The entire time he worked (drawing the water, measuring the ingredients, adding them carefully in one by one and mixing as he went), Sam could feel the weight of Dean's eyes on him. It wasn't like he was trying to be subtle about it or anything, leaning against a tiled column with his arms crossed and a guarded expression on his face. He left Sam to it, though. Mostly.
"I don't know about this," Dean stated. There hadn't been anything but the sounds Sam was making himself for so long he almost jumped, even though he definitely hadn't forgotten Dean was there.
"Look, it's totally safe," Sam assured, grabbing the next ingredient. "I've tested it a hundred times. Foolproof curse remover."
"That's quicklime," Dean stated as Sam poured it into the water filling the deep bathtub. "People dissolve bodies in that shit." When Sam looked up at him, he shrugged defensively. "What? They do. You're one with the weird serial killer kink, you oughta know that."
"It's not gonna do any damage in this mixture." After squinting at the water to make sure everything was combining correctly, Sam straightened. "And lime actually preserves corpses, not dissolves them. Common misconception." He'd think Dean would at least be able to infer that, considering they torched corpses rather than just packing them in calcium oxide, but apparently not.
Dean just grunted.
"Like I said. I tested this on a ton of cursed objects, dude. Ran through half our stash. Every single one came out completely unscathed."
"Yeah, but I'm a person." Dean pointed to himself like Sam had somehow overlooked that fact. "And the Mark ain't exactly a curse."
"Yeah, well." Sam sucked in a breath. "Close enough." He was silent for a second, focusing on the bottles and vials and pouches he had piled up on the table he'd dragged over, then elaborated. "Alchemical treatises don't specifically mention the Mark. Or curses, actually. But there's a whole lot about removing impurities and curing diseases, and this…" He gestured to Dean's right arm. "Probably counts as both."
"What's this stuff called, again?"
"Alkahest."
Dean warily approached the tub. Eyeing the contents, he grimaced, then commented, "Shit looks nasty."
Sam dumped in a carefully-measured bottle. "Least I'm trying."
Dean was silent for a couple seconds. Then he replied, "Seems like a lot more trouble than you should be willing to go to's all. Knowing you." He moved both hands behind his back. "Just...being...honest."
Sam felt his jaw tighten, eyes darting up hot to meet Dean's. Dean was already looking back at him, no remorse, stare flat and icy. Something had ballooned instantly in Sam's chest, searing, feeling like an internal stomp to the ribs, and he couldn't even draw in a breath because his air was choked off by everything he suddenly had to say.
A magnesium flash from the tub between them suddenly clipped Sam's train of thought neatly off, probably for the better. Dean jumped, Sam didn't. He'd filled entire notebooks with all the times he'd done this before.
A musky, almost animal smell rose from the ugly solution inside the porcelain. It roiled, then calmed, and faded quickly away to what looked like pure, clean water. Sam gestured to it, raising his eyebrows.
"There you go," he said, and snagged the Guess you're gonna have to find something else to whine about before it could make it past his mouth.
Dean still looked like Sam expected him to take a dip in the runoff from a chemical plant. Rolling his eyes, Sam tugged a sleeve up to his elbow, stuck his arm in, and swished it around. It tingled, kind of a pins-and-needles thing, but it was mild, and he showed Dean the unmarred skin when he pulled it out. "See?"
"Why's it look so pale?" Dean asked suspiciously.
"It doesn't." Grabbing for the roll of paper towels on his work table, Sam wiped himself dry. He glanced at Dean's face, and let out a sigh. "Okay, Dean...listen. Either this works or it doesn't, but we don't know 'til you get in."
There was a tense and irritating moment where Dean just stared down into the tub, gears almost audibly ticking in his head. Sam meticulously gathered up every comment he wanted to make about all much-nastier things Dean had jumped feet-first into over the years with far less hesitation than this (demon deals, questionable alliances, the exact Mark they were trying to get rid of right now), and locked them down with everything else he'd kept buried for months. Then, glancing at him, Dean asked, "So, like, this is gonna have to be a birthday suit affair, right?"
It clicked. The last time either of them had seen the other naked, fully naked and for longer than a second or two, had been...before. And even then, Dean had been distant and guilty for a good chunk of time, much to Sam's confusion and hurt. He got it now. Dean had probably felt weird doing anything remotely X-rated, considering he knew that…
The lightning-ash taste of angelic Grace, forced in and then back out, clawed itself in furrows across Sam's tongue. He swallowed it firmly down.
Eyes flicking briefly to the livid Mark on Dean's arm, Sam had to swallow again.
"I'm just gonna…" Sam jerked an awkward thumb over his shoulder. "Head over...here." He wasn't leaving, just in case, but he could try for as much privacy as possible. Seeing Dean like that felt too intimate, with the barriers between them now.
There were a lot of rooms in the bunker whose purpose wasn't immediately obvious. Or ever obvious, in some cases. As near as Sam could figure out, this one, with its couple of enormous tubs, tiled walls and floor, and ancient liniments and oils, was some kind of physical therapy office. They weren't in here very often. There was something sort of awkward about taking a bath smack dab in the middle of a large room. Sam took the opportunity to study the intricate warding etched into the grout, realizing about a minute in it was somebody insulting a guy named Cuthbert in Sumerian.
He heard Dean's belt hit the floor, then the skff of callused feet as he mounted the tub's steps. After a second's hesitation, he lowered himself in, hissing loudly through his teeth.
"Son of a bitch."
"What's the matter?" Sam spun around instantly, Cuthbert and his apparent cock-sucking abilities forgotten.
"It's freezing," Dean complained, in up to his waist, hands braced on the sides to keep him from going any further. Sam relaxed.
"It's room temperature."
"You couldn't have made it hot?" Dean glanced down. "Getting some major shrinkage here."
Sam cleared his throat, and aimed his eyes firmly away from Dean's nipples, small and dark and plainly erect. "How's it feel besides the temperature?"
"Like water." Very reluctantly, Dean lowered himself by inches. "I don't know, maybe a little gooier or something." He glanced over at Sam. "Should I get the Mark in here? Swish it around?"
"I-I mean, it definitely can't hurt." From here, Sam had an excellent view of Dean's right forearm, and the sigil sitting on the freckled skin in all its keloid glory. It definitely hadn't gone anywhere yet. Watching as Dean dipped his arm in the alkahest, Sam cautiously asked, "How's that?"
"Feels like I got my arm wet." After waving it around for a little while, Dean pulled it back out and examined it. He showed it to Sam. Sam knew its dimensions by heart by now, he really ought to measure it again and compare it to pictures he'd taken over the months, but...he already knew he'd come up with no change at all. "What next, Nicolas Flamel?"
Folding his arms, Sam thought, tongue pushing at the inside of one cheek. He sucked in a small breath. "Try...going all the way under."
"What?" Dean shook his head. "No way."
"Everything else this stuff took the curse off was fully covered," Sam explained, gesturing to the tub.
Dean glared at him, and Sam braced himself for another jab. Instead, Dean just rolled his eyes.
"Fine. Whatever." He took a deep breath, grabbed his nose. "Here goes nothing."
He slipped under the surface. The tub was deep enough to allow that, so long as he bent his knees. It even took him out of Sam's sight. Sam watched him go, expecting him to just dip in and out, but he stayed put for ten seconds. Then twenty.
At thirty, Sam called, "Dean?" No answer, and no movement. He knew it wasn't anywhere near the cap for how long Dean could hold his breath, but when his internal clock hit forty, he headed for the tub. "Dean?"
He ran the last few steps, adrenaline hitting his bloodstream so fast his stomach cramped. "Dean!"
Right before he reached the tub, Dean burst out of it, spraying alkahest everywhere. Sam threw his arms up instinctively to shield himself, getting thoroughly soaked anyway, but they came down just as fast.
Dean was shaking, body a knotted mess with what looked like everything under his skin standing out in harsh relief. Muscles, tendons, ligaments. There was a cracking, crunching noise, and when Sam looked to where he was gripping the sides of the tub, he saw the porcelain splintering under his fingertips. He'd barely processed that before his eyes went to the Mark. Infection-red, practically glowing, swollen black veins whipping off it to strangle Dean's arm from knuckles to shoulder. Sam could literally see the whole mess of it throbbing.
His stomach felt like it'd just been kicked out of him.
Gasping like he was fresh off a ten-mile run, Dean looked at him. His eyes were the kind of vibrant, living green Sam usually only saw on him in full sunlight, and the pupils were reptilian slits. Sam suddenly felt like everything inside him was in free fall.
"...Dean?" he asked cautiously, struggling between two equally-powerful instincts to touch him and to get as far away as possible.
"Food." It came out of Dean in a growl.
"What?"
"Food, Sam, now!" Dean snarled. "I - fuck, I'm starving to death, feels like there's teeth in my goddamn - "
He cut himself off, violently shaking his head as he grimaced. Speaking of teeth, his didn't look quite right, but they weren't bared long enough for Sam to figure out what was wrong. He swallowed and reached for Dean's shoulder.
"Okay. Yeah. All right. But I think we oughta get you - "
"Sam, if there ain't something in my mouth in the next two minutes, one of us is gonna start bleeding," Dean warned, and the threat in his voice was solid enough to club Sam over the head with.
Sam backed away. It felt almost indescribably wrong to be leaving Dean like this, worse than walking away from a severed limb, but he didn't know what else to do. Turning, he sprinted to the kitchen.
He didn't have any idea what to give him. Not like he'd specified. Yanking open the pantry and grabbing at the first things he saw, Sam's mind tore along, ricocheting off one theory after another. The thing was, though, that he really had no idea what could have caused this. There was nothing at all in the theory or lore, and he hadn't done anything wrong, he'd measured out each and every ingredient exactly and added them how he was supposed to.
Hadn't he?
A bag of beef jerky in one hand and a box of crackers in the other, Sam made it halfway back to Dean before he realized he needed something to drink. Water would have been the safest bet, but since he couldn't rule out yet that there wasn't something in the pipes that had kicked off...whatever was happening, Sam snatched a six-pack out of the fridge. No time to separate the bottles.
"Sam!" Dean bellowed once he was within hearing distance, sounding like he'd been yelling it for a while.
"Yep. Here." In the room, Sam's boots skidded on the wet tiles around the tub, and he probably would have snapped his tailbone clean off if Dean hadn't swung a vice-like grip around his wrist. Sam couldn't muster a thank-you, probably wouldn't have even if it hadn't been immediately obvious Dean just wanted to grab the jerky from him. His touch had all the savage, impersonal cruelty as it did when the Mark was screaming in his blood.
With the way it looked right now, maybe it was.
Sam watched Dean rip open the pack of jerky with his teeth, and he finally got a good look at them. His breath snagged hard in his chest. Predator-sharp, canines shearing effortlessly through the plastic. They hadn't dropped through his gums, hadn't pushed out the ones he had, they'd just...changed.
What did that? Werewolves? Werewolves didn't have snake eyes, and Sam was pretty sure they didn't come from alkahest.
He fumbled open the box of crackers as Dean charged through the beef jerky, then uncapped a bottle of beer on the edge of the tub, since it wasn't like he cared about chipping the tile anymore. Dean grabbed the bottle from him, chugged the entire thing without once coming up for air. He dropped the empty, belching, and Sam barely caught it before it could shatter. When he looked up, Dean was shaking the remains of the jerky into his mouth, and then Sam had to grab the silica packet before that wound up in his stomach.
Dean growled at him. Honest to god growled, like an animal, like Sam couldn't remember him doing since the dog spell a year or two back. Then he seemed to realize what Sam had in his hand, and regret flickered in his eyes. He didn't apologize, though. Just took the box of crackers and bottle of beer that Sam wordlessly held out to him.
"Gonna need more," he grunted through a mouthful of carbs.
Sam shook his head. "We gotta get you outta this stuff."
"Eat first."
Mouth working, Sam turned away and crossed to one of the curtains that sectioned off the room, pulling it back. There was another tub here, and he wasted a couple seconds antsily shifting from one foot to the other as he debated with himself over what to do. Occam's razer: it was almost definitely the alkahest, not the water, and even if it was, what harm could putting Dean in more of it do now?
He turned both taps on full blast, then turned and hurried back to the kitchen. He didn't know if feeding this sudden, alien hunger of Dean's was a good idea or a bad one, but if nothing else, maybe it would at least keep him occupied while Sam traced this back to its roots and figured out how to fix it.
Sam was a little more methodical this time around, with beer and crackers to tide Dean over. Greens were filling, so he emptied the crisper drawer only he ever seemed to use. Dean wouldn't eat all of them, he'd get sick, but if he did, what should he give him after? Meat? They had a chicken, ground hamburger, hot dogs… With a very bad feeling, Sam preheated the oven, and slid the chicken in. Just in case.
It didn't occur to him until then to pray to Castiel. He didn't have wings anymore, but he could start making his way back here from the case he was working, at least. And he probably wouldn't be able to help out much in angelic ways, but it only felt right for him to be here, for him to know. Sam tried to give him a quick rundown of the situation, unsure exactly how much would go through because he'd never been completely clear on exactly how prayers worked and what angels could hear, how come he'd never done any - ?
He did his best to scrape every stupid, weird little thought out of his head and focus on Dean. Looked like Sam had made it back at the right time, considering he was shaking the very last drops of beer into his mouth as Sam entered the room, empty box of crackers on the floor amid a lot of broken glass. Sam sidestepped it, held out a bag of baby carrots he'd pulled open.
"Are you kidding me?" Dean complained, even as he took them and shoved a handful into his mouth. Past those teeth that didn't look like they were made for vegetables.
"You're eating it," Sam pointed out before he could stop himself.
"Can't help it."
"Sorry." A bleak joke about always trying to get Dean to eat more veggies came to mind. Sam didn't make it. "All I brought back this time. C'mon, we gotta get you outta this crap, get you rinsed off."
The other tub was still filling as Sam, hands on Dean's bare skin because he was pretty sure they were past caring about that kind of thing, guided him up and out of the alkahest. He was boiling hot, feverish. Sam almost expected to see the slick solution on his skin steaming off him. Keeping him away from the glass, he brought him over to the second tub, helped him climb in as he kept eating. At least the water was warm this time.
Sam turned off the taps, watching the alkahest float off Dean in oily globs on the surface of the water. His stomach was looking pretty puffy, he noticed, and he didn't think it was just a refractive effect.
"You...feeling okay?" Sam asked tentatively, aware of what a stupid question it was.
"No," Dean grunted back, taking the bag of kale Sam offered him next with a grimace.
"How do you feel?"
"Bad." Dean crunched into the kale with an audible gag, and Sam winced. "Hungry."
"Still?" Sam crouched next to the tub, arms folded on the edge as he watched Dean eat. "Does your stomach hurt? D'you feel sick?"
In answer, Dean tore open a bag of baby radishes Sam had set within his reach. Sam got the message loud and clear: if he was talking, he wasn't eating.
"I'm sorry," Sam said quietly. Dean's eyes flicked to him, not overbright anymore, but still with those same slit pupils. Seeing his own fear and confusion reflected, Sam's first instinct was to reach out and put a hand on Dean's shoulder, but he didn't know if touching him would make things better or worse.
He wound up just piling the rest of the vegetables he'd brought on the edge of the tub and going back to the kitchen. He didn't want to, but he didn't know what else to do as he filled his arms with bags of chips, boxes of Twinkies, packages of Oreos. Dean had done the shopping last. He left the hot dogs from the fridge to boil in a pot on the stove. If (fingers crossed) Dean finally wound up sated before they were ready, they could just stick them in the fridge. God knew Sam wasn't eating them.
He returned to Dean finishing off an entire bunch of romaine. Everything else was gone. Unnerved by the speed, Sam opened a bag of chips for him, and Dean sighed in apparent relief at finally getting to eat something that wasn't green and leafy.
As he gorged, Sam brought over the roll of paper towels and dipped a handful in the tub, wiping off his shoulders, back, and chest. Getting the alkahest off him really didn't seem to be doing anything, but leaving it on him definitely wouldn't help. He would've liked him to dunk again, or get him in the shower, but he knew better than that. Couldn't exactly take a bag of barbecue chips underwater with you.
At least the Mark was starting to look better. Sam thought, at least. Again, he should have taken a picture of it, but the furious veins were slowly recessing, the violent color fading back down into its normal shade.
Dean's back was aggressively hunched, shoulder blades and the knobs of his spine sticking out as Sam ran the paper towels over each one. Scars were clear and obvious on his tight skin. There were so many. So many newer ones Sam didn't remember, which meant he'd picked them up since...yeah. Which meant he'd gotten hurt bad enough to leave one and hadn't told Sam.
He was still eating like an animal, didn't seem to have slowed down at all. Just shoveling and pouring in massive handfuls, looking like he was swallowing whole chunks with minimal chewing. This close to him, Sam could hear the gurgling of his stomach and, more importantly, the growling. Even though when he looked at it under the water, it was more swollen than the last time they'd hit a buffet.
Dean paused for breath, grabbed a can of soda. Sam moved to open it for him, but he got it on his own. Though he did rip the tab clean off in the process.
"Don't gotta - " He spoke between gulps from the can, and belches. " - bathe me like that."
Sam could have pointed out how often Dean had done it for him, when they were younger. Even once he was definitely old enough to do it on his own. But he said, "You're covered in this stuff. After what it did to you, I wanna get as much off you as I can."
This was probably the highest level of intimacy they'd hit since everything had gone down, Sam realized. Dean naked, him with his hands all over him. Of course, anything that might've built between them had been smothered in the cradle by the horror and the stress. Dean attempting to cram four Twinkies into his mouth at once didn't help, either.
Eventually, Sam had Dean about as clean as he was going to get him without dumping water over his head. Grabbing an ancient-looking but still very functional towel off a shelf on the wall, Sam guided Dean to his feet with a hand on his bicep. He got him out of the tub, wrapped the towel around him and then, because he didn't seem inclined to stop stuffing his face two-handed long enough to dry himself off, Sam took care of that.
He picked up Dean's clothes where he'd left them on the floor, then paused, looking down at the belted jeans and then over at Dean. He'd never had a six-pack, and he'd gotten a little more soft in recent years, but the Mark seemed to have been wearing him leaner. With the way his belly was bowing out now though, denim didn't seem like a great idea.
Sam tried not to look too hard at Dean's stomach, or pay too much attention to how he was eating. With the adrenaline wearing off, too much time passing for Sam to sustain the same level of panic...other things were surfacing.
He had Dean sit down on the edge of the tub, towel across his lap. "Hey." He waited until Dean looked at him. The eyes sent sickness through him all over again. "I'm gonna go grab a couple things. You gonna be all right?"
Dean grunted. Sam swallowed. "Right. Yeah. Okay."
In the kitchen, the hot dogs were close to boiling over. Sam turned the burner off, fished them out onto a plate, then rotated the chicken in the oven. He piled candy bars and beer and shredded cheese next to the hot dogs, then left them to cool as he went to grab clothes for Dean. Moving at a jog, Sam thought about his stomach. All that food. He was aching with worry, self-loathing. He was. Nothing else.
He needed his notes, because he had to figure out where he'd fucked this up, because he had to have. But first, he needed to take care of Dean.
Castiel called Sam when he was on his way back to Dean. It took some serious juggling to get his phone out of his pocket, and he nearly lost a couple hot dogs, but he managed it.
"Sam," Castiel said urgently. "What happened?"
Sam tried to give him as brief a rundown as possible. Castiel was silent for so long Sam was starting to think the call had dropped when he stated, "I'm on my way. I don't know what would have happened, alchemy isn't my area of expertise by a long shot, but...Sam. We're going to figure this out, all right?"
"Uh huh." Sam nudged the door open with his back, phone held between his shoulder and ear.
"I'll be there soon. But for now, I wouldn't let Dean eat any more than he has already," Castiel advised. "Just in case."
"Uh...yeah." Stomach even more bloated than when Sam had left, Dean was shaking Oreo crumbs out of the package and into his mouth. "I don't think that's really an option."
"That Cas?" Dean asked as Sam handed the hot dogs over to him. He held the platter with both hands and grabbed one with his teeth.
"Yep." Sam laid out the other food, dropped the clothes for now. There were empty wrappers floating in the tub he hadn't drained yet, about a hundred more around Dean's feet.
"Tell him to get pizza on the way home," Dean said through a full mouth. "And burgers."
Sam hesitated, then turned his back on Dean, clearing his throat. "Cas, can you - ?"
"I heard." Castiel cut him off. "Are you sure that's a good idea?"
Sam glanced over his shoulder then, even though Castiel couldn't see it, helplessly shook his head. He threw his free hand wide.
"I-I mean, I don't know, Cas. He's bloated, he's, like, super full, but he's not sick, doesn't look like he's in any pain…"
"Definitely hurts," Dean grunted behind him. "Just starving. Gotta keep - " A belch. " - eating."
"W-well, the skin on his stomach's not red." It was soft and damp, inviting where it was stretched across the bulk of Dean's belly. Sam looked firmly away. "This isn't an eat-yourself-to-death curse, or anything like it. Not a conventional one, at least. The way he's filling up, I don't think it's an Erysichthon situation, either."
Castiel sighed. "Well, until we know more, I suppose there's no harm in trying to make him comfortable. But...please, be careful, Sam."
"Don't worry." Sam looked at Dean again, and Dean looked back, weary. "We will."
By the time Castiel made it back to the bunker, Dean had finished the hot dogs. And the chicken, which had finished cooking, the ground beef Sam had fried for him, all their beer, all their other alcohol (none of which appeared to affect him like it should), the rest of Sam's fruits and vegetables, eggs, bacon, a loaf of bread…
The remainder of what they had was scattered around him on the tiles, where he was sitting on the floor against the wall. Sam had brought in a pillow from his bedroom, done his best to make him comfortable even though Dean really couldn't seem to care less.
His belly was enormous, bloated out to an obscene size. Sam had given up on not staring at it. Belly button stretched flat, it spilled out of the T-shirt and plaid pajama pants Sam had helped him into a few hours prior, resting in his lap. He was eating much more slowly now, languid, eyes a little glazed. They were back to normal, a dark olive in the bunker's lighting with round, human pupils, and so were his teeth. Not that Sam could inspect the latter all that closely with them in action like they were.
With the way Dean kept grunting and palming at his stomach, it was obviously bothering him, and Sam didn't know how to help him. He'd downed an entire bottle of Pepto earlier and it, kind of like the booze, hadn't had a huge effect. There were other options, but Sam felt weird about touching him more than he had already. Especially with the...well. Extenuating circumstances.
Sitting across from him, back up against one of the tubs and forearms resting on his bent knees, Sam watched Dean dig out spoonful after spoonful of Rocky Road from a carton. He was moving at a steady, almost methodical pace, and when the carton was empty, he dropped it into the space Sam had designated for his wrappers and reached for a platter of cheese slices. Good thing he wasn't lactose intolerant.
A door slammed, bringing both of their heads up. Distantly, Castiel called, "Dean? Sam?"
Sam pulled himself to his feet, wincing at the slight stiffness from being on the floor so long, and after the usual hesitation over leaving Dean alone, went to meet Castiel. And, as it turned out, help him carry in a pizza, a bag of McDonald's, and a large soda.
The first thing Castiel said to Sam was, "How's he doing?"
"Uh...better?"
He took Castiel straight to Dean, who looked up at them, eyed what Castiel had brought, and complained, "You couldn't have brought more?"
Castiel said nothing. A second later, Dean sighed around a mouthful of cheese, shaking his head. "It's fine, man, I'm just...having a crappy day. Sorry."
"I can see that." Castiel hesitantly offered the pizza to Dean, who took it and flipped the box open. "Sam was able to fill me in on the basics over the phone."
"Yeah?" Dean's eyes settled on Sam. "He tell you this whole thing was his fault?"
Glancing at Sam before he answered, Castiel confirmed, "He was...very forthcoming about that fact, yes."
"So can you like - feel him out?" Sam asked Castiel, gesturing to Dean. He wasn't really sure what state his powers were in currently, what he could and couldn't do. "Figure out what's going on?"
"I can try," Castiel answered. Sam didn't like how doubtful he sounded.
Closing the distance between himself and Dean with a couple steps, Castiel crouched, then put a hand on Dean's belly. Sam swallowed. Castiel closed his eyes, an expression of intense concentration on his face. As he ate, Dean watched him. After a couple seconds, a stuttering glow started up behind Castiel's eyelids, and the hand he had on Dean. Sam folded his arms tightly over his chest as he watched Castiel's hand sink into Dean's gut up to the elbow. Dean squirmed, but that just could have been from how full he was.
It was almost a minute later Castiel pulled his hand out and straightened up, glow abruptly vanishing as he exhaled loudly.
"There's no physical damage," he told Sam and Dean. "I don't think there will be."
"Well, thank god for that." Dean burped, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand before reaching for the soda Castiel had brought.
"So why's he a bottomless pit all of a sudden?" Sam demanded. "I mean, more than he normally is." He immediately shot a guilty glance at Dean. "Sorry."
Dean just shrugged in a "fair's fair" kind of way, taking another bite of pizza. Chewing, he asked Castiel, "Think you can flip all my switches back before I wind up looking like the Michelin man?"
Castiel hesitated, then put a hand on Sam's arm.
"I need help unloading my gear," he told him. "Some of it is...a biohazard in motion."
"Active," Sam automatically corrected as they left the room. From the way Dean eyed them, he knew exactly what they were doing, but didn't bother trying to stop them.
Castiel took Sam a good way towards the garage, well out of Dean's earshot. Looking at him, he quietly stated, "There have been some physical changes."
"What kind?" Sam asked immediately. "H-his eyes and his teeth went back to normal, did you see that?"
Castiel pressed his mouth into a thin line. "His organs are a lot more elastic now. Skin too, if I had to guess. And if it wasn't already obvious. Metabolism's a bit faster, but not enough to account for the fact I don't think he's going to be producing or expelling waste anymore."
Sam stared at him. If he'd heard, Dean probably would have been proud of him for demanding, "Are you shitting me?"
"I am not shitting you," Castiel confirmed. "There's something very odd going on with. Well. Everything in him, if I'm being honest. I couldn't tell you what it is, though."
It took a lot for Sam to force out the next question. "...is he still human?"
Castiel hesitated for a beat too long before answering. "I don't know, Sam. I'm not sure I'm qualified to measure that. After all, you of all people should know 'human' is more of a spectrum than a solid category."
That didn't really make Sam feel all that much better, but he didn't say so. "So what's going on? What, I-I mean, d'you have any idea what could've caused this? What I did? Can you reverse it?" His voice might have gotten a little more demanding at the end than he'd intended for it to.
"I don't know," Castiel said wearily, "but I think we can safely say it had something to do with the ritual you performed."
"It wasn't...whatever. Can you fix him or not?"
"No." It was firm, definitive. "I can't. Mostly because I don't know what's wrong with him." It felt like Sam's lungs crumpled inside his chest. "But I agree with your earlier decision: after examining Dean, I don't think it's a good idea not to feed him."
"Then…" Sam glanced through the doorway. Dean, hair sticking up in greasy tufts from alkahest residue, was methodically working his way through a burger. Sam felt his scalp prickle as he continued. "I guess we should feed him."
Between the two of them, they got Dean up and moved to his room. It was an ordeal, filled with a lot of grunting and slow waddling, but they couldn't just leave him on the floor forever. Settled comfortably on his bed, Dean requested more fast food. Tacos, this time. Sam suggested something a little healthier (hell, he would have let Subway pass at this point), but at Dean's wholehearted bitching and Castiel's assurance it wouldn't have any negative effect on his cholesterol, Sam gave in. He felt too guilty about the whole situation to push any harder.
Castiel went back out, Sam stayed with Dean, sitting in his room with him. As soon as he got back with food, both Taco Bell and fresh groceries, he went straight to the library and hit the books. The need to research was a physical pain for Sam at this point, uncut diamonds in his chest, but he couldn't leave Dean alone and there was no way he'd be able to concentrate with the sounds of his eating in the background. It was even louder than normal. He was just going to have to wait until he fell asleep so, for now, with the panic having exhausted itself, they watched TV, and didn't talk about what was going on.
The weirdest thing about it all was that hanging out here together, while Dean stuffed himself with junk food and Sam sat closer to him than he'd gotten in months and some stupid and mindless horror movie they could make easy fun of played on the screen, felt...normal. Like a night from before the truth about Gadreel had come out. Before Dean had let Gadreel ooze into Sam. Before the Trials even, because their life was just one cascading disaster after another, and Sam honestly couldn't remember when they'd last been able to just sit with each other and let things be quiet. Easy. Maybe even some distant shade of almost-good.
There was just the near-literal elephant in the room: Dean's unnaturally distended belly. Not growing any further but definitely not shrinking, gurgling as he kept steadily eating, forcing belch after belch out of him practically every five minutes.
"Any way you could stop that?" Sam half-snapped, wishing he hadn't said it as soon as it was out.
"Not really." Dean burped yet again.
"Right." Sam sucked in a breath. "Sorry."
The skin on Dean's stomach wasn't quite shiny, but it was tight. He shifted a lot, touched it a lot, groaned a lot, but kept eating. Like he couldn't stop. Obviously, he couldn't. If he could, he would have done it a long time ago.
Sam thought about rubbing it for him, but didn't trust himself to get anywhere near him.
Even with the obvious discomfort, Dean was in a shockingly good mood. A better one than he'd been since he came home with the Mark of Cain raised ugly on his arm, because with that thing pumping poison into his brain, even his laugh seemed tinged with something unhinged and feral that sent needles down Sam's spine. Speaking of the Mark, Sam found himself looking at it to avoid looking at his stomach. It was about as surprising as how good everything was going, outside of what was wrong with Dean.
The black veins were gone. It had flattened, looking more like a healing scar than an angry, fresh burn, and the color was more pink now, rather than the red of infected meat rotting on living bone. But Sam didn't let himself hope. After all, what was worse, the Mark or this?
Around ten, sitting on Dean's bed, Sam pulled his eyes off the TV and asked him, "Ready to turn in?" Dean had been churning out jaw-cracking yawns for the past twenty minutes, a food coma coming on fast.
Dean looked at him in surprise. "We gotta figure this out." He gestured to himself, apparently ignoring the fact they'd spent the evening doing essentially nothing.
"Cas and I'll take care of it," Sam assured. "You need to try and sleep off some of...this." He glanced at Dean's belly. "You gonna try and tell me you aren't tired?"
Dean held out for a little while longer, wavering, before letting out a huge sigh, followed by a hiccup.
"Fine." He drained the rest of the beer he'd been gulping from, and groped a candy bar off the nightstand. "But wake me up soon as I get in my three or four hours, right? Hell, I probably only need two, with all the damn sugar in me right now. Then I can help you guys out."
"Right," Sam agreed with zero intention of doing that. With roughly twenty thousand undigested calories in his stomach, maybe Dean would get a good night's sleep for the first time in his life. "Sure."
A couple seconds passed, Dean still working on the chocolate. "So, you about good to wrap it up, or…"
"I'm trying," Dean grunted, and reached for a bag of chips.
After he barely managed to brush his teeth between bites of a fudgesicle, they were forced to confront an issue Sam admittedly hadn't thought of: Dean wasn't going to be able to stop eating long enough to sleep. And for all his other awful habits he'd honed into art forms over the years, sleep-eating wasn't exactly in his repertoire. With Dean's eyelids looking heavier by the second, Sam went and got Castiel to help them brainstorm.
The obvious solution was to just fix this before Dean had to sleep. Sam wasn't convinced that was possible.
"Does it need to be solid food?" Castiel ventured as Sam paced agitatedly back and forth in Dean's room. "Or is liquid okay?"
Sam stopped, glancing over at Dean, who'd been lazily sucking down beers for the past half hour. Setting the half-empty bottle aside, Dean wiped at his mouth, stifled a burp.
"Got an idea," he said. "Help me up."
After getting Dean and his overstuffed gut down to the room he used as a workshop (it had grown since they'd taken him to his room; he'd had to support it with both hands as he walked), Sam helped him jerry-rig something halfway between an IV and a giant hamster bottle. Gravity-fed, but sucking on the tube ought to work, too. With the way he was feeling right now, Dean was confident he could manage that in his sleep, so long as it stayed in his mouth.
"What're you gonna put in it?" Sam asked, looking at the enormous reservoir. Dean had hooked six empty gallon water jugs together.
"I'm thinking Coke," Dean answered almost breezily. Sam said nothing. At least it wasn't beer.
And, hopefully. This wouldn't last too long.
Sam and Castiel both stayed in Dean's room as he fell asleep, watching him. He was out way faster than Sam had expected, deep under with his blankets pulled haphazardly over the swell of his stomach. Once it was obvious that the soda thing was working and he wasn't going to choke or drown in his sleep, Castiel took a deep breath and guided Sam just past the doorway, then turned to him.
"What's our next step?" he asked him.
Sam sucked his teeth. He knew what he wanted to do. Lay down next to Dean, chest against his back, protective arm over his belly. Or kneel next to the bed, both hands on it, kneading gently through the night so he wouldn't be woken by the raging stomachache Sam couldn't believe hadn't hit him yet. Considering both of those were so far off the table they weren't even in the house, he at least wanted to stay in here with him, but knew he couldn't.
"Can you watch him?" he asked Castiel. "I'll be back in a little while."
"Sam, you should rest, too," Castiel said with obvious concern. "You're not going to be able to do anything for Dean if you drop dead of exhaustion."
"It won't take all that long," Sam assured.
Castiel just studied him for a few seconds, then slowly began, "You know I'm empathic, to a certain degree. And I'm afraid I don't...fully understand the way you're feeling right now."
Sam's heart free-fell to somewhere around his knees.
"This guilt," Castiel continued. "Even for you, even for the fact you obviously feel this was your fault despite the extensive testing you did before trying this on Dean, even for the way you spoke to him earlier while you were upset. It seems extreme. Out of control."
Sam took a breath he hadn't realized he needed, ashamed at the relief flooding him. "I feel bad."
Once again, silence from Castiel for a little bit, before he said tentatively, "You know, I never asked what happened between you two. After we pulled Gadreel out of you and your body was fully your own again. Why you stopped touching each other, started sleeping in separate beds again, why your relationship effectively ended. I just didn't feel it was my place."
It's not. Sam clenched his teeth to keep himself from saying it.
"But now I'm going to ask." Castiel's voice was firm. "We're a family. And if we should have learned anything from practically all the time we've spent together, it's that we shouldn't keep secrets from each other."
Folding his arms across his chest, Sam stared at Dean, nursing at the soda tube in his mouth. The steady rise and fall of his chest. He usually never would have slept so deeply, with a whole conversation happening right outside his room. Even a quiet one. Finally, Sam let out a breath through his nose, and coughed softly.
"I didn't understand why he was pulling away from me," he started. "Back when I was recovering from the Trials, when I had...you know. I-it. I felt like I needed him then, because I was still sick. I'd confessed some stuff to him when he talked me out of finishing the last one, and I thought that he'd taken that to heart and realized I was right. Or the 'incest' thing had gotten to him. Or he'd finally figured out I was a-a freak, all along, and he'd always been too good for me. Or all of the above." He tipped his head back, blinking at the ceiling. "Makes sense that when Gadreel put me under, he stuck me with a Dean who couldn't seem to keep his hands off me. He wanted me happy and quiet."
Castiel didn't say anything, so Sam continued after a second.
"After everything went down, I was...upset. I was possessed, I was used, I felt dirty and violated and the worst part of all of it was that Dean put the whole thing together. And he didn't even seem to get it! I don't think he even apologized, he just said I would've done the same thing, so I told him…" Sam sighed heavily. "I told him I wouldn't have."
"Obviously, you were lying," Castiel said after a second, tone suggesting he wasn't entirely sure whether or not Sam was aware of that.
"Obviously!" Sam threw his hands up. "Dean should've known that. I know he knew it. He didn't come to bed with me that night, which was fine, I didn't want him to. I didn't want him to for a while after that. He...he never came back, though. Not even when I was ready. When I thought he would've been ready. And then." Sam swallowed. "He came home with the Mark on his arm."
There was a long silence where Castiel didn't do anything but look at Sam. Sam looked back, not sure what he was going to say but reasonably sure that he wasn't going to like it. Turned out he was right.
"Just because he knew you were lying doesn't mean he wasn't hurt by it."
"Yeah, thanks, Cas, I'd figured that one out," Sam snapped back, then dragged a hand through hair gone greasy with stress and exertion. He had to force out the, "Sorry."
Castiel just nodded, like he'd been expecting both the outburst and the apology. After a second, Sam said, quietly, "I know it's both our faults. How things are between us. But I think he blames me, and maybe that's not him, maybe it's just the Mark. But for this to happen when it's already so bad - " Sam threw a hand in Dean's direction. "For it to have been me who did it, on purpose or not, it feels. Like it's me fucking up again. Letting him down."
Castiel just stood there until eventually, he started nodding again. Then he took a deep breath and said, "I'll watch him until you're finished with your research. But I think it would make both of you feel better if you were here when he eventually wakes up."
Sam wasn't sure about that, but he could recognize when somebody was trying to do him a favor. He nodded jerkily. "Thanks, Cas."
In the bunker's dungeon, with holy water and the demon blade on a nearby table, Sam made sure the devil's trap and all the other sigils were in working order. The chair in the center still functioned as a first line of defense; he'd checked. He laid out acacia, oil of Abramelin, other ingredients. Once they and his blood were combined in a bowl, he lit a match, dropped it in, and waited.
When Crowley arrived, he looked surprised, but not for long. With a deep sigh, he settled into the chair, crossing one leg over the other. Steepling his fingers, he raised an eyebrow.
"You know, if you wanted to arrange a little soiree, Moose, all you had to do was call," he said mildly. "Not that I can promise anything, of course. Schedule's a little full these days. You know how it is. Newly-reinstated ruler of Hell. Lots of demands on my time."
"You're going to help me with something," Sam answered tensely.
"Oh, am I?" Crowley pulled his mouth into an exaggerated pout. "Tell me, Sam, why do you only call on me when you need something? Do you have any idea how that makes me feel?"
"Something's wrong with Dean."
Crowley paused, squinting. Incredulously, he asked, "I'm sorry, did - did you just figure that out? Because, I mean, clearly."
Sam breathed deeply.
"Between the comorbid Oedipus and Electra complexes, the mountains of unresolved and largely self-inflicted trauma, the not-so-latent homosexuality, the overcompensation for said, the long and torrid history of liaisons with women who look just like his brother all culminating in finally getting to bend over that brother, the alcoholism, the runaway sadism, the Mar - "
"I tried something to get rid of it," Sam cut in frustratedly. He'd thought he'd let Crowley wear himself out, but that obviously wasn't going to happen. "It backfired. And you're gonna help me fix it."
"Again." Crowley sat back. "Am I? Now, why would I do that, when I so enjoy seeing all the different shades you two paint yourself into corners with?"
"Because you're the reason Dean's got that fucking thing on his arm in the first place," Sam responded through gritted teeth, "and you owe us about a million times over besides that." Crowley didn't seem particularly swayed. "And if you don't, I'm going to peel you open and eye-drop holy water into you until you change your mind."
That had his eyes widening. After a beat of silence, Crowley commented, "My. That's rather...dark for you Moose, isn't it? More Squirrel's forte." When Sam didn't say anything, Crowley cleared his throat. "Right. I see. Need to get creative with the steam-blowing, what with your little Flowers in the Attic thing being on the fritz and all. What makes you think I can clean up your mess?"
"It was...magic-adjacent."
"Mm-hm. Mm-hm." Crowely nodded. "And you didn't ring the ginger whore because…?"
"Rowena's in the wind." Sam smiled tightly. "Lucky you."
"Well, then. Much as I doubt you've got the guts, pun very much included, to actually anoint my insides, we might as well get this over with." Crowley settled into the chair. "What, pray tell, did you fuck up in this latest iteration of your endless quest to save each other from yourselves?"
"Nothing was working," Sam started tightly. "I started looking into protosciences."
"Alchemy?" Crowley guessed. When Sam didn't respond, he nodded in a self-satisfied way. "Go on."
"I modified an alkahest recipe." Sam took a deep breath. "I really thought it'd work to strip off the Mark, everything that comes with it. And it's not like I didn't test it."
"Ah, yes," Crowley agreed, "on the large supply of Hell-touched, Mark-toting Michael Swords available to you." Sam reached for the bottle of holy water he'd set up nearby, and Crowley hastily added, "Sorry, sorry. What happened?"
"He can't stop eating." Sam shook his head. "Literally can't, not even to sleep. It's not making him sick, not...popping him…"
Crowley appeared to take that in, one hand held to his mouth in thought, the other tapping at the arm of the chair. "What did his eyes look like? When the change occurred."
"Uh." Sam blinked, caught off-guard by the question. "Like a snake's, kinda?"
"And the teeth?"
"Sort of the same. Look, I don't know, they were kind of moving a lot, with all the chewing."
Crowley closed his eyes for a second. When he opened them, he slowly started to clap, smirking.
"Well, congratulations, Sam. You've made yourself an ouroboros." The lack of any real reaction must have needled him, because he groaned. "Oh, don't tell me you don't know what that is. You were faffing around with alchemy and you're not even familiar with the main icon? No wonder you screwed the pooch."
"I know what it is," Sam said, an edge to his voice, "but that doesn't make any sense. It's a snake eating its tail, or a dragon, i-it's just a symbol. Life, death, rebirth, endless cycle."
"Like most symbols, this one is symbolic," Crowley began with sarcastic patience. "Meaning it doesn't have to be a literal dragon eating its literal tail. Really, you ought to know this after...what, thirty years of hunting? After all, you don't see me prancing about on cloven hooves, jabbing people with a pitchfork. Do you?" He gestured. "An ouroboros is endless consumption. Constant creation, the eternal glutton. It's...chaotic, primal, infinity contained in one vessel, the circle of life itself, connection, do you seriously not - ?"
"Okay, whatever," Sam said impatiently. "Dean's an ouroboros, I turned him into some kind o-of alchemy snake monster, just my fucking luck. What do I do now?"
Crowley scoffed. "Spoilt brat. You get all the best toys, and you don't even appreciate them. Typical." This time, Sam picked up the demon knife. Crowley leaned forward. "You create some extremely potent alchemy or magic, is what you do. You've got an ouroboros at your disposal. Do you have any idea how difficult it is to find or breed these things, let alone make one by bloody accident? Do you know how expensive they are? Everything is useful. Everything that comes off the body can be considered the elixir of life in its raw form. You can literally live off one of these things. Hair, blood, tears...ought to be plenty of those last two, considering this is a Winchester we're talking about here - "
Sam cut him off again. "How do I fix it?"
"...all right." A muscle in Crowley's jaw twitched. "If it weren't so personally offensive to me that you'd want to 'fix' this, I'd laugh at you thinking you can reverse what you did." He smiled then. "You of all people ought to know that there are some things that simply can't be undone, Sam. Teacups don't fly back together. Blood doesn't come out of silk."
Sam clenched his own jaw, so hard the pulp beneath his fillings ached. "What about you? Can you do something?" Crowley opened his mouth, and Sam cut him off. "I know how Hell works. I know what being King again does for you, all kinds of crazy powerful mojo comes with it. We put you back there, Dean killed Abaddon. You owe us."
After studying Sam intensely for a long moment, Crowley admitted, "No. I can't do anything. Much as I would dearly love to, considering the kind of contract I could lock you both into with this kind of favor, I can't undo this. I don't think anyone short of God Himself could, and He's...well. 'Absent parent' hardly seems to do it justice."
Something cold and hollow and massive yawned where Sam's stomach had been until a couple seconds ago. "Then what am I supposed to do now?"
"Keep Dean fed. Obviously."
"What happens if I don't?"
"Really?" Crowley spread his hands. "Use that big brain once in a while, would you, Sam? The ouroboros is a snake eating its own tail. What do you think will happen if you don't provide him with enough food?"
It clicked, and Sam felt his face change before he could stop it.
"Exactly," Crowley confirmed. "You'd better keep Dean in burgers and beer unless you want him quite literally eating himself to death. Just imagine the mess that would make."
Sam squeezed the knife in his hand so hard it shook, a sick ache feathering up the tendons. He was pulsing with rage, trembling with it, and he knew himself well enough at this point in his life to be aware most of it wasn't directed at Crowley. Much as he wanted it to be.
"What now, then?" Crowley asked pleasantly, as the silence stretched out. "Gonna kill me? Torture me? You did promise, after all. Like I said earlier, that's usually Dean's role, but seeing as he's not going to be doing anything outside of stuffing his face and growing his ass for the next few...eternities, you're going to have to fill in." He lifted his chin, apparently waiting for a response. When he didn't get one, he suggested, "Christ. Look on the bright side, would you?"
"What bright side," Sam gritted out, "could there possibly be here?"
"Your goal was to scrape the Mark of Cain off your brother," Crowley pointed out. "Out on a limb, I'm guessing you didn't manage that. But you've come damn close. The Mark's destruction, an ouroboros is creation. They won't cancel each other out, per se, because one's not necessarily stronger than the other, but there's a definite interaction there. A dilution, I suppose you could say."
"What?" Sam shook his head.
"Dean's much hungrier now for chips and chocolate than sex and violence," Crowley explained slowly, "and so long as he's kept properly fed, he'll be a good sight more docile and clear-headed than your average ouroboros." He grimaced. "Useful as all hell, but nasty little things. Or big things, in most of their cases."
He sat there expectantly, like he was waiting for Sam to thank him or something. When he didn't get whatever he was waiting for, he huffed a little.
"As an added bonus, there's going to be all sorts of fun little physiological changes to watch out for, some of which I imagine you've already noticed. The ouroboros is a distant cousin of both the dragon and the gorgon, and I know how very much you love to study and examine and catalogue." Crowley bounced his eyebrows. "Then there's the inevitable results that will soon come from all that constant gorging. Quite enjoyable for you as well, albeit on an entirely different level, hmm?"
"You don't know what you're talking about," Sam said quietly, feeling his jaw jut in a familiar stubborn way.
"Don't I?" Crowley asked, smiling. Seeing the knife shift in Sam's grip, he cleared his throat. "Anyway. Pleasant as this has been, we really ought to get down to brass tacks." He put an elbow on the arm of the chair, rested his head against his fist. "I don't suppose I could get a vial or two of Dean's blood? Even a fledgling ouroboros has his uses."
"No," Sam snapped.
"Fingernails? Hair? Tears? Even spit?"
"No."
"Semen?" Crowley suggested. "Though I can see how that might be difficult for you, considering - "
"No."
"Right." Crowley tugged his suit jacket straight. "Obviously, if you change your mind, give me a ring...same goes for if you find the balls to go through with the torture." He tipped his head. "Otherwise, I believe I have a kingdom to run, and you have a brother to stuff."
He raised both eyebrows. There was a lot that Sam wanted to ask him or, more cathartically, do to him, but he already knew that none of it would be useful. No point in doing anything but releasing him.