TWO
"He is," Dean said, chucking a thumb at his taller accomplice. Sam looked at him in disgust, Dean noticed. "Hey come on," he protested, "like they're gonna get us mixed up anyway. She's just trying to break the ice," he shrugged.
"You're always right, aren't you Dean?" she asked, her eyes sweeping down him and back up. "Have you just crawled out of bed or are you just plain ol' pleased to see me?"
Sam's shoulders sagged slightly as Dean looked down at himself and then back at her.
"What can I say, I just got up," he shrugged helplessly.
"Couldn't miss that, could I?" she mused as Sam shook his head, ashamed. "So how do we do this? I kill the little one and take the big one home to play with?" she asked brightly.
"No," Sam said abruptly. "You get trapped and exorcised, and we carry on finding all the others like you."
"Trapped? Me?" she asked.
"Could you say something that's not a question?" Dean asked suddenly, folding his arms.
"Why, does it annoy you?" she grinned.
"So you can't," Dean nodded, turning and walking to the chest of drawers next to his bed.
"Where are you going? Is a real live demon not enough to keep your attention?" she called.
"Sorry, no. I'm sure Sam can take care of this one. I'm going to do something worthy of my complete attention: find some pants," he said with a definite air of malicious boredom.
"Really? How is little Sam here going to take care of me?" she asked.
"He ain't so little," Dean said, taking out a pair of jeans and a heavy item from the drawers and walking back over. He handed the large book to his brother. "And anyway, I did the last one."
She looked up quickly, spotted the devil's trap on the ceiling, and cursed fluidly and at length. Dean turned and looked at her.
"Is that Demon for 'I would have got away with it if it weren't for you meddling kids'?" he asked easily, nodding to Sam and walking off.
Sam opened the book and started to read.
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Dean opened the door and manhandled the six-pack and brown paper bags from Burger King in with him. He closed the door with his foot, the Curly-Wurly clamped between his teeth starting to slip. He crossed the room quickly, depositing the beer and bags on the table under the mirror, manoeuvring the chocolate coated stick of caramel round his mouth with his tongue. He managed to stop it popping out of his mouth Pez-style and let himself feel immensely pleased about it.
Sam looked up, stretched out on the bed like it was the only flat surface he'd ever seen. He closed the laptop in front of him smartly and looked at his brother.
"So how did– Do you have to do that?" he demanded, unable to stop watching Dean shunt the Curly-Wurly round his mouth using just his tongue. The white wrappered end stuck out at odd angles, Macarena-ing its way from one side of his mouth to the other.
"What – aaargh!" he cried in dismay as the chocolate plummeted to the hairy carpet. "Noooooo! Goddamn it, Sam!" he wailed angrily, staring at it.
"It's like watching a dog eat a grape," Sam tutted heavily in revulsion, shaking his head and looking away.
Dean just stared open-mouthed at the fallen chocolate. Sam looked back at him.
"What is it now?" Sam sighed, pushing himself to sit up. Dean tore his eyes away from the mess on the floor and looked at Sam, and he was struck by the vulnerability and anguish on his older brother's face. "What, Dean?" he asked, surprised and more than a little alarmed.
"It fell," he pointed out, and for a heartbeat Sam actually believed he was about to witness real man-tears. "It fell!" he reiterated, as if Sam's carefully constructed expression of sympathy were not for him after all. "Thirty-three minutes and fifty-eight seconds, and it fell!"
Sam got up slowly, fear prickling up his back as he realised there were very, very real unshed man-tears burning in his brother's eyes.
"And…?" he prompted gingerly. He waited till Dean was again staring at the lost chocolate in agony before he let his own eyes sweep round the room, wondering what could have happened in the intervening forty-five minutes his brother had been outside by himself.
"And another… another two minutes and fifteen seconds and it would have been a record!" Dean sniffed, his voice weak, and Sam looked back at him sharply.
"I can't believe you're thinking of blubbing over a candy bar," he said harshly, and Dean looked up at him. Sam met his feeble gaze easily, again shocked at the lack of fight in his brother's demeanour.
"It's not about a goddamn candy bar, Sam!" he protested. "It's about setting a record before I run out of time!" He sniffed and hated himself for it. "It's about knowing I've got to leave all this stuff behind and it's never going to get done without me around to do it!"
"Alright, calm down," Sam said soothingly. "Considering I'm not letting you go down anyway, there's no need to get all upset about a candy bar," he added gently. "Ok?"
Dean turned away from him deliberately, giving a pre-emptive sniff before crouching down to put his hands to the stricken bar.
"Leave it," Sam said quietly. "I'll get it. You open the beer."
Dean just stared at the bar for a long moment. Then, looking much more like himself again, he straightened and walked past his brother without so much as a flicker of his eyes, walking into the bathroom and washing his hands with an inordinate amount of soap.
Sam just watched him, standing there with his hands in the sink, taps going full-blast, the mountain of soap bubbles deciding they'd had enough of being trapped in the confines of their porcelain world and wanted more. They wanted excitement, freedom, far away lands. They made a group effort to band together and hurl themselves over the edge to victory.
What they got was rinsed off Dean's hands and swept down the plughole. Even worse, he didn't even notice their failed attempt at independence as he stared at his own eyes in the mirror, determined to make sure he would never nearly go to pieces over a chocolate bar again.
Sam lifted the sticky offender from the carpet and dropped it in the bathroom bin as Dean dried his hands on the fluffy white towel hanging from the shiny ring in the wall.
"All done," Sam said reassuringly. Dean just looked at him with a face that implied he had already forgotten about anything embarrassing that may or may not have just happened. Sam let his eyebrows raise in judgement, watching Dean go to the beers on the table and wrench the tops off two of them with his ring.
He held one out to Sam and they looked at each other.
"Come on, this is as close as I get to saying thanks," Dean managed, and Sam smiled at last. He took the beer and opened his mouth.
But he heard an all-too-familiar scrabbling sound from his left. The two brothers looked at each other, stunned, then turned slowly to look over at the window.
"Another one?" Dean managed in confusion.
"Sounds like it," Sam agreed, turning and running for the flasks of holy water and the book. "Are you doing the honours this time, or am I?"
"My turn, I guess," Dean shrugged, chugging down half the bottle of Miller Lite before setting it down with a satisfied huff. He slapped his hands together, rubbing them briskly and taking the book from Sam.
They walked to the window, waiting impatiently for the thing to climb over the sill.
"We really oughtta find out why they're picking this one window," Dean said conversationally from the side of his mouth, and Sam grunted.
"Yeah. After this one."
"What do you reckon?" Dean asked quietly, eyes on the claws grappling at the ledge. "Another dumbass? The other two weren't exactly tough assignments."
"Good point. You reckon we're stuck under a 'noobs, arrogant jerks and second-rate demons here' sign?" he reasoned.
"Noobs?" Dean asked. "Sounds kinda kinky."
"It means 'new people'. Honestly," Sam tutted, rolling his eyes as Dean chuckled to himself. Sam couldn't help but smile and a moment of long-missed mutual amusement flashed between the two of them, glad of the chance to flourish its wings and touch both brothers at once. Then it was gone as the talons hauled the grey mass of tattered flesh and rags over the sill.
The lump of moving creature tumbled onto the carpet, hissing and spitting at the markings underneath its clawed hands that were once human. It spat moisture and attempted to break an edge of a triangle, but it refused to be smudged.
Dean chuckled again and Sam looked at him.
"I was meaning to ask, what did you use to draw that?" he inquired conversationally.
"Magic Markers. Had a certain poetry to it," he admitted. "Hey no, that would be a limerick," he added brightly. He took a deep breath. "Let me think now… 'Some demons picked a window through luck, Crawled through and made the carpet all rucked. They saw the two Hunters, Knew they'd be punted, 'n said "Winchesters, dude! We're fu–'!"
"Dean, can this wait?" Sam interrupted. "This is not the usual demon. Look at him."
Dean closed his mouth, his eyes sweeping from side to side in his slight disappointment that his brother did not fully appreciate his ability to make up random poems on the spot. He looked over at the creature, currently drawing itself up to its full height with a determination that would have put Dean out on a beer-binge to shame.
"Dude," he managed as they stared at it.
Roughly eight feet tall and made of sinew, bone and rotting strips of flesh, the two brothers could not take their eyes from the revolting, stinking figure in front of them. It shivered all over, before finding them in its sights and raising a single figure in slow motion. It pointed at the elder brother with definite connotations of doom.
"邊個係啊 Dean?" it demanded in a rasping, creeping voice.
The two brothers looked at each other, then back at the demon's black ocular marbles.
"Uh… come again?" Dean asked slowly. The demon looked confused.
"你地唔識中文咩? 敗喇, 我估錯啦," it said abruptly, looking angry. Again the brothers exchanged a furtive glance before Sam cleared his throat.
"D'you think he's speaking Chinese?" he ventured.
"You are shittin' me," Dean said flatly. "Why would he do that?"
"你地講乜? 我只係想知邊個係 Dean," it said clearly.
The Winchesters exchanged a look.
"Just start reading," Sam sighed, past caring. Dean opened the book and rifled through it quickly.
"Right then," he said brightly, clearing his throat. He began to read.
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Sam climbed back in through the window, falling to the carpet and getting his breath back.
"Well?" Dean asked, watching him with his arms folded. Sam twisted round on the carpet, looking up at him and lifting his hand.
"Someone left this," he managed, and Dean looked confused for a whole second.
"What's this?" he asked, walking over and taking the offending article from his younger brother's fingers. He lifted it higher and studied it. "Looks like a dead animal."
"It is. It's got inscriptions on it though," Sam said, getting to his hands and knees and climbing to stand slowly, wiping his shirt clean of the paint and bracken. "Someone's been here before us, summoning demons. With that."
"You mean someone was friggin' lazy enough to use this dead-ass piece of hedgehog-thing to make demons come tothem?" Dean asked, disgusted.
"Exactly. Once we burn it, we'll stop getting them coming through our window."
Dean whisked it into the bathroom, tossing it into the sink and looking around. Sam was still dusting himself down as Dean doused the stinking corpse with lighter fluid and tossed in a match.
"Burned?" Sam asked, walking over.
"It's on the way," Dean nodded with a satisfied air. Sam smiled, relieved.
"Well aren't we glad that's over," he said on a long sigh.
"Yeah, man. Although there is some kind of sense in making them come to –"
"No," Sam said firmly, pushing at Dean's shoulder. "Don't even think about it. I just want to sleep all afternoon, knowing we won't get any more demons crawling in through windows when we're not looking."
"Alright dude, chill," Dean grinned. "To tell the truth, I could do with a rest from all this. Kinda making me do stupid things, y'know?" he offered lightly, but he made sure his gaze was well and truly averted from anywhere near Sam.
"Yeah," Sam allowed gingerly, then stood aside as Dean walked out of the bathroom and away from the cheerful flames consuming the hedgehog in the sink. He turned on the extractor fan and closed the bathroom door, walking to his bed and sitting heavily. "Although," he said quietly, seeing Dean bouncing on his bed with conviction, "I have to say…"
"What?" Dean asked lightly, putting his hands behind his head and letting himself relax on the bed. "What do you have to say?"
"Well… If it did come to it – which it's not, cos I'm gonna get you out of this – but if it did come to it, and something should happen to you, for whatever reason–"
"Sammy! What?" Dean interrupted, apparently amused.
"Well… If anything should happen to you, I'll set you a new Curly-Wurly record."
It was silent for a long few moments. Then Dean grinned to himself.
"Thanks Sammy," he managed, before he chuckled, "that's a load off." He couldn't help but laugh, and then Sam started laughing at the absurdity too.
They didn't stop laughing.
Until they heard a familiar scrabbling sound from the windowsill.
THE END