Fic: Weekly World News

[entangled_now]

Title: Weekly World News
Fandom: Supernatural
Rating: PG-13
Characters: Sam, Dean, Castiel
Warnings: Transformation, crack
Spoilers: None
Disclaimer: In no way mine, or anything to do with me, I own nothing.
Summary: Sam's not feeling like himself, the Impala makes a huge sacrifice, and the world reaches new and interesting levels of crazy.
AN: Written for setos_puppy  who had the idea originally and very kindly let me play with it as well. Thank you! I had a lot of fun writing this for you. I really hope you like it.


The hunt for the lake monster that's been eating swimmers in Wyoming goes pretty well, considering.

It was Dean's plan, and they usually involve a lot of thinking on your feet, closely followed by wild stabbing and the occasional flight through a window. But they have a habit of working out for them anyway. Which is why Sam's not that surprised that operation 'hack it to pieces while it tries to drown them with its tentacles' is a success. The thing stops thrashing eventually. But damn, it's hard work.

When they haul their way back to shore choking on water, and feeling like they've been pummelled and squeezed and choked for an hour, they're absolutely exhausted. They're both soaked all the way through and one of the guns is completely fucked. Sam looks like someone tried to drown him, twice. But they're not missing any limbs and neither of them feel particularly violated.

Which is pretty much instantly a good day.

Sam's coughing water and sitting on the rocky edge of the path when he realises his leg hurts. He finds a rip in his jeans and underneath that a pretty wicked looking hook is dug into the muscle of his thigh.

"Jesus, Sam."

Dean tears the material a little more and it's still light enough to see the direction the thing has dug in.

Sam winces. "Crap, it's not that deep, it's just - damn it, I thought I felt something snag me -"

Dean carefully slides the whole thing out, and the rest of what Sam would have said is lost in a hissed out swearword.

The hook's smeared red with his own blood and the hole in his thigh is pretty gruesome even through his jeans. But it's not bleeding much. It's not bleeding enough to need stitches and as far as they both know sea monsters aren't poisonous. Sam hopes this one isn't poisonous anyway. Because they're pretty far away from anything remotely resembling a hospital.

Still, Dean walks slowly enough that Sam doesn’t get left behind when he limps after him to the car.

Though he still makes him wring out his shirt and sit on an old backpack.

~~~~~

Sam can't sleep.

He's been shifting around for hours, listening to Dean breathe and murmur his way through what's starting to look like a full night's sleep for him for a change.

Sam wishes he could be happier about that. It's too hot under the blanket and his thigh aches, deep in the muscle where the hook punched in and tried to tear his leg open. No matter how he lays, or where he puts pressure, it doesn’t stop. And somewhere in there there's a long, deep itch. The sort that healing skin gives, just to prove it's still alive enough to annoy the shit out of you.

He sighs and very carefully turns over again. Gives a soft groan of discomfort. The pillows are too warm and now everything aches and itches and he's far too tired to be awake putting up with this. If he's caught something from the water, some sort of horrible, intestinal lake parasite, Dean's never going to let him live it down.

He coughs, rubs his face in the cotton and then tries to move to a cooler spot.

Something's wrong.

Not just a little bit wrong either.

He can't move his legs.

He can't even feel his legs.

He's far too hot now, dizzy and shivering in strange pain. A long dragging thirst has started, deep in his chest. It leaves every breath sharp and dry and painful. God, it saws out of him like his throat is full of dust.

"Dean," his voice comes out thick, rough like it's already halfway gone. Not nearly loud enough to wake his brother.

And he's having trouble swallowing now.

Fuck.

Fuck.

"Dean." He gets a hand out, sheets shoved weakly out of the way, and he reaches out, flails in space. He manages to drag his phone off the table, it crashes to the floor and Dean jerks awake and blinks across at him.

"Sam?"

Sam heaves another breath, but it's not even a little bit better and now he feels like he's on fire.

Dean's up out of his own bed now, standing over him, one hand shoved quick under Sam's hair to push against his forehead and Dean's hand is too hot as well. It's too hot and too dry and Sam turns away and rasps in another useless breath.

"Something's wrong," he manages hoarsely.

"Yeah," Dean agrees and tugs the sheets off of him completely.

They flutter down the bed and then fall abruptly.

"Jesus, Christ," Dean takes one, quick, abortive step back, bare feet smacking the carpet hard. Sam can hear his breathing, can hear it rush out of him in shock. "Jesus fucking Christ. Sam."

Dean's voice is only half there, a sort of quiet horror that's trying not to panic, and Sam's shoving his hands down into the mattress, trying to get upright to find out why -

Why.

Oh God.

Oh God, no, no way, no.

His breathing turns into a shaky, horrible mess of rasps because he has a - he has a - fuck.

Then he can't breathe at all. Which becomes the main problem here.

"Dean," he hisses. "I can't breathe."

He tries to pull in air, fails, then tries to sit up and can't do that either. He no longer has the right bones in the right places. His fingers are slowly going numb. Body starving for oxygen.

"Dean -" he digs his fingers into his brother's skin, can't manage another word. It feels like he has no air in his chest even though it's full of it. He's taking such deep breaths he should explode but they're doing nothing at all. Nothing but slicing air uselessly into his lungs.

"Hang on, Sam, fuck, just let me -"

Sam's choking, he's suffocating and Dean digs his hands under Sam's armpits and pulls sideways.

Sam feels dense and immovable but he starts to slide, slowly but surely. Dean's soft, grunted-out sounds of effort and breathless swearwords bringing him closer to the edge of the bed. Sam's trying to help but he has no control over anything any more. He can barely reach up and grasp Dean's arms with his own fingers.

Dean hauls him as hard as he can sideways off the bed. They go down in a pile, damp sheets slithering down to the floor.

"You weigh a fucking ton, Sammy," Dean hisses breathlessly. But the dig is almost buried under the harshness of cold panic. Dean's hands are sweat-damp on his skin when he picks up his shoulders again and starts dragging him.

They keep going, towards the unnaturally bright light of the bathroom and Sam gets it, he absolutely gets it. Because that's exactly what he would do if he'd had enough oxygen left in his brain to think.

There's an almightily flapping 'smack' when Sam's - fuck - when his tail hits the floor, spraying up some unidentifiable slick substance and the glossy shine of a million tiny scales. Dean's still pulling and Sam's too weak to do anything but struggle for every breath. While his brain tries to work out some sort of coherent explanation for why he's currently half fish. He can see spots dancing in front of his face and he's heaving air but it's doing absolutely fuck all to stop his blood from screaming in his veins and his heart from trying to slam itself apart inside his chest.

Dean's dragging him across the floor and the sensation is a rough, long burn of strange discomfort. Like his body belongs to him, and yet not at the same time. The twitching, flailing edge of something that can't possibly be his knocking into the table and their bags. Drag, flap, drag, flap and Sam still can't breathe, can't form words so he digs his fingers into Dean's bare shoulders hard and then he's sliding across tile and Dean's letting him go long enough to lean over the tub and pull the taps open as far as they'll go.

"One minute Sam, one damn minute."

The world is dissolving in pinpricks of light and the hammering desperation of his own heartbeat.

He barely registers Dean's hands dragging his head up, shaking it and his brain jerks inside his skull, tells him, uselessly, to breathe when he's already trying. When he's doing exactly that.

But the rest of his brain is trying to focus on what Dean's saying.

"Sam, you have to help me here, come on, up."

Sam flails, but he can no longer coordinate what goes where, or even if he still owns the body parts he used to.

"Come on, bitch, in the fucking tub," Dean snaps and that's not a question, that's an order.

Sam throws a shaky arm round Dean's shoulders, holds on as tight as his fingers can manage and then Dean's pulling, hauling him up as high as he can. Sam's slip-sliding on tiles and porcelain. Because he's longer and thinner and he no longer has any feet and he's not build to stand up any more. He's not build to do anything apparently and the world's grey-black at the edges.

But then he's skidding over and down and - falling. He hits the inside of the tub with a sliding splash, water flung up everywhere to slosh over the side in a high arc. The stiff, terrifying numbness starts to fade away, the slide of water over what used to be his legs a completely foreign and yet totally perfect sensation.

But he still can't breathe, he's still gasping.

"Your fucking gills you idiot," Dean says fiercely.

Sam's about to tell him he doesn't have gills. But then Dean's shoving his abdomen underwater and - oh, fuck, oh, yes. It's like a shock of brightness and air and the head rush is insane. There's an almighty splash that he thinks maybe he caused and then there's just water and his head is swimming and it's good, it's really good.

The world starts to come back in bright, perfect clarity. He has his hands clasped round the edge of the tub, breathing again, though he's fairly sure the part through his mouth no longer matters.

His stomach aches at the sides in long lines, shivery and stiff and then - there's a shudder of bliss that's really, really good. Sam looks down through wet hair, watching the rising water gushing over as much of his tail that will fit in the tub, and his stomach on both sides, where the skin is now split horizontally in painful looking lines.

Apparently he does have gills.

That's...really not how he wanted to wake up today. What the hell. He can feel the taps still gushing water across his body, can hear the heavy rush of Dean breathing and the hum of the artificial light and he can't take any of it in. Because his brain's still going round and round over the very obvious...thing, that's currently in the tub right in front of him.

He has a tail. The unnatural shine of grey, green and blue as it twitches and shudders under the water. Sam can't exactly process that at the minute. There are no words good enough for how he's feeling right now.

He looks at Dean. Who's sprawled out untidily on the floor, breathing hard, pretty much soaked. Looking at him in some sort of still horrified exhaustion from a foot away.

"Congratulations, Sam," he says flatly. "You're a mermaid."

Sam's not entirely sure what to say to that.

There's a wet sliding flap as the half of his tail still sprawled out of the tub tries to get in on some of the watery action and dislodges the shower rail with an almighty 'crack.' Before reluctantly laying back down again and twitching against the tiles.

"So," Dean says carefully. After what he obviously thinks is a long enough pause for Sam to get used to the fact that he's now apparently half fish. "I guess when the monster snagged you earlier it wasn't so much a flesh wound after all."

Dean's ability for sarcastic understatement is much less funny when it's directed at you.

Sam looks down, tries to find the spot where the hook went in but there's nothing there but the grey-green shine of scales over muscle. He swallows, hand squeaking on the rim as he moves it. Lets it hover in mid-air. Because he thinks this might be a step too far across the weird line even for him.

He holds his fingers uncertainly over the skin - not skin?

"It's you," Dean points out. "Trust me, I'm seeing it and I'm believing it, whether I like it or not."

Sam takes a breath, he's still doing that even though he clearly doesn’t need to - and puts his hand down. Presses his fingers into the scaled edge where his thigh should be.

The immediately pulls his hand away and clenches it into a fist. Because that's just wrong.

"Oh, that's just...nasty. It feels like -"

"Like a fish?" Dean guesses.

Or maybe it's a wild stab in the dark. Either way Sam scowls at him. Because it's too close to exactly what he was thinking himself.

"Don't bitchface at me," Dean says. "You're the one in the bathtub with a tail."

"We need to call Bobby," Sam says miserably. Because pretending they can handle this particular adventure is insane. He's not too proud to admit that, not under the circumstances. "This is...kind of beyond us, I think."

"Yeah, no shit." Dean shakes water off his hands and disappears out of the bathroom, leaving Sam staring at his own fish tail, where it's draped forlornly over the end of the tub and out across the floor. It feels kind of numb and unpleasant. They're probably going to have to think up some way to keep it wet, at some point.

Jesus. This is...this is a little much and Sam would really love to hyperventilate himself into unconsciousness but he doesn't even know if he can hyperventilate any more. Now he's breathing through his waist. For God's sake. He never expected to need complex knowledge about fish human hybrids and their respiratory systems.

Dean comes back, but he's not dialling he's holding the phone up like - Oh crap.

"What the fuck, Dean, do not take a picture."

The flash goes off.

Water sloshes everywhere when Sam makes a completely useless grab for the phone. The shift of his own body weight nearly threatens to slide him straight out of the tub.

But Dean is eyeballing his phone in a way that's far too satisfied.

"God, damn it Dean!"

"Dude, I'm not spending half an hour at three in the morning trying to convince Bobby that you turned into a mermaid in the middle of the night. I'm just gonna send him a picture."

"A merman," Sam says tightly. "Mermaids are girls, Dean."

"Whatever, dude, it's not like you're packing any more anyway."

Sam looks down. Makes some sort of quietly hysterical noise. Because, unhappy as he is to admit it. Dean's right, there's just the flat shine of scale from where his hipbones used to be. He's missing all his important human parts from below the waist.

He looks up again, swallows down something that's either anger or hysteria. He can't even tell.

Dean nods jerkily.

"Uh huh, now you have whatever fish have instead. I don't even know what fish have for God's sake. What the fuck, Sam? How is this our life. Why am I living in life where my brother can spontaneously turn into a mermaid- " Sam glares at him "- fine, merman merperson, whatever the fuck at three in the morning."

Dean's wearing his 'I am very close to my acceptable bullshit line' face. But he punches 'send' on his phone and Sam sinks in the tub with a squeaky and confused slosh.

The end of his tail is really starting to hurt. It's a dry, cracking sensation that's something like a burn and something like an itch. He figures when you're part fish letting any of you hang out of the water is probably a bad idea.

"Dean, could you, umm, I think I need to get the end of my -" He can't say it, he can't.

"Your tail?" Dean says. "You can say it Sam, it's your magical sea-time adventure."

"Could you get the rest of my tail wet, please."

Dean makes a face. It's not a happy face. It involves a lot of horrified lip curling.

"Oh, you've made that sound so very wrong." Dean takes two steps back, holds up his hands like he wants no part of the madness whatsoever.

Sam winces. "It's kind of, hurting and -"

Dean shakes his head.

"I'm not touching it, I touched it to put you in the tub and it was gross."

Sam resists the urge to send a tidal wave of water at him.

"I would like to actually have feet when we fix this, so could you just throw some water on it, or something?"

"You mean like on the discovery channel, when they transport dolphins." Dean's about a second away from laughing his ass off. Much as Sam is probably better off with humour than sweaty panic being on the end of it still makes him want to punch his brother in the face.

Sam flails for him but he's already sliding out of reach.

"Damn it, Dean, you know full well if you were the one in the tub I'd do it for you."

Dean snorts. "Dude, I'm not going to be guilted into it with an imaginary parallel universe where I'm the fish."

But he shakes his head, stands up and turns the shower on, tips it the other way so it streams awkwardly down along the bend of Sam's tail, where it lays up and over the tub and across the floor. The tiles get very wet.

"The freakish crap I have been forced to do in my life," Dean mutters.

Dean's phone goes, loudly and abruptly, echoing off the bathroom walls. He opens it and does nothing but hold it to his ear for a long minute.

He's close enough that Sam can hear the Bobby's voice, the volume, if not the words.

"Yeah, Sam's a fish........uh huh..........trust me I know. I'm looking at it and I'm still half convinced it's not happening."

There's a pause where Dean looks briefly confused.

"No, we're in Pinedale. We killed some sort of mutated water monster in a lake here. Sam got one of its hooks in his leg. He woke up at three am with a sudden pressing need to be in the tub. So yeah, about seven hours."

Dean's quiet for a while. Though judging by his expression Bobby's chewing them both out.

"Is it bad?" Sam asks.

Dean covers the phone.

"He's called me a girl's name twice, so I'm going with yes."

Sam sighs. "Let me guess, we're idiots?"

Dean grunts assent. Then pulls his hand away from the phone again.

"Ok..............yeah, we'll be here, Sam's pretty much confined to the tub anyway. Speak to you later Bobby, and thanks."

Dean shuts the phone.

"He's looking into it for us, oh, and you're an idiot."

"It's not my fault I got stabbed Dean."

"Clearly the universe disagrees with you." Dean sets his phone down. "And now, I need some pants, since one of us being mostly naked in here is more than enough." He straightens up with a couple of unpleasant cracks, winces and then disappears.

Sam drags himself up the back of the tub again, experiences a brief moment of unpleasant tightness when his gills slide up out of the water.

Demons, he has experience with, He's been cursed, he's had spells put on him. He's gone through an entire day with such insanely bad luck it nearly killed him. But this, suddenly changing species is something which he has no frame of reference for.

He stares at his fish tail, watches it flip, and flop in mute irritation against the white of the floor, sloshing water all of the place.

Yeah, they're never coming back to this motel.

Dean comes back wearing jeans and a t-shirt and carrying three books and Sam's laptop.

"So, while Bobby's looking for a way to fix this we're not just gonna sit on our asses...those of us that still have asses anyway. Though, seriously, if anyone can find out what the hell happened to you and how we switch you back, it's Bobby."

"And you can delete the picture," Sam says firmly.

Dean's face is an expression of blankly confused innocence.

"What picture?"

You know which picture," Sam says through gritted teeth.

Dean shakes his head.

"Dude, I am never deleting that picture. Ever."

Sam scowls at him, which is pretty much all he can do now he's confined to staying here so he doesn't suffocate in all that terrible air. There's a great slap of movement and all the shampoo bottles and the towel rail come crashing down under the sudden weight of Sam's displeasure.

Half the water in the bath sloshes over the edge.

Dean looks at his soaking jeans with more than a little annoyance.

"Sorry," Sam says tiredly. "It's kind of - I can't exactly control it, I don't think."

He's making excuses for his giant fish tail.

His life is a comedy.

One where people sometimes get eaten by monsters, granted.

Dean shakes water off his hand.

"Well, when you've finished thrashing. I was going to say that if we can find out exactly what this thing looked like maybe we can work out how to reverse your sudden fish mutation.

"I can help," Sam says. Because he is absolutely behind any plan that gets him his legs back. "Give me the -"

Dean shakes his head.

"No way, you're not getting your computer in the tub, or any of the books, unless maybe you hang over the edge."

Dean gives the lower half of Sam's body a dirty look. Like it's an interloper that's come to the party uninvited. Which, Sam guesses, is progress of a sort, because at least he's looking at it now.

"I don't think I can turn round," Sam tries to push himself up, tries to haul himself to the edge of the tub. But he's just too heavy, there's much tail, and it doesn't exactly want to bend, or curl, or fold. When he tries it hurts.

He sighs irritation and tips his head back over the edge.

"The tub's not big enough."

He moves again, one sliding drag, there's something uncomfortable underneath him, maybe something that fell in there when Dean dumped him in.

"I think there's something under me too."

Dean grunts and sits down on the closed toilet, wrings out the leg of his pants.

"I think it's a fin, I saw one when I dragged you out of bed."

"I have a fin?" Sam's not entirely sure how he's supposed to feel about that.

"Apparently." Dean is clearly thrilled about the new and exciting weird.

"I have a fin I don't know about?" It's really not fair how hysterical his voice sounds. He's tempted to try and look for it again. But really, there are only so many fish body parts he can handle touching in one day. Even when he's currently the unhappy owner of them.

Oh so unhappy.

He does notice something though.

"I'm not getting pruny," he says curiously.

"That's because you're Aquaman," Dean says, without looking away from the book he's opened. Trust Dean to suddenly be king of research when Sam's having a terrible genetic crisis.

"I'm serious, Dean, I don't just have a tail and gills any more. I'm actually physically different."

Dean does look up then, all eyebrows and dubious amusement.

"So you've stopped freaking out and now you're in the 'wow, I'm a fish and it's fascinating' portion of today?"

"That's not funny," Sam grumbles. Though it probably would be fascinating if he was ever in a place where freaking out about the whole thing wasn't a more important option.

Dean chucks him a towel.

"Dry your hands and promise not to get water or fish gunk on the books and you can help," he says reluctantly.

Sam knows he's going to get sick of all the fish jokes really quickly. But he suspects they're too good to resist at the moment. So he glares and dries his hands and then flings the towel back, before waving a hand for a book.

Dean hands it over dubiously.

Flicking through the pages is a continual and uncomfortable reminder that he's now a horrible mutant. Not all that far removed from all these tentacled and fish-mouthed monsters.

Also, it's making him hungry. Which he's not actually that happy about.

Still it's something boring and normal to talk about that isn't fish-related.

"I'm hungry," Sam says.

Dean grunts and shoots him a grin.

"Want me to sprinkle some fish flakes in the tub?"

Ok, Sam was wrong, clearly everything is going to be fish-related until it gets old.

Sam waves the treatise on medieval demons at him.

"Want me to shove this book up your ass?"

"At least I still have an ass, Ariel."

"Dean, I'm serious, I'm starving."

"You're a fish, Sam, do you really want to be up close and personal with the logistics of that."

Dean makes a noise and stands up.

"Me however, I need protein, serious amounts of protein to deal with this. I'll be like twenty minutes, tops. Don't go anywhere."

Dean's out of the bathroom and pulling on his coat before Sam can slither awkwardly to the edge of the tub. His tail smashes into the wall hard enough to leave a dent.

"Dean."

He hears the door shut.

Sam hates his brother sometimes.

So much.

~~~~~

Dean's eating his burger two feet away just to mess with him.

Though Sam gets a milkshake as some sort of lame-ass apology for Dean being a dick. Since actual apologies are some sort of terrible foreign language he never managed to learn.

It occurs to him that he's probably the first merperson to sit in a bathtub and enjoy a milkshake. Though he's not exactly having a parade for his own uniqueness.

"The one plus of this, Sam, is that the apocalypse is probably on hold," Dean says, around a mouthful of beef, lettuce and onions.

Sam sighs and splashes grudgingly. Though not hard enough to actually get Dean wet.

He grunts something unhappy. "I will admit that this maybe puts a bit of a dent in the apocalypse."

Dean looks up, face twisted up in amusement.

"I think this is more than 'a bit of a dent,' Sam. Unless Lucifer has a sudden pressing desire to be a fish."

Sam glares at him, tail curling and flapping on the wet bathroom floor.

"I don't know why you're pissy-facing me. Seriously unless there's some sort of fish-based apocalypse you're pretty much in the clear."

Sam doesn't talk to him for an hour.

Until he finishes his little stack of books and can't reach any of the others.

He'll have to ask if he wants to continue working on plan 'get Sam's legs back.'

But before he can speak Dean's phone goes again and Dean picks it up and opens it.

"Yeah -"

Sam wriggles his way up as high as he can.

"Is it Bobby?"

Dean waves him quiet.

"We have to what?.............That's going to be a bit of a problem. Sam weighs like three times as much as he used too and he's about a foot or two longer."

Sam's fairly sure Dean gets his feelings on that from the expression he throws him.

Dean raises an eyebrow at Sam, then blows out a breath.

"Yeah, yeah, ok. I'll figure it out somehow."

Dean flips the phone shut.

"Apparently we have to take you back to the lake. This thing should have a mate or something and it's working its juju through the wound it's dead tentacle boyfriend put in you."

"Crap," Sam says quietly. Because the lake isn't exactly close and Sam can no longer breathe out of the water.

Dean nods. "Yeah, and apparently we have to change you back before you grow tentacles."

Sam's stomach flips sickeningly.

"You're kidding?"

Dean grins. "Yeah, I'm totally kidding. We go we kill it, you should get your legs, and your junk, back."

Sam grinds his teeth.

"Dean, I hope you get cursed. I hope you end up with wings. Because, I am going to laugh at you, so hard.

Dean opens his phone, still laughing.

"Cas, we have a little bit of a problem that we could really use your help with. We're at the Halfmoon Lodge Motel, room 7."

Dean shuts his phone.

"Dean, you are such a -"

There's the sound of wings from the other room.

"Dean?" Castiel's voice is low and curious.

"We're in the bathroom, Cas."

The angel appears in the doorway. He looks at Dean, then Sam. He blinks, but other than that he has no obvious reaction.

"Hey, Cas," Sam lifts a hand in greeting.

"Hello, Sam."

"Sam's a fish," Dean provides helpfully.

Castiel nods.

"I see. I'm assuming you were hunting a minor sea god, or a leviathan."

"It had tentacles," Dean provides helpfully. "But it wasn't actually that big, can you have small leviathans?"

Sam pushes himself up higher, tail skid-sliding across the edge of the bath and the floor.

Dean gestures, as if to demonstrate that that is entirely the problem. Or possibly that Sam is some sort of prize Castiel will win if he answers questions correctly.

"We need to get him back to the lake where he killed it, but Sam needs to stay in the water 'cause he can't breathe otherwise. Also, I don't have a hope in hell of lifting him and carrying him all the way to the car."

"We have something of a dilemma," Sam admits.

Castiel comes a few steps closer. Dress shoes sloshing through the inch of water on the bathroom floor.

Castiel barely looks big enough to even move Sam but he shoves his hands underwater, one curved under Sam's back, and one under his tail and he just lifts. Like Sam weighs nothing at all. Water pours off of him, tail slithering up and out to trail across the floor.

"Whoa, Cas!" Sam has no choice but to grab hold of the angel's shoulder.

"You'll be able to breathe," Castiel says simply.

Sam's ready for the clawing, tightening horror of suffocation but it's not there. He's absolutely soaking Castiel's chest and pants, and he feels ridiculous. But Cas is right, he can breathe.

"Now that's something I didn't think I'd ever see," Dean admits quietly after a long and slightly disturbing moment of staring.

"We need to get him to the car," Castiel says and Sam has never been so grateful for Castiel's ability to be all business. Even in the face of extreme weirdness.

Also, Sam's pretty sure that being carried like this, one arm slung round Castiel's neck, is the weirdest and least manly he's ever felt.

"You can't just teleport us there?" Dean complains.

Castiel looks down at the tail draped over his arm.

"Sam has gone through a complex genetic restructuring. I thought it best not to subject him to the sort of travel that may interfere with it."

"I'm going with that," Sam says. Trying not to...wriggle. Because he's pretty sure the indignity of it would kill him. Or he'd be forced to kill any witnesses.

"He's soaking wet," Dean protests.

Sam's own glare is given added weight by Castiel's

Dean sighs.

"Fine, though how exactly are we going to get him out into the parking lot. This isn't a romantic comedy. Someone is going to notice a giant with a fish tail being carried by a guy in a trench coat. That's the sort of thing that's gonna stick out in Wyoming. Trust me."

"I have to agree with Dean," Sam says. Castiel's turns to look at him, and, yeah, this is in no way weirdly uncomfortable.

Also, he's still dripping.

Castiel's almost as wet as him now.

"No one will notice anything," Castiel sounds pretty damn sure about it.

"You going to use your angel voodoo on them?" Dean asks dubiously.

"Something like that."

Dean shrugs, like that's the only answer he needs. Then gets the keys off the table and Castiel turns around, Sam's tail drags uncomfortably on the carpet. It makes him want to shudder, because it feels like insects are crawling on him, or biting him. Also, there's now another problem. He draws a careful breath.

"Umm, Cas, could you move your hand please, that's kind of...uncomfortable."

Castiel shifts him awkwardly while Dean pretends he's not laughing his ass off. He stops laughing long enough to reach for his phone.

"Do it and I'll make your life miserable for the rest of time, Dean," Sam warns him.

Dean's face is a mess of disappointment.

"This is going to be the first time in history that an angel and a mermaid have been in a car together. I was going to document it with photographic proof. Also, you're still a fish, Sam. There is nothing, absolutely nothing that's ever beating this."

Castiel still looks confused.

"Technically Sam is a merman," he says firmly.

Dean rolls his eyes.

"Oh my God, you're perfect for each other, seriously." Dean drags his keys off the table and they all make their way outside. Carefully.

It takes another minute to get Sam's tail out of the room, and he hisses when it drags across the gravel.

"Sam, you're not gonna fit in the backseat."

"Dean, if I don't have legs again before tonight I am going to smack you in the face with my new fish tail, ok?"

"God, you're such a bitch." Dean pulls open the door and holds it as wide as he can while they messily and inelegantly haul Sam into the backseat together. Castiel really is stronger than he looks.

Though that doesn't stop him from getting smacked in the face with the end of Sam's tail. Which Sam feels really, really bad about. He apologises for it until Dean makes him stop.

Sam ends up shoved in lengthways with the end of his tail curled and coiled uncomfortably, but not painfully, in the foot space.

Dean makes a horrified noise when water runs across the seats.

"Oh baby, I'm sorry, I'll make it up to you I swear.

"Dean, the longer you cry over it, the wetter it's going to get," Sam says testily.

Dean hauls the driver's side door open.

"I swear to God, Sam, if the interior smells like fish forever I will kill you myself."

Castiel slides into the passenger seat, then half-turns so he can watch Sam.

"Thanks, Cas," Sam says quietly.

Castiel nods.

"My baby is going to have your ass-scales all over the leather," Dean grumbles.

"I would imagine the abrupt transformation would have been extremely painful and disturbing," Castiel says, like Dean hasn't spoken. Sam can hear the harsh tone of chastisement under the words.

Dean rolls his eyes but doesn't say anything else.

~~~~

"So how exactly are we going to do this?" Sam asks, when the car comes to a stop.

"I thought we were just going to dump you in the lake?" Dean says with a shrug. "We get out to the middle, we hack up tentacle monster's girlfriend. You get legs again, everyone goes home happy."

"You make that sound so easy," Sam says stiffly.

"You can swim," Dean reminds him, slowly, like he's an idiot.

"I could swim with legs, Dean. I'm not actually a fish. I don't know how to swim like a fish."

"You can breathe underwater now, Sam," Dean reminds him.

Sam feels like an idiot. Because, ok, yes, he'd briefly forgotten that.

"There's still the worrying possibility that the thing's going to eat me."

"Me and Cas won't let that happen, right, Cas?"

Castiel nods firmly.

Sam grunts, and then prepares himself to lose a great deal of dignity while they get him out of the back. Complete with Dean grumbling that Castiel is going to smell like fish for all eternity.

Dean digs the knife out of Sam's bag. Since they're not exactly sure what Sam's manoeuvrability in the water is yet.

Sam does not appreciate the plunge into the lake, it's shallow at the edges and the bottom is rocky. The shock of the water steals all his breath for a second, needed and unneeded, and it's hard to be buoyant when you weigh about a hundred or more extra pounds than you're used to.

Then he has company and the ground drops away.

It turns out tentacle monster's girlfriend is fucking huge.

At least five times the size.

And it's been waiting for them.

There's a solid splash as the surface is broken by a mess of angry tentacles.

Thirty seconds after that they're all underwater.

Dean's half wrapped up in tentacles, one of which he's stabbing with extreme menace but it's only one of half a dozen and the angel is kind of busy slicing through his own mess on the other side.

Sam takes the knife from Dean's flailing hand and hacks off the two largest tentacles, then shoves Dean backwards to go up for air.

Castiel is gaining ground by crudely, but effectively, applying brute strength to the things flailing limbs and tearing them out of its body. The thing only has so many limbs and the angel has all the time in the world.

Sam figures he can give him a hand. While it's concentrating on trying to pull bits off of the angel Sam can hack at its body. Until Dean gets back down.

On his way round Sam discovers something.

He's fast.

He's really fast. It turns out you don't need to learn to swim with a tail after all. The damn thing is perfectly happy to do all the work without bothering any of the other parts of his brain. It leaves him kind of dizzy for a second when he overshoots where he's aiming for by about twenty feet. And he can turn like nothing on earth.

The other bonus is that he's slippery, he discovers as much when a tentacle skids off the end of his body for the third time. The damn things can't grab onto him. It can't hold him long enough to dig its hooks in and drag him in close.

It's apparently smart enough to realise this though. Because after a pause it starts to go after his arms instead and Sam's left trying to corkscrew his way round its body to escape the lashing green lines through the water.

At one point he gets close enough to Castiel to slice through the tentacle trying to choke him. The angel promptly snags the tentacle chasing Sam and rips it in half.

Then something winds round Sam's waist and jerks him backwards.

It turns out to be one of Dean's arms and it takes Sam that long to realise he'd strayed close enough to get near one the large and wicked looking hooks that are currently trying to tear their way through Castiel's trench coat.

The monster's huge body is leaking blood steadily into the water. Sam takes Dean back away from a sudden angry thrash and gets slow-elbowed in the gut for what Dean would probably call 'mermaid manoeuvres' if he wasn't currently underwater.

He yanks Sam round and makes a gesture which seems to indicate Sam and Castiel taking all the remaining tentacles to either side while Dean swims in and guts the thing.

Sam glares and indicates that he's the one with goddamn tail and he should be doing the 'dash and gut' if anyone should.

Dean's irritated glare tells him in no uncertain terms that if they argue about this Dean will run out of air and drown and Sam will still be a little bitch.

God, damn it!

Castiel seems to know exactly what's going on and he goes one way while Sam goes the other.

Sam spends at least half a minute being choked and fighting to sever the tentacle, while mentally counting down how much air Dean has to have left - when abruptly the tentacle holding him goes slack.

He pushes away with one massive shove and ends up near the thing's main body. Sam finds Dean in the mess of twitching inner tentacles, half tangled up in its death shudders and he grabs on and pulls him free.

This time Sam pushes straight up. He hauls Dean all the way to surface in one movement, shoves him out of the water and listens to his brother object to the ragdoll treatment with a great deal of manly coughing and spluttering.

Castiel breaks the surface smoothly next to them, hair a watery mess. He doesn't look bothered at all by his underwater adventure.

Sam reaches out and smacks Dean on the back. Gets a glare for his trouble, which breaks into another cough before Sam can feel its full force. He pushes back a bit in the water to give him room, hands Dean the knife back.

It takes Sam a confused moment to realise something...he's kicking. He looks down through the water.

"Oh, thank God," he manages.

"What?" Dean's trying to turn around and cough up water at the same time.

Sam kicks him in the shin.

Dean grunts and grabs Sam's foot. Then immediately uses it to tug him under.

Sam's the one that comes up sputtering. But Dean's already swimming for shore, laughing his ass off. Sam throws a look at Castiel. Who manages to look composed and angelically perfect even while treading water. Which really shouldn't be possible.

Swimming with legs...not as much fun, if Sam's going to be honest.

Though dragging himself out and standing on the gravel-strewn shoreline is the best Sam's felt in a long time.

Dean rolls his eyes at him.

"Dude, really, I'm happy you have a dick again, now please put it away."

Sam grumbles something which he knows damn well Dean can hear and drags a blanket out of the trunk, winds it round his waist to save everyone's delicate sensibilities.

When he comes back round Dean is shaking water out of his ear.

"You get to ride in the back, Sam. You can sit exactly where you sat on the way here." He lifts his head long enough to grin at him.

Sam's tempted to flip him off but he's too happy to have legs again to care.

"At least I can clean the car. It's not like Sam's ever going to be a fish again."

Castiel's expression is oddly intent and Sam pauses with the door open because he senses the angel has something to say.

"It's possible that Sam may now have the ability to transform at will. Should the situation require it," Castiel offers helpfully.

"What?"

"What!"