SPN: Walk Like A Man (gen)
Title: Walk Like A Man
Details: Gen, PG, ~5000 words.
Spoilers: One very mild spoiler for Bad Day At Black Rock.
Warnings/Notes: Craaaaack. There is just no way around it. I can't believe I don't post any real fic for six months and this is what eventually makes it to LJ. Seriously. But it's special because it's for arabella_hope, because it was her idea and she was so squeeful about age regression LONG before spn_halloween came along. I'm glad to have finally made it happen for her. Oh, also, I kind of borrowed a little bit from gottalovev regarding Dean's Halloween costume. Hope you don't mind, Lou! :)
Summary: Dean gets his ass cursed at a truck stop, and it all kind of snowballs from there: the virgins, the breading, the space ninjas. Written for the spn_halloween prompt: Grown-up Sam & Dean are mentally age-regressed and go trick or treating, but I ended up fitting at least 2 of the other prompts in here accidentally.
Walk Like A Man
In retrospect, it's totally not Sam's fault that it takes him so long to notice. Dean is being Dean. If anything, he's being more Dean than usual. So Sam's weirdness alarm goes untripped for far longer than it should.
It starts at a truck stop on the Thruway. Sam comes out of the bathroom and Dean is arm wrestling with a machine. Or trying to. The beefy plastic arm won't budge, and a robot voice is calling him a scrawny weakling.
“Sammy. Little help here?”
Sam watches him lunge at the thing, his face flushed bright red.
“Go, Dean,” Sam says colourlessly. “You can take him.”
He goes over and puts a penny into one of those penny squishing machines, works the crank.
“This. Thing. Is. Possessed.”
Dean is growling, his feet skidding along the floor as he leans his entire body weight against the burly arm.
“Yeah,” Sam says. “Everything's out to get you.”
Sam's penny comes out stamped with a unicorn. He quickly shoves it deep into his pocket.
“Piece of shit,” Dean says, and kicks the Charles Atlas Strength Challenge so hard it knocks into the Love Meter and causes half its pink lights to stop blinking. Unfortunately for Dean, the lights on the Strength Challenge are unaffected - and currently spelling out the word “PUNY”.
Sam's trying to keep his laughter inside, he really is.
“You,” Dean says. “Unicorn boy. Shut the hell up.”
“How did you...” Sam says. Dean shoves past him out the door.
He pouts all the way to Schenectady. Cranks Moving Pictures until Sam starts plotting ways to sneak over to Canada and murder Geddy Lee.
Basically, business as usual.
::
Their first stop when they get to town is the Union College chapter of Choose Chastity, where they pose as prospective members and gather some facts about a couple of dead girls.
Sam comes away with a tear-soaked shoulder and a head full of information.
Dean comes away half-hard and twitchy.
He climbs into the shotgun seat, so Sam trips over his feet a little, changing his trajectory. Gets in and starts her up, then looks over at Dean, who's not-so-subtly adjusting himself.
“Uh,” Sam says.
Dean huffs.
“They sure go on about sex. I mean, for a bunch of virgins. Whooie.”
“I guess. I didn't really...”
Dean squirms, pushes a tightly closed fist against his lower belly. He looks awkward and embarrassed, which is an odd look on Dean.
“Are you okay?” Sam says.
Staring intently out the window, Dean nods, clears this throat.
“So,” he says. “Virgin sacrifice. Kinda gives a whole new meaning to 'saving yourself for marriage'.”
Dean snorts at his own stupid joke. Sam sighs and finds them a motel.
::
At dinner, Sam watches his brother construct a mashed potato island complete with looming volcano and groves of broccoli trees. He's arranging peas up the side of the volcano when Sam hits his threshold and speaks up.
“What are you doing?”
“What? Oh. Check it out. The natives are appeasing the gods with a mass suicide,” Dean says.
He holds Sam's gaze, and Sam holds his. There's a long silence, and then Dean grabs his fork and smushes the potato structure flat, muttering something Sam barely catches, but that definitely contains the words “Captain McBoring”.
So, on the one hand? Completely weird behaviour. On the other hand? Totally normal.
::
It's not until that night in the bar that Sam starts to worry.
“What'll it be, cutie?” the bartender says, leaning strategically close, showing off some impressive cleavage.
“Some beer,” Dean says, looking up at her face,. “Uh. Please. Ma'am.”
She waits for specifics that don't come.
“I'll just get you my favourite, alright?” she says, and Dean nods pleasantly. She walks away with a sympathetic glance over her shoulder at Sam.
Yep, Sam thinks. She is definitely under the impression that Dean is suffering from some form of mental handicap. And she's probably about to bring him some sparkling grape juice.
“So,” Dean says. “What do we do about all the dead girls? You think we should we call someone?”
“I think we should take care of it,” Sam says. “Like always. Are you sure you're feeling okay?”
“Yeah,” Dean says tightly. “Course.”
“It's not like this is our first cult case, Dean.”
“Riiight,” Dean says. “I'm just messing with you.”
The bartender returns with a Bud Light. Dean tips it back too quickly, earns himself a nose full of foam. Sam watches him sputter and cough. Yeah, something's messing with Sam, alright.
::
One minute, the girl is licking Dean's ear. The next, she's falling all over his empty bar stool and he's across the room, looking sick. He wipes his ear with the hem of his shirt.
“Ugh. Gross. Sammy, let's go.”
Outside, Dean says, “We're never going in that place again. That's a kissing place.”
Yeah, okay. Sam's alarm bells are a little late in sounding, but they're ringing out loud and clear now.
Dean scrubs at his face with his sleeve. “Ew, yuck.”
“Dean, how old are you?” Sam says, stomach heavy with dread and breaded chicken wings.
Dean rolls his eyes. “Ten and a half. Duh.”
“How old am I?”
Dean is about to answer, but then he looks confused and just blinks a lot.
“Come on,” Sam says, grabbing Dean's hand and leading him back across the street to their room. “I'm calling Bobby.”
::
Bobby laughs. A lot. Sam thinks he hears furniture falling over.
“It's not funny,” Sam says.
Dean is cramming Cheetos into his mouth and watching The Simpsons. Which is what he'd be doing anyway.
“It's a little funny,” Bobby says.
“What if he just keeps getting younger on the inside? I mean, earlier, it seemed like... I don't know, he was having these, uh...”
Sam's face feels like it's on fire.
“Sam?”
“He's definitely regressed beyond puberty, alright? And uh. Earlier, he hadn't yet. Actually, I think it was kind of... going on.”
Sam can hear the exact moment Bobby decides he's better off not knowing. It sounds a lot like a sigh.
“I don't know, sounds like a pretty mellow curse, Sam. I mean, it took you this long to notice in the first place. Shouldn't last more than a few days, I'll bet. Has your brother had any contact with your father's stash of cursed objects lately?” Bobby says.
“No, we haven't been back there in months,” Sam says.
“Can you think of any unusual objects he might have come into contact with? Maybe in an adversarial position?”
As mysteries go, it's not the hardest one to crack.
“Uh. Yeah.”
::
Sam lies there with his eyes closed. He waits while Dean gets up to check the salt lines, cracks the bathroom door open so there's a sliver of light across the floor, the way Sam used to like, and screws around with the thermostat.
When Dean is finally asleep, curled up in the bed by the door, hand under his pillow clutching his favourite knife, Sam sneaks out with the keys and aims the car toward the tollbooths at the edge of town.
Serves them right for ever getting on the interstate, he thinks. There's a reason they usually go out of their way to avoid it - it's like a cesspool of evil interspersed with Kenny Rogers' Roasters.
::
The Charles Atlas Strength Challenge is just where he remembers, wedged between a dock of pay phones and a dusty array of arcade rejects.
“So you're the culprit,” Sam says.
Insert $0.25, says the machine.
Sam glances around. The Ben & Jerry's awning is down and there's only one sleepy-looking trucker sitting at a table, pawing through a stack of newspapers looking for the funnies.
“Can't let you keep cursing people,” Sam says. “You're coming with me.”
Insert $0.25, says the machine.
It doesn't look that heavy. Sam goes for the cord, and the blinking lights go out. For a second, everything's running smoothly. Then Sam crouches to lift the thing, and it roars to life and flexes its robot arm directly into his forehead.
“Ow! Goddammit!” Sam says, and falls over. He kicks the machine a couple of times. Feels better.
Until he remembers how Dean got cursed in the first place.
This is not his proudest moment.
::
Maybe Sam overthinks things. He's convinced he can feel it happening, his mind and past shrinking, and it makes his skin crawl and his heart race.
Or maybe that's the fact that he's speeding down a four-lane highway in the rain, trying to make it back to the Genessee Motel in one piece before he forgets how to drive, or whatever's about to happen happens.
His phone rings and he brakes suddenly, startled. The car coasts on a thin sheet of water for forty yards or so, just long enough to send Sam into cardiac arrest. By the time he regains control and remembers to breathe, the call's gone to voicemail. He takes one look at the caller ID and dials right back.
“Bobby. Tell me good news.”
“I got some of that.”
“Oh, thank god.”
“Got some bad news, too. Which one you want first?”
“Whichever won't make me crash into a tree,” Sam says. Although come to think of it, he doesn't remember seeing anything but flat brown fields along the roadside.
“Fair enough,” Bobby says. “I asked around about your brother's little problem. Friend of mine dealt with a few similar cases some years back, mostly tied to a kid's toy, and not one of them lasted longer than three days. He'll be fine.”
Sam sighs, relieved in more ways than one.
“What's the bad news?”
“Those dead girls you were talking about earlier. They have some kind of a symbol carved into their foreheads? Like a half-moon with a hash mark through it?”
“Yeah. You know it?”
“I know it,” Bobby says. “Dealt with these guys before. Pagan blood rituals.”
Sam slows for the tollbooth, tosses a random handful of coins into the container.
“So we got 'em. This sounds like more good news, Bobby.”
“Yeah, except for the part where they like to slaughter three virgins at sundown on Samhain and use the entrails to tell the future.”
“Oh, shit.”
“Ain't no way I'm gonna make it out there in time to help you. And your sorry excuse for a brother probably oughta stay out of the way. You're on your own.”
“Uh. Bobby?”
Sam swallows and it makes a clicking sound. He's going to let Bobby down. He's going to let everyone down and those girls, whoever they are, will die gruesome guts-hanging-outside-of-their-bodies deaths because of him and some stupid arcade gizmo. Mostly him.
“Yeah, Sam?”
“Nothing. Never mind.”
::
Although the sun's barely up when Sam gets back, Dean is wide awake, sitting bolt upright on the bed with the comforter draped over his head and shoulders. He's aiming a zombie stare at the Powerpuff Girls but still jumps and changes the channel when he catches sight of Sam.
Sam sets the car keys on the table and toes off his shoes.
“Hey,” he says, and it comes out shakier than he wants it to. He definitely should not have been driving that entire last hour, and he's got butterflies in his stomach trying to fly up into his throat. He feels weird.
“I woke up and you weren't here,” Dean says. His eyes are wide, hurt and anxiety close to the surface.
“I went out,” Sam says.
“You were gone a long time,” Dean says.
“I was trying to fix your curse.”
“Did you?”
“Not exactly.”
Dean just looks at him, doesn't pry any further, the way Sam knows he would have, especially when he was a kid.
“Scoot over,” Sam says, and Dean does, lets Sam under the blanket with him and turns on Spongebob. They sit quietly for a while, and it helps.
::
“So, those ladies we talked to yesterday are all gonna die?” Dean says. “That blows.”
Sam looks up from peeling the breading off his chicken finger and considers.
“Not all of them. Maybe, like, half.”
“Oh, well, that's better,” Dean says with a grimace.
“Not really,” Sam says.
He pokes at his pile of discarded breading and wobbly fat, watches it topple off the edge of his plate and sit there on the formica in a little puddle of grease. After a few seconds, Dean reaches over and arranges the oily flakes into the shape of a smiley face, like that's going to make Sam feel any better. Sam tosses the naked chicken finger back down on his plate and sighs.
“OK,” Dean says. “So we're cursed. Or something. That's what you said.”
Sam nods, fearful of the kind of flawed Dean logic that usually accompanies that tone.
“So what? We're still the only ones who can stop it. Our bodies are still the same. It's just inside that's different, Sammy, so you know what? We fake it.”
Sam shakes his head, mostly to hide his trembling chin. “Dean, I'm scared. We should call the police or something.”
Dean looks disappointed in him. Also, manic. Also, he cut himself shaving this morning in six places.
“What's the matter with you? Don't you remember anything from those scary movies I made you watch? You never call the cops. Cause the sheriff always turns out to be one of them. And then you're screwed.”
“Those are movies, Dean. Not real.”
“We can't just let those ladies die because we're scared, Sam. That's not what Winchesters do.”
“I know,” Sam says.
He stares at what's left of his food, feeling sick. He must be sending out some sort of vibe, because the waitress heads right over and takes their plates away.
“Not too hungry, huh?” she says. “You want a coffee or something?”
Sam looks up at her, feeling shy.
“You got chocolate milk?” he says. Feels Dean kick him in the shin and it hurts a lot more with steel toes. “Please?”
The waitress smiles.
“I'll go see what we have in the fridge.”
::
Sam feels better after two glasses of chocolate milk. Except that he kind of wants to crawl into the back seat of the car and go to sleep, but he can't do that. There's no one to drive it around and make it all warm and comfortable, for one thing, and also they have to figure out how to stop a bunch of psycho pagans from cutting some ladies open just because they've never had sex.
“Why don't we just go back to the college and tell them they have to have sex?” Sam says, still scooting along the sidewalk after Dean even with his much longer legs. “Then they won't be virgins anymore, right? They'll be safe and the bad guys might not find anybody to take their place.”
“Uh,” Dean says, like he's trying to be nice. “Maybe.”
“Well, if you're so smart, what do you think we should do?”
“Here's what we're gonna do,” Dean says, leading Sam into a Wal-Mart at the other end of the strip mall from the diner. “I'll distract the scary people with the knives, and you'll get the virgins to safety.”
“But Dean -”
“Sammy, when you're older than me, then you can pick what we do. I might even listen to you. Now help me find a Halloween costume.”
“I was older than you yesterday,” Sam grumbles. Dean pretends not to hear him, browses through a bin of latex masks. He holds up a scraggly werewolf, makes growly noises at Sam.
::
In the end, Dean forces Sam to go as MacGuyver, which mostly involves a mullet wig and a utility belt he can fill with items Sam might need to bust out the captives. Sam peers miserably from under tufts of blond hair as Dean dons a black turtleneck and a ski mask.
“What are you, a ninja?” Sam says.
“Master thief,” Dean says, pulling on a pair of thin black gloves. He stops, tilts his head in thought. “And ninja.”
“You can't be two things at once,” Sam says.
“Sure I can,” Dean says, smacking into a bin full of shoes as he heads for the cash register. He adjusts his mask. “I used to be a ninja but then I retired and now I'm a master thief. Simple.”
Sam snorts and grabs a roll of reflective tape from an impulse displayer on the counter.
“What's that for?”
“It's for you. You can't go out all in black. It's not safe. You could get hit by a car.”
“I'm not gonna get hit by a car,” Dean says, his exasperation muffled under the ski mask.
“Not if you use this tape, you won't,” Sam says. He picks it up and tilts it back and forth. “See? Shiny.”
“I can't wear that, Sammy.”
“You have to!” Sam says. “No one will be able to see you in the dark!”
“That's kind of the point, dork.”
Dean grabs the tape, tries to wrestle it away from Sam. The checkout girl just stands back and watches as Sam shoves Dean back hard and he loses his balance and nearly crushes a cardboard display of marshmallow brooms. Sam uses the opportunity to slam the roll of tape back onto the counter and pull out his wallet. Dean straightens out and grabs for the tape again, but stops when he sees Sam's wobbly chin.
“Don't want you to get hit by a car, Dean.”
“Sammy,” Dean says. “I can't sneak up on anybody if I'm glowing, okay? You understand?”
Sam nods. He still doesn't feel good about this. They end up buying the tape anyway, just in case.
::
Four hours later, Dean steps back from the tree and admires his masterpiece.
“I call it Angry Dude,” he says.
Sam checks it against the drawing Bobby sent them.
“There should be another swirly thing here,” he says, pointing, and Dean unrolls a length of tape and adds what looks like a plume of curling smoke to his creation.
“Perfect.”
It's starting to get dark, so they hide, Dean next to the marked tree, and Sam a little ways down on the edge of the clearing.
When the sky is bright red and orange at one end, darkening blue at the other, they show up, five figures in long robes. One of them is holding a length of nylon rope in one hand like a leash, three nervous-looking ladies in very little clothing trailing behind, their hands bound and twisted in the rope like caught fish. The rope gets secured around a tree trunk on the other side of the clearing, tied off tight even though the women seem exhausted and a little dopey and aren't fighting against their bindings at all.
The pagans get a fire going, which is a little scary because one of them comes very close to discovering Sam while looking for fallen branches. After that, Sam starts to make his way around to the other side, careful of twigs and leaves and anything else that might make noise. He's all stooped down, remembering that he's really, really tall in his grown-up body. Taller than Dean, even. He's pretty good at sneaking around on his tip-toes, but it still takes a really long time and requires a lot of attention, so he doesn't notice the chanting and the drumming until he gets right up close to the tree and there are only two girls tied to it.
Sam gasps, spots the third being dragged into a stone circle, and then a scary, glowing face comes out of the darkness. The ladies all scream very, very loud, and Sam makes a note to thank them later for playing along.
“Followers!” Dean's voice booms across the clearing. He's using the deepest, scariest voice he can muster, and to Sam it sounds a little like a cross between their dad and Rod Serling.
“Um?” one of the robed figures says.
“Your actions have angered me!” There's a silence, in which the pagans stand around and look at each other, wide-eyed. “A lot!”
“What have we done, uh... master?”
With their attention fully on the tape god, Sam feels it's safe enough to make a dash for the other two captives. He kneels down next to them and pulls out his utility knife, hacking at the thick rope. His stupid wig keeps flopping in front his eyes, but he's making some progress. The two ladies watch him, blinking like cows. Eventually he just tosses the wig off into some bushes.
“Bow before me!” Dean yells. Then, when they just look at each other, “I said bow!”
The bad guys get down on their knees, wincing like huge wimps when the ground is lumpy underneath them.
Sam finally cuts through the rope and he helps the two ladies to their feet. They sway a little, but then one of them looks at him and smiles.
“Hey, you're that cute pledge from the other day,” she says.
“Shh,” Sam says, leading them into the brush and shoving them behind some bushes. They fall in a tangled heap and just lie there.
“Good, now stand on one foot!” Dean's booming voice comes through the trees.
Sam re-enters the clearing just in time to see the five robed figures lift one leg up in the air. The third virgin is still in the middle of the stone circle, sitting stunned on the ground as her captors play a strange slow motion version of Simon Says.
“Close your eyes,” Dean says. “No peeking.”
The worshippers do as they're told. Sam steps out into the clearing, tries to be quiet as he makes his way to the stone circle and squeezes between two of them. He's grateful for the slight breeze that helps disguise his movements as he brushes up against their robes. Once in the middle, he puts a finger to his lips and the lady nods, her stringy brown hair swaying forward. He tries to get her to her feet, but she's kind of heavy and her body's not entirely cooperative. He can hear Dean stalling.
“Make a picture in your mind of a wild animal,” Dean says, his big scary voice starting to fray along the edges. Sam's going to have to hurry. “Imagine it in its natural habitat. Reeeally picture it.”
Frog, frog, frog, Sam thinks as he bends his knees, gets his arms under the girl and just hoists. It's hard to be quiet: she's really big, and he almost topples backwards.
“That animal is your totem. It represents you. Its faults are your faults.”
Sam sneaks between the same two robes - trickier now with the width and weight of a girl to accommodate - and makes his way over to Dean.
“Open your eyes and behold!” Dean says, then turns away from his cupped hands to cough, because doing the voice is destroying his vocal chords.
The pagans look around the clearing, baffled.
“What's a totem?” Sam whispers.
Dean shrugs. “I read about it in National Geographic,” he whispers back, then clears his throat and starts yelling again.
“I have taken your sacrifice and offered you mercy, followers. Never again will you spill human blood in my name. Promise?”
The guys in robes seem really shook up. A couple of them are already running through the forest as fast as their legs will go, but the others stop long enough to yell back, “Promise!” before disappearing into the dark.
Dean reaches over, clicks off the propped-up flashlight that's been pointed at the reflective tape this whole time.
“Well, that was easy.”
::
They give the three ladies some t-shirts out of their bags and let them use the phone in their motel room to call for a ride. Dean keeps offering to drive them, says he totally knows how since Dad taught him for emergencies, but Sam's chin juts out and his eyes mist over whenever Dean mentions the car, so eventually he stops talking about it.
They wait outside for the ride, and Dean pulls his ski mask back over his face. Sam's wig (retrieved by Dean, because Sam couldn't care less) has twigs and what looks like a clump of sap caught in it, but he's back to wearing it because it makes Dean laugh. Sam's pretty sure it's not the good kind of laughter, but he'll take what he can get. And anyway, Dean lets him break out the roll of reflective tape and go nuts, so Dean obviously loves him a lot. Sam makes big X's across Dean's front and back, and circles Dean's wrists and ankles with the stuff. Now Dean kind of looks like a space ninja, which Sam secretly thinks is a lot cooler (and more believable) than a thief ninja.
The ladies all hug them when their friend's car pulls up. They're still acting kind of floppy and drunk, and one of them presses her boobs right up against Sam. She smells like flowers and smoke, and he gags a little bit, covers it by coughing. Then she grabs Dean, who sticks his tongue out through the mouth hole of his mask and makes big eyes at Sam.
“You should probably have sex with somebody soon,” Sam advises them. “Cause if you guys weren't virgins this would never have happened.” They look confused, so Sam gets technical. “It means when two people do naked wrestling. And the one who wins gets to tickle the other one. Maybe you can do it to each other.”
He looks up and Dean's kind of biting his lip through the mask. His eyes look all shiny like he's trying not to laugh. Well, whatever, Sam's just trying to help.
::
They have pillowcases, and costumes, and they're already covered in safety tape, so the trick-or-treating is practically a no-brainer. It's late, but it's not that late, and there are still a few kids doing the rounds in the housing development behind the motel. They head over to the nearest house, crossing paths with a couple of cats, a princess, a jockey and two kids dressed as a camel.
“Kay, same as usual,” Dean says when they're standing on the stoop. “You act cute and kinda stupid, do the puppy eyes thing, and we rake in the candy.”
He rings the doorbell, and the door swings open before his finger leaves the button.
“What do we have here?” the man says, grin freezing on his face when he sees Sam and Dean.
“Trick or treat!” Sam says.
“What is this?” the guy asks through the screen door.
“I'm MacGuyver and my brother is a space ninja.”
“Master thief, Sam. Thief slash ninja.”
“Space ninja's cooler, though, Dean.”
“Is not, it's lame. A ninja couldn't do any ninja stuff in space, he's have to wear a big bulky space suit just to survive.”
Sam resists the urge to shove his brother. He's really liking that he can get Dean to fall over with just one shove these days. Also, he's taller.
The door starts to close in their face, the guy turning away, muttering, “Real funny, guys. Go sleep it off.”
“Wait!” Dean says, in a tone that can only mean he's spotted mini 3 Musketeers bars inside. “My brother's retarded! I mean, slow! And I, uh, I have to take him trick or treating on Halloween, otherwise he gets really upset and he cries for days.”
The man swings the door wider and takes a long look at them both.
“You serious?”
“He's like a six year-old inside,” Dean says.
Sam nods vigorously, glad that Dean's spun a story that's at least partially true this time. You can never tell with Dean.
“Well,” the guy says, and it looks for a minute like he's going to close the door in their faces anyway. “That's actually pretty sweet.”
The screen door swings open, and Sam gets a double helping of mini 3 Musketeers.
They head over to the next house, chattering back and forth and perfecting their routine, so by the time that door swings open and a grey-haired lady pokes her head out, takes one look at Sam and says, “Which one are you, Siegfried or Roy?” they've got it down.
::
OK, so Sam probably shouldn't have eaten his entire stash of candy (except for the Glosette raisins, he hates those) in one sitting. His mouth feels all burned from the sugar and then from the throwing up of the sugar afterwards, and his stomach feels really gross and he's all shaky. But Dean rubs his belly, and Dean lets Sam curl up in his bed after Sam's gets puked on, and Dean gets him water and leaves the TV on, even though he hates that, because it helps Sam sleep.
When he wakes up the next morning, stomach still rumbling, Dean is packing their bags.
Sam rolls over, his stomach protesting, and he barely keeps whatever's down there down.
“Owww, tummy,” Sam says, burying his face in the pillow, and he feels Dean's weight settle on the mattress, Dean's arm, warm and comforting around him.
“God, you were such a needy dork when you were six,” Dean says. “Glad I don't have to deal with that shit anymore.”
He sounds kind of sad, and that's how Sam knows Dean is a grown-up again.
::
Sam's curse wears off faster than the nausea does, but despite his protesting stomach, they load up the car later that afternoon.
Halfway to Scranton, they pull off the road, take the Charles Atlas Strength Challenge out of the trunk, drag it into the middle of a barren field, and salt and burn the hell out of it.
“That's that,” Dean says.
It's the last either of them says about it.
Details: Gen, PG, ~5000 words.
Spoilers: One very mild spoiler for Bad Day At Black Rock.
Warnings/Notes: Craaaaack. There is just no way around it. I can't believe I don't post any real fic for six months and this is what eventually makes it to LJ. Seriously. But it's special because it's for arabella_hope, because it was her idea and she was so squeeful about age regression LONG before spn_halloween came along. I'm glad to have finally made it happen for her. Oh, also, I kind of borrowed a little bit from gottalovev regarding Dean's Halloween costume. Hope you don't mind, Lou! :)
Summary: Dean gets his ass cursed at a truck stop, and it all kind of snowballs from there: the virgins, the breading, the space ninjas. Written for the spn_halloween prompt: Grown-up Sam & Dean are mentally age-regressed and go trick or treating, but I ended up fitting at least 2 of the other prompts in here accidentally.
Walk Like A Man
In retrospect, it's totally not Sam's fault that it takes him so long to notice. Dean is being Dean. If anything, he's being more Dean than usual. So Sam's weirdness alarm goes untripped for far longer than it should.
It starts at a truck stop on the Thruway. Sam comes out of the bathroom and Dean is arm wrestling with a machine. Or trying to. The beefy plastic arm won't budge, and a robot voice is calling him a scrawny weakling.
“Sammy. Little help here?”
Sam watches him lunge at the thing, his face flushed bright red.
“Go, Dean,” Sam says colourlessly. “You can take him.”
He goes over and puts a penny into one of those penny squishing machines, works the crank.
“This. Thing. Is. Possessed.”
Dean is growling, his feet skidding along the floor as he leans his entire body weight against the burly arm.
“Yeah,” Sam says. “Everything's out to get you.”
Sam's penny comes out stamped with a unicorn. He quickly shoves it deep into his pocket.
“Piece of shit,” Dean says, and kicks the Charles Atlas Strength Challenge so hard it knocks into the Love Meter and causes half its pink lights to stop blinking. Unfortunately for Dean, the lights on the Strength Challenge are unaffected - and currently spelling out the word “PUNY”.
Sam's trying to keep his laughter inside, he really is.
“You,” Dean says. “Unicorn boy. Shut the hell up.”
“How did you...” Sam says. Dean shoves past him out the door.
He pouts all the way to Schenectady. Cranks Moving Pictures until Sam starts plotting ways to sneak over to Canada and murder Geddy Lee.
Basically, business as usual.
::
Their first stop when they get to town is the Union College chapter of Choose Chastity, where they pose as prospective members and gather some facts about a couple of dead girls.
Sam comes away with a tear-soaked shoulder and a head full of information.
Dean comes away half-hard and twitchy.
He climbs into the shotgun seat, so Sam trips over his feet a little, changing his trajectory. Gets in and starts her up, then looks over at Dean, who's not-so-subtly adjusting himself.
“Uh,” Sam says.
Dean huffs.
“They sure go on about sex. I mean, for a bunch of virgins. Whooie.”
“I guess. I didn't really...”
Dean squirms, pushes a tightly closed fist against his lower belly. He looks awkward and embarrassed, which is an odd look on Dean.
“Are you okay?” Sam says.
Staring intently out the window, Dean nods, clears this throat.
“So,” he says. “Virgin sacrifice. Kinda gives a whole new meaning to 'saving yourself for marriage'.”
Dean snorts at his own stupid joke. Sam sighs and finds them a motel.
::
At dinner, Sam watches his brother construct a mashed potato island complete with looming volcano and groves of broccoli trees. He's arranging peas up the side of the volcano when Sam hits his threshold and speaks up.
“What are you doing?”
“What? Oh. Check it out. The natives are appeasing the gods with a mass suicide,” Dean says.
He holds Sam's gaze, and Sam holds his. There's a long silence, and then Dean grabs his fork and smushes the potato structure flat, muttering something Sam barely catches, but that definitely contains the words “Captain McBoring”.
So, on the one hand? Completely weird behaviour. On the other hand? Totally normal.
::
It's not until that night in the bar that Sam starts to worry.
“What'll it be, cutie?” the bartender says, leaning strategically close, showing off some impressive cleavage.
“Some beer,” Dean says, looking up at her face,. “Uh. Please. Ma'am.”
She waits for specifics that don't come.
“I'll just get you my favourite, alright?” she says, and Dean nods pleasantly. She walks away with a sympathetic glance over her shoulder at Sam.
Yep, Sam thinks. She is definitely under the impression that Dean is suffering from some form of mental handicap. And she's probably about to bring him some sparkling grape juice.
“So,” Dean says. “What do we do about all the dead girls? You think we should we call someone?”
“I think we should take care of it,” Sam says. “Like always. Are you sure you're feeling okay?”
“Yeah,” Dean says tightly. “Course.”
“It's not like this is our first cult case, Dean.”
“Riiight,” Dean says. “I'm just messing with you.”
The bartender returns with a Bud Light. Dean tips it back too quickly, earns himself a nose full of foam. Sam watches him sputter and cough. Yeah, something's messing with Sam, alright.
::
One minute, the girl is licking Dean's ear. The next, she's falling all over his empty bar stool and he's across the room, looking sick. He wipes his ear with the hem of his shirt.
“Ugh. Gross. Sammy, let's go.”
Outside, Dean says, “We're never going in that place again. That's a kissing place.”
Yeah, okay. Sam's alarm bells are a little late in sounding, but they're ringing out loud and clear now.
Dean scrubs at his face with his sleeve. “Ew, yuck.”
“Dean, how old are you?” Sam says, stomach heavy with dread and breaded chicken wings.
Dean rolls his eyes. “Ten and a half. Duh.”
“How old am I?”
Dean is about to answer, but then he looks confused and just blinks a lot.
“Come on,” Sam says, grabbing Dean's hand and leading him back across the street to their room. “I'm calling Bobby.”
::
Bobby laughs. A lot. Sam thinks he hears furniture falling over.
“It's not funny,” Sam says.
Dean is cramming Cheetos into his mouth and watching The Simpsons. Which is what he'd be doing anyway.
“It's a little funny,” Bobby says.
“What if he just keeps getting younger on the inside? I mean, earlier, it seemed like... I don't know, he was having these, uh...”
Sam's face feels like it's on fire.
“Sam?”
“He's definitely regressed beyond puberty, alright? And uh. Earlier, he hadn't yet. Actually, I think it was kind of... going on.”
Sam can hear the exact moment Bobby decides he's better off not knowing. It sounds a lot like a sigh.
“I don't know, sounds like a pretty mellow curse, Sam. I mean, it took you this long to notice in the first place. Shouldn't last more than a few days, I'll bet. Has your brother had any contact with your father's stash of cursed objects lately?” Bobby says.
“No, we haven't been back there in months,” Sam says.
“Can you think of any unusual objects he might have come into contact with? Maybe in an adversarial position?”
As mysteries go, it's not the hardest one to crack.
“Uh. Yeah.”
::
Sam lies there with his eyes closed. He waits while Dean gets up to check the salt lines, cracks the bathroom door open so there's a sliver of light across the floor, the way Sam used to like, and screws around with the thermostat.
When Dean is finally asleep, curled up in the bed by the door, hand under his pillow clutching his favourite knife, Sam sneaks out with the keys and aims the car toward the tollbooths at the edge of town.
Serves them right for ever getting on the interstate, he thinks. There's a reason they usually go out of their way to avoid it - it's like a cesspool of evil interspersed with Kenny Rogers' Roasters.
::
The Charles Atlas Strength Challenge is just where he remembers, wedged between a dock of pay phones and a dusty array of arcade rejects.
“So you're the culprit,” Sam says.
Insert $0.25, says the machine.
Sam glances around. The Ben & Jerry's awning is down and there's only one sleepy-looking trucker sitting at a table, pawing through a stack of newspapers looking for the funnies.
“Can't let you keep cursing people,” Sam says. “You're coming with me.”
Insert $0.25, says the machine.
It doesn't look that heavy. Sam goes for the cord, and the blinking lights go out. For a second, everything's running smoothly. Then Sam crouches to lift the thing, and it roars to life and flexes its robot arm directly into his forehead.
“Ow! Goddammit!” Sam says, and falls over. He kicks the machine a couple of times. Feels better.
Until he remembers how Dean got cursed in the first place.
This is not his proudest moment.
::
Maybe Sam overthinks things. He's convinced he can feel it happening, his mind and past shrinking, and it makes his skin crawl and his heart race.
Or maybe that's the fact that he's speeding down a four-lane highway in the rain, trying to make it back to the Genessee Motel in one piece before he forgets how to drive, or whatever's about to happen happens.
His phone rings and he brakes suddenly, startled. The car coasts on a thin sheet of water for forty yards or so, just long enough to send Sam into cardiac arrest. By the time he regains control and remembers to breathe, the call's gone to voicemail. He takes one look at the caller ID and dials right back.
“Bobby. Tell me good news.”
“I got some of that.”
“Oh, thank god.”
“Got some bad news, too. Which one you want first?”
“Whichever won't make me crash into a tree,” Sam says. Although come to think of it, he doesn't remember seeing anything but flat brown fields along the roadside.
“Fair enough,” Bobby says. “I asked around about your brother's little problem. Friend of mine dealt with a few similar cases some years back, mostly tied to a kid's toy, and not one of them lasted longer than three days. He'll be fine.”
Sam sighs, relieved in more ways than one.
“What's the bad news?”
“Those dead girls you were talking about earlier. They have some kind of a symbol carved into their foreheads? Like a half-moon with a hash mark through it?”
“Yeah. You know it?”
“I know it,” Bobby says. “Dealt with these guys before. Pagan blood rituals.”
Sam slows for the tollbooth, tosses a random handful of coins into the container.
“So we got 'em. This sounds like more good news, Bobby.”
“Yeah, except for the part where they like to slaughter three virgins at sundown on Samhain and use the entrails to tell the future.”
“Oh, shit.”
“Ain't no way I'm gonna make it out there in time to help you. And your sorry excuse for a brother probably oughta stay out of the way. You're on your own.”
“Uh. Bobby?”
Sam swallows and it makes a clicking sound. He's going to let Bobby down. He's going to let everyone down and those girls, whoever they are, will die gruesome guts-hanging-outside-of-their-bodies deaths because of him and some stupid arcade gizmo. Mostly him.
“Yeah, Sam?”
“Nothing. Never mind.”
::
Although the sun's barely up when Sam gets back, Dean is wide awake, sitting bolt upright on the bed with the comforter draped over his head and shoulders. He's aiming a zombie stare at the Powerpuff Girls but still jumps and changes the channel when he catches sight of Sam.
Sam sets the car keys on the table and toes off his shoes.
“Hey,” he says, and it comes out shakier than he wants it to. He definitely should not have been driving that entire last hour, and he's got butterflies in his stomach trying to fly up into his throat. He feels weird.
“I woke up and you weren't here,” Dean says. His eyes are wide, hurt and anxiety close to the surface.
“I went out,” Sam says.
“You were gone a long time,” Dean says.
“I was trying to fix your curse.”
“Did you?”
“Not exactly.”
Dean just looks at him, doesn't pry any further, the way Sam knows he would have, especially when he was a kid.
“Scoot over,” Sam says, and Dean does, lets Sam under the blanket with him and turns on Spongebob. They sit quietly for a while, and it helps.
::
“So, those ladies we talked to yesterday are all gonna die?” Dean says. “That blows.”
Sam looks up from peeling the breading off his chicken finger and considers.
“Not all of them. Maybe, like, half.”
“Oh, well, that's better,” Dean says with a grimace.
“Not really,” Sam says.
He pokes at his pile of discarded breading and wobbly fat, watches it topple off the edge of his plate and sit there on the formica in a little puddle of grease. After a few seconds, Dean reaches over and arranges the oily flakes into the shape of a smiley face, like that's going to make Sam feel any better. Sam tosses the naked chicken finger back down on his plate and sighs.
“OK,” Dean says. “So we're cursed. Or something. That's what you said.”
Sam nods, fearful of the kind of flawed Dean logic that usually accompanies that tone.
“So what? We're still the only ones who can stop it. Our bodies are still the same. It's just inside that's different, Sammy, so you know what? We fake it.”
Sam shakes his head, mostly to hide his trembling chin. “Dean, I'm scared. We should call the police or something.”
Dean looks disappointed in him. Also, manic. Also, he cut himself shaving this morning in six places.
“What's the matter with you? Don't you remember anything from those scary movies I made you watch? You never call the cops. Cause the sheriff always turns out to be one of them. And then you're screwed.”
“Those are movies, Dean. Not real.”
“We can't just let those ladies die because we're scared, Sam. That's not what Winchesters do.”
“I know,” Sam says.
He stares at what's left of his food, feeling sick. He must be sending out some sort of vibe, because the waitress heads right over and takes their plates away.
“Not too hungry, huh?” she says. “You want a coffee or something?”
Sam looks up at her, feeling shy.
“You got chocolate milk?” he says. Feels Dean kick him in the shin and it hurts a lot more with steel toes. “Please?”
The waitress smiles.
“I'll go see what we have in the fridge.”
::
Sam feels better after two glasses of chocolate milk. Except that he kind of wants to crawl into the back seat of the car and go to sleep, but he can't do that. There's no one to drive it around and make it all warm and comfortable, for one thing, and also they have to figure out how to stop a bunch of psycho pagans from cutting some ladies open just because they've never had sex.
“Why don't we just go back to the college and tell them they have to have sex?” Sam says, still scooting along the sidewalk after Dean even with his much longer legs. “Then they won't be virgins anymore, right? They'll be safe and the bad guys might not find anybody to take their place.”
“Uh,” Dean says, like he's trying to be nice. “Maybe.”
“Well, if you're so smart, what do you think we should do?”
“Here's what we're gonna do,” Dean says, leading Sam into a Wal-Mart at the other end of the strip mall from the diner. “I'll distract the scary people with the knives, and you'll get the virgins to safety.”
“But Dean -”
“Sammy, when you're older than me, then you can pick what we do. I might even listen to you. Now help me find a Halloween costume.”
“I was older than you yesterday,” Sam grumbles. Dean pretends not to hear him, browses through a bin of latex masks. He holds up a scraggly werewolf, makes growly noises at Sam.
::
In the end, Dean forces Sam to go as MacGuyver, which mostly involves a mullet wig and a utility belt he can fill with items Sam might need to bust out the captives. Sam peers miserably from under tufts of blond hair as Dean dons a black turtleneck and a ski mask.
“What are you, a ninja?” Sam says.
“Master thief,” Dean says, pulling on a pair of thin black gloves. He stops, tilts his head in thought. “And ninja.”
“You can't be two things at once,” Sam says.
“Sure I can,” Dean says, smacking into a bin full of shoes as he heads for the cash register. He adjusts his mask. “I used to be a ninja but then I retired and now I'm a master thief. Simple.”
Sam snorts and grabs a roll of reflective tape from an impulse displayer on the counter.
“What's that for?”
“It's for you. You can't go out all in black. It's not safe. You could get hit by a car.”
“I'm not gonna get hit by a car,” Dean says, his exasperation muffled under the ski mask.
“Not if you use this tape, you won't,” Sam says. He picks it up and tilts it back and forth. “See? Shiny.”
“I can't wear that, Sammy.”
“You have to!” Sam says. “No one will be able to see you in the dark!”
“That's kind of the point, dork.”
Dean grabs the tape, tries to wrestle it away from Sam. The checkout girl just stands back and watches as Sam shoves Dean back hard and he loses his balance and nearly crushes a cardboard display of marshmallow brooms. Sam uses the opportunity to slam the roll of tape back onto the counter and pull out his wallet. Dean straightens out and grabs for the tape again, but stops when he sees Sam's wobbly chin.
“Don't want you to get hit by a car, Dean.”
“Sammy,” Dean says. “I can't sneak up on anybody if I'm glowing, okay? You understand?”
Sam nods. He still doesn't feel good about this. They end up buying the tape anyway, just in case.
::
Four hours later, Dean steps back from the tree and admires his masterpiece.
“I call it Angry Dude,” he says.
Sam checks it against the drawing Bobby sent them.
“There should be another swirly thing here,” he says, pointing, and Dean unrolls a length of tape and adds what looks like a plume of curling smoke to his creation.
“Perfect.”
It's starting to get dark, so they hide, Dean next to the marked tree, and Sam a little ways down on the edge of the clearing.
When the sky is bright red and orange at one end, darkening blue at the other, they show up, five figures in long robes. One of them is holding a length of nylon rope in one hand like a leash, three nervous-looking ladies in very little clothing trailing behind, their hands bound and twisted in the rope like caught fish. The rope gets secured around a tree trunk on the other side of the clearing, tied off tight even though the women seem exhausted and a little dopey and aren't fighting against their bindings at all.
The pagans get a fire going, which is a little scary because one of them comes very close to discovering Sam while looking for fallen branches. After that, Sam starts to make his way around to the other side, careful of twigs and leaves and anything else that might make noise. He's all stooped down, remembering that he's really, really tall in his grown-up body. Taller than Dean, even. He's pretty good at sneaking around on his tip-toes, but it still takes a really long time and requires a lot of attention, so he doesn't notice the chanting and the drumming until he gets right up close to the tree and there are only two girls tied to it.
Sam gasps, spots the third being dragged into a stone circle, and then a scary, glowing face comes out of the darkness. The ladies all scream very, very loud, and Sam makes a note to thank them later for playing along.
“Followers!” Dean's voice booms across the clearing. He's using the deepest, scariest voice he can muster, and to Sam it sounds a little like a cross between their dad and Rod Serling.
“Um?” one of the robed figures says.
“Your actions have angered me!” There's a silence, in which the pagans stand around and look at each other, wide-eyed. “A lot!”
“What have we done, uh... master?”
With their attention fully on the tape god, Sam feels it's safe enough to make a dash for the other two captives. He kneels down next to them and pulls out his utility knife, hacking at the thick rope. His stupid wig keeps flopping in front his eyes, but he's making some progress. The two ladies watch him, blinking like cows. Eventually he just tosses the wig off into some bushes.
“Bow before me!” Dean yells. Then, when they just look at each other, “I said bow!”
The bad guys get down on their knees, wincing like huge wimps when the ground is lumpy underneath them.
Sam finally cuts through the rope and he helps the two ladies to their feet. They sway a little, but then one of them looks at him and smiles.
“Hey, you're that cute pledge from the other day,” she says.
“Shh,” Sam says, leading them into the brush and shoving them behind some bushes. They fall in a tangled heap and just lie there.
“Good, now stand on one foot!” Dean's booming voice comes through the trees.
Sam re-enters the clearing just in time to see the five robed figures lift one leg up in the air. The third virgin is still in the middle of the stone circle, sitting stunned on the ground as her captors play a strange slow motion version of Simon Says.
“Close your eyes,” Dean says. “No peeking.”
The worshippers do as they're told. Sam steps out into the clearing, tries to be quiet as he makes his way to the stone circle and squeezes between two of them. He's grateful for the slight breeze that helps disguise his movements as he brushes up against their robes. Once in the middle, he puts a finger to his lips and the lady nods, her stringy brown hair swaying forward. He tries to get her to her feet, but she's kind of heavy and her body's not entirely cooperative. He can hear Dean stalling.
“Make a picture in your mind of a wild animal,” Dean says, his big scary voice starting to fray along the edges. Sam's going to have to hurry. “Imagine it in its natural habitat. Reeeally picture it.”
Frog, frog, frog, Sam thinks as he bends his knees, gets his arms under the girl and just hoists. It's hard to be quiet: she's really big, and he almost topples backwards.
“That animal is your totem. It represents you. Its faults are your faults.”
Sam sneaks between the same two robes - trickier now with the width and weight of a girl to accommodate - and makes his way over to Dean.
“Open your eyes and behold!” Dean says, then turns away from his cupped hands to cough, because doing the voice is destroying his vocal chords.
The pagans look around the clearing, baffled.
“What's a totem?” Sam whispers.
Dean shrugs. “I read about it in National Geographic,” he whispers back, then clears his throat and starts yelling again.
“I have taken your sacrifice and offered you mercy, followers. Never again will you spill human blood in my name. Promise?”
The guys in robes seem really shook up. A couple of them are already running through the forest as fast as their legs will go, but the others stop long enough to yell back, “Promise!” before disappearing into the dark.
Dean reaches over, clicks off the propped-up flashlight that's been pointed at the reflective tape this whole time.
“Well, that was easy.”
::
They give the three ladies some t-shirts out of their bags and let them use the phone in their motel room to call for a ride. Dean keeps offering to drive them, says he totally knows how since Dad taught him for emergencies, but Sam's chin juts out and his eyes mist over whenever Dean mentions the car, so eventually he stops talking about it.
They wait outside for the ride, and Dean pulls his ski mask back over his face. Sam's wig (retrieved by Dean, because Sam couldn't care less) has twigs and what looks like a clump of sap caught in it, but he's back to wearing it because it makes Dean laugh. Sam's pretty sure it's not the good kind of laughter, but he'll take what he can get. And anyway, Dean lets him break out the roll of reflective tape and go nuts, so Dean obviously loves him a lot. Sam makes big X's across Dean's front and back, and circles Dean's wrists and ankles with the stuff. Now Dean kind of looks like a space ninja, which Sam secretly thinks is a lot cooler (and more believable) than a thief ninja.
The ladies all hug them when their friend's car pulls up. They're still acting kind of floppy and drunk, and one of them presses her boobs right up against Sam. She smells like flowers and smoke, and he gags a little bit, covers it by coughing. Then she grabs Dean, who sticks his tongue out through the mouth hole of his mask and makes big eyes at Sam.
“You should probably have sex with somebody soon,” Sam advises them. “Cause if you guys weren't virgins this would never have happened.” They look confused, so Sam gets technical. “It means when two people do naked wrestling. And the one who wins gets to tickle the other one. Maybe you can do it to each other.”
He looks up and Dean's kind of biting his lip through the mask. His eyes look all shiny like he's trying not to laugh. Well, whatever, Sam's just trying to help.
::
They have pillowcases, and costumes, and they're already covered in safety tape, so the trick-or-treating is practically a no-brainer. It's late, but it's not that late, and there are still a few kids doing the rounds in the housing development behind the motel. They head over to the nearest house, crossing paths with a couple of cats, a princess, a jockey and two kids dressed as a camel.
“Kay, same as usual,” Dean says when they're standing on the stoop. “You act cute and kinda stupid, do the puppy eyes thing, and we rake in the candy.”
He rings the doorbell, and the door swings open before his finger leaves the button.
“What do we have here?” the man says, grin freezing on his face when he sees Sam and Dean.
“Trick or treat!” Sam says.
“What is this?” the guy asks through the screen door.
“I'm MacGuyver and my brother is a space ninja.”
“Master thief, Sam. Thief slash ninja.”
“Space ninja's cooler, though, Dean.”
“Is not, it's lame. A ninja couldn't do any ninja stuff in space, he's have to wear a big bulky space suit just to survive.”
Sam resists the urge to shove his brother. He's really liking that he can get Dean to fall over with just one shove these days. Also, he's taller.
The door starts to close in their face, the guy turning away, muttering, “Real funny, guys. Go sleep it off.”
“Wait!” Dean says, in a tone that can only mean he's spotted mini 3 Musketeers bars inside. “My brother's retarded! I mean, slow! And I, uh, I have to take him trick or treating on Halloween, otherwise he gets really upset and he cries for days.”
The man swings the door wider and takes a long look at them both.
“You serious?”
“He's like a six year-old inside,” Dean says.
Sam nods vigorously, glad that Dean's spun a story that's at least partially true this time. You can never tell with Dean.
“Well,” the guy says, and it looks for a minute like he's going to close the door in their faces anyway. “That's actually pretty sweet.”
The screen door swings open, and Sam gets a double helping of mini 3 Musketeers.
They head over to the next house, chattering back and forth and perfecting their routine, so by the time that door swings open and a grey-haired lady pokes her head out, takes one look at Sam and says, “Which one are you, Siegfried or Roy?” they've got it down.
::
OK, so Sam probably shouldn't have eaten his entire stash of candy (except for the Glosette raisins, he hates those) in one sitting. His mouth feels all burned from the sugar and then from the throwing up of the sugar afterwards, and his stomach feels really gross and he's all shaky. But Dean rubs his belly, and Dean lets Sam curl up in his bed after Sam's gets puked on, and Dean gets him water and leaves the TV on, even though he hates that, because it helps Sam sleep.
When he wakes up the next morning, stomach still rumbling, Dean is packing their bags.
Sam rolls over, his stomach protesting, and he barely keeps whatever's down there down.
“Owww, tummy,” Sam says, burying his face in the pillow, and he feels Dean's weight settle on the mattress, Dean's arm, warm and comforting around him.
“God, you were such a needy dork when you were six,” Dean says. “Glad I don't have to deal with that shit anymore.”
He sounds kind of sad, and that's how Sam knows Dean is a grown-up again.
::
Sam's curse wears off faster than the nausea does, but despite his protesting stomach, they load up the car later that afternoon.
Halfway to Scranton, they pull off the road, take the Charles Atlas Strength Challenge out of the trunk, drag it into the middle of a barren field, and salt and burn the hell out of it.
“That's that,” Dean says.
It's the last either of them says about it.