Chapter Sixteen
The Winchesters helped the staggering man into the back of the Impala, where he decided that the dog wasn't going to eat him after all: he hugged Jimi and continued to sob into the dog's neck, while Jimi offered soothing whuffs and tender ear-washing for comfort.
"He must be affected," Sam posited, "Jimi wants to help, so the nose for evil shit must've picked up on a victim of occult mojo."
"That's just how awesome the J-Man is," stated Dean, looking at their passenger in the mirror. "So, what now?"
"We take him back to our room, let him sober up, and talk to him," Sam replied, "If he's been affected by the same curse as you, he could lead us to a common factor, and help us figure it out. Above all, we keep him safe."
"From death by the curse?" asked Dean.
"Well, mostly from himself, I was thinking," Sam turned around to regard their guest with bemusement. "I mean, why would he do that?"
"Well, the ear-washin' thing, it's his way of showin' you that he's lookin' after you, like you were a pup needing his protection – if I'm honest, if you're drunk and feeling down, it's kinda soothing in a weird way..."
"No, no, no!" Sam snapped, "Not the dog, the human! Why would he do that to himself? Make a bad situation worse? He looks like he hasn't been sober for days!"
"Well, clearly the guy is totally traumatised," Dean answered, "I mean, if he's been hit with the same curse whammy as me, he's gone from totally hot, not as hot as the Living Sex God, but yeah, I'm mature enough to admit it, he's gone from totally hot to totally not, and as a civilian he has absolutely no idea what's happened – he thinks he's having a nightmare that's come true. It's devastating, bro, I can tell you that from personal experience."
"When something goes wrong, getting drunk doesn't help," Sam observed, "You should know that from personal experience, too."
"With something this wrong, he probably figured it couldn't make things worse," Dean suggested.
"Well, maybe it can," Sam noted grimly, "I don't like the look of his complexion."
"It aint his fault if some asshole has unhotted him and given him zits, Sam," Dean's tone dripped with disdain.
"No, no, I mean, he's looking a bit, well, jaundiced," Sam clarified. "It could just be the lights, or it could be because suddenly his cursed liver can't cope."
"Oh, dude," Dean sighed sympathetically as he started the engine, "He doesn't know it, but his problems are just beginning."
"What the...? Dean, if he's been hit with your curse too, we're gonna fix this!"
"Fine, I'll tell him that bit," Dean said, easing the car out of the lot, "You can explain why you're gonna force feed him weird shit for his own good."
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Their possible curse victim mumbled incoherently about women, assholes and booze, then fell asleep on Sam's bed, snuggled up to Jimi.
The Winchesters, familiar with tending to a human being coming off a bender, took turns to keep watch, and when Mr Average Joe II finally stirred, they were on hand with water, Gatorade, pills and ear-washing.
"How come he gets coffee?" demanded Dean, watching as his brother handed the cup to the ashen-faced man.
"Because we need him compos mentis as soon as possible," Sam replied.
"Well, you need me compos mentis for this job," Dean complained, "Why can't I have coffee to help my brain get with the program?"
"Because you have a diagnosed cardiac pathology," Sam snapped, "Besides which, all the coffee in Colombia would not convince your Upstairs Brain to get with the program. Here, drink some of this," he turned back to their guest with a kinder tone. "Look, you must be feeling completely confused at this point, but we need to talk to you."
Wordlessly, the guy accepted the coffee and sipped at it. "I recognise you," he said in a shaky voice. "From a few days ago. I played pool. Against you." The look on his face suggested that at least a few of his brain cells were able to wade through the alcohol far enough to remember what had happened. "I, uh, I..."
"Don't worry about that," Dean cut it, "You got more immediate concerns, am I right? What's your name, dude?"
"I... I'm Gary," he stuttered, "Gary Shields. At least..." he caught sight of himself in the room's speckled mirror, and shuddered, "I was..."
"Hey," Dean cut in, "You still are, man. You're still you, okay? Hang on to that thought. You are still you."
"O... Okay," Gary replied vaguely, looking around himself with a dazed expression. "Where..."
"This is our motel room," Dean went on, "I'm Dean, this is my brother Sam, and that awesome dude there is Jimi. He found you, outside that bar."
Gary turned to look at Jimi, who offered him a doggy smile. "But he... he... he wanted to eat me..."
"That was before, when you were threatening his people, his pack," Sam assured the confused man. "Now, he knows you're in trouble, and he wants to help."
"I'm... I'm..." Gary seemed on the verge of tears again; Jimi humphed, lay down, and put his big earnest head in the man's lap. "I'm... I don't know what happened, but... I don't look like me anymore. I don't look like this. I'm a chick magnet. This is... this is not me..."
"We know," Sam told him, "Gary, we are trying to work out what happened to you."
Gary looked up, still bemused. "You... you believe me? Nobody believes me, my friends don't recognise me, they think I'm just some total nobody having some sort of delusional break, and women just slap me, and, and, and everybody just ignores me, I can walk down the street and it's like I'm not even there..."
"Ohhhh, we believe you," Dean told him, "This is real, Gary, it's really happened – you're not going nuts. Look." He took out his cell, and brought up a photo of himself with his Baby. "See that? That's me. Not this me, that's proper me."
Gary stared at the phone. "It's... this has happened to you?" he asked incredulously, as Dean nodded. "Oh, wow, that's... that's a fuckin' tragedy right there, my man, you are hot."
"Damn straight," Dean agreed as Sam rolled his eyes.
"I mean, you could pull chicks in your sleep, dude."
"You better believe it," Dean smirked.
A look of wistful compassion formed on Gary's face. "Oh, man, I'm so sorry," he sighed. "I feel your pain."
Dean sat down next to Gary. "So, the thing is, right now, we are trying to figure this out," he said, "We think it's some sort of curse."
Gary blinked. "Huh?"
"A curse," Sam echoed, "Look, I know this is going to be hard to believe, but stuff like curses? It's real. You understand that – it's happened to you. There really are things that go bump in the night – it's our job to track them down, and stop them."
Gary's mouth fell open. "Wow," he breathed, "So, there's some asshole, like, like, Voldemort, goin' around putting curses on hot guys, and making them not hot? Seriously? Somebody did that?" He let out a whistle. "That's, like, totally evil. Really, really evil. It's the most evil thing you could do in the whole world!"
"Well," Sam shrugged, "Maybe if we put this in perspective, compare it to, oh, say, genocide, massive systemic corporate fraud, political repression, systematic and deliberate discrimination, child abuse, religious persecution, mass homicide..."
"You're totally right," Dean assured Gary, "This is the most evil thing that could ever be done, by anybody, to anybody. And we need your help to fix it, and stop it happening again."
Hope bloomed in Gary's eyes. "You think you can fix this?" he asked, "You can make me... you can make both of us hot again?"
"Back to our awesome selves," Dean assured him, "But we gotta figure out who's doing it. You are our link, Gary, you are our lead. It's up to us to save other hot guys from a fate worse than death."
"We need to know everything that you've done, everywhere that you've been, since you played pool with Dean," Sam instructed, shooting his big brother a Bitchface #8™ (You Are Now Officially Talking Complete Shit, Dean) then looking at his watch. "Why don't you clean up a bit, then we can go and have breakfast, and we can talk?"
"Yeah, okay," Gary looked down at himself. "I, uh, I had to wear sweats, 'cause none of my clothes will fit me."
"It's okay, I got some pants that you can use," Dean offered, "Then prepare to be horrified."
"Gary looked grimly determined. "No, I'm okay, I can do this," he said firmly, "If it will help you fix this, and save other hot guys, I can talk about it..."
"Not that," grunted Dean, "But you'd better steel yourself for the sort of crap that Aunty Samantha will order for breakfast."
The Winchesters told Gary a bit more about what they did, and how they operated, and after that Gary insisted on taking them to a favourite place of his for breakfast. "Hey, you guys are an unacknowledged public service," he told them, "Plus, the staff there are good at the sort of stuff I like, so you won't have to worry about 'Aunty Samantha' ordering crap," he offered Dean a grin.
"I don't order crap!" complained Sam.
"You totally do," Dean confirmed with a smirk, "And if Gary here is offerin' to buy breakfast, well, we aint gonna complain, we're gonna be grateful, right, Sam?"
Sam muttered something dire about gratitude for impending atherosclerosis being misplaced, but subsided.
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Since he was a child, Dean had become familiar with the experience of getting trapped in the car with his little brother while Sam held forth on a topic that he considered to be 'interesting'. When they were kids, he did it as part of the routine of raising his baby brother. When they were teenagers, he indulged it, because it made Sam happy, and a happy Sam was less likely than a moody Sam to get into fights with Dad. Now they were adults, Sam was still able to talk for an extended period of time on something that interested him; Dean didn't think he'd ever met anybody who could talk about a topic he found interesting quite as much as Sam.
As it turned out, Gary gave his little brother a run for his money.
And Gary's favourite topic was, it turned out, Gary.
"So, I try to avoid coffee," he went on, patting Jimi, "But I think this morning I really needed it, man, you really saved me, I'm gonna have to do cardio until I die to work the last two days off, and today would usually be leg and back day, but I feel seriously dehydrated, and I've totally screwed up my carb loading, and I haven't taken my supplements, I've been in shock, and this body, huh, I'm gonna have to drop sets, and reps, and weights, damn it, it's gonna be like I'm a total noob, and if I try to superset it'll just collapse, if I have to train down and use those plastic coated girly weights that the women use, I'll just die, of course, the core is like fucking spaghetti, it can barely hold me upright, and I'm betting this body's abs have never seen the light of day, and you know how damned hard you have to work to get that back if you let it slide, and right now I don't even wanna think about my bench..."
"It, uh, it might be a good idea to, um, give it a miss, at least for today," Sam interrupted, "Let your body recover a bit. From the shock. And the bender."
"Yeah, you're probably right," Gary sighed, then looked resolute. "Still, time to get my shit together, and get back on the horse, right?"
"Uh, yeah, sure," Sam agreed, as Dean let out a small noise of distress at the metaphor.
"So that's it, right up ahead," Gary pointed out the establishment. "And Dean, I promise, I'll do the ordering, and I won't let your brother screw up your breakfast."
Sam sighed inwardly, and wondered if he was being punished.
Screw that, he knew he was being punished; it was just that he'd quite like to know what for, so he could avoid doing it ever again.
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As it turned out, Sam needn't have worried about breakfast...
"What the fuck is this, Gary?"
"Omelette, dude."
"Omelette?"
"It's just egg whites, I swear."
"Egg whites...? Just... egg whites? Gary, I can't eat fried egg whites!"
"Yeah, I know, if I wasn't such a wuss I'd drink 'em, but, well, somehow, I just can't bring myself to do it. The guys get on my case about it all the time, I'm such a soft cock, but, well, ewwww. I guess I just don't have a strong stomach."
"You think you don't have a strong stomach?"
"Yeah, it's grossing me out, just thinkin' about 'em."
"Gary, you're eating them right now!"
"Yeah, but they're cooked. And there's filling. The tomatoes dress it up a bit, and you get the Vitamin C for the iron absorption from the spinach."
"Dean, try this, it's really pretty good."
"Shut up, Sam, that's not 'filling', when somebody says 'filling' that means cheese, and bacon, and..."
"Cheese and bacon? Whoa, cheat day is ten days off, dude."
"Cheat day?"
"It's a day off from watching your diet, Dean, a day where you can eat more of the things you want."
"You still gotta stay away from processed stuff, though, and watch the total calories. So, you guys don't do cheat day, then?"
"Uh, not exactly, no..."
"Man, I am so jealous! I shoulda realised that the minute I got a look at you, Sam. Respect, guys, you have serious willpower!"
"Ohhhh yeah, right now, I feel so lucky... what exactly is this?"
"It's a smoothie, Dean."
"I can see it's a smoothie, Sam, thank you very much, what I want to know is, what's in it? Why is it a totally disturbing colour?"
"That'll be the protein powder."
"The what?"
"Well, it's pretty clear I don't have the discipline you guys do – I get 'em made with the chocolate protein powder."
"Chocolate protein powder?"
"Yeah, I know, you wouldn't think it'd be that good, but somehow it really works with the broccoli."
"Broccoli?"
"Yeah. I think maybe it takes the edge off the bitterness of the kale, too."
"Try it, Dean, it's not bad..."
"I'm not drinking that."
"Oh, man, I'm sorry, that was so thoughtless of me, I'm not trying to sabotage you, really, let me get you another one, no chocolate, straight whey, I promise, you want BCAAs and creatine with that?"
"No, no, that won't be necessary, Gary, it'll be good for him to drink a broccoli and kale smoothie with chocolate protein powder in it. Go on, Dean, just this once. Think of it as a cheat day."
"I hate you."
I think it's kind of sweet - Dean and Gary can start a Cursed Narcissists Support Group. Meanwhile, feed Beau-Ponty the plot bunny reviews, because Reviews Are The Egg White Omelette In...
Er, no, just... no. I'd rather have the pancakes. Or hash browns. Or both.