Ermagerd you are so naise! So many reviews! Dictate, bunny, dictate 'til you herniate!
Chapter Eight
Later in the day, Sam started agitating to visit the workshop. "Oh come on," he wheedled over lunch, "I'm gettin' cabin fever!"
"It's not safe, for a…" she paused. "Look, you're not exactly a pup, but... not when I'm casting silver, Sam."
"You do it all the time," Sam pointed out, 'And it doesn't hurt you."
"I'm a cranky old battleaxe who's been doing it for years," she replied, leaning over to put more meat on his plate, "And for the record, it gives me a headache and sometimes I feel positively unwell, even using a respirator."
"Dean wants to go and see the car," Sam pointed out. "I could just stay in the office. Please?"
"I'd rather you didn't," she replied.
"I can watch on the security cam," he persisted. "And Bobby's always sayin' you should show somebody what you do."
"You won't see much in the office," she chortled, leaning in to wipe his face. "And as much as it pains me to say it, if your welding is anything to go by, well, your brother has more of an aptitude than you, but I can't see him hanging around long enough to learn it – he doesn't have the patience to be my Padawan, and I doubt he could tolerate addressing me as 'Yes, my Master'."
Dean was no stranger to seeing Sam pout at being thwarted, then consider his next move – the kid had done it to him a thousand times. He watched his little brother consider 'I'm not a kid to be told what to do', 'I'm big enough to sit you on your ass if you try to stop me' and 'You're being completely unreasonable,' and discard them all. Hmmm, what will Sam do?
His brother deployed the Great Big Sad Puppy Dog Eyes. "Dean wants to see the car," Sam said in a wistful voice. "And he won't leave me by myself, even if I'd be fine."
"Sam, I can live without seeing a damned car," Dean began. Oh, you sneaky little bitch…
"Why should you?" Sam cut him off. "How come you always have to be the one who misses out on my account, huh?
Look, it doesn't matter…"
"It does," Sam insisted, "You heard the noise he made, Ronnie, he really wants to see the car. It's not fair that he always puts me first, even just going to see a damned car! It's not fair!"
Sam used Emotional Blackmail.
Ronnie gave him a warm smile. "Is that what it's about?" she asked. Sam turned the Anguished Eyes up a notch, and Dean watched her reluctance crumble.
It's super effective!
"All right," she agreed, as Sam beamed. "But if you even start to feel the slightest bit weird, you say so right away, and come straight back here."
"Thanks, Ronnie," Sam gave her his most heart-melting smile, "From both of us."
Ronnie took out her cell to tell Andrew his lunch was on the way, plus visitors. "That was shameless," Dean growled at Sam.
"But it worked," Sam grinned smugly.
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The Winchesters hitched a lift in Ronnie's truck, with the dogs riding in the bed, noses in the wind, whilst Ronnie complained about them blocking her mirrors.
"We could put Sam in the bed," suggested Dean, "There'd be plenty of room for his legs, and he might enjoy it. Although it would make a mess of his hair."
"Jerk," muttered Sam.
"It's no big deal," Dean grinned, "The alpha female can just groom the unkempt pup afterwards… OW!"
"Knock it off, you bozos," Ronnie rolled her eyes as Sam slammed the shotgun seat backwards in an attempt to squash his brother in the back, "Or I'll put you both in the bloody tray and have the dogs in the cab!"
"He started it," complained Sam. Ronnie curled her lip and growled, and he subsided.
Andrew was cleaning up and waiting for his lunch when they arrived; Dean watched in some bemusement as he greeted Ronnie and Sam with whuffs and nose-sniffing.
"What is this, you people are Eskimos?" he asked.
"Could be worse," Ronnie shrugged, "You wanna see 'em sniff each others' arses?"
"No homo," shrugged Andrew. Dean let out a bark of outrage.
"Now, stay here," Ronnie instructed as they gathered in the office. "Andrew will give you the wifi password – did you start the furnace for me?"
"Yes, dear," Andrew answered around a mouthful of steak sandwich. He bared his teeth at Sam, who was watching him eat, and Dean chuckled when Sam dropped his eyes. "The pup's hungry again."
"I fed him already!" complained Ronnie, taking some protective gear out of a battered locker, "Give him a sandwich or something. And get the cameras on screen for him."
"Hey, 'him' is right here," complained Sam, as Andrew pushed the chiller bag towards him.
"Screw food, where's the beer?" demanded Dean.
"Ah, the Winchester boy," Andrew nodded at an ancient refrigerator.
Andrew and Dean talked cars while the older man ate his lunch, and Sam watched Ronnie on the CCTV footage. "What's she doing there?" he asked.
Andrew peered at the screen. "Looks like sprue plate insulators," he said. "She makes 'em out of a plaster mix. Something to do with silver having a higher melting temp than lead, and hardening quicker."
"What is that?" he pointed at a grey thing on the bench.
"She makes her own molds," Andrew explained, "That's why her rounds look so different to anybody else's; silver doesn't deform like lead, so she's gotta change the shape so it'll break up and slow down on impact, otherwise it'll just go right through your target."
"I've wondered why her rounds look like that," Sam mused, glued to the screen. "How does she counter oxidation in the mold when she pours it?"
"By way of strange and wonderful juju," Andrew intoned. Sam pulled a face. "Seriously, you'll have to ask her later. I got no idea. So, you wanna come cheat on your number one girl, Dean?"
"Ohhh, I am so ready," Dean grinned. "It's okay – Baby understands."
"Just keep your hands where I can see 'em," Andrew frowned, "I don't wanna have to explain any nose prints – or worse – to the owner."
"Oh, gross!" yapped Sam as Dean beamed.
"Stay out of the workshop while she's casting," Andrew reiterated, "You got any questions, you can rerun the footage later, and ask to your heart's content."
"Who died and made you king?" Sam grumped.
"I bit you, which makes me Alpha," Andrew gruffed, "Stay put."
Sam let out a humphing whuff noise that sounded remarkably like the sound made by Jimi when he was told to get off a sofa where he was snoozing comfortably.
He settled in to watch Ronnie on one of the camera feeds, trying to ignore Dean mugging furiously for another. He pulled a pad towards himself, and made some notes as he watched her sort through some raw material – a combination of all sorts of stuff, including jewellery and old coins and possibly some batteries – into what looked like an old coffee pot, then take a mallet and start bashing at a badly tarnished and very ugly milk jug that might once have been intended to resemble a cow.
"Crap," he muttered, "I need an audio feed here."
It was a frustrating way to watch something; the cameras had been set up to cover the whole workshop (including the area where Dean was now miming having sex with the car, while Andrew facepalmed) and not necessarily to give a good view of the small partitioned off work area in the far corner, where Ronnie was doing... something.
"Move your arm!" Sam found himself griping at the screen. "What's in that pot? Gah!" he huffed in annoyance. "What did that jug ever do to you, huh?" The heavy protective gear Ronnie wore made it even harder to make out what she was doing.
Sam considered his options. He'd been told to stay in the office. That is, to stay out of the workshop. While Ronnie was casting silver. But he really needed the camera angle to change so he could see what she was doing...
He watched the screen thoughtfully; she was still whacking away at the jug like a relatively literate fickriter assaulting an author of tween vampire fiction. A crucible sat empty in front of the furnace, which apparently wasn't even up to temperature yet.
So, if she wasn't melting anything, she wasn't actually casting.
And if he went around the back of the building, he could just call to her from the rear door, which was conveniently open, without going through the workshop, and still stay right out of the way.
Content with his reasoning, he put down his pen, and headed for the door.
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"You should be careful," Andrew warned, amused, "If your brother records this and puts it on YouTube – 'My Big Brother Has Sex With Cars' – and I have to reach an out-of-court settlement with the owner over letting somebody molest a car while it's in my care, I'm comin' after you with all lawyers blazing."
"I don't care," grinned Dean, continuing to dance the lambada with a quarter panel for the express purpose of grossing out his little brother. "Knowin' that Sam's face is turnin' green as we speak, it's worth it."
"I feel I should inform you," Andrew went on, "This car's name is in fact Boris."
"No homo," grinned Dean, continuing to make ostentatious love to the car.
"You really are a sick individual, Winchester," sighed Andrew. "If you can just control yourself for a few minutes, I think you'll be impressed by what's under the hood, just let me..."
As he reached into the car to pop the hood, an alarm sounded, and a red LED on the far wall began to flash.
With a fluent curse, Andrew sprinted for a work bench, and pulled out a mask and goggles.
"What?" yelped Dean, "What is it?"
"Man down alarm!" Andrew snapped, pulling on the respirator, "We rigged one for the back room – Ronnie's in trouble! Come on!"
They barged through the partitioning to see the work area deserted.
"Where is she?" barked Dean.
Andrew didn't stop. "Outside," he headed through the door, Dean on his heels. "She must've... SHIT!"
Ronnie was indeed outside; still wearing her protective gear, she had Sam in a fireman's carry, and was heading back around the building.
"Sam!" Dean sprinted to catch up, and grabbed at his little brother's inert form. "Sam!"
"Door!" Ronnie commanded, voice muffled by the respirator.
"Got it," barked Andrew, shoulder charging the front door so the catch broke and the door burst inwards.
"What happened?" asked Dean, as Ronnie evicted the dogs from the ratty old sofa and put his semi-conscious brother there. "What the hell happened?"
"He came in the back door," Ronnie snapped, pulling off her respirator and throwing it aside, "He was supposed to be in the office!"
"Sam! Sam!" Dean dropped to his knees beside his brother; Sam's face was chalk-white, and he was shivering. "Sam! Hey, hey, stay with me, bro..."
Sam's only response was to let out a small cry like a wounded dog, which went straight to Dean's heart, and Jimi whined anxiously.
"Ronnie, what the fuck?" he called desperately.
"He's poisoned," Andrew pronounced grimly.
Ronnie was scrabbling in the bottom of the beer fridge. "Silver!" she yapped over he shoulder, "I was pulling it out of a whole bunch of stuff!"
"But... what went wrong?" Dean practically wailed. "He didn't go through the workshop!"
"Nitric acid purification," she growled, pulling at a packet. "Dissolving it in acid, to separate it from all the other crap. Silver oxide – it's volatile, no big deal if you're a human, but it's toxic to werewolves, which is why I dress up like Darth Vader and leave the door open when I do that, and your brother walked into a fucking cloud of the stuff!"
She tore open the packet, and removed something that looked alarmingly like a large barrelled syringe.
"Chelator," she said shortly, "It'll pull the stuff out of his blood, I hope."
"You hope?" Dean echoed, "You fucking hope?"
"Yes!" she snarled at him, "I've been hit with silver, but never been poisoned systemically…"
"Anything in the lungs has immediate access to the bloodstream," translated Andrew. "It's worse than a non-fatal wound with a silver round, or a knife."
"…So I only keep it here on the grounds that if I ever did get a lungful, it couldn't possibly make it any worse! Hang on to him," she instructed, popping the cap, "This is intramuscular, and it's gunna hurt."
"Sam," Dean began, putting his arms around his non-responsive brother's shoulders, "Listen to me, you gotta..."
"Move," Andrew elbowed him aside roughly, "You won't be able to hold him."
Sam made that awful sound again, and Andrew responded with a surprisingly gentle crooning noise as Sam curled into his shoulder.
"Do it," he told Ronnie, locking his arms around Sam.
She put the horrible looking thing to Sam's thigh, and triggered the release.
Poor Sam; he's just too whumpable, isn't he?
Incidentally, I had the most dreadfully discombobulating morning. I was in an OH&S training 'refresher' (in which a clueless twat spends a morning telling me how to do the job I've been doing since before he finished Grade One without even a minor incident), so I wasn't paying a lot of attention to the long list of documents scrolling past (I had a plot bunny whispering in my ear), until the course convenor happened to stop with one document out of hundreds highlighted:
WHS Aspects Of Using Shackles.
Okaaaaaay, not the sort of thing one expects to see first thing in the morning in the workplace. Well, not in my workplace. Perhaps if your work somewhere called the Pink Pussycat, or The Glory Hole, or something like that, but not at an august research institution. I think they meant a) the D-clasps or carabiners on safety harnesses, or b) the great big latched-hook fittings used in heavy lifting equipment. It led to stunned silence, then some terrible innuendo over morning tea. Just dreadful, I tell you. Shackles. Shackles. All I could think of was shackles. The harder I tried not to think about the word, the more it whizzed around in my head. Shackles. Shackles. Funny word. Shackles. Shackles rhymes with hackles. And crackles. And tackles. And... oh, dear Cas... no no no no no.
And of course, the more I wanted not to think about it, the worse it got. Shackles. Ackles. Ackles. Shackles. Ackles in shackles. Make it stop, make it stop...
I blame the depraved beldames amongst The Denizens. The only consolation I have is that I'll bet any amount that somebody over on Tumblr thought of it ages ago...
Please send the bunny reviews, so I can get on with this story and stop worrying about OH&S documents. They're terribly distressing.