Chapter Nine

"What – is – that?"

It was spoken in a tone suggestive of an aristocratic lady finding a grubby street urchin sitting on the pristine steps of her favourite townhouse, a Michelin starred chef staring in horror at a can of Cheez Whiz, or possibly a blithely ignorant fickriter browsing cheerfully and blindly through DeviantART and landing unsuspecting on a Crobby picture that leaves nothing to the imagination.

In this case, it was spoken by Dean Winchester as he stared at his plate.

"It's your breakfast, Dean," Sam answered, tucking into his own. He was in a good mood – he'd only gotten three steps from the car when he'd realised that he had something stuck to the bottom of his shoe, and it turned out to be a fifty dollar note.

"Yes, Sam," Dean said with a smile that was in no way leering but nine-tenths I Will Buttfuck Your Soul, "I understand that it is my breakfast. I know that, because it's morning now, and I'm hungry, and we're sitting in a diner, shortly after having woken up. I understand the concept of breakfast. What I want to know is, what the fuck is it supposed to be?"

"It's eggs on toast," Sam replied.

"No, it's not," Dean snapped, "I know what eggs on toast looks like – there's bread that's been toasted, there's butter, then there's eggs, and bacon on top. This is NOT eggs on toast."

"It totally is!" Sam protested.

"It totally is not!" Dean shot back, "This shit is green, Sam! Butter is not green!"

"It's avocado, smartass," Sam rolled his eyes.

"What the fuck happened to the eggs? They're not cooked!"

"They are cooked, Dean."

"No they're not!"

"Yes they are."

"No they're not!"

"Yes they are! If they weren't cooked, they'd just be all runny and transparent and they'd just ooze right off the toast!"

"If they're cooked, then where are the crunchy bits, huh? Where are my damned crunchy bits?"

"They've been poached, Dean, there are no crunchy bits!"

"Well, poaching sucks. It's illegal when you do it to elephants, you know."

"That's a completely different meaning of the word!"

"And there's no bacon on top! What is this crap? If this is some unholy version of tofu bacon, I will end you for blasphemy."

"It's haloumi."

"Haloumi? What is that, Arabic for 'disgusting vegetable substitute for bacon that we're allowed to eat because we're not allowed to eat bacon, Allah damn it'?"

"It's a cheese, Dean."

"If I'm gonna eat cheese, why can't I have a cheeseburger?"

"Because a cheeseburger is full of excess calories, saturated fat, refined carbohydrates and salt."

"Yeah, that's nearly all the major food groups I need – just throw in a beer, and it's a complete meal."

"It's seven o'clock in the morning, Dean! You can't have a cheeseburger for breakfast!"

"Cheese goes with burger, Sam, like snacks go with TV, like Dr Sexy goes with cowboy boots, like politicians go with lying. I can't just eat cheese. A man is not a mouse! Why does it look like that, anyway?"

"It's been fried."

"Fried? Cheese that's been fried, and eggs that haven't? What fresh hell is this?"

"It's a sensible, nutritionally sound breakfast, is what it is."

"Where's the piece of dead meat?"

"What the fuck are you, a Hellhound?"

"No, I'm a human being. I'm not a herbivore, Sam! A man is not a cow!"

"Will you just shut up and eat!" Sam hissed between clenched teeth. "Human beings are omnivores, and are in fact capable of surviving without any meat at all, and if you don't knock of the melodramatics you will be forced to survive without a head because I'm going to knock yours right off!" He stabbed viciously at his own breakfast. "You shouldn't find that too difficult, thought, because if I just knock your head off, well, it's not like you keep anything important in there..."

"Yeah, yeah." Dean sighed heavily, and bit into a forkful of fake bacon-replacement cheese and raw egg on green shit toast. "What's this supposed to be?"

"It's a smoothie."

"What does it smooth?"

"It's a drink, you jerk, you know damned well what a smoothie is."

"I want coffee."

"You've had a coffee."

"I want more coffee."

"It's not sensible to have more coffee."

"Sam, I need coffee!"

:No you don't."

"Please, bro, just a small slice..."

"Dean, you drink too much coffee. We both do. It would be good for me to try to cut down, too."

"Sam, I don't just want it, okay, if you want me to function with a reduced alcohol intake, I need it! Would you tell a diabetic that they need to cut down on insulin? If I told you that you need to cut down on oxygen, how would you react? If I told you to lay off the lettuce, how would you cope? Don't make me give up coffee!"

"I'm not making you 'give up' anything, it's about moderation."

"Okay, well, I need a moderately sized coffee."

"You don't."

"I do! I really do! Give me coffee, or give me death!"

"Right now, I'm considering the death bit, coffee or not."

"C'mon, Sam," Dean wheedled, "I can't concentrate on this job if I get a caffeine withdrawal headache."

Sam shot his brother a Bitchface #8™ (You Are Now Officially Talking Complete Shit, Dean). "Fine," he said through a tight smile, gesturing to a waitress. "More caffeine for Dean."

A few minutes later, she returned.

"Sam, what the hell is that?"

"It's tea, Dean."

"Yes, yes, I can see that it's tea. It wasn't exactly a literal question, Sam. What I mean is, why have you ordered tea?"

"So you can get a moderate caffeine hit."

From tea? Seriously? I gotta drink tea now?"

"No Dean, you don't 'gotta' drink it. You have your smoothie."

"But... tea?"

"It's good enough for Jean-Luc Picard."

"But it's tea!"

"Sixty-five million Brits can't be wrong, bro."

"I need coffee, Sam! A man is not a teapot!"

"Dean, just shut up and eat your breakfast.'

"I suppose pie is out of the question?"

"Don't even think about it."

"I hate you."

...oooooOOOOOooooo... ...oooooOOOOOooooo... ...oooooOOOOOooooo... ...oooooOOOOOooooo... ...oooooOOOOOooooo...

Dean's whining had just about subsided when they returned to their room, to start up the laptops and get back to the case.

"This is depressing," Dean complained after some time, "Sitting here, lookin' at pictures of hot guys having fun, it's just depressing. This one's eating curly fries," he added resentfully.

"Yeah, I'm still having trouble with the system security here," Sam muttered, leaning back and stretching, "Maybe it's time for a break."

"Amen." Dean stood up and made his way to the small bar fridge. "I need a drink. So, I still can't find any connection between... Sam, what is this?" He held up a bottle the same way somebody might pick up a dead mouse.

"It's kombucha, bro."

"Kom-what?"

"Kombucha."

"I'm sorry, let me rephrase that – when I said 'What is this?', I really meant 'Where the hell is the beer?'."

"You don't need beer at this hour. You don't need beer, period."

"It's beer o'clock somewhere, Sam."

"But not here."

"Beer o'clock is not just a time zone," Dean protested, "It's a state of mind."

Sam glared at his brother with a Bitchface #8™ (You Are Now Officially Talking Complete Shit, Dean). "Dean, you drink too much beer. Both of us do. It won't do either of us any harm to try to cut down on the alcohol intake. It will be positively beneficial, in fact. So, if you want a cold drink, drink that."

"I don't want this, Sam!" yapped Dean, "You were supposed to get beer! I want a refreshing, fizzy, fermented beverage, not this overpriced New Age dolphin pee crap!"

"Kombucha is a refreshing fizzy fermented beverage," Sam told him. "And I got it for more than half price off, because the printing on the labels isn't quite right, which was a lot cheaper than beer."

"Really?" Dean peered suspiciously at the bottle. "Fermented? Like beer?"

"Well, yeah," Sam told him, "In a very similar way. It starts off as a tea, then..."

"Again with the tea! What is it with you and tea, bro? Is there some curse on you turnin' you into a Limey?"

"No!" Sam snapped, "Look, it starts off with tea instead of barley, okay, and it's fermented by a yeast, just like beer, except the sugar doesn't come from a grain, it's added to the tea, so the yeast ferments the sugar to produce alcohol..."

"Alcohol? Why didn't you just say?" Dean beamed as he uncapped the bottle. "For a moment there, I thought you were angling to make me try some weirdo drippy hippy new age crap." He raised the bottle to take a long drink.

"...Which is in turn converted to acetic acid by bacteria of the Acetobacteracea family," Sam finished as Dean sprayed a mouthful across the small kitchenette.

"What the..." he spluttered. "You told me this stuff contained alcohol!"

"It can," Sam shrugged, "Depending on the fermentation, it can be up to 0.5%, although homemade stuff can go higher or be forced lower, if you tweak the conditions."

"It tastes like vinegar!" Dean yelped in outrage.

"No it doesn't," Sam rolled his eyes, "The bacteria in kombucha are different species to those used to produce vinegar – one of 'em can produce cellulose, which is typically something only done by plants..."

"Stop. Stop – right – there," instructed Dean, glaring balefully at his little brother. "You have replaced our beer with this... stuff, and induced me to drink it under false pretences."

"I did not!" Sam retorted hotly. "Look, I'm just trying to get you to take care of your health for a bit, so you don't die until we figure out what happened to you! Which bit of 'I don't want you to die' do you not understand?"

Dean sat down heavily, eyeing the bottle with despair. With a resigned sigh, he took another drink from the bottle, and made a face. "This stuff is supposed to be drinkable?"

"Some people claim it has all sorts of health benefits," Sam replied, "Although there's no hard data on that. The point is, it's not as nutritionally unsound as beer or sodas. And if it does turn out to have any benefits, that's a bonus."

"Well, if it does turn out to be good for me, that would explain the taste," Dean noted philosophically. "If it tastes good or it's fun to do, it's always bad for me, but if it tastes gross or it hurts, it's good for me," he declared with all the certainty of a six-year-old getting a first true insight into how the real world works. "It sucks."

"Once we get you back to yourself and your non-average constitution, it won't suck quite so much," Sam's voice held a note of sympathy, "But for now, you've just gotta deal with life on the same terms as the average guy does." He sat back, and stretched, wincing. "Crap, I need to stretch out and give my brain a rest. I'm going for a run."

"A freak as well as a geek," muttered Dean, "Well, if you're taking a break, I can, too – I think there's a Dr Sexy marathon on cable, and..."

"You could come out too," Sam suggested, ratting through his duffel for a pair of sweat pants.

"In this body? You're kidding, right?" Dean looked down at himself forlornly. "It gets out of breath goin' up stairs, let along trying to keep up with a running moose."

"You heard the doctor, you don't have to run," Sam reminded him. "You can just go out for a, you know, a whiskey-word."

"A whiskey...? Oh," understanding dawned on Dean's face.

"Yeah, and, uh, juliet-india-mike-india would love to go," Sam continued. "You know he does."

"He also likes to sit with me and enjoy snacks and TV," Dean countered, "So, we don't have to go anywhere for both of us to take a refreshing break, even without beer, so..."

"Oh, for fuck's sake, Dean," Sam snapped, "Just put on your trainers and take Jimi for a walk!"

At the mention of his name and the whiskey-word out loud, Jimi began to whuff excitedly, his tail wagging so hard that his whole back end gyrated.

"Nice going, bitch," complained Dean, as Sam gave him a grim scowl of triumph, "You got him all worked up! Well, you can take him on your run."

"Sorry, bro," Sam pulled a singlet over his head and made for the door, "It's actually not good for a dog to go any faster than a trotting gait for more than a few minutes, because they can't pant when they canter, so it'll be much better if he goes out with you."

"Sam..."

"Enjoy taking JIMI for a WALK!" Sam trilled as he headed out the door.

"BITCH!" yelled Dean. His baby brother flipped him off as he set out.

With a sigh, Dean reached for Jimi's leash. "Well, I can't leave you hanging, can I," he said to the dog, who clearly agreed with him. "Just let me get some suitable footwear on. Suitable for going out for a brisk walk. And suitable for briskly kicking a Sasquatch in the ass when he gets back."

Sensible diet? Moderate exercise? How absolutely ghastly for poor Dean. How much more indignity can one man stand? (He shouldn't diss the 'booch, though, I brew my own (I prefer a low-sugar no-alcohol version) and it's fantastic stuff. Much less nutritionally unsound than beer or soda, and I think it tastes better than either of them.)

Poor little Beau-Ponty the plot bunny is feeling peckish, so feed him reviews to power him along, because Reviews Are The Weekly Ration Of Chocolate In The Sensible Eating Plan Of Life!