Fic: Blood Moon (SPN Sam/Dean 1/9)

Fic: Blood Moon (SPN Sam/Dean 1/9)
Title: Blood Moon
Author: tryfanstone
Pairing: Sam/Dean
Wordcount: 29,500
Disclaimer: Fanfiction.
Thanks: To rivkat for whom this story was written, via help_pakistan. Best prompt ever.
So very gratefully to     tygers, whose beta work for this fic was astonishingly thorough and
quick, and to     naatz, whose logical, take-no prisoners beta made this a much better story. To
    q_i for reassurance, and to hpreader, whose wonderful Ameripick for a different story
informed and improved this one. Any mistakes are entirely my own.
Summary: Werewolf fic. With demon. Oh, and there's a book: of course there's a book. The
Impala seems to have slunk in there as well. Don't think anyone drinks tea, it's not really the right
fandom, but there are at least a couple of bonfires, some beer, and a little more bourbon than
strictly necessary.
Warnings: Hmmm. Dub con. But I'll warn you I've had long discussions about dub con/non con,
and if you start to feel uncomfortable, please stop.

Masterpost - Whole story on website

                                                Day 1

Five miles out, he can smell it: the charnel house sweet rot of fly-blown burnt flesh and ash on
the wind. Kill site. Sam follows his nose, loping through the trees, paws running easily on the
soft earth. There's no hurry. What's dead is dead.

When the trees start to thin out he slows to a walk, tasting the scents on the air. By the time he
gets to the clearing, he knows there's nothing here but himself and the dead. Even the startled
chatter of the birds has faded.

From the smell of old blood and kerosene and damp, charred wood, as clear to his nose as the
scent of the pine trees, Sam knows he'll find a cremated body. What he doesn't expect is the size
of the fire circle, or the ash and fur drifting petal white in the breeze and catching on his hide, or
what lies half-burned under the cinders. There's too much debris for the pyre of one lone
werewolf.

Sam shifts. He's easy in his skin, both of them, but the transition from wolf to man is three
minutes of pain as his bones re-form under his skin, every nerve, every joint, every follicle a
separate pin-brick of rebirth. He pants his way through the shift on his hands and knees, once he
has them, staring at the sparse acid-leached grass and fresh pine needles that litter the ground.
There's a shining screw under his nose he uses to focus through the pain, with a shred of rough-

cut pine clinging to the threads and a tuft of sheared fur caught against the tip. That too is
unexpected.

When he can stand and the pain of the shift is no more than a lingering ache, Sam rakes through
the ash. The fire had burned hot, but there are more wood screws tumbling through the cinders,
and some blackened steel braces. Half burned bones, a wolf's' femur rolled aside, white with
heat, and half a dozen adult rib bones with the ends sheared. He doesn't need a microscope to
know the rib cage is knife-cut. Sifting ash through his fingers, Sam finds heat-cracked teeth,
irregular and mismatched. The first he finds are adult, too many for a single wolf, but gleaming
small and white through the ash he later finds milk teeth.

Two adult wolves died in this clearing, and at least one cub. By the metalwork and the footing
for an A-frame Sam finds next to the fire, someone had killed and skinned his kin and had
burned the bodies.

The soil smells of two men. Sam knows both of them, but from the interweaving of scent he
knows that they were not present together. One scent is faint, one more recent. Sam's snarl is
involuntary. He has known these men since he saw his first dead werewolf, by their smell and by
the taste of blood and metal in his mouth.

By the time Sam has looked his fill it's evening. He's cold and uneasy. There's no bird song in the
clearing or outside it, and no rustling in the undergrowth.. Something is wrong with this site, this
kill, and even in his two-legged form Sam knows it in the shiver of his bones and the prickling of
his neck. He's not human, to make the hunted flee at his scent, nor has the forest emptied at the
fall of his paws. The silence is unatural.

Sam's not human. He shifts again, sorrow loading the pain of the change, and raises his nose to
the translucent half-ripe moon. October. Hunter's moon. Blood moon.

Sam howls once. He holds the note, his voice throbbing with grief and rage, but there is no voice
to answer him.

                                                Day 2

By the time Sam hits paydirt, it's the eighteenth call he's made looking for the Winchesters.
Impala is the magic word: the motel clerk's a classic car fan and too ill-paid or too young to
know better. Sam couldn't care less. The younger Winchester's booked for two nights, and Sam's
five hours away by the interstate.

"Don't say I'm coming, okay?" he tells the clerk, all rueful puppy charm and smile. The smile

sounds in his voice. It doesn't matter if it's more of a grin and all Sam's teeth show, the clerk can't
see. "I kinda wanna surprise the guy," Sam says, and the clerk doesn't even ask why.

Sam does not ask about John Winchester's pick-up. The Winchester sire's clever as well as
vicious and there's no point: if he's there, the clerk won't know what he's driving. But his pup's an
arrogant son of a bitch and flashy with it, and the chrome gleam of his car is as good as a scent
trail over turf laid out for Sam to follow.

In Wyoming, there is no human law against culling a wolf. There is no human law against killing
a werewolf. There's a law - several laws - against killing humans, but unless Sam's research was
wrong, no human had died because of his friend. There were no torn human corpses, no
unexplained dog attacks, no missing teenagers and no overdue hikers to bloody Kyle's name and
explain the werewolf's death. Sam had seen enough game in the woods for a full pack of wolves
before he'd reached the clearing, not just one were and one born wolf and their pups. And Kyle
was not feral. He hadn't needed to hunt, nor had he been forced to by the psychotic madness to
which werewolves fell prey to as much as humans. The Winchester family's last two kills had
been justified by that madness, if resented - Caleb and Sam had been hunting on the same
grounds for the same reasons - but Kyle's was not. For Sam, it was murder, but no human law
gainsayed Kyle's blood on the grass.

But Sam lives by pack law, not human law. This is the third Winchester kill he's had to see, and
this time it's personal. Kyle and he had known each other years ago, and if Kyle had gone feral
and died at Sam's hands it would have been a swift and sanctioned execution. Sam has a rifle in
the trunk with silver bullets he has to load with tweezers and gloves, and he carries it under pack
law. Sam's feral kills were necessary. Kyle's death was not. It was murder, and it sickened Sam
down to the bone, and someone was going to pay.

Sam knows who owns that debt.

Five years ago, in Colorado, he and his uncle had stood over a long-dead pyre and Sam had
tasted for the first time the scent of the man he hunted now. Leather and cigarettes and skin,
blood and gun oil. Caleb had stood stiff-legged and grieving, but Sam had rolled over and over in
the spot where the Winchesters had stood, father and son, soaking up the smell of them. He'd
know that smell fifty years later if he needed. Then, Sam had been nineteen, his paws still too big
for his body, clumsy and over-eager and self-righteous.

Two years ago, on his own, with a freshly-minted law degree and a brand new human girlfriend
who knew what he was but said she loved him anyway, it had been a canyon in Arizona. Another
pyre, but the same scent, singular and utterly familiar. The Winchester boy was careless, not like
his sire, and from that site Sam carried the smell of his piss and the taste of his blood. There were

no pictures of Dean Winchester that Sam could find, but he knew the man's scent in his bones. It
was enough. The first two kills had been necessary. The third, Kyle's, was murder.

Sam drives hard, and there is a loaded Beretta in his glove box.

The town is Revelation. It has a population of just over ten thousand humans, and a main street
shuttered at six o'clock in the evening. There are no children's toys on the sidewalks and no
groups of teenagers on the street corners. Every porch is lit, despite the barely darkened sky. Sam
cruises through the silent streets, feet easy on the pedals, hands gripping so tight on the steering
wheel he can feel the leather imprinting his palms. The car windows are wound down to catch
both scent and sound, but Sam has nothing but the muted sound of half a hundred televisions
tuned to anodyne cartoons and the smell of overcooked food. The town is as closed in as if it
were under siege, and the feel of it makes the hairs on the back of Sam's neck bristle and tightens
the muscles of his jaw. Like everything to do with the Winchesters, there is something wrong
here.

Even the motel sign is darkened. Were it not for the gleam of the Impala's bodywork under the
lights of Sam's car, he would have missed the turn. He parks across the lot, and when he goes to
check in he does not carry his duffel with him. Sam has no intention of staying, and his Beretta is
heavy and cold tucked into the back of his jeans.

The glass doors are locked, but the clerk is at the desk. His face, when Sam knocks, is pale and
there are dark shadows under his eyes. It takes three minutes of gesticulating and Sam's biggest,
most consciously charming smile before he's buzzed in, and the clerk watches every step he
takes.

It's the sweat of fear he can smell. Sam stops three feet from the desk and spreads his hands,
harmless.

"I called earlier," he says, and lets his voice soften and lengthen the vowels, slow. "I'm looking
for my brother. His car's in the lot." Sam had looked for the sire's pick up, but had seen nothing.

The clerk blinks. "Room fourteen," he says. "But you don't want to go back there."

Sam glances over his shoulder. It's not evening but almost night, now, and the moon is up. He
shrugs. "I'm not scared of the dark."

"You should be," the clerk says. Behind him, through the office door, Sam can see an unrolled
sleeping bag and the window is shuttered.

"Wanna tell me about it?" Sam asks.

"Ask your brother," the clerk says. His breath smells of bourbon, and his hands are not steady
when he passes the room key across to Sam. "Sixteen," he says.

He doesn't say what time checkout is, and he doesn't ask for cash.

"Sure," Sam says, and tosses the key from one hand to another, frowning.

"Check the lobby door locks when you go," the clerk says.

Sam nods, and does.

It's pointless even opening the door to number fourteen. Although there's no evidence of his sire,
Winchester's scent is all over the doorstep, but it's dry and faint and hours old. He smells of
burgers and beer and gun oil, Winchester, and underneath the smell of the road rich and smoky
of his own skin. The door's marked with his scent and the handle smeared with his sweat, and if
Sam had been wolf, he'd have pissed on the marks.

He's not, but even two-legged his sense of smell is still keener than any human's. The freshest
trail leads to the trunk of the car, where it blends with the smell of firearms, clean and deadly.
Winchester's footprints do not smell of fear, but he's carrying, and he's gone into the dark.

Sam follows. The man won't be far.

To Sam's ears the night is alive. Even as a human, Sam's hearing is sharp and his sense of taste
and smell enhanced. He can hear the small sounds of nocturnal wildlife moving through the
undergrowth and the rustling of wind in the leaves. Crushed into the leaf matter beneath his feet
and carried in the breeze, he can smell his quarry's passage through the woods. Sam would be
both quieter and quicker travelling as a wolf, but he needs the gun. Teeth are too keen: he wants
to hear as Winchester begs for his life, and he wants the man to know why he's been called to
account. Sam wants to watch the man's face as he dies. He will die. There's no room for doubt in
Sam's mind, just the absolute certainty of justice dealt.

This wood too smells of fear. It's not like the wood where Kyle died, where the absence of life is
something Sam is still puzzling over. This wood is tame, scattered with plastic bags and cigarette
butts, crushed grass and the trails of teenage boys. The animals here are small and tense,
scattering from Sam's footsteps. There's a sense of anticipation, as if the woods are haunted by a
greater predator than Sam himself.

But the moon is out, and Sam has never met the match to his teeth and claws. He follows
Winchester's footsteps, and he treads lightly, but he is not afraid.

It's half an hour before he hears the first gunshot. The roar of it tears through the silence of the
night, and then sounds again, the noise of a shotgun, fired deliberately and from not far ahead.
The trees come alive with rudely awoken birds, and Sam starts to run.

Over the sound of his own footsteps he hears the vicious growl of a creature with teeth and claws
and the sound of a man breathing hard, and he can smell sweat and fear and gun smoke on the
breeze. The smell of an animal Sam does not recognize, rank and dirty with old blood.

He's half expecting what he does see when the tree line breaks. Winchester is still standing,
blood soaking through his T-shirt and a knife in his hands. He has his back against a tree, a
shotgun at his feet, and he is not alone. In front of him is something for which Sam has no name.
It's a hunched long-legged creature of teeth and claws, and when it turns its head, its eyes glint
red in the moonlight. The flared nostrils indicate that, like Sam, the thing navigates as much by
scent as sight. It cannot see Sam, but by the questing tilt of the beast's head as it paces in front of
the cornered Winchester, it can smell him. It has claws twice the length of Sam's, and teeth that
belong on the set of a horror movie. There is no intelligence in its eyes, just fury.

Sam is already, instinctively, changing when he sees the second creature. Well back in the
clearing, the second animal is crouched over something - someone - still moving. It's human, that
bundle of rags. It's small. And suddenly, the shuttered windows and the cloistered children make
sense.

But it's the nearest threat Sam counters first, and if he spares a thought for the fact that he's
fighting for Winchester before the child, it's a thought edged in blood. His claws are still forming
when he launches himself across the grass, and he goes straight for the beast's throat. It hasn't
expected attack. Sam leaps, his hind legs vicious on the creature's belly as it stands half upright
and his spine already twisted to avoid the sweep of its claws, and his jaws close hard and fast in
the flesh of the beast's throat. He rips through flesh, still moving, paws scrabbling, and he's up
and over its shoulder and back on the grass before it can touch him. The creature screams, hurt,
the noise bubbling through the blood at its throat, and its paws come up to clutch at the wound as
if it were human, once. It's not a deathblow, but it's close enough, and Sam's already circling
towards the second creature when he hears the first to fall to the ground.

It knows, the other one. It's wiser. It watches him, tense and crouched, confident, claws poised
and mouth open. Sam can smell its breath from ten feet away, fresh blood and rotting meat. It's
not clean, this beast. Testing, Sam feints, sliding in the grass, pulls himself back even as one
clawed paw snatches at him - close. The beast is faster than he thought and his back stings: it's

drawn blood. Pulling back, Sam slides again, and catches a glimpse of Winchester standing over
the first creature with his knife in his hand. There's something familiar about the way he stands,
something painfully recognizable in the way he smells that's unexpected and intriguing, but
behind Sam something whimpers and it's not the beast.

It is a child the second beast stands over. Small and ill clad and bleeding. Sam goes in close,
trying to tempt the creature to move away, twisting and turning. He's close enough to snap at the
thing's hamstrings, misses, and dances away. Winchester is closer, circling to the beast's back,
his eyes on both beast and child. Sam goes in close again, offering himself as distraction. Closer,
slower, as if he is weakening.

It works. The beast glares down once, and then lunges for him. It's fast: Sam yelps, pulls himself
back, feels his front paws catch and slip on mud and all his muscles bunch to force a desperate
retreat. He can feel the heat of the beast's breath on his back and hear its heartbeat.

Then the shotgun sounds again. The beast screams, and blood spatters on Sam's coat, a warm and
sticky patter of droplets. It's not enough. Twisting on his four legs, Sam tumbles head over heels
just fast enough to avoid the beast's infuriated lunge. Winchester hasn't managed a killing shot,
and there are only two barrels to a shotgun. Sam runs. Ten paces, fast as he can, and then he
whips around, braced, all of his teeth bared.

But the beast is not behind him. Limping, growling, it's stalking back to the spot where the
Winchester boy stands over the child with his knife raised.

Winchester's out of cartridges, but he's still not running, and he's still alive. Still Sam's to kill.

Fast as he knows how, Sam goes back. He hits the beast's back square on with all four paws and
all the weight of his body, feels it stumble even as he closes his jaws around the back of its neck
and bites down as hard as he can. He can feel the bones crack. It's falling, the beast, and Sam
with it, shaking, yowling. Sam doesn't let go, his paws scrabbling for grip on the thing's matted
coat, his jaws aching.

It's only after he knows for sure that it's dead that he looks up.

He was wrong about the shotgun. It's not harmless. The stock of it's heading straight for his nose.

Night falls in on Sam in a blaze of stars.

                                                 Day 3

Sam wakes on carpet, uncomfortably cramped and human. He's wearing his own clothes, which
means someone dressed him. He can smell motel carpet, old beer and dust and the scent of
strangers and one man he knows, the smell of him fresh and unmistakable.

He's in the same room as Winchester. Sam nearly smiles. The boy is a fool.

His mouth is dry and tastes of blood that's not his own. Weighted, his wrists and ankles feel
oddly present, as if the chains on them tie him to this human body. There's something soft around
his neck, as if he's wearing a scarf. The moon's high in the sky, he knows it without looking.
Midnight, near as. So. Winchester's caught himself a werewolf by the tail.

He can hear the man breathe.

After a while, he can hear the sound of the man's heart and the beat of the blood in his veins. It's
an unsteady rush, familiar and strange. Winchester's heart is strong, but his body is more battered
than it should be for a man of... Sam is twenty-four. Winchester, Sam realizes with slight
surprise, must be twenty-eight. He's not a boy any more, although Sam's always thought of him
as one, a bumbling amateur with no idea what he's playing with and no knowledge of pack. Frat
boy innocent.

But they are alive, and Sam has no idea what those creatures in the woods were. He opens his
eyes.

Winchester is watching him.

There's a bottle of beer in his hand, and his eyes are half closed, and there's a gun on the bedside
table. Sam guesses-

"Awake?"

-Winchester thinks he's fast enough. He'll be wrong.

The windows are dark, but the curtains are open. He's reckless, this man, as well as wrong, but
Sam's hurting and there are clouds over the moon. He'll need to wait for her help to change.

"You're human when you're unconscious," Winchester says, and tips the bottle in Sam's
direction. He takes a swig with his eyes steady on Sam's, and wipes his mouth with the back of
his hand. The beer is cheap, smelling of chemicals rather than hops, but Sam is ambushed by his

own thirst. On his own, he'd whine. He swallows instead.

"You've never met a sane were before," he says. It doesn't matter how many pack laws he breaks.
Winchester is a dead man.

"Make you any less of a monster?" Winchester says. He could be making conversation over a
pool table.

Kyle's death played out in his mind, Sam feels himself snarl. It's more wolf than he's ever laid
bare before a human before.

"As if you're not," he says. If the moon wasn't still hidden, he'd have changed then. He can feel
his fur roil under his skin: he's going to have to change fast, and it's going to hurt.

"Yeah?" Winchester says, and puts the beer bottle down without looking on the bedside table,
balanced and perfectly judged. He doesn't even glance sideways. He's good.

"You killed your first werewolf," Sam says, "in Colorado. Your father was there. It was a clean
kill, and you burned the body."

He waits, but Winchester just watches him. Purses his lips and folds his arms.

"Lavinia," Sam says. "She'd turned. She'd been feral for three weeks and we were two days
behind you. Your second was Montana. Philippe. He was older. You bled for him, but you killed
him all the same. I was a day behind you."

He waits. It's still skeined with clouds, but he can see the moon glint silver, now.

"You gonna tell me you're the werewolf police?" Winchester asks him, and the contempt in his
voice is laid out plain as his scent.

"We look after ourselves," Sam spits out.

"Yeah. Right." Winchester says.

"You killed again, two nights ago," Sam says, and Winchester's gun hand twitches, a sharp tell
that hits Sam to the bone. The moon's out. Sam reaches for his own self - and slams up against a
wall that shouldn't be there. He can feel the wolf under his skin, but he can't change, can't, and
he's fighting the chains but they're not giving and the growl in his throat is human.

After the first frantic seconds, it's brute strength alone that Sam sets against the iron padlocks and
the sturdy iron pipes on the motel wall, but he's still human and it's not enough. He knows it's not
enough, but he still tries, futile lunges against the strength of the bonds, boots scrabbling on the
floor, chains tight around his forearms.

Thirty seconds in, when he can think, he realizes he's not dead yet. Then he starts to think how
stupid he must look, and that's it, game over. He would be an idiot not to conserve his strength,
because Winchester is either more clever than he looks or he's got a friendly witch on his side,
and Sam hates magic.

"You done?"

Sam does not want to look up. He does, panting, from under his bangs.

"Kid, you're wearing silver," Winchester says, and toasts him, ironic, with the last of the beer. He
hasn't moved.

'Oh fuck,' Sam thinks, and gropes at his neck. His fingers burn, the pain not instant, but felt as a
slow simmer of heat through the fabric. Wool.

Winchester's wrapped the silver around Sam's neck in a scarf, and it still smells of the man's
skin.

"Bastard," Sam says, with feeling, and snatches his bound hands back down, because scarf or
not, that stuff has started to burn.

"You're probably right there," Winchester says. "But you're off on your score. Colorado was the
fourth." He looks down then, and in the moonlight his eyelashes shadow his face, making him
something darker and more dangerous than the boy Sam had thought he was. When he looks up,
it's right back at Sam.

"I didn't make that last kill," he says. "But I wish I had."

Chain or no chain, Sam lunges for him then, snarls and heaves and slavers like the monster
Winchester thinks he is, so angry he can't think. Rage hammers through him, the red tide of it
riding his bones, but the chains hold.

Winchester takes his time, reaching for the gun, and his hands and his eyes are both infuriatingly
steady.

All Sam succeeds in doing is half choking himself to death. Winchester is not stupid at all, and
the chain that holds closest is the one that links to the silver around his neck. Sam's as helpless as
a lapdog.

"There's a reason why I'm not shooting you right now," Winchester says. "But don't take any
chances." He looks down at the gun and drops out a single bullet. Holds it up between his thumb
and forefinger for Sam to see.

It doesn't take the glint of moonlight for Sam to know the thing's silver. He can feel the shudder
of it in his bones.

"Just so you know," Winchester says.

"Fuck you," Sam says, still sore and aching. He sits back on the carpet, eyes on the gun. He's not
looking at Winchester's face. He won't. The man's a murderer.

"Why not shoot now?" He says, bitter and angry.

Winchester puts the gun down, the click of it heavy against laminate. For a moment, he takes his
eyes off Sam, and then he looks back, direct as a loaded rifle. "Never met a werewolf who talked
to me before," he says.

Sam rolls over. He can see the untouchable moon from here, and out of the corner of his eye the
man on the bed and his gun.

He doesn't intend to sleep, but he does.

Nothing has changed when Sam wakes up. He's still in the motel room. He's still chained. His
neck's started to itch. He's still thirsty.

He is alone. It's daylight, late morning, and the moon is on the other side of the world.

Stretching, Sam catalogues his skin - bruised, cut, but not badly. His jaw still ache, and the itch
around his neck from the wrapped silver is fierce. He's not comfortable in himself, as if the wolf
in him presses restlessly against the chain around his neck. But Sam's fingertips have blistered
overnight and he feels queasy even thinking about investigating Winchester's bindings. Nothing
had led him to expect a man who knew silver would bind him to his human form. Sam had
thought that something only pack knew.

Nor had he expected whatever it was Sam had fought, last night. Belatedly, Sam remembers the

child in the clearing, and reminds himself to check later when he is free if the child is alive.

Winchester, though. Winchester, then, does not only hunt werewolves. It's an interesting thought,
and Sam turns it over in his mind as, bone by bone and tendon by tendon, he stretches out the
bounds of his skin.

Fact. Winchester is both better prepared and better armed than Sam expected.

Fact. Winchester appears to kill monsters for a living. It wasn't chance that found him in that
clearing, shotgun to hand, facing down the beasts that have terrorized this town.

Fact. Winchester has not killed Sam. And he could have done. Still could.

Fact. That, Sam is willing to bet, is the sound of an overcharged muscle car's exhaust pulling into
the motel lot.

By the time Winchester walks in the door, Sam's as tidy and composed as he's able to be, sitting
cross-legged with his back to the wall. The smell of coffee presages the opening door, and for all
Sam's resentment, he watches Winchester walk in the room with hungry eyes.

The man's got donuts and a tray with two cups he puts down on the bedside table. It's cruelty.
Sam chalks one up on the scoreboard and runs his eyes over Winchester's jeans and, once the
coat's off, his layered shirts. By the dip of his waistband, the gun's tucked into the small of his
back.

"You wanna clean up first?" Winchester says. In daylight, his eyes are unexpectedly green.

"You gonna let me free?" Sam says.

"Nah. Chains reach the sink." Winchester blows across the top of one cup of coffee. He's got a
mouth like a five hundred dollar whore: Sam's been trying not to notice.

"Fine," he says. "Do I get a toothbrush?"

"Brought your stuff in," Winchester says, and nods to the spare bed. Out of reach, laid out and
tallied are Sam's clothes, his laptop, and disassembled on a towel, his rifle. Which means that
Winchester also has his Beretta, his cell, his car keys and his wallet. "Your kit's on the sink."

There is no reply Sam can make that isn't ungracious and won't come out spitted with frustrated
anger. He hits his head off the wall instead, once, and shuffles to the bathroom with the chains

dragging out behind him. On the washbasin he finds only his soap and his toothbrush, the head
cut down to half an inch of shaft. It's a prison trick Winchester's wise to, and Sam wonders if it
was he or his sire who'd spent time inside.

The water is hot, though. Were it not for the coffee, Sam would have taken his time, but he
shuffles back out ten minutes later to find both a cup of coffee and a sugar dusted bag by the
wall. Within reach. He looks down and swallows.

"Thanks," he says, the words hard to say and shaping awkwardly on his tongue.

"Yeah," Winchester says, like it was nothing.

There's milk in the coffee, not cream, but it's the best thing Sam's drunk since he left his own
kitchen. There's no telling where the next will come from and he savours it, eyes closing, sliding
his back slowly down the wall to sit again on the carpet. He hasn't realized how hungry he is
until he opens the donut bag, but he eats those slowly as well, licking the sugar off his fingers.

"Anything else I should know about feeding you?"

Sam had forgotten Winchester was in the room. Jerking his head up, he catches the man looking
up from his laptop. There's a table and chair under the window, and Winchester is camped out
with a pile of newspapers and what looks like a journal.

"Other than people?" He adds.

"I don't eat kin," Sam says.

Deliberately, Winchester flicks a photograph across the room. It lands at Sam's feet, a bloody
and battered image. A teenager's body. What's left of it. The girl has been ripped apart. It's an
ugly death, but Sam doesn't flinch, it's nothing he hasn't seen before.

"One in a thousand of us goes feral," Sam says, and knows then by the widening of Winchester's
eyes he's let something slip the man doesn't know. "One in ten of those kills humans. We don't
like it any more than you do." He waits, holding the man's eyes, but Winchester shrugs.

"Only good monster's a dead monster," he says.

Sam rolls his eyes. "How's the boy? That kid from last night?"

"Alive," Winchester says shortly, and glares at the screen.

That kills the conversation. Sam drinks the last of the coffee, and amuses himself estimating how
much longer the chains would reach. Then, he catalogues the water stains on the ceiling. He's
bored.

The laptop keys click, uneven. He might be able to shoot, but Winchester can't type. Sam taps his
fingers against the carpet in sympathy with the keyboard, clinking his chains.

"Shut up."

"Bored," Sam says.

Winchester pushes a few more keys, peers down at the screen, and bites his lower lip. His teeth
are white and even, strong.

"Take a look at this," Winchester says. "Tell me what you think." When he looks up, he's not
sympathetic, and Sam's half expecting the case file Winchester lifts from the desk. The man
slides the paper folder across the carpet, and it reaches Sam spilling newspaper clippings and
photocopied reports. Carefully, Sam tucks everything back into place before he opens the file.

On top of the clippings is a photograph of the same teenager. Alive. Her name is Rebecca and
her high school yearbook page is photocopied under the photograph, and under that Sam finds
notes from interviews with her family and friends and the few witnesses who last saw her alive.
Before she was ripped apart. Her mother. Her boyfriend. Under that are the coroner's reports, and
a sheaf of photographs Sam doesn't want to look at but does. At first glance, and to Winchester
without a doubt, it's a werewolf killing. But Sam's not sure. He tilts the photographs, stares at
them, and frowns. There's something about the shape of the bite marks doesn't fit with any
signature Sam recognizes.

"Did they do a cast of the teeth?" He asks abruptly, and looks up to catch Winchester's eyes
startled open. Eyelashes like a girl's.

"Didn't see one," the man says slowly. He doesn't ask.

"Hm," Sam says, and frowns again at the photograph.

There's more paperwork under Amy's. Three more deaths: two hikers. Someone whose tire blew
out at the wrong time and in the wrong place. Three local newspaper pieces on feral dog
sightings and one on stolen underwear. Sam reads steadily, and shuffles the photographs until he
has a montage in front of him. At the end of the file, there's a map. Each sighting and each death

is circled. On the map, they form a rough ring of dots, circled around a red cross that lies straight
over the clearing where Kyle died.

The only thing is, the territory is far too wide for a wolf. Kyle had a mate and pups and, despite
that eerily silent clearing, a forest full of game. Even for a feral wolf, the sites on the map were
far too far apart to make comfortable hunting. Sam had looked, searching for evidence that Kyle
had turned, but he'd missed these kills. They were all too far from Kyle's territory.

"Pass over the laptop," Sam says, eventually.

"No."

He'd expected it. "Then google wolf bite for me, on images. Turn the screen around."

Winchester looks at him. Something in Sam's face must ring true, because he does.

"Save that one?" Sam asks. "On the third row - no, save the full-size - double-click," he says.
"Now save."

"And?" Winchester says.

"Now dog bite. Something big. Doberman. Pull both of them up, yeah? Can you see the
difference, the gap after the incisors?"

"And?" Winchester says, staring at the screen with his head on one side.

Sam slides the pictures across the carpet and sits back. "That wasn't a wolf," he says.

"Huh," Winchester says, and flicks through the pictures. He lays them out, and turns the screen
back to peer at it, thinking.

"Can I have a shower?" Sam asks.

Looking up, Winchester measures the length of chain with his eyes. "No," he says.

"Would you send an e-mail for me?"

"You got people looking for you? Furry friends?"

"Yeah," Sam says viciously, and glances at the window. Four hours until the moon will rise, pale

in the blue sky.

"Let me think about it," Winchester says, and peers at one of the photographs, checks back at the
screen. Looks at Sam.

"I'm not setting you free," he says. But as Sam says, "I guessed," he adds, "Padlock your ankles
and you can shower. You're stinking up the room."

Sam sighs. "Deal," he says.

Winchester goes out to the car to get another lock and comes back with another hand gun as
well, short and stubby. "Move as far away as you can," he says. "I'm gonna take the chains off at
the wall. Use the fifth link." He doesn't throw the keys with their padlock. "Lie down. Roll over."
He doesn't say, boy: his voice is composed and exact, and for all its weight the pistol is steady in
his left hand.

Sam does. He hears the jingle of the keys, and he can feel Winchester's eyes on his back. He has
to fight his own body to stay relaxed. "I'm gonna need to..." he says, and gestures at his clothes.
He's been wearing the same sweatpants and hoodie for two days.

He can hear Winchester swallow. "Okay," the man says. When Sam rolls over again he's got his
back to the door and he's ten feet away.

It's not like Sam's putting on a show. He strips his sweatpants efficiently and tucks his shirt over
his hips, not looking at the man with the gun, and when he's done he bolts his own ankles
together before he looks up. Winchester is flushed, but his gun hand is still steady.

"I've got a point to prove," Sam says, and nods at the laptop. "I'm coming back."

Still the gun trails him, hobbling, into the bathroom and the window is bolted. Sam takes his
time.

When he's finished, he knocks on the door. "Can I come out?" He asks, and then is suddenly
struck by the situation, and nearly laughs. The smile must sound in his voice: Winchester says,
suspicious, "What?"

"Little silly," Sam says. "Should I come out with my hands up?"

"Yeah," Winchester says. "C'mon."

His eyes are comically wide, when Sam walks out of the bathroom with both hands high and
nothing but a towel around his waist, and the up-and-down glance Dean gives him looks
horrified. Sam's grinning. He shuffles along the wall and lets the chain fall obligingly close to the
staple before he lies down again, but it's nearly a full minute before Winchester moves to the
padlocks.

"You'll want clothes," he says eventually.

Sam rolls over nodding, and catches the man's eyes as they snap upwards. So Sam's got a nice
ass and Winchester noticed. It means nothing. They're not friends, and Winchester's got blood on
his hands, but Sam's inexplicably warmed by the appreciation.

"You done?" He says. "Pass me a clean T-shirt? Some sweats?"

Winchester does. And the keys. Sam, dressed, throws them back on the bed. Clean and
comfortable, he curls back up on the carpet and wonders if Winchester's generosity will extend
to dinner. Then blinks at himself. Last night, he was planning in ten second increments. Now he's
thinking about dinner for two.

Winchester is not. "You reckon... If it's not one of you," he says, the words slow, reluctant and
honest. Sam can respect that. "What is it? 'Cause there's been nothing since the wolf died, and it
looks..."

"Pretty damn convincing?" Sam says. "Yeah. Me too. But there's other stuff."

Winchester leans back and cocks an eyebrow at him.

"The range is too big," Sam says. "Kyle had a pup to look after, but there was enough game in
that forest for a pack, not just a wolf and his mate. I was there. He's just not going to hunt that
far. It looks as if someone's set up..." Sam holds that thought. "Google... Territory," he says.
"Size of. I don't expect you to take my word for it, man."

Winchester flicks him a glance, hands on the keyboard. "Dean," he says.

Sam watches him type. "Are we meant to be friends now? 'Cause, no."

"Figure you're less likely to eat me if you call me by my name," Winchester says, dry. "Sam."

"That wolf," Sam says. "That one you wished you'd killed. That was Kyle. We grew up together,
him and me. I was there when he first changed. I was the person he wrote when he found his

home, the last person he wrote. He said, it's beautiful here. He went wild: he didn't turn, he had
family. Those were his first cubs who died with him, and I - " he stops. "I was too late," Sam
says.

Dean's stopped typing. There's a frown line between his eyes, and he's staring at Sam. "What did
you see," he says. "Up there?"

"What?" Sam says.

"Where he died."

"You were there," Sam says, bitter bitten off words.

"After," Dean says. "I was there after. The fire was still warm. No point hanging around." There's
no judgement in his eyes, no malice. He wants to know, and Sam begins to wonder if he is telling
the truth.

"I..." Sam says, and swallows. "We heard someone might have died," he says. "I knew it was
Kyle. I drove up." It had taken sixteen hours, pedal to the floor. "I knew I was too late when I hit
the tree line. I could smell the ash." Sam's gripping the chain now, his knuckles white. His wolf
is as close as it can be, not close enough, the barest trace of a warm comfort Sam wants to sink
inside. "Those woods... Did you notice? No bird song, once you got near? No game?"

"Nah," Dean says. "Not my thing." But his eyes are bright, interested, and he's listening.

"It was weird," Sam says. "When I got there I could smell you. I knew you'd been there. And cut
wood. Building timber, I mean, not dead wood fire. I raked out the ash," Sam says. "There were
bones. Teeth. All of them died. But there were screws and brackets. Someone built an A frame
and skinned them all," he says. "Split open their bones, like it wasn't enough to kill them. And I
don't know - " he looks away, looks back, swallows. "Whatever killed Kyle, it wasn't silver,"
Sam says. "And I'm betting it hurt."

"I saw the bones," Dean says abruptly. "Figured it was one of us. Told Bobby, legged it back
down to the road. I didn't want..." He stops. "I didn't like the way it felt," he says, and he's not
looking at Sam. There's something he isn't saying.

"Yeah," Sam says. Neutral.

"Have you..." Dean pauses. Looks down, shakes his head. When he looks up, it's with a very wry
smile. "Have you ever seen anything like this before?"

"Get me a cell," Sam says.

"Dude."

"Get me a phone, or lend me the lap top, and I can find out." There's no way he can make Dean
understand the rest, not without giving away half the pack's secrets.

"Not happening. You call out, you e-mail, you got people, and people means trouble I can't
afford. How about you just tell me."

Sam sighs. "I don't know everything, Dean."

"I thought you dealt with this stuff," Dean says.

"It's not just me." But Dean's still frowning at him. "There's other people involved, okay?" Sam
says, and rolls his head back against the wall because, seriously, isn't this obvious? Then he
remembers the steady certainty of Dean's hands on a gun and which one of them is wearing
chains. Sam might have grown up pack, but Dean did not.

"Werewolf cops."

"Dude. I saw your face. You had no idea how many of us there are," Sam says. "Did you?"

Dean shrugs.

"You usually head blind into something you don't understand?" In Sam's head, when the
sentence started, it was threaded with mockery, but halfway through the image of Dean's body
where Kyle's had burned makes the thing is real. Sam doesn't like that thought.

"I knew it was a werewolf," Dean says. "That case was closed."

"Just like you knew there were two of those... Whatever they were, last night?" Sam asks. He's
got an image in his head, now, of Dean are facing down monsters over armed and under
equipped: and that he does not like. It's not as if Dean's pack, not at all, but there's something
between them that makes him want to rake his claws down the carpet and show his teeth. Dean's
got no right to be careless.

"Chupacabra," Dean says. "Never met a pair before. Dad... "

"What the hell?" Sam says.

"Thought you'd know," Dean says. "Being one yourself. Monsters. Things that go bump in the
night." He looks away from moment, and Sam follows his eyes to the window, but unfocused,
Dean's not looking at anything.

Then, "I'm going out," Dean says, abruptly, and snaps the laptop closed. He kicks the chair back,
and walks to the door with his hands in his pockets. Hand on the latch, he stops.

"Thanks," he mutters. "For the..." His hand describes something crouched and vicious, with
claws.

Sam's startled "Welcome," follows him out the door.

Left alone, Sam naps, waiting for the moon. He pulls desultorily at the chains, too, but he's not
going to break the links unless he can change, and while Dean's silver is still hot around his
throat that's not going to happen even when the moon does show in the window.

Dean left his phone behind. It rings twice, frustratingly out of reach. The first time it's a man's
voice, "Dean," he says. "Dean, Bobby. Answer your phone." After a minute Sam can hear the
call disconnect.

When it rings again, it's a different man. "Dean," this one says. "There's a hunt in LA. I need you.
Call me." It's peremptory and assured, that voice. As if Dean was going to drop everything and
run, and Sam doesn't like the man who can make that assumption.

He's getting a little possessive about Winchester. He knows it.

Dean comes back well after dark, smelling of beer and sex and pizza. The pizza he brings with
him, along with a six-pack he drops on the bed. The smell of sex is dirty and hot, as if Dean's
been screwing someone nasty and none too clean. When Sam sits upright, his chains jingle and
Dean's head snaps around, almost as if he had forgotten Sam was in the room. Then his eyes
clear. "Still here?"

Sam shrugs. He doesn't like the smell of Dean's skin, but it's none of Sam's business. "That for
me?" He asks, nodding at the pizza box, and Dean tosses it across. "Your phone rang," he says.

"Fuck," says Dean, and presses keys. Sam, eating - half the pizza left and he's hungry - listens
again to the first message, and then as Dean reaches out a hand to the phone, the second. Two
words alone of that one as Dean, violently, snaps the cell closed. His face has paled.

Sam, stupidly, says, "Who was that?" And Dean sends him a look that would strip the flesh from
his bones if it could.

"No one," he says. But his fingers twitch and cramp.

Sam eats pizza. Dean strips his boots off, stands up, pulls the duvet from the spare bed and
throws it across the room in Sam's direction. Then he rolls himself into bed in the same T-shirt
and jeans he slept in last night, with a gun under his pillow. In minutes, his breathing is slow and
even. Too even.

Sam watches the moon.

                                               Day 4

"We're moving," Dean announces the next morning. He's brought coffee again, but no donuts,
and the shadows under his eyes are darker.

Sam, gritty eyed, unshowered and stiff from his second night sleeping on a motel floor, is not
sympathetic.

"Yeah," he says, and rattles his chains. There's a second cup of coffee, but Dean hasn't handed it
over.

Frowning, Dean looks down at him. Sam blinks up, uncooperative.

"Fine." And Dean packs, in five minutes: newspapers, laptop, wash kit, Sam's duffel. Dean keeps
a knife under his pillow as well as a gun, and his T-shirts are not retro but vintage. When he
comes back from the car, it's with a gun in his hands.

"This is how we're gonna play this," he says "I'm gonna give you the keys. You walk to the car.
You do your wrists. You put the chain through the door handle," Dean says. "And padlock it up.
Got me?"

"What if I say no?" Sam says.

Dean slides the safety. "You want to take a bet on what I've got loaded?" He says.

"Do I get coffee?" Sam asks.

"In the car," says Dean.

So Sam does. Dean's ten feet away. If Sam could change... but Sam doesn't want his teeth in
Dean's throat. They're way past that. Sam's intrigued. Wary, more than suspicious, but Dean's life
is utterly something other than he had thought it, and so very different from Sam's own.

Plus, he's not dead yet. Also, coffee.

It's still early. This sky is brightening, and the parking lot gravel is still wet with dew. Sam's glad
of the warm cup of coffee between his hands as Dean tosses the ankle chains in the trunk,
although drinking has to be done one-handed.

Dean's car smells of Dean. Or Dean of the car: road dust and wax polish and gun oil and leather,
the seats smooth with age. There's a tape deck on the console and no iPod jack, but the seats are
made for someone Sam's size. Unwillingly, he feels almost comfortable; far more so than he had
been while trapped in the hotel room, within four walls. So comfortable he sleeps, after the
coffee. He wakes up only as Dean pulls in for gas, the sound of the bass guitar and the Seventies
cock rock riff that threaded through his dreams proving real.

Dean says, abruptly, "You want anything?"

Sam grimaces. Says, "More coffee?" Says, "Where are we?" And then, "Where's my car?"

Dean rolls his head against the seat back and looks over. He doesn't say anything.

"Fuck," Sam says.

Dean says, "You're on a hunt, wolf boy. Hang tight." As he gets out of the car, Dean's whistling.

Sam pins down the music as early Metallica. Figures. He finds a box of tapes at his feet that he
can't reach to investigate. Wonders when the pack will trace his Lexus, how much longer he's got
until someone comes for him. How much longer Dean's got. He needs a cell. Any kind of phone.

"Define hunt," Sam says, when they hit the road. He would turn the music down, but he can't
reach and anyway, he's got a coffee cup in one hand.

"Bobby says witches," Dean says. "Two kids missing."

"And you..." Sam says, as Dean looks at him sideways, one eyebrow raised. Yeah, of course
Dean was on his way, wolf in tow.

"Okay," Sam says. Bobby was the first guy on the phone, last night. He must have called back.
With information. "Two kids?" Caleb had messed with a witch, once. It hadn't been pretty. Pack
remembered. "What kind of witch? What have you got?"

"Couple of..." Dean drops him a look over the seat, wary assessment. "There's a file on the back
seat," he says, "If you wanna."

Sam pulls emphatically at the chain, eyebrows raised, staring at Dean's profile.

Pulling over, Dean doesn't even look at Sam as he reaches back and then slaps the paperwork
down between them. "That's all I got," he says, and then curses as the Winnebago he'd passed
two miles back rolls on by.

It's a slim file. Four newspaper clippings and a brown envelope Fedexed to a drop box in
Revelation, with three printed out rituals inside that Sam does not like the look of at all.

"They're using the kids for divination?" He tries, and Dean shrugs.

"That's what Bobby thinks," he says.

"So..." Sam says. "What do we do?"

 Dean does look at him then. "You sit tight so I know where you are," he says. "I ask some
questions. Then," He makes a gun with his fingers, shoots, and blows imaginary smoke from his
fingernails.

"Right," Sam says. "Like you did with the Chupacabra."

"I've been doing this for fifteen years, dude." Dean says. "Family business."

Four werewolves. Two missing kids. "You always go for a gun first?" Sam says.

Dean turns the music up.

Fifty miles later he turns it down. "I grew up hunting things," Dean says, although he's still not
looking at Sam. "I fired my first gun when I was eight."

Sam turns his head. Dean's profile against the window is all cheekbones and hair and mouth: the
curve of his lower lip, for all his mouth is set, is as elegantly rich as a Beardsley drawing. His
father is on record with three feral kills, one more than Sam and one less than Dean's confessed.
Sam thinks the records are wrong.

He's been staring. "What?"

"Nothing," Sam says. He can see the shape of the boy Dean must have been in the curve of flesh
on his face. Suddenly, badly, Sam wants to see Dean smile. There are creases in the corners of
his eyes, but Sam can see the pattern of them now and he thinks they're sun squint lines, not
laughter.

Dean fucked someone, last night, and came back to an empty bed in a hotel room that held no
more than the contents of his duffel bag. And Sam.

Impatiently, Dean says, "What?"

The moon's out. Sam can see it through the left side window, low on the horizon, so pale it's
almost invisible against the pale blue of the sky.

"Take me along," Sam says.

"So you can go all wolf on their asses," Dean says. "No way."

Sam keeps looking. Dean taps his fingers on the wheel, shifts his legs, glances out of his
window. Taps his fingers again. "Look, kid -"

"I get it," Sam says. "I get it, I really do, because that night in the woods? I was aiming to rip
your throat out, dude. But - "

Dean's breath hisses through his teeth. "Kinda sounds different when you say it like that," he says
evenly.

"I'm trying to say it's not like that," Sam says.

"I'm not seeing a difference," Dean says. "You're still furry, and I'm still the one with the gun."

                                                    ~*~

They haven't spoken for fifty miles by the time Dean pulls into Revival, but the motel is horrific
enough to shock Sam into speech.

"Dean," he says helplessly, stuck on the threshold staring at a two foot crucifix hung over the
bed. The wallpaper's magenta, with wreaths. The carpet is purple shag.

"Walk," Dean says.

"There'll be fleas," Sam says, walking reluctantly over sticky clumped pile to the wall. "And I
need a shower."

"Oh, for - " Dean says.

"Please," says Sam. "Seriously. And a clean T-shirt. There's one in my bag. And boxers. I won't
use all the hot water. Just - "

"Fine!" Dean says, and stomps out to the car and back for the duffel while Sam leans, smilingly
obedient, against the wall. He's pretty sure Dean hasn't realized what he's done, because Sam's
not chained to anything right now.

Dean is an idiot.

Dean needs a fucking keeper.

When Sam comes out of the shower the man's practically bouncing on the soles of his feet by the
door, impatient. Sam holds his hand out for the keys, and locks the padlocks back up. Dean's
found an air conditioning pipe to wrap the chains around, and Sam inspects it doubtfully,
because one good pull looks as if it would rip the thing out of the wall. Keys still in his hand, he
looks up. "This all you've got? Just go and ask around? C'mon man. I'm bored. Take me with
you."

Dean flicks his eyes to the cuffs.

"I swear," Sam says. "Cross my heart. Pinkie swear. Kiss me deal. Whatever."

Dean's hesitating.

"You fed me," Sam says. He's grinning. "It'd be like... biting the hand."

He's absurdly happy at slow tilt of Dean's head, the way his eyelashes drop in acquiescence and
the suppressed smile that curves the corner of his mouth. "Can I?" Sam says.

"We're back here before dark," Dean warns.

"Awesome," says Sam, and strips off the cuffs. Tosses Dean the keys. He can't resist: he makes
mock claws of his hands, and growls, high pitched, and watches Dean's grin spread. He doesn't
realize he's grinning back until his dimples hurt, but it takes a while to fade, Sam's smile. Dean's
is sooner gone.

Then he glances back under his eyelashes and says, " C'mon then. Puppy."

But standing on Lizzie Standing's doorstep, he says, "I'm John Bonham. This is David Kessler."
And Sam wonders why he liked Dean, in that moment in the motel room when they were both
smiling.

Then Dean says, "I'm sorry if this is a bad time for you, but I wondered if you'd mind talking
about your daughter?"

He says it straight faced, plasters his face with appropriate sympathy so false Sam wonders how
anyone could fall for the act, while Sam rearranges his own expression to carefully blank. And
yet, Dean's not lying. He's awkward and sincere at the same time, and it's almost charming.

Lizzie is charmed. Lizzie is divorced. Lizzie's home is painfully clean and pink, with ruffles, and
smells of cloying air freshener. Sam sits uneasily on an oversized couch and tries not to sneeze
while Dean talks their witness through her daughter's disappearance. Sam's got no idea if they're
supposed to be detectives or reporters or what, and Dean's not exactly throwing him a line, but
Lizzie is too far deep in exculpation to query a word. Eventually, she lets them upstairs to Amy's
room. Among Amy Standing's plush toys and Barbie peripherals Sam stands awkwardly, too big,
while Dean feels under the girl's mattress and in her drawers. Amy does have a diary; it's pink,