After he heard the lock click into place, Dean turned his attention back to the bag. As long as the thirteen year old body didn't bail on him, the experienced hunter intended on shooting each of the damn things in the heart. Possibly more than once. Assuming there were enough silver bullets somewhere in there. He found a revolver, at least. It was kind of big and heavy in Dean's current pair of hands. But it would do.

"What I wouldn't give for the Colt," he muttered to himself. If it weren't for the deal, he'd swear that 'shifters were going to be the end of him. Shot gun shells, rock salt, and normal .9mm bullets swiftly climbed the list of runners up. Apparently "emergency" really meant "extra."

Finally Dean found the bullet box with "SILVER" printed on the top in Dad's handwriting. He was only marginally surprised to find just four bullets inside. (Of course silver adhered to the real definition of emergency.) "Probably jinxed myself." He loaded the gun with sure fingers.

Dean had enough time to line himself up with the door. The dizziness only faded a little. He kept to the wall and braced himself against it. Part of him was glad this wasn't that lame motel in Texas (the wallpaper featured a painting of the freakin' Alamo every couple of feet, and he just did not need that kind of mojo) and the rest of him wished that the older Sam was here so he could make a crack about Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.

He hated working alone.

The bits of the door that still posed an obstacle to the fuglies were kicked in. Some were still attached to hinges and clattered uselessly into the wall; the rest splintered across the threshold. The 'shifters entered one by one. They were fast, though, faster than Madison, her neighbor and the skinwalkers combined. Four of them were in the room before he'd been able to take aim at one. Which sucked hard because now there was absolutely no margin for error.

These were creepy bastards. All the joints were wrong, like they weren't really connected. They moved fluidly enough - but it wasn't with the horrific grace Dean saw in the other supernatural evil he hunted. This was... more unnerving. Their faces were expressionless despite the way their noses and mouths stretched out like snouts. Except for the eyes; those were canny and hungry and eager to kill. And definitively canine, just like Sammy said. The ears were too. Their skin was pale with a filmy look and it sagged in odd places, ready to slough away when they took a different form.

Dean hoped they didn't slip their skins anytime soon. He was pretty sure he would wind up being sick. It was bad enough the throbbing in his head was getting worse. (Besides, Dean preferred the transformation sequence in An American Werewolf in London. What was the point of changing if the fuckers stopped in between species?)

The last to enter was taller than the others. It looked straight at the door to the bathroom... and growled.

Dean didn't need a dictionary to figure out what Boss Fugly meant. Sam always was a monster magnet. The others started moving forward. "Not today, assholes."

He raised the revolver and fired at the one that could reach Sammy first. The bullet ripped through its heart as it leapt over the nearest bed. It howled briefly and never got any closer to the bathroom than landing on its face next to the night-stand. A faint thread of smoke sizzled out of the wound. So the bastards were weak to silver. Dean thanked whoever was listening for that much.

The next one didn't get much farther. He was aiming at it before its buddy even hit the floor. A squeeze of the trigger and its corpse fell dead and smoking on the bed closest to the bathroom.

Dean spun back around to face Fugly Minion Number Three, which had gone the opposite direction of its companions and was coming up behind him. A new wave of dizziness rolled through him. His knees threatened to give out from under him and his vision tunneled. The sensation wasn't easing up this time either.

Willpower alone kept his hands steady as he fired.

This 'shifter intended on plowing straight through Dean to get at its prey. The bullet found its mark, of course, but it did little to slow the corpse's momentum. The damn thing slammed into him and brought them both crashing to the floor, sending the gun skittering over to the bathroom door.

"Shit," he groaned. Black washed over his vision for a few painful moments. The stench from the freakish pile of flesh and its crispy hole made him gag. Dean struggled to get out from under the thing. It was getting more difficult to make his own body move, though; every inch of him felt weaker and more disconnected with every second that ticked by.

Dean kept an eye on Boss Fugly as he slowly pushed the corpse away from himself. It watched him right back, lips parted wide in a parody of smiling that revealed viciously jagged teeth. It started to cross the room.

Dean's position had gone from the frying pan, on through the flames and straight to sitting on the burning coals. He tried to stand. His legs wobbled and gave, leaving Dean on his ass. "Fucking hell!"

The shape shifter was too close for this to be happening now. It snarled long and low. Since it was still showing its teeth, Dean wasn't sure if that was a warning or the closest it got to laughing. He decided it didn't matter much either way and scrambled for the gun on his hands and knees.

The revolver was just out of reach when Fugly caught up to him and delivered a swift kick to his ribs. The 'shifter gave it a little extra lift so that it slammed Dean into the wall and his head rebounded off the bottom of the door. (If his younger self didn't have a concussion before, he sure as hell did now. No wonder he didn't remember a damn thing.) Dean clenched his jaw and swallowed the agony that made him see stars. Sammy was hearing enough without hearing that.

Boss Fugly reached down and rolled Dean onto his back, making sure to slam him against the floor with as much force as possible. It looked down at him and growled. There wasn't a whole lot left in Dean's body that would obey him. His legs couldn't do more than tremble. He couldn't turn his head very much, now. All he could hear was his blood rushing through his ears. His vision was tunneling again. But Dean could still reach out for the revolver. His fingertips brushed against the bottom of the handle.

The were-whatever raised one hand, its forefinger stretched out so that its claw looked more like a blade of bone. It eyed Dean's neck. Fugly even licked its teeth in anticipation. (The freak was savoring this, savoring his desperation. His failure.)

Instead of striking, Boss Fugly jerked its head up to look at the gaping doorway to the outside. It let go of Dean to stand at its full height. Its face contorted into a vicious snarl.

Dean didn't have to be told twice.

He used the last of his strength to thrust himself backwards and grab the gun. He took the briefest moment to aim (he couldn't afford to miss, not now) and squeezed the trigger. The son of a bitch actually looked surprised as it crumpled to the floor. "Dumbass." He gingerly rested his head back down. "Sammy? They're all dead. You can come out now." He heard the lock click, and the squeak of the hinges.

"Boys?" someone called from the doorway. Belatedly Dean realized it was Dad. (He couldn't remember the last time he'd heard his father sound so afraid. Then again, now was a pretty long time ago when he considered the present.) "Dean?" Dad was kneeling next to him now. Was pulling him into his arms.

"Dad..." Dean said. Nothing else made it out. His mouth had stopped working. That pissed him off. This was probably the only time Dean would manage to say "I love you but you're a real prick" without any consequences.

"He has a concussion," Sam said. Dean could see him standing in the doorway of the bathroom. The boy glanced over at Boss Fugly's corpse, wide-eyed shock dissolving into hatred. Dean closed his eyes. (Partly because he couldn't keep them open any more, but he wasn't going to blame himself for not wanting to see the very moment his kid brother stopped being a kid. Even if he was proud Sam kept his head.)

"Dean... C'mon buddy, I need you to wake up..." Dad said.

Then Dean couldn't hear anything anymore. Like someone had closed a soundproof door. And maybe wrapped him in gauze as well. Honestly, Dean didn't care because he didn't hurt anymore either.

-----

Scrying for Dean turned up nothing. Sam was frustrated, to say the least. Knowing his brother was somewhere in the ether was bad enough. (The alternative was unthinkable, untenable, and absolutely not to be considered.) He began to regret ever pulling the tape away from Leslie the Beige's mouth. (Sam really couldn't believe someone chose that name for themselves outside of D&D or World of Warcraft. Even the two wanna-be ghost hunters back in Richardson had better taste.) At least he was still tied to his chair. And hadn't attempted any more magic.

Sam resisted the urge to point the Colt at him again. He glanced over at Bobby. The other hunter shrugged and continued flipping through the book Leslie used (supposedly) to create his spells. Sam crossed his arms.

"What do you mean, you can't bring him back?" he growled, low and gravelly and dangerous. It occurred to him that he sounded like his father. Sam frowned. He'd sworn to himself he would never become like him. (Never become that cold. That disconnected. Not with the price Dean had paid.)

The problem was that Leslie didn't respond to anything short of death threats. He rolled his eyes. "Precisely what it sounds like, of course."

"Ain't you cocky," Bobby said.

Sam didn't give the wizard a chance to respond. He bent over, grabbed him by the collar, and put them nose to nose. "Then give me a damn good reason not to kill you," he said. This time he sounded more like Dean. Sam saw Bobby glance up at him sharply (the same look Dean had been giving him since Wyoming, all unasked questions and barely veiled anxiety), but that didn't matter right now. He hoped Leslie wouldn't be able to tell he didn't mean it. (He didn't. Sam couldn't kill a person. Not like this.) Hell, he wasn't even reaching for the Colt.

Apparently Sam's intensity was enough.

Leslie cowered. As much as his bonds and Sam's grip allowed, anyway. He licked his lips. His gaze flicked over to Bobby as he spoke. "I can make sure he comes back here. When the, uh, when the spell is done he'll be here. It's sort of a time thing, okay? I can't interrupt it. I mean, I'm not able to, right? But once it's through teaching him his lesson..." Leslie froze as soon as the last few words left his mouth. He looked back at Sam more than a little terrified.

If he hoped Bobby might protect him, he was mistaken.

"What exactly did you do to him?" Bobby asked. Leslie actually whimpered. (Unsurprising, really. The only time Sam ever heard Bobby use that tone, Dad ran out of the junkyard on foot with the sound of gunfire to speed him on his way.)

"Um. Well." Leslie licked his lips again. "You see, he mocked me. Mocked my robes. My hair. I warned him I was a wizard but he didn't believe me and mocked me like I was some kind of larper in front of girls and everyone else and it was mortifying just utterly devastating and I just wanted him to remember what it was like to be so embarrassed and to learn to respect wizards..."

"Just 'cause you were born with a metaphysical stick up your ass and carry a twig around as your boom stick, you think you're a real wizard?" Bobby interrupted. He never was a man for melodrama. "You've got all the ego and none of the experience, that's for sure. Now let's try this again. What. Did. You. Do."

"I sent him back to his most embarrassing moment." Leslie shifted uncomfortably. "Well. His most embarrassing moment in adolescence. Probably."

"Probably?" Sam asked. The word hung in the air ominously. (Dean had five months left, and the best this guy offered was probably?) He tightened his grip.

"Um." Leslie looked down in an effort to avoid meeting Sam's eyes. He suddenly seemed like he was even younger than either hunter gave him credit for. "That's what I was attempting to do. I had to tweak the spellwork. And. Um. The language wasn't entirely. Y'know. Conducive."

Sam blinked. This kid, this wizard couldn't be serious.

"Not... entirely...?" Bobby managed. His mouth opened and closed a few times.

"Enough," Sam said, and he didn't particularly give a shit if it did come out as a growl. He shoved the idiot backwards hard enough for the chair to tip over onto the floor. Bobby shot Sam another one of those looks. Sam ignored him (right now it didn't matter), and pulled out one of his knives. He knelt beside Leslie (Jesus, was he crying?) and started cutting him loose. "You're going to make sure my brother comes back here. You're not going to try and do anything else unless we specifically tell you to. And this time, the language had better be conducive."

It took nearly twenty minutes to prepare the circle. Bobby and Sam both checked and double checked everything Leslie used, read, drew or mixed together. (Except for the last few minutes, when Sam tried scrying for Dean again. Nothing, again.) The chanting itself took another ten minutes. It didn't help that the damn kid kept glancing sideways at Sam; he could barely pronounce the words when he looked at them properly.

Then there was nothing to do but wait.

Sam was a very patient and diligent person, or so he imagined. He sat in the chair and watched the circle. Dean was rubbing off on him though, and he found it hard to sit still. Even if he did keep his vigil without blinking.

Bobby took his hat off, rubbed his head, then put it back on. He looked at Sam for a long moment, then sighed. "I'm gonna see if I can figure out what this moron screwed up. Should keep him out of trouble, too." Sam nodded. "Alright, Leslie." Bobby sounded more than a little satisfied at the way the wizard jumped. "You're going to stand there and we're going to go through your, hmph, arcane collection..."

Sam overheard only bits of their conversation. For instance, Leslie owned a total of five books on magic. Bobby made one phone call to a contact in New York, then made one to a new contact in Chicago. Lots of pages rustled. Bobby said the word idjit at least twenty times. Leslie couldn't construct a sentence in Latin if his life depended on it, and his Gaelic was unintelligible.

Sam spent most of his time trying not to think about Dean. About what his idiot brother considered his most embarrassing moment. Or what it would mean if the word that Leslie used meant shameful (or something worse) instead. What would happen to Dean's soul if he never came back. How he would say Sam was being an emo girl that thought too much and brooded like his head was surrounded by his very own set of clouds. Probably because he was a gigantor mountain made entirely of angst. Sam wasn't very good at not thinking.

When he succeeded, it led to increased fidgeting. (Sam wondered if maybe that was why Dean never held still for any given moment that he was awake. Always moving. Always making noise. Staying out of his own head for as long as he could.) First Sam drummed his fingers on the underside of the chair. Then he tapped his heels against the legs of the chair. Sam picked at his fingernails, sharpened three knives without glancing at them once, and found every possible way to stretch without lifting his butt from the seat or breaking line of sight with the circle. Sam decided to time how long it took him to blink, but gave up after five minutes. (Checking the time just reminded him that Dean was still... elsewhere.) He started contemplating the benefits of sound effects only a moment before he realized Bobby was standing next to him. (This was a good thing. Sam always hated it when Dean resorted to making random noises like a bored five year old. At least all the other distractions rated a mental age with two digits.)

"Sam, we've been through all his books. Even considering what could be done wrong... The only spell this kid has that could pull off anything like this, the only one, is the one he says he used. The only mistakes he might have made would lead to Dean being sent to a different time in his own life." Bobby shrugged a little. When he continued, his voice was subdued and cracked a little at the edges. "I called someone who'd know. Being accidentally sent to the future with this spell is almost impossible to do. Even if Leslie had the mojo to pull it off, it requires the living body of that particular person..."

Sam turned to look Bobby in the eye. "So he couldn't have ended up..."

"Right."

Sam's shoulders relaxed a bit and he turned to stare at the circle again. Then his hair fell over his face. "What about..." He bit his lip, not sure he wanted to try asking the question. (Dean didn't ask questions, just ignored them and their answers. The success rate for that particular method was in sharp decline lately.) It popped into his head any time there was a lull in his distractions, even interrupted them. "Could it have broken...?"

"He didn't think so," Bobby said in that same quiet tone. "From what we know of the terms, if Dean skipped out on his end at all... You would have..." Sam nodded. He didn't need to make Bobby finish that sentence. "Well... I'll keep looking," Bobby said after a moment. He tried to sound encouraging. "Maybe we missed some way to get Dean back quicker. How long he spends in the past don't seem to have any bearing on how long it takes in the present. My guy says it has more to do with the intentions and strength of the practitioner casting the spell. And since Leslie is as subtle and packs as much oomph as a snow flurry at the height of a Texas summer..."

"Yeah," was all Sam managed to say. He thought it would be better than nodding again, at least. Bobby had a way of bending over backwards to help them, lately, so he deserved something. (He deserved a lot.) It ended up sounding kind of hollow instead. "Thanks," Sam said after a few moments. He said it so quietly that he wasn't sure Bobby heard him. But the older man put a hand on his shoulder and squeezed before he went back to the books and hodgepodge magic. (For Bobby, family was family. It wasn't so long ago the brothers called him uncle.)

The hours stretched out. Sam didn't fidget after Bobby spoke with him. It didn't take long for his worry to move to a mental back burner as well. He watched the circle (he only blinked twice) for as long as he was able. But he'd only had a few hours sleep, and there was no long drive in the Impala to make up for it. He rubbed a hand over his face and focused again. Sam wasn't about to fall asleep now.

He listened to Bobby lecturing Leslie about the way the world really worked. All the things that go bump that would be attracted to the power he threw around. The demons that would trick him out of his bright and glowing soul with promises of anything he wanted. Sam was impressed that Bobby was taking the time to explain anything at all, considering how often the wizard interrupted and argued. (Personally Sam would have used some more duct tape by now.)

"Now, I ain't telling you all this because I like you," Bobby said forcefully enough to cut off whatever nonsense Leslie was pulling out of his ass about ghosts.

He sputtered to a stop mid-word. His mind took a moment to catch up, though, so that the last word he said came out as, "er-uh-huh?"

"There's people that hunt these evil bastards down so normal people can get on with living. Not all of them are so picky about which supernatural things are evil and which are just different. They kill everything, you catch me? So for one thing, you steer the hell clear of them and keep your head down." Bobby paused long enough for that to process. Leslie's mouth closed with a click of his teeth. "Then there's the ones that only ever go after what hurts innocent folk. The guy you decided to take your hissy fit out on is one of them. So am I. Believe me when I say that he'll come back to end your sorry existence if you continue the direction you're headed..."

And then... For a moment Sam thought he was microsleeping. Or maybe that Bobby chose a very odd moment to leave his threat hanging. It was more than that, though. Different. More like the sound had been drained from the room entirely. It felt like one of his visions, a pressure from inside and outside his head all at once. A resonance with something Sam couldn't begin to identify. No glimpses of the future though. Just as quickly as it hit, it was gone.

He was vaguely aware of Bobby calling his name. He was on the ground, on his knees and barely holding himself up. Pain pulsed through his head. Sam forced his eyes open. He was on his feet before he consciously registered what he was seeing.

His brother, sprawled on his back inside the circle.

"Dean?" Sam knelt beside him. (He ignored the fact that his brother looked too calm, too still to be alive.) "Dean, are you alright?" He felt for a pulse and was relieved to find it strong and steady. "Dean?"

Dean groaned and opened his eyes. "Sam?" He looked like he might be sick. Sam helped him sit up, supporting him from behind. "For the love of God, tell me that you're twenty-four."

"Yeah," Sam said. "You're back where you came from." Once he was sure his brother wasn't about to vomit all over both of them, he hooked one arm around Dean's shoulders and hugged him tightly. (Dean could call him a girl all he wanted. Samantha even. Sam didn't give a damn, not this time. Dean would have to deal with the touchy-feely stuff if it meant Sam was sure his brother was alive and breathing and here.)

"I'm alright Sammy. I'm alright," Dean said. He patted his brother's arm soothingly for a few moments, content that for all the years and shit in between, some things had never actually changed. "Ok, you big wookie, I'd really like to..." He blinked. "Sam? Am I naked?"

Note: I borrowed a couple of phrases that I won't pretend are mine. One is from a Highlander episode (Alexa I believe), and the other is borrowed from the person I wrote this story for. If you need them pointed out, I will do so. Many thanks to the various betas I used: The Cynic, Ariana Deralte, Sylk, and Avarial Wings. And, of course, much love to Refur.