There's No Such Thing As Monsters
A/N: So my wee daughter decided to have a long sleep and my son's enthralled with watching Superdog (cute show) so I managed to get this typed up way faster than I thought possible. I make no promises that future updates will be this fast (though I'll try). This chapter probably makes things even more confusing.
A note; in any story of mine that mentions 'magick', I'm intentionally spelling it with a 'k' to differentiate between 'magic' as in tricks that magicians do and 'magick' as in actual witchcrafty type magick. Also, I know that American's say 'Mom' rather than 'Mum' but my fingers are trained to type 'Mum' so that's what I'm going with (not an issue in this chapter but will come up later).
Enjoy!
Chapter Two
"Sam won't wake up."
"... Dean?" Bobby's sleepy voice queried.
Dean paused in his pacing to glare at the phone, throwing an anxious glance at his brother's still form on the bed. "Of course it's me," he growled, "Listen, Bobby, Sam won't wake up."
"Well, damn it, boy, take him to a hospital. What'd you go up against?"
Over the phone Dean heard the faint rustling of blankets being thrown off. He sunk down on his bed, running a nervous hand through his hair. "We didn't go up against anything. We've been tracking a werewolf but it's all just research. We haven't tried to gank it yet. We haven't even figured out who it is."
"What about before that?" Bobby asked, sounding a little more alert now.
"We've been here a week, Bobby. Sam hasn't hit his head or been thrown around by anything. He was fine yesterday. His breathing's fine, his pulse is normal, everything. Except he's currently playing Sleeping Beauty and I don't think a kiss is going to solve this."
"Have you tried?"
Dean pulled the phone away from his ear and looked at it incredulously before bringing it back. "What? Bobby, no, come on. I need help here."
"Sorry, sorry. You try being helpful when some idjit's dragged you out of bed at four in of the morning."
"Four in the..." Dean glanced out the window. "Sorry, Bobby, it's not that early here. I didn't think..."
"Can it, Dean. It's not like I ain't used to it. I'm up now and your brother's in trouble so lets try to figure this out."
"Right." Dean blew out a long breath, struggling to make the switch from big brother to hunter.
"So he was fine yesterday? What were you doing?"
Dean scrubbed at his face. Act like a hunter. Come on, Dean, you can do it, just think smart, look for clues, put the pieces together. It would be easier if Sam wasn't still and silent on the bed, screaming for attention.
God, when Dean thought about earlier, coming back from his breakfast run to find Sam still asleep, which was unusual in itself because Sam was usually up first. Slapping the sole of Sam's foot with a 'Rise and shine, Sammy' and not getting any rising or shining. For a second he'd thought Sam was -
"Dean!"
"Huh? Oh." Dean snapped out of his memories with a shake of his head. "Yeah, like I said, we've been tracking a werewolf so we were looking through the victim reports, trying to find a link between them."
"Did you find it?"
"No. Bobby," Dean stood again. This level of frustration (not panic, no, just frustration) required pacing, and he couldn't concentrate while focusing on the rise and fall of Sam's chest, inches from some sort of (totally manly) breakdown every time it seemed like there was too long a gap between the two. "The werewolf's not important. It can't just magick someone into a coma."
"Well, you haven't found anything out yet, have you?" came Bobby's crotchety response. If anyone else had spoken to Dean like that right now he probably would have slammed the phone down, but this was Bobby and even when someone else would have been grating on Dean's nerves, Bobby's voice managed to calm him down, just a little.
"Look, we start from the beginning and work from there. You know this, Dean, get your head on straight."
Dean blew out a breath. "Okay, okay."
There was a pause as if Bobby wanted to say something, maybe something more personal, but then he cleared his throat and got back to business, which Dean was grateful for. He didn't need reassurances, he needed answers.
"So you were looking at victim reports..." Bobby prompted.
"Yeah, and we couldn't find anything." Dean took a swig from the half-forgotten coffee he'd picked up before he'd realised that Sam sleeping in was something far more sinister than it appeared, grimacing at the cold, bitter taste.
The coffee he'd gotten for Sam sat alone and untouched on the night stand, where he'd placed it before trying to shake Sam awake.
"But there was this guy in the hospital, animal attack apparently, so we went in to see what he had to say."
"And?"
"And nothing." Dean dropped his cup back down on the table. "I mean, I'm certain it's a werewolf behind the attacks. The MO's spot on, missing hearts, lunar cycle's right. Guy got away by locking himself in his basement, but that doesn't explain Sam."
"What about the guy you saw in the hospital? He seem dodgy at all?"
"If you're thinking witchcraft, I doubt it." Dean looked at Sam's coffee. He needed more caffeine for this. Maybe if he nuked it in the motel room's crappy microwave it wouldn't taste too much like ass, even though Sam took a million spoonfuls of sugar and a gallon of milk while Dean had his black. "The guy's an architect, got a wife, three kids. He even does volunteer work."
"Takes all sorts," Bobby reminded him.
"Yeah, but this guy checks out. Sam and I looked into him, trying to find a connection between the vic's. He's never been involved in anything remotely suspicious. The worst he's got on his record is a few parking tickets."
"Might just mean he's good at covering his tracks, but lets move on. Have you checked for hex bags?"
Hex bags. Dean could have kicked himself (Great work, Dean, call Bobby in a panic before exploring the obvious possibilities. And you call yourself a hunter). "Oh, uh... no. I'll call you back."
He swore he could actually hear Bobby rolling his eyes, but, thankfully, all the older man said was, "Just keep me posted, kid."
Dean tossed the phone towards the table, not caring when it skittered across the surface and over the edge to the floor. He looked around the room, cataloguing everything he would have to search through, before his gaze, like a compass finding North, found it's way back to Sam's sleeping form.
Damn, but it was so unnatural to see Sammy so still. Sammy's don't stay still.
"You been pissing off witches, Sammy?" he murmured worriedly, before he shook his head and set about his task.
Logically, seeing as Sam was the only one affected, the hex bag should be in his stuff or on his person. If there was a hex bag. Dean kind of hoped there was because at least he'd know what he was dealing with, and it usually only took a bit of fire before poof, bag gone, hex broken, wakey wakey time for sleeping Sammy.
Okay, first things first. Sam's duffel bag was promptly upended on the floor.
"Alright, Sam, if you want to stop me from going through your personal belongings, it's time to speak up." Dean glanced up from the pile of clothes, but Sam's eyes stayed closed, breathing deep and even.
It was an unspoken rule – occasionally spoken with force actually – that they never went through each other's bags. There was very little privacy involved in the life they led. They were always together in the car or a diner or a motel. They shared the same hairbrush and the same shampoo and the same razor, sometimes the same toothbrush, although Sam bitched about that (hey, it wasn't Dean's fault that toothbrushes were great at getting muck out of hard to reach places on the Impala. They swapped clothes when laundry duty had been neglected, and ate together, went to bars together and talked and argued together and son of a bitch, when exactly had they started acting like an old married couple?
Moving on.
Point was, their duffel bags were off limits and Dean couldn't help but feel disappointed when Sam didn't jump up and pull a bitch face, demanding to know what the hell Dean thought he was doing going through his stuff.
Dean sighed.
"Think there's any chance that you're just really really tired?" he suggested as he turned back to the pile, shaking out the clothes. Man, he was so totally taking that kid shopping sometime soon (when he wakes up. Wake the hell up, Sam). Nearly everything he owned was either ripped or bloodstained.
"Yeah, I didn't think so," Dean muttered, answering his own question when no reply came from the bed, tossing a shirt with half the buttons missing to the side.
The pile of uninspected clothes grew smaller and smaller until all that was left was a few books, a zippo lighter and a squishy half-melted chocolate bar. It made Dean wonder why Sam got so defensive over his bag, seeing as the kid was so sorely lacking in personal items, but maybe it was just the principle of it, having one thing that was entirely his own.
Dean flipped through the books, wasted a few minutes wondering whether it would be possible to fit a hex bag into a lighter, and pocketed the chocolate.
"Ya snooze, ya lose, Sammy. Unless you wanna wake up and claim it?"
Predictably, Sam didn't answer.
Dean checked the pockets and seams of the duffel bag but both were clear. He shoved Sam's stuff back in and moved on to the laptop and it's case, and then to Sam's wallet on the night stand.
"You better hope there's a hex bag in here," Dean warned as he picked it up. "'cause if there's not, I'm gonna have to move on to a strip search."
Sam had one of those wallets with a ridiculous amount of card pockets and coin holders and note sections but even so, it didn't take long to figure out that it was as much of a dead end as the duffel bag and the laptop had been.
It wasn't actually much of a strip search. Dean wasn't keen on wrestling Sam's limbs out of his clothes but he still made sure that it was a thorough search. He wasn't exactly going to let Sam lay around in a coma because Dean was too embarrassed to make sure there was nothing hiding in his jeans.
Why the hell was Sam wearing his jeans to bed anyway? Dean wondered vaguely before remembering that Sam had crashed out halfway through the Spiderman movie Dean had found to watch, before 9PM even.
The memory made him smile. Sam always reverted to a toddler-like state when he was tired, emphatically denying the need to sleep.
'Oi, princess, you should get changed if you're gonna have a nap,' Dean had teased, gently because a werewolf hunt meant Sam was thinking about Madison, whether he'd admit it or not.
''m not,' Sam had denied, sitting up straighter against the headboard and blinking bleary eyes determinedly at the TV.
'Want me to check under your mattress for peas?' Dean grinned to himself.
'Dean...'
And when Dean turned around Sam had been asleep, fully dressed and sitting up. Dean had shaken his head affectionately. God but he loved that kid.
The memory turned sour. What if Sam had been trying to tell him something in that last waking moment? Dean had assumed he hadn't been sleeping well, plagued by memories of Madison, so it was only logical that he'd crash eventually. But what if Sam had realized that something was wrong?
Dean shook the thoughts out sharply. 'What if's' wouldn't get him anywhere.
"I'm so glad you're not awake for this," he muttered as he checked around the waistband of Sam's boxers (and yes, he did realize, after the fact, that had Sam been awake, he'd have no reason to go rooting around in his brother's unmentionables. Whatever.)
It was an awkward process. Sam flopped where ever Dean rolled him, a tangle of half-shed clothes and limp limbs. Dean tried really hard to stop the words 'dead weight' from crawling into his mind.
Sam was clean though. No hex bags on him or in his stuff. Dean carefully moved him into what he hoped was a comfortable position before moving on.
It took another hour to inspect everything else the two of them owned; the Impala, Dean's duffel, the laundry and weapons bags, the bed and table and chairs and any cracks in the walls or ceiling (and there were a few. It definitely wasn't the best motel they'd ever checked into). Everywhere was empty, completely and utterly.
Sam was still through the entire procedure.
"So no hex bags," Dean concluded finally, staring at Sam as though his sleeping form might give him answers. "Doesn't mean you're not cursed though."
He retrieved his cellphone from the floor and punched in Bobby's number.
"Anything?" Bobby asked when he answered, wasting no time with formalities.
"Nada. Place is clean, Bobby, and Sam's still out."
"Maybe it's a curse," Bobby mused.
"That's what I was thinking." Dean nodded, sinking down into one of the motel's rickety chairs so he could keep an eye on Sam's breathing while he talked.
"Well, I've got some all-purpose counter-curses around here somewhere. I'll dig them out. But Dean, you know for most of these things you need to find the witch and either burn the altar or get them to reverse it themselves."
Dean sucked in a disgruntled breath through his teeth. "Which would be kind of difficult seeing as I've got no idea who put the whammy on him."
"Well, get researching then," Bobby ordered gruffly. "Think of everyone you've interacted with since you got to town and work your way through. I'll call you when I've found something."
"Yeah." Dean pinched the bridge of his nose between his fingers. There were potentially dozens of people that they'd talked to, bought gas or food from, questioned about the werewolf attacks... "Thanks, Bobby."
"Just keep an eye on your brother."
"Yes, sir," Dean replied automatically.
The room was horribly quiet when Dean hung up, even with the steady stream of traffic outside. He contemplated turning on the TV just for some background noise but discarded the idea quickly. He wanted to be able to hear Sam's breathing, or lack of if, God or whatever forbid, things got that far.
It was tempting to just hover (keep watch) over Sam, to get visual confirmation that he was still okay, or at least still alive. Sam definitely wasn't okay. But hovering (damn it, keeping watch in a totally not mother hen kind of way) would get him no where and he had a little brother to fix.
Dean sat down at the laptop, considering the situation. Was it possible that the werewolf, in it's human form, was aware that it turned into a bloodthirsty slobbering monster during the full moon? Could it have figured out what he and Sam were in town for and taken steps to avoid it's extermination? Maybe the answer lay in figuring out the pattern of the attacks, finding the animal and dealing with it.
Dean stared at the laptop screen. Or maybe it lay in one of the dozens of people they had bumped into during their investigations.
"Got any ideas, Sammy?" Dean spoke into the silence. "'cause I could really use your help with this one."
Sam slept on.
Sighing, and wishing he had fresh coffee, Dean pulled up a Word document and set about listing off all the names he could remember.
Gareth Hanks, the architect who'd survived the attack. Melinda Collingworth, the first victim. Daniel Harrington, the second. He had to refer to Sam's meticulous notes to get most of them. OCD freak that he was, Sam had written down the names and details of all the victim's family members that they had interviewed, which came in handy. Dean made a mental note not to mock Sam for his anal retentiveness for at least a week if any of his information led to an answer.
He added the gas station attendant who'd served him when he'd bought gas after they rolled into town, Tom, the name tag had read, and Carol, the waitress at the diner where they'd had breakfast four days in a row. After some thought, the man in a suit who'd asked for their salt joined the list under Diner Patron – name unknown.
There was the motel clerk who'd checked them in, a weedy teenage boy with more zits than clear skin. Then there were the nurses at the hospital that they'd spoken to briefly on their way to visit Gareth Hanks. Gareth's wife, who'd been visiting him when they got there, two guys Dean had played pool against the night before, Melissa the bartender and a pizza delivery boy.
By the time Dean was finished, the list came to almost thirty people, and they had only been in town for a week. And Dean had thought they'd been being inconspicuous.
Dean sat back, rocking the chair up on it's hind legs as he looked over the document he'd created. He let out a low whistle.
"Well, we sure are popular guys, Sammy. And you managed to piss someone off. What'd you do, forget to tip the waitress? Eye up Gareth's wife? I swear, no one finds trouble like you do, kiddo."
Of course, there was the possibility that Dean had pissed someone off and the witch – if that's what they were dealing with – had put the whammy on the wrong brother accidentally, or deliberately, if they were smart enough to realize that the fastest way to really piss Dean off was to mess with Sam. Whatever the case, the wart-y bitch was going down.
As soon as he figured out who it was.
"Okay, I definitely need coffee for this," Dean informed Sam's sleeping figure, pushing off his chair to commandeer Sam's untouched coffee and making his way to the kitchenette's rusty microwave.
He almost didn't hear it over the hum of the machine. No more than a whisper, it still had Dean whipping around and bounding over his bed to reach Sam.
"Sammy?" he asked, hope fluttering (no, like, gnawing or something not totally girly) in his stomach as he crouched down by Sam's bed so that he was level with Sam's face.
Sam's head rolled to the side, turning towards Dean's voice.
"Dean," he sighed again.
"Sam, wake up!" Dean demanded sharply. "That's an order, bitch."
He shook Sam's shoulder and his brother's body rocked bonelessly with the motion.
Sam's eyes stayed closed. "There's no such thing as monsters," he murmured.
To Be Continued...