus hadn't been able to kill.
So, when Dean heard Sammy's voice on the phone, his knees half-buckled in relief. He was supposed to be the tougher one, but the relief he felt at that moment almost floored him. And when Sam came through – because that's what they did for each other – and was somehow standing at the end of the hall, somehow alive and shooting straight and covering Dean's back, his mind simply blanked. The rightness of it might have flattened him if he weren't already on his back. "Took you long enough," was all he could say.
And when Sam folded like a pup tent, that was okay too, because Dean was there and finding help for him, like he'd dug out the bullet. They had each other's backs. And when Dean heard how Sam had ganked two more werewolves on his own while gravely injured, he felt a surge of pride."Remember that imp hunt in Colorado?" asked Dean as they pulled out of the parking lot."One of my favorite hunts ever," smiled Sam."Really? You limped for weeks!"""Yeah, but even though I was kinda...against hunting then, teeing up on those imps with you, that was fun!" Sam mimed swinging a golf club and Dean laughed carefully, mindful of his broken ribs. "Besides, you loved fighting that Nachzehrer, and you came out of that down a pint or so.""That was one freaky dude," said Dean with relish. "Still. Taking out all those imps was pretty sweet."Old Hank had stopped in briefly to check how the boys were before heading out. Dean had been half asleep, but he remembered the hunter's words.
"I almost pity any monster that comes up against the friggin' Winchester brothers. There probably ain't nuthing' they can't kill."
As he put Grangeville, Idaho in Baby's rearview, Dean thought of what they'd come through. And despite the fact that this last victory wasn't without its cost, he began to feel a glimmer of hope. They'd smashed through everything else that had come at them. Together, they just might take down Amara too.