Fic: Thicker Than Water (4/10)
Fic: Thicker Than Water (4/10)
Series: Special Projects
Summary: Vampires are not nice monsters. Especially vampires embroiled in a nest war.
Author: pen37
Beta: Clarksmuse
Fandoms: Smallville/Supernatural
Characters: Chloe, Sam, Dean
Pairing:Chloe/Dean
Rating: R for violence
This is a part of the Special Projects series. You can find the rest of the series here.
Written for the Crossovers100 challenge. Prompt #95 New Year The table is here.
Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6a, Part 6b, Part 7, Part 8, Part 9, Part 10
Chloe held up a bag of blood marked with a red bio-hazardous waste sticker "You know, that would have gone much smoother if you hadn’t grabbed this on the way out."
"He was already not buying our fraternity prank story," Sam said dismissively while making little quote marks in the air with his fingers.
"Yeah? Well, when you shouted run for it and then bailed? That totally didn’t help."
"I guess it didn’t," Sam sighed. "But we did get what we needed."
"What’s so important about bio-hazardous waste?" Chloe asked
"It’s dead man’s blood," Sam said.
"Dean mentioned that earlier," Chloe noted.
"Standard operating procedure for killing vampires," Sam explained. "First you slow them down with dead man’s blood, then you kill them while they’re weakened."
"How does it work?"
"Shouldn’t you know that, Miss CDC?"
Chloe raised an eyebrow in response.
"Okay --" Sam through his hands up in mock exasperation. "I might have a few theories."
"Thought so," Chloe grinned.
By now they arrived back at the abandoned store. Sam popped the trunk of the Impala, and produced a couple of syringes. While he was filling them with blood from the bag, he explained his theory to her.
"Okay so - blood is everything to a vampire. They change into what they are through a virus introduced through exchange of blood.
"After which they can only derive nutrients through ingesting blood. When a person dies, their body stops - well, everything. But the important thing here is that their body is no longer initiating chemical processes. One of those chemicals that it’s no longer producing is called adenosine 5'-triphosphate. Which is why rigor mortis sets in.
"I think the lack of ATP in the bloodstream are why dead blood is poisonous for vampires. Their bodies need ATP the same as ours do, but they’re no longer producing it themselves. So they get it from their food source. When dead man’s blood is introduced, there isn’t any ATP present, so their bodies are weakened while they overcome the deficiency.
"The only thing that really kills a vampire is beheading it."
He handed her two of the syringes. Then a thoughtful look crossed his face. He turned back to the Impala and began to rummage through one of his spare bags.
"What are you doing?" Chloe asked.
"Looking for my journal," Sam said. "I’ve got the number of a vampire who might be able to answer some questions for us."
"Wait!" Chloe’s eyebrows climbed toward her hairline. "You know vampires?"
Sam nodded as he located his own journal. Then he shut the trunk and headed for the building with Chloe in tow.
"You know vampires that you haven’t tried to kill?"
"You know meta-humans who haven’t gone crazy and been locked up?" Sam countered while he held the door for her.
"Okay, you have a point," Chloe conceded. "How did you get in with friendly vampires?"
"A while back, Dean and I met a nest leader named Lenore."
"Lenore? How very gothic."
"Anyway," Sam rolled his eyes. "Lenore’s nest is trying to integrate back into society. They hold down jobs, drink cow’s blood. Nobody is getting hurt. So Dean and I, at least, leave them alone."
Chloe nodded thoughtfully. As she climbed the stairs, she glanced back at him. "So they aren’t all Lestat wannabes?"
"They’re trying to blend in," Sam grinned. "Something tells me that yards and yards of corsetry and black hair dye would be a little conspicuous."
"Yeah maybe," Chloe nodded.
***
"Hey Dean!" Sam called out as he walked into the upstairs apartment. "You’re not going to believe what we found!"
It was an unwritten Winchester rule that Sam or Dean entered the room first. That way, if there was something there that would jump at them, Chloe was more protected from it. So she wasn’t expecting to be grabbed from the side and slammed into a wall.
In her confusion, she registered Dean’s scent -- leather and denim. Soap and gunpowder. She felt his familiar, hard body pin her against the wall and pinion her arms to her sides. His face burrowed into the crook of her neck, and she felt him kiss and suckle the delicate skin. Suddenly, he froze there.
"Dean?" Chloe blinked down at the top of his head in confusion as he inhaled her scent deeply. He wasn’t above playing a prank, especially at Sam’s expense. But this was going a little too far, even for him.
He looked up at her and growled. Chloe had the briefest impression of fangs - before he pushed himself away from her and turned on Sam.
Sam cried out as he sidestepped his brother’s attack and dropped into a defensive stance.
Chloe watched the exchange blankly. The shock of seeing her lover with a face bristling with razor-sharp teeth had rendered her immobile.
"Chloe! The blood!"Sam called again as Dean closed to grapple with him.
At the sound of Sam’s voice, Dean seemed to snap out of the mindless frenzy that he’d been in.
"Sam?" Dean blinked muzzily at his brother. He looked from Sam to Chloe, then down at his hands, before looking up again with wide eyes. "I - Sam. God. I almost." His voice dripped with self-recrimination. Then his fangs receded, and for a moment Chloe could pretend that it was a trick of the light, that she’d imagined the whole thing.
Then Dean set his jaw in that stubborn Winchester way. He’d never been one to wear his emotions on his sleeve, but Chloe was getting very good at reading them. Now she could see him steel himself for a difficult decision. He walked over to the corner, where he’d obviously piled a set of weapons from earlier. Then he picked up a machete and tossed it at Sam’s feet.
"You know what to do."
"Dean. No." Sam shook his head. But Dean wouldn’t give him room to argue. Instead he turned, effectively shutting Sam out, and focused his attention on Chloe. She wanted to argue as well. Wanted to scream at him that he was being an idiot. That there had to be another way. But just looking into his already expressionless face and his dead eyes seemed to sap all of her will to argue. It was like he had already left her, and she could feel her heart breaking in his absence.
"Chloe," he reached out to touch her cheek, but she turned her face into her own shoulder, just out of his reach, and shut her eyes against the tears that she couldn’t hold back.
He sighed, and when she opened her eyes, she could see the flicker of regret there. "In the trunk of the Impala is a snub-nosed .38. I noticed that you stopped carrying your .22. Thought you might like it. Been meaning to give it to you for a while."
She nodded. That was so very like Dean. Trying to keep her safe, even after he was gone. "Thank you." She hated how hoarse her voice sounded.
"Take care of Sam for me," he said quietly. "Please."
She nodded again, but didn’t trust herself to speak. Dean seemed satisfied with this, and turned back to Sam.
"The Impala’s yours, Sammy. You better not put one scratch on her," Dean said. "You hear me?"
Sam looked like he was on the verge of tears as well, and Chloe felt the vice around her heart tighten again. She knew that they were out of options.
Dean knelt and turned his back to them. Offering his neck. "Do it quick, Sam. The waiting’s killin’ me."
Sam picked up the long blade and rested it against the side of Dean’s neck, in preparation to swing it. Dean took a deep breath. His whole body seemed to tense. Chloe shut her eyes and turned so that she didn’t have to watch.
Then she heard a strangled curse and turned again. Instead of taking a swing for Dean’s neck, Sam had instead pulled out a srynge of devil’s blood and plunged it into Dean’s veins. The eldest Winchester blinked at it in shock, before crumpling to the ground.
"That works fast," Sam noted.
Chloe blinked back her tears and felt a moment of elation. If Sam wasn’t giving up, maybe there was hope. But she quickly buried it. At best, this might only be a temporary stay of execution.
"Chloe," Sam turned to her and dropped the weapon. "I don’t know what he’s going to do when he wakes up. Best case scenareo - he’s still himself, but pissed off. We need to find a way to contain him, just in case."
Chloe glanced around the empty apartment - the ceilings were high - with a stamped tin pattern and antique fixtures. She bet that the plumbing was the sturdy old-fashioned kind. "The bathroom. I bet the tub is cast iron. If Buffy can keep Spike chained up in one of those, then we can do the same with Dean."
"I think we have a tow chain in the trunk of the Impala," Sam said.
"Sam," Chloe looked at him sadly. "How long are we going to do this?"
"Until we can find a solution." Sam said. His jaw set in the same determined line that Dean’s was set in earlier.
"What if there isn’t one?" Chloe asked hesitantly. Sam’s stubbornness filled her with hope. But there was also enough fear to nearly kill her hope off. If there wasn’t a solution, would Sam be willing to keep Dean alive? Would Sam want to move him off into the middle of nowhere, and keep him prisoner until he was ready to accept his new condition? Chloe didn’t think she could be a party to that. Trying to save Dean that way wasn’t a solution. Anything that broke his spirit for the sake of not losing him was no solution.
"There’s a solution, Chloe." Sam said. "We just have to find it. If I thought I could summon up a demon and make a new deal, I would. That option isn’t open to us anymore. But this isn’t the most serious situation we’ve been through. We got through the others. We’ll get through this."
Chloe shut her eyes and nodded. Dean and Sam had a bond that went so deep that she couldn’t fathom it. If anyone could get Dean out of this mess, it would be his brother.
Series: Special Projects
Summary: Vampires are not nice monsters. Especially vampires embroiled in a nest war.
Author: pen37
Beta: Clarksmuse
Fandoms: Smallville/Supernatural
Characters: Chloe, Sam, Dean
Pairing:Chloe/Dean
Rating: R for violence
This is a part of the Special Projects series. You can find the rest of the series here.
Written for the Crossovers100 challenge. Prompt #95 New Year The table is here.
Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6a, Part 6b, Part 7, Part 8, Part 9, Part 10
Chloe held up a bag of blood marked with a red bio-hazardous waste sticker "You know, that would have gone much smoother if you hadn’t grabbed this on the way out."
"He was already not buying our fraternity prank story," Sam said dismissively while making little quote marks in the air with his fingers.
"Yeah? Well, when you shouted run for it and then bailed? That totally didn’t help."
"I guess it didn’t," Sam sighed. "But we did get what we needed."
"What’s so important about bio-hazardous waste?" Chloe asked
"It’s dead man’s blood," Sam said.
"Dean mentioned that earlier," Chloe noted.
"Standard operating procedure for killing vampires," Sam explained. "First you slow them down with dead man’s blood, then you kill them while they’re weakened."
"How does it work?"
"Shouldn’t you know that, Miss CDC?"
Chloe raised an eyebrow in response.
"Okay --" Sam through his hands up in mock exasperation. "I might have a few theories."
"Thought so," Chloe grinned.
By now they arrived back at the abandoned store. Sam popped the trunk of the Impala, and produced a couple of syringes. While he was filling them with blood from the bag, he explained his theory to her.
"Okay so - blood is everything to a vampire. They change into what they are through a virus introduced through exchange of blood.
"After which they can only derive nutrients through ingesting blood. When a person dies, their body stops - well, everything. But the important thing here is that their body is no longer initiating chemical processes. One of those chemicals that it’s no longer producing is called adenosine 5'-triphosphate. Which is why rigor mortis sets in.
"I think the lack of ATP in the bloodstream are why dead blood is poisonous for vampires. Their bodies need ATP the same as ours do, but they’re no longer producing it themselves. So they get it from their food source. When dead man’s blood is introduced, there isn’t any ATP present, so their bodies are weakened while they overcome the deficiency.
"The only thing that really kills a vampire is beheading it."
He handed her two of the syringes. Then a thoughtful look crossed his face. He turned back to the Impala and began to rummage through one of his spare bags.
"What are you doing?" Chloe asked.
"Looking for my journal," Sam said. "I’ve got the number of a vampire who might be able to answer some questions for us."
"Wait!" Chloe’s eyebrows climbed toward her hairline. "You know vampires?"
Sam nodded as he located his own journal. Then he shut the trunk and headed for the building with Chloe in tow.
"You know vampires that you haven’t tried to kill?"
"You know meta-humans who haven’t gone crazy and been locked up?" Sam countered while he held the door for her.
"Okay, you have a point," Chloe conceded. "How did you get in with friendly vampires?"
"A while back, Dean and I met a nest leader named Lenore."
"Lenore? How very gothic."
"Anyway," Sam rolled his eyes. "Lenore’s nest is trying to integrate back into society. They hold down jobs, drink cow’s blood. Nobody is getting hurt. So Dean and I, at least, leave them alone."
Chloe nodded thoughtfully. As she climbed the stairs, she glanced back at him. "So they aren’t all Lestat wannabes?"
"They’re trying to blend in," Sam grinned. "Something tells me that yards and yards of corsetry and black hair dye would be a little conspicuous."
"Yeah maybe," Chloe nodded.
***
"Hey Dean!" Sam called out as he walked into the upstairs apartment. "You’re not going to believe what we found!"
It was an unwritten Winchester rule that Sam or Dean entered the room first. That way, if there was something there that would jump at them, Chloe was more protected from it. So she wasn’t expecting to be grabbed from the side and slammed into a wall.
In her confusion, she registered Dean’s scent -- leather and denim. Soap and gunpowder. She felt his familiar, hard body pin her against the wall and pinion her arms to her sides. His face burrowed into the crook of her neck, and she felt him kiss and suckle the delicate skin. Suddenly, he froze there.
"Dean?" Chloe blinked down at the top of his head in confusion as he inhaled her scent deeply. He wasn’t above playing a prank, especially at Sam’s expense. But this was going a little too far, even for him.
He looked up at her and growled. Chloe had the briefest impression of fangs - before he pushed himself away from her and turned on Sam.
Sam cried out as he sidestepped his brother’s attack and dropped into a defensive stance.
Chloe watched the exchange blankly. The shock of seeing her lover with a face bristling with razor-sharp teeth had rendered her immobile.
"Chloe! The blood!"Sam called again as Dean closed to grapple with him.
At the sound of Sam’s voice, Dean seemed to snap out of the mindless frenzy that he’d been in.
"Sam?" Dean blinked muzzily at his brother. He looked from Sam to Chloe, then down at his hands, before looking up again with wide eyes. "I - Sam. God. I almost." His voice dripped with self-recrimination. Then his fangs receded, and for a moment Chloe could pretend that it was a trick of the light, that she’d imagined the whole thing.
Then Dean set his jaw in that stubborn Winchester way. He’d never been one to wear his emotions on his sleeve, but Chloe was getting very good at reading them. Now she could see him steel himself for a difficult decision. He walked over to the corner, where he’d obviously piled a set of weapons from earlier. Then he picked up a machete and tossed it at Sam’s feet.
"You know what to do."
"Dean. No." Sam shook his head. But Dean wouldn’t give him room to argue. Instead he turned, effectively shutting Sam out, and focused his attention on Chloe. She wanted to argue as well. Wanted to scream at him that he was being an idiot. That there had to be another way. But just looking into his already expressionless face and his dead eyes seemed to sap all of her will to argue. It was like he had already left her, and she could feel her heart breaking in his absence.
"Chloe," he reached out to touch her cheek, but she turned her face into her own shoulder, just out of his reach, and shut her eyes against the tears that she couldn’t hold back.
He sighed, and when she opened her eyes, she could see the flicker of regret there. "In the trunk of the Impala is a snub-nosed .38. I noticed that you stopped carrying your .22. Thought you might like it. Been meaning to give it to you for a while."
She nodded. That was so very like Dean. Trying to keep her safe, even after he was gone. "Thank you." She hated how hoarse her voice sounded.
"Take care of Sam for me," he said quietly. "Please."
She nodded again, but didn’t trust herself to speak. Dean seemed satisfied with this, and turned back to Sam.
"The Impala’s yours, Sammy. You better not put one scratch on her," Dean said. "You hear me?"
Sam looked like he was on the verge of tears as well, and Chloe felt the vice around her heart tighten again. She knew that they were out of options.
Dean knelt and turned his back to them. Offering his neck. "Do it quick, Sam. The waiting’s killin’ me."
Sam picked up the long blade and rested it against the side of Dean’s neck, in preparation to swing it. Dean took a deep breath. His whole body seemed to tense. Chloe shut her eyes and turned so that she didn’t have to watch.
Then she heard a strangled curse and turned again. Instead of taking a swing for Dean’s neck, Sam had instead pulled out a srynge of devil’s blood and plunged it into Dean’s veins. The eldest Winchester blinked at it in shock, before crumpling to the ground.
"That works fast," Sam noted.
Chloe blinked back her tears and felt a moment of elation. If Sam wasn’t giving up, maybe there was hope. But she quickly buried it. At best, this might only be a temporary stay of execution.
"Chloe," Sam turned to her and dropped the weapon. "I don’t know what he’s going to do when he wakes up. Best case scenareo - he’s still himself, but pissed off. We need to find a way to contain him, just in case."
Chloe glanced around the empty apartment - the ceilings were high - with a stamped tin pattern and antique fixtures. She bet that the plumbing was the sturdy old-fashioned kind. "The bathroom. I bet the tub is cast iron. If Buffy can keep Spike chained up in one of those, then we can do the same with Dean."
"I think we have a tow chain in the trunk of the Impala," Sam said.
"Sam," Chloe looked at him sadly. "How long are we going to do this?"
"Until we can find a solution." Sam said. His jaw set in the same determined line that Dean’s was set in earlier.
"What if there isn’t one?" Chloe asked hesitantly. Sam’s stubbornness filled her with hope. But there was also enough fear to nearly kill her hope off. If there wasn’t a solution, would Sam be willing to keep Dean alive? Would Sam want to move him off into the middle of nowhere, and keep him prisoner until he was ready to accept his new condition? Chloe didn’t think she could be a party to that. Trying to save Dean that way wasn’t a solution. Anything that broke his spirit for the sake of not losing him was no solution.
"There’s a solution, Chloe." Sam said. "We just have to find it. If I thought I could summon up a demon and make a new deal, I would. That option isn’t open to us anymore. But this isn’t the most serious situation we’ve been through. We got through the others. We’ll get through this."
Chloe shut her eyes and nodded. Dean and Sam had a bond that went so deep that she couldn’t fathom it. If anyone could get Dean out of this mess, it would be his brother.