A/N: This is a fairly long fic, over 40,000 words written so far, somewhat plotty. It's written for the lovely Heather03nmg's birthday. Her birthday's not for a couple more weeks, and since we're going to be in Chicago that weekend, I figured there's no point waiting until then to start posting as neither of us will be reading that weekend—unless Jensen and Jared care to tattoo our names on their chests—LOL. I haven't written the end yet, and the middle needs quite a bit of editing before I will feel comfortable posting it—I'm not really comfortable with this, but you can only poke at something so much before it pokes back. I'll try to post a chapter a week. Maybe 8 or 10 chapters total. It starts with a lot of setup. I apologize for that, but if you know Heather, you know she asked for Hurt or Sick Dean, and there' s plenty of that in this. There will also be Hurt Sam, though my Sam's never limp. I like him Rambo-esque. RAWR. I won't be posting this on LJ until after it's finished, so read it here as I post or wait until it's finished and read it there. It's all good. Just let me know what you think.

A/N2: This is set in season 2 after Nightshifter. I played with the timeline a little. Superwiki says end of March beginning of April. I'm pushing it more to the middle of April for seasonal purposes. Just pretend Heart never happened. I do. Also, this story has no bigger message. It's just sick and whump for the sake of sick and whump.

Beta'd by the lovely Chemm80 in all her one-handed glory.

Warnings: Language. I don't pull any punches. And there's innuendo and boys being boys.

Disclaimer: I want them. That's it. I also want to get paid for this stuff, but I don't, so this is just fiction for fun.

Happy Birthday, Heather. I am officially your bitch.

Sin Nombre

There's a little black spot on the sun today.

There is--and it's not a cheesy song lyric blaring from Dean's alarm clock, care of whatever local station broadcasts in this part of New Mexico--just the first thing that runs through Sam's mind when he blinks his eyes open and discovers there's something wrong with the sun here. There are spots in it.

He's not surprised. There's something wrong here, period.

Of course there are spots on the sun. They're sleeping in a friggin' barn. There are spots on everything, some of them with wings and legs, and some just left behind by things with wings and legs. The place is swimming with dust, pollen, hay chaff, powdered sh..., er, stuff Sam doesn't even want to think about, all of which have made him a red-eyed, wheezing zombie.

Immune to demon viruses but allergic to dust and pollen. He sneezes hard into the sheet he's got pressed over his mouth and nose, groans at the itch in his eyes. Fuck irony. Fuck yin and yang and cosmic balance. This just friggin' sucks. Four days and counting, and he doesn't seem to be building any sort of tolerance. He's really tired of walking with an internal slosh, and the lines around his eyes from constantly squinting back the burn are about two days away from becoming geological wonders of the world.

Dean and his brilliant ideas.

'It's New Mexico,' he'd said. 'Miles and miles from big cities, jails, and big, bad police officers who want to put us in jail,' he'd said. 'Perfect place to lay low.'

Dean thought. Dean said. Dean, Dean, Dean... And when exactly did Sam turn into Jan Brady?

It's perfect all right. At least it would be, if no one lived there. New Mexico in March, after a couple hundred years of 'civilized' cultivation is like Mardi Gras for pollen and spores. Sam's sinuses can't decide which they hate more: last fall's alfalfa starting to mold away in the next loft, the sorghum raising a cloud of dust every time it drops out of the gravity boxes and into the wheelbarrows of the hired help, or Jeannie Cagel's juniper bushes--the ones Dean purposely runs his hand through every time he walks by.

Sam's gonna kill him. Slowly.

Still, as much as it grates on the last nerve in Sam's head that's not throbbing with sinus pressure, it's not the worst gig they've ever had. As missions go, this one's far from impossible and won't require any fancy wires and cables ala Tom Cruise-before-Katie-Holmes. At least they're getting paid.

Well, they'll get paid if Sam doesn't drown in his own choke before they bag the chupacabra.

The Cagel ranch is well-run, organized, as clean as a goat ranch can be. It's also got a goat sucker problem and no empty rooms at the inn in which to house the weary hunters they've hired to resolve the issue. How biblical. He briefly wonders which one of them is Mary and which is Joseph before he turns over on his cot, looks down out of the hay loft to the barn below where Armando and Francisco, the hired hands, are already starting morning chores. It's inhuman to be that awake at this hour of the morning. Maybe one of them is a were-chupacabra. Armando, in particular, seems to have a spring in his step that makes Sam want to put thumb tacks in his shoes.

Oh yeah, they need to bag this puppy and be gone. This place is grinding Sam to a miserable pulp.

Pulling the sheet away from his nose to test the air, he takes a tentative breath, feels it scratch over his sinuses until a steady trickle drips down his throat. He groans and puts the soggy-sheet-turned-oversized-kleenex back over his face. This sucks. And blows.

"What the...? Shit!" From behind Sam, there's a thud and the sound of sheets being yanked off the neighboring cot. "Sam!"

Sam takes his good-natured time rolling over. Dean was sleeping soundly thirty seconds ago. The earth hasn't moved, and the sky hasn't fallen in that amount of time, so Sam's sure he's fine. His brother's kind of a drama queen before he's had his morning coffee. Dean's probably the only person on the planet who requires massive doses of caffeine just to mellow out.

"Sam!"

Big girl.

"Dude, what?"

Sam figures out what the major malfunction is all on his own. 'Cause he's kinda awesome like that. Dean doesn't have to answer, which is a good thing, because he seems preoccupied with standing in the corner of the loft waving his trusty under-pillow knife like a light saber. Sam gives himself a good dramatic pause before he acknowledges the issue. It's what any kid brother would do in the same situation. Payback's a bitch.

"I told you, Sam. I told you not to feed that cat! I told you it wouldn't do its job if you fed it."

Sam raises his eyebrows indifferently. 'I told you so,' isn't an acceptable alternative for 'good morning' where he comes from.

The thing is, Dean? He has a thing about rats. He says it's the beady little eyes. Sam doesn't suppose the fact that this is a mouse, not a rat, and it has no eyes, because well, it has no head at all, is any consolation. He doesn't suppose there'll be any consolation either, considering the decapitated rodent is smack in the middle of Dean's pillow. It's kinda balanced on the abyss of Dean's head-dent. Must've had its tail directly...

Dean completes the mental picture by grimacing and scrubbing his forearm down the front of his face. Again. And again. Dean's taken bog beast spit right between the eyes without flinching--Sam's seen him do it--but apparently rodent derriere has poked him directly in his mind's eye. Sam knows the look. He'd worn it himself for a week after walking in on Dean with that girl on the pool table back in...yeah, Sam's not going there.

Sam must do a pretty poor job of looking concerned. If the Elvis quirk tugging at his upper lip doesn't say, 'hunka, hunka, you're a giant girl,' then the raised eyebrows directed at the way Dean holds the sheet fisted at his hip while brandishing the knife say, 'gay naked fencing,' loud and clear.

Dean flushes red and drops the sheet, extricating his feet from the tangle with a roll of his eyes that says, 'bitch!'

Sam huffs, "Jerk!" and punches his pillow with his head.

The man of the hour, Theo, the black-and-white barn cat, jumps up onto Sam's cot and nudges his head into the palm of his hand. Now that's a 'good morning.' Sam sits up, obliging the tomcat with a rub between the ears.

"He did do his job," Sam says, more to the cat than to Dean who's pulling on his jeans with a line in his forehead the size of the Grand Canyon. "He killed the mouse. Didn't you, Theo? There's no law that says he has to eat it."

Dean doesn't find that funny, and after tossing the mouse, pillow and all, down the hay chute, he just slides on his boots and climbs down the ladder without even tying the laces.

Figures.

Pretty much every day in this place has started with some form of major suckage. Sure, some of it's probably leftover tension from the realization that Victor Henriksen and, well, every major law enforcement agency in the country is on their asses. But more of it is Dean just up and deciding the best way to deal with it all is to stagger out into the wilderness like Mad Max in exile from Thunderdome.

Sam's not a wilderness guy. He likes rooms with walls and air conditioning. Surely there's a convenient basement somewhere... He's decided he hates New Mexico, hates goats with hard heads that land in soft places, hates the smell of goats, goat dander, motes in sunlight that are anything but sparkly, just hates it all.

But then, Dean's not the only one who can't function without his morning coffee. Give him an hour, a couple of breakfast burritos made with homemade tortillas and Mexican cheese, add half a pot of coffee, and he might only strongly dislike New Mexico. Until then, hate is as good a word as any.

He leaves the cat curled on the foot of his bed and starts to dress, finds out he's used the last sheet off the roll of toilet paper he smuggled out of the guest bathroom, and ends up blowing his nose--blowing it a LOT--into an old t-shirt. It might be Dean's. With his sinuses mostly clear, he wrinkles up his nose and grimaces. Smells like Dean's. Then, he sneezes, wipes the tears out of his red eyes with the sleeve of his shirt, and trudges off after his brother, a sloshing in his chest that makes him feel heavy in a way he can't blame on his steel-toed shoes. Yeah, he hates this place.

Nobody will be gladder than Sam when they finally bag this goat sucker.

XX

Goat sucker, as it turns out, is not the best name for the thing they end up killing. Just the baby ones eat goats, and only because goats are mostly defenseless and come in large herds. Well, so do sheep but the wooly buggers give them hair balls that knit themselves into sweaters by the time they come out the other end. Adult chupacabras prefer bigger quarry--cows, horses, the occasional semi-trailer full of border hoppers. Yeah. Yum.

This one's not a baby, but it has one on board. It's broody, looking for lots of bite-sized morsels and ready to pop its maternal cork at any second. Okay, that's a disgusting turn of phrase, and Sam would protest the vulgarity of it if popping wasn't exactly what she'd done. An M80 down the old cakehole will have that effect.

"You know, we might be the first and only hunters to ever encounter a pregnant chupacabra. Might've been nice to leave a few bits and pieces bit enough to study."

"I had my own research to conduct." Dean shrugs him off, wincing and putting a hand to his back as he does. The trap took him all day to dig.

"What research?"

"Needed to know whether a goat sucker can survive swallowing a cherry bomb." He pulls a chunk of bloody meat out of a nearby bush and tosses it into the center of the debris field with a satisfied smirk. "Now I know."

"Well, thanks to you, we still don't know anything about how chupacabra reproduce. We don't even know if she was fixing to have one really big, really ugly baby, or if this is all that's left of a litter." He does a double take at the fistfuls of ragged flesh he's studying. "Hell, I cannot even believe I'm looking through this mess."

Digging through a pile of guts is not something he'd usually do, not for research purposes or any other purposes. There will always be other chupacabra. It's just, something about this hunt feels wrong. Ominous. Sure, as far as he knows there's nothing really supernatural about a chupacabra-- just bad genes, isolation, and hybrid vigor, he supposes--but considering the amount of damage it'd done on the Cagel's goat ranch, the months it had eluded Don Cagel and his posse of immigrant ranch hands, it just seems like it should have been harder to kill. This doesn't feel finished. Though what he expects to find in a pile of steaming guts is beyond him. He rises from his kneeling position, the creaking of his stretched tendons most likely due to being baked dry and re-sized like Shrinky Dinks in the New Mexican sun.

With a last grimace, he chucks the entrails back into the glop, stands gazing at his gore-coated fingers. He wishes they'd thought to keep latex gloves in their med kit. Dean's offer of some Magnum condoms to put over his hands hadn't really provided the tension breaking guffaw of laughter Sam's sure it had been intended to elicit. He doesn't even want to know why Dean has Magnums. If Sam doesn't need 'em, then... ah well, he's not getting into the grower versus shower debate while standing over goat sucker bits.

He's being pissy, but he has every right to be. He kicks dirt over the remains just for good measure, glaring back toward the ranch as the sound of mariachi music wafts in on the grease-heavy smoke rolling over the hardpan. Quitting time on a Sunday night is apparently fiesta time in the bunkhouse. It's enough to make Sam want to puke.

"Smells like dinner calling," Dean says, his eyes heavy-lidded and a little glassy in what Sam assumes is anticipation. Sam can practically hear his mouth watering. "Kidwiches, yum."

"Dick," Sam mumbles under his breath as he trudges behind. He doesn't even bother to wipe his hands on his jeans before opening the car door. A soggy towel hits him in the side of the head before he gets seated. Sam knows for a fact Dean used it to mop up sweat while they dug the trench for the trap. He silently hopes it wasn't used on anything below the belt, can't be sure, though, not with the memory of his own sweat trickling down, down, down past the waistband of his baggy jeans still fresh in his mind.

"You're not still pissed about the goat," Dean guesses, more a statement than a question.

"Of course not," Sam sneers. "We've been sleeping in a barn for almost two weeks now. I wake up every morning, drowning in my own..." he swallows, "...secretions. I have to sneak through the yard on the way to the toilet in order to avoid being a)head-butted by a billy goat, or b)pecked bald by a banty rooster. And for my trouble..."

"Our trouble," Dean interrupts.

"Fine," Sam rants, "And for our trouble, we get a baby goat on a spit. Why the hell would I be pissed about that?"

Dean eases back, eyes fixed forward even though there's no road between here and there. Sam catches the twitch under his jaw as Dean bites back something, shakes his head, then lets out something that probably isn't much better. "C'mon, Sam, the Cagels are paying us good. The goat is just extra, a thank you from the ranch hands. What'd you expect when they asked you to pick one out? That we were going to buy it a collar and some dog tags, call it Norman, and keep it in the backseat?"

Sam rubs his hands on the thighs of his jeans in exasperation. Dean's right. He should've known better. But still. "It was just a baby."

"Which is why they looked at you like a giant lawn gnome when you picked it."

"I didn't think they were going to barbecue it. If I had, I'd have picked the one that head-butted me when I walked through the yard the other morning." He crosses his legs protectively, refrains from forming a makeshift cup of his hands while he pushes the memory back into the recesses of his mind where he wishes it would stay.

"Did you miss the fact that this is a meat ranch? Everything out here is measured by the pound." Dean adopts a slightly vindictive slant to his eyes, lashes sweeping lower beneath a sliding gaze. "Besides. You did your job, Sammy boy. You killed it. There's no law that says you have to eat it."

"Bite me."

On a roll, Dean smirks. "It's fine if you don't eat. That's just more for me." He gets a twinkle in his eye, turns, and asks, "Hey, Sam? D'ya think that makes me a goat sucker, too?"

Sam bites his lip in order to keep a straight face, laugh lines tugging against the determined set of his brow. "Depends." He shrugs.

"On what?"

"Which part of the goat you're..." he waggles his brows, "... eating."

Dean's head cocks, chin jutting out toward the window like he's just taken a hit to the jaw, but his grin doesn't fade. "Just for that, Sam, since you picked the scrawniest goat in the herd," He stops mid-sentence to clear his throat again, trying not to laugh at his own joke before delivering the punchline. "I'm gonna tell 'em you want a puppy to make up the difference."

The laugh line tethers snap, and Sam's eyebrow drops like a dead weight. Is that supposed to be a joke? 'Cause if it isn't...well, eew. "Dean, you don't think...?"

Dean groans, finally rolls his head in Sam's direction, his forehead peaked like it's just waiting for a giant "L" sign to be tacked in the middle.

"No, Sam, I do NOT think they would've made you chihuahua tacos for breakfast. That's sick. Can't even believe you went there." He shrugs, a smug expression twisting the far side of his face. "Gotta say I'm disappointed you'd entertain such a racist, derogatory, stereotypical..." He pauses in search of the right word, settles on, "...notion."

"Notion?"

The one lowered eyebrow meets with the quirked lip and flared nostril like some old, fat aunt has just pinched his cheek and pushed his head between her breasts. "First of all, you totally planted that 'notion' in my head, Mr. I-Eat-Kids-And-Like-It. Secondly, since when do you use the word notion?" he asks before an image pops into his head that answers his question and makes him wish he'd never, ever heard the word. "Oh. God. You totally read the Nancy's Notions catalog in the Cagel's guest bathroom."

Dean ducks his gaze out the driver's side window, a hint of color on his cheek that's more than sunburn. He coughs into the shoulder of his jacket, but Sam doesn't drop the subject. Finally, he purses his lips, swims his head back and forth, and says, "What was I supposed to do? The tamales weren't sitting right...weren't sitting at ALL...and Nancy only had craft and hobby mags in the rack." He turns back to Sam, the blush fading behind a sneer that makes Sam nervous for his already sensitive stomach. "For future reference, though, I have the last three issues of 'Racked Up,' stashed in my bag." He pauses, pleased with himself for having devised a contingency plan for bathroom distress. "I think we need some secret code for, 'I'm gonna be here awhile, send porn and a match.'"

"Screw you."

"No." Dean seems to ponder, then says, "That's becoming your new catch phrase. Bound to cause confusion. Ow." He rubs at the back of his neck for a second, his smirk slipping, but the next pothole they hit jerks him back to the moment.

"We need something that says 'lavatory distress' without, you know, actually saying it. Was thinking of something more like, uh, how 'bout this?" He pauses dramatically, for what, Sam can only guess with dread, then dons an imaginary sombrero and says, "Yo quiero taco bell," complete with bad Mexican accent.

"Dean!"

"Fine, then. How 'bout, 'release the hostages'?" He says the last bit like he's shouting into a megaphone. It's loud enough to boom back off the windshield, and he flinches at his own voice.

Sam shakes his head but has to choke back a laugh. Times like these, bathroom humor is probably the only thing that actually is funny. Must be the neanderthal allele on the Y chromosome.

"How about, instead, we do the same thing we do with everything that matters?"

"What's that, Sammy?"

"Not talk about it."

Dean hooks his thumbs under the steering wheel and shrugs while waving the rest of his fingers, the half of his face Sam can see twisted into a goofy smirk. "Fine. Have it your way. Just remember that the next time you've got a major code brown and are on your last sheet of Charmin."

Sliding his index finger nervously across his forehead, Sam says, "That only happened once. And I'm never ordering chicken salad again."

"Whatever," Dean dismisses. "I'll just leave you for housekeeping next time."

Instead of arguing, Sam huffs and leans back in his seat, relaxed for the first time since they've been here. Thing is, Sam knows Dean won't leave him for housekeeping. Dean won't leave him, period. And as miserable as he's been, it feels pretty good to know that.

XX

He can't bow out of the barbecue all together. That would be considered rude, and since he'd rather sleep in the barn than in the car on the side of the road somewhere, Sam puts in an appearance, but no way in hell he's eating any 'kidwiches' as Dean has taken to calling them. One more thump on the back accompanied by, "C'mon, it's the other red meat," and Sam's gonna have to see how well the steel toes on his boots hold up against the blunt force of Dean's shins. Or maybe it's the other way around. No, he's definitely more worried about his shoes at this point. They don't buy his size off the shelf.

Dean doesn't seem to have any issues reaping their reward, though Sam had nearly had to drag him out of the hay loft after they showered in the bunkhouse and went back to change into slightly less dirty clothes before dinner. Seems a long day of trap digging in the sun makes a soft cot more appealing than food. Sam never thought he'd see the day. He'll give Dean shit about getting old later, after he survives the Great New Mexican Kid Roast.

Tired or not, now that he's here, Dean's not wasting time feeling sorry for the goat. He started with half a dozen taquito rolls of barbecue with pico de gallo, some fresh green sauce, and Mexican cheese on homemade tortillas, and he's down to one. Sam finds that a little hard to believe considering Dean hasn't really stopped talking/grunting to the Cagel's dog since they slid into the picnic table. Some people talk to dogs like babies, their voices all high and squeaky. Dean apparently talks to them in pig latin or something. Sam wonders how he didn't know that before now and if he should maybe tell Dean to stop doing it. By the way his brother keeps clearing his throat, he's gotta be straining something. But then, if he loses his voice, maybe Sam won't have to deal with anymore toilet humor for the day. Besides, the dog seems to like it.

The poor Australian shepherd's name is Jethro. Not a tragedy in itself, except Dean's dubbed him Tull, because you know, a metal band with lyrics like, "eyeing little girls with bad intent," and "snot is running down his nose," is so much classier to be named after than the doofus from The Beverly Hillbillies. Sometimes, Dean amuses himself too much to be healthy, and Sam's not just talking about alone time in the bathroom. Times like these, Sam thinks he'd be better off trying to socialize a feral child than get Dean to unlearn the Winchester survival etiquette.

As if on cue, Dean slides away from Sam and pats the seat, sings, "Sitting on the park bench," while doing air guitar, and Jethro jumps up beside him. Doesn't even put his doggie elbows on the table. Dog has better manners than Dean, except when his tail starts wagging and smacks Dean in the back. The way Dean grunts and arches away in response, Sam'd think there were barbs on the end.

Dean catches Sam's suspicious glance in his direction and says, "Touch of sunburn, I think."

"Big baby," Sam teases. Dean does have a knack for burning, and a 'no way in Hell' attitude about letting Sam put on the sun block. He shrugs off Sam's gaze, and Sam narrows it to a glare before glancing away. Let Dean apply his own burn cream, too, then. Serves him right.

At the end of the bench, Armando and Francisco each work on their own plate of barbecue, grinning around bottles of Corona. Sam lifts his glass of iced tea in thanks for the meal, nods his gratitude. They smile back around lime wedges, eyes crinkling at the corners from the tart. Sam, of course, passed on the Corona. Even with a plugged nose, the stuff smells like donkey piss, and lime doesn't help at all.

The two workers are either brothers or cousins. The Mexican system of surnames always throws Sam for a loop. They're good guys, though, kidicide notwithstanding. In the nearly two weeks Sam and Dean have been here, Sam's figured out that the hired hands get paid at the end of the day and head into town three times a week to send the money home. The Cagels pay well, but Armando and Francisco never come back with more than a case of beer and a carton of smokes, though Sam has seen Francisco tuck the occasional stuffed animal under the hem of his shirt and wipe something from the corner of his eye while staring into his well-worn billfold. He's sure there's a grinning daughter or son somewhere in Mexico missing a daddy. Hunting's not the only lifestyle it sucks to be born into. Poverty is its own cross to bear, tears families apart just as effectively.

Cappy leans back on the bench across the table from them, seems almost to talk through his nose while savoring each lungful of smoke from his pipe, allowing barely a wisp to escape. His name's Don, or so says the mailbox, but the handshake and two pint coffee mug both go by the name Cappy. Could be a military designation, Sam supposes, but the D.V.M. takes up all the room on the letter head, so it's hard to say. Sam can see the old codger as a retired captain of something. He seems strong for a man of seventy, disciplined, up at the crack of dawn, could easily have commanded a ship of some sort. Heck, with the little glimmer in his eyes, Sam can easily imagine him at the helm of the Starship Enterprise, pretty green alien women on each of his muscled arms. His Jeannie must be one hell of a woman. After all, her name's the first one listed on the personal check the old bear paid them with.

"So it was what, then?" Cappy asks between puffs on his pipe. "One of those mutant wild dogs that been in the news?"

The question's directed at Dean, but Dean's distracted, most likely by a mouthful of barbecue. He looks up with a blank expression, his gaze slightly trailing the motion of his head. If there's any doubt whether he heard, it's erased by the, "Hmm?" he gives in reply.

Yeah, that's his big brother, all right. Eats himself stupid while Sam handles the explanations. He's definitely got a kick in the shins coming just as soon a Jethro moves. Way to be professional.

"That depends," Sam intercedes. Scratching the back of his head, he asks, "What do you think it was?"

"Think it was a goddamned goat sucker's what I think!" Cappy says, banging the bowl of his pipe on the lip of his coffee mug for emphasis.

"Chupacabra..." Armando and Francisco chime in, no grins around lime slices to indicate they're anything other than dead serious.

Sam laughs. A little backwoods superstition is sometimes a better ally than civilized disbelief. "Well, then, I'd have to agree. She was a chupacabra."

"She?" Cappy asks. He tips back slightly so Olga, the housekeeper, can take his plate, leans back in with a twinkle in his eye. "How do you know? Did you look up her skirt?" He jerks upright when Jeannie comes up behind him and smacks him between the shoulder blades hard enough that he almost drops his pipe. Sam really likes her.

Dean chimes in but not before clearing his throat twice. Loudly. Sam hopes he's biting his tongue as well. "We found her den. Looked like she was setting up house. Only thing it was missing was a picket fence and a sandbox. Was probably due any day."

"Huh," Cappy says, rolling his lips around the end of his pipe thoughtfully. "She was that canine, was she? I'd have thought monsters like that reproduced by, I dunno, mitosis or something."

"D'ya think that's important?" Sam asks.

Cappy shrugs. "Dunno. Just... the idea that she adopted canine denning behavior makes me wonder how else she takes after dogs. Wonder if Daddy's coming home for dinner, if you know what I mean."

"Maybe a mate?" And there it is. That little niggling tug at the hairs on the back of Sam's neck becomes a full-blown head jerk into the locked and upright position.

"Or a whole pack..." Dean adds, his face pale with realization, a blush on the tops of his cheeks that must be from the sun. He pushes his empty plate to the center of the table as Sam crosses his arms in resignation, his thumbs smoothing at the wrinkles of his shirt beneath his armpits. He doesn't feel much like celebrating anymore either.

"It's a thought," Cappy says with a nod. He looks from Sam to Dean and back again, lowers the pipe from his mouth with one hand. "I tell you what. You boys look like Hell. Let me make you an offer. Twice your fee to stay another week. You don't have to do anything, just hang around and rest up before you get back to doing whatever it is you do. If we see more of our goat sucking friends, then you're here to take care of the problem. If not, then live and let live. No harm, no foul. Whattaya say?"

Before anyone can answer (and really, how can they say no?), Jethro starts heaving on the bench beside him, and Sam kicks away from the table just in time to keep his feet clean. The dog hawks up what looks to be at least half a dozen goat taquitos. Sam glares at his brother, because he gets three guesses where the food came, from and the first two don't count. Dean takes one look, flushes red, then white, then green, and dives around the corner of the house.

Sam shifts uneasily on his feet, unsure whether to follow, then shrugs and crosses his arms, the tail of his shirt coming up with the sweaty-tack of his hand against it.

"Oh...dear," Jeannie says. "A woman's work is never done, I see." She shakes her head and goes into the house, deliberate steady steps of a woman on a mission with no idea she's supposed to be tottering and old.

It takes Dean a few minutes to slink back out, longer than it should considering he couldn't have had much in his stomach to begin with after feeding it all to the dog. When he does, he's all square-shouldered and bow-legged swagger cocky, swipes a lime and a Corona, and spits into the shrubbery. It's the worst cover up Sam's ever seen. Dean's either slipping in his old age, or Sam's somehow missed the more convincing stages of deception.

"Funny how that works," Dean says sheepishly, sweaty palms over the thighs of his jeans. "Y'know, when you see someone..." he makes upchucking motions with his hands, "...and then, well..." He's leaning forward just enough for Sam to take a step away. It's a load of crap and Sam knows it. Dean sees more disgusting things than dog puke on a pretty regular basis and stops for cheeseburgers on the way home. And pie.

He might be still be a little sun weary and bone tired, groggy from days of restless sleep, but he doesn't miss the tiny wince Dean makes when he has to straighten up again. Sam knows he's been a little busy trying not to buckle under the weight of the world and this black cloud of doom pressing down--black cloud with yellow eyes that breathe fire. But that flinch? That's new. He knows it is. He'd have noticed that.

Wouldn't he?

"You all right, man?" Sam says, casual with half a laugh in his voice that doesn't even hint at the fact that his arm almost reaches out on its own to pat Dean on the shoulder. Nothing shuts his brother down like genuine concern.

"Sure." Dean does a passable job of looking bewildered. Too bad Sam's already onto him. "Fine."

"Yeah, fine," Sam snips. It's the code-word for anything but fine. Somehow Dean hasn't figured that out yet. Lucky for him, Sam speaks fluent Dean Latin. Sam does a rapid recall of the day 'til now, wonders if he's missed anything else. He tries to remember. Any unusual groans? Pops? Staggering? Yes. Yes. And yes. None of them from Dean, though. Friggin' hay fever.

At least, none as far as Sam remembers, which is about as far back as Dean taking the shovel from him and doing Sam's share of the trap-digging because Sam was wheezing like an old man and bitching about sleeping in the barn for the umpteenth time that day.

Well, shit. Of course Dean's sore. He did the work of two grown men today, and blew up a chupacabra to boot. Sam owes him some credit. And a week off.

Dean scowls, no doubt thinking he hides it well, with his perfectly ducked gaze and quick reach for the glass of tea he left on the table, but it's a bona fide scowl. Sam's treading water at the edge of the Dean Winchester whirlpool of sucking denial and self-sacrifice. That buoy circling slightly faster and bearing down at increasing velocity? That's pride. Sam takes a backstroke and lets it go by.

"Uh, Cappy, Sir," Sam stammers, "I think another week in the barn might not be a bad idea. I mean, if the offer still stands, considering my brother just tried to poison your dog."

Cappy laughs. "Boy, you can't poison that dog. I've seen him suck down day old road kill, and..." He darts a glance in Dean's direction and breaks off the description, then shrugs at Jethro. "See, he's just rearranging it."

Sure enough, the dog's lapping up the mess he just made, and Dean's halfway around the corner of the house again before Jeannie comes out with some aspirin and a glass of water. She pats Sam on the shoulder and says, "Why don't you boys come stay in the guest room. We usually keep it just for family, but I think we can trust you not to steal the china." She does that annoying cheek pinching thing Sam's learned to tolerate and goes on to say, "Give those to Dean when he comes back. Poor boy's looked pinked ever since breakfast."

He has?

"Sure thing, Mrs. Cagel."

"Jeannie," she corrects and starts clearing the table.

"Jeannie," Sam agrees. "Thanks." But now he wonders if maybe the flush that's been creeping up Dean's cheeks all day is more than the sun.

Ah, well, time will tell. And they have a whole week. Another week in New Mexico. Yippee ki yay! Land of Enchantment, my ass.

XX

The guest room is almost a no-go. There's just one queen-sized bed under that pile of heirloom quilts. That's not the problem, though. Despite all the snide comments and gay innuendo that's been directed at the two of them over the years, sleeping together is really not that big a deal. You spend enough time crammed into a sleeping bag together as kids, and you get the fuck over it. And the Cagels aren't exactly the kind of people to snicker and raise their eyebrows at the idea of two brothers piled in a bed. From the number of family pictures on the walls and above the mantle, Sam would wager to say Jeannie's feather bed would hold eight kids, four hound dogs, and a piggy they stole from the shed... and it probably has on more than one occassion.

So, it's not the bed that poses an issue. It's Dean. Dean, who's already sprawled out over the entire width of the thing, one shoe off and one shoe on, diddle, diddle, dumpling, before Sam gets out of the bathroom.

Sam's still wiping the last of the shaving cream from his face, towel covering his eyes when he comes into the room. Three prompts of, "Dean, it's open," without a snide response about using all the hot water or lighting a match, and he drops the towel, flips the light switch beside the door. "Dean?"

He's pissed for half a second. He's been crabby for over a week now, and he doesn't switch gears that fast, but he can't stay mad. Sure, Dean's taking up the whole bed. Dean is kinda everywhere at the moment, but Sam can't stay mad. Can't even work up more than a passing annoyance as he leans back against the door jamb, hand to elbow, and watches Dean sleep. It's pretty comical, actually. Looks like he was untying his second boot and just keeled sideways. The six or seven lace-shammed pillows are scattered about like he made half an attempt to sit back up and then gave in, sprawled back, and closed his eyes. Probably told himself he was just resting his eyes, only for a second.

"If you can finagle him outta those britches, I'm fixin' to do some laundry. Won't be no trouble to add y'alls." Sam starts a little at the sound of Jeannie's voice, hadn't heard her come down the hall.

"Oh, you don't have to..." he begins, more than a little embarrassed by the amount of grunge he's glaringly aware is lurking in their duffel bags. He doesn't even want to think how he'd explain the shirt he blew his nose on last week.

"Baloney!" She snaps with good-natured cuff to back of Sam's head. "Now put those muscles of yours to use and see if you can't peel him out before they cement themselves on. I'd do it myself," she says, flexing her biceps with a glint in her eye that says she's fully aware they flop the wrong direction, "but I get the feeling you two haven't had any female company in a bit. A lady's got to protect her virtue." She smirks while wrapping a stray whisp of blue-grey hair around the nearest pin curl and primping the rest with long, bony fingers capped with short, square-tipped nails. "I'll have him know I'm taken." She twirls around like a dancer, shoulders back and chin up, floats out the doorway. Turning back at the last second, she sweeps a gaze over Dean's sprawled body, bites her lip and shakes her head. "But boy, if I wasn't..."

Sam laughs at the quirk of her eyebrows as she ducks away, and slides away from the door jamb, knees, hips, lower back, shoulder blades, then head like a marionette plucked from a hook and yanked into action. He can do it without starting a tidal wave in his chest for once, the filtered indoor air already doing wonders for his hay fever, and he's breathing through both nostrils for the first time in days. It would be a much better feeling if he wasn't lowering himself to his knees with the intent of removing some slightly moldy socks.

Dean barely stirs while Sam undresses his feet. Rather than have Dean wake up with his belt undone and his zipper half down, Sam tries to wake him. He puts a hand on one crooked thigh and shakes. "Dean, dude, c'mon. Help me out here, man." Dean flinches under the touch and rolls so Sam's hand slides off but doesn't wake up. Sam half thinks he's faking, but the thought passes when he gives up and goes to work on the belt buckle. No way Dean would let Sam undo his belt if he was aware it was happening. Sam sighs, resigned to the fact he's going to have to do all the work.

"And here I thought you gave as good as you got. I don't see how you get so much action letting someone else do all the work. I feel sorry for your the next girl you pick up..."

He falters in his nervous monologue when Dean twitches. It's more of a twinge, actually, hands jumping off the bed while his belly sinks away from the prod of Sam's fingers over his stomach. Brow furrowing, Sam raises the tail of the belt, pulls it slightly tighter in order to slide it over the tongue of the buckle. He gets the same reaction, more violent this time, and there's a definite flinch around Dean's eyes.

Somehow, Sam doesn't think Dean's got sunburn on his stomach.

Fingers feeling fat and clumsy, he finishes undoing the belt buckle as gently as he can, pops the button and lowers the zipper. The awkwardness of knowing it's his brother's pants he's undoing is far outweighed by the concern that's started to clench inside his own stomach. With the jeans open, he can push the shirt tails up over Dean's abdomen. He watches, worry clawing its way up his spine as the slightest touch of his finger over the pale, definitely NOT sunburned skin, elicits a quiver of muscle as each fiber jerks away from the contact. Before he can get the shirt unbuttoned, Dean makes a noise in his throat, half groan and half whimper. It turns into a tight cough that has Dean curling in on himself, arms folding over his stomach as his legs draw up.

Sam pauses right there, his thumbs hooked in the waistband of Dean's jeans. He's watching the way the soft spot just under his brother's sternum caves in a little with every breath in like it's trying to hide from the pressure of even the light in the room. It flutters up and down ahead of every exhale, then... stops. His heart does a somersault in his chest as his eyes dart up to Dean's face, and then backflips back again when he finds Dean looking back at him through half-lidded, bleary eyes.

"You see something you like?" Dean asks, trying and failing to cock an eyebrow without closing the eye instead.

Sam can't jerk his hands free of the jeans without tugging them down a few inches lower on Dean's hips. Dean wears his jeans tighter than Sam, and his underwear start to come down along with the pants. He might look tired and sore, but Dean's grip is iron on Sam's wrist when he pries the invading fingers away from his exposed hip bones.

Blushing and a little out of sorts with himself in general, Sam gives a half-hearted, "Don't flatter yourself," then backs away. For some reason, what a few seconds ago was just the innocent removal of dirty laundry is suddenly intrusive and feels like spying. Not because he might accidentally see Dean without his clothes, but because he might have just seen Dean naked in a whole other way. Asleep. Unaware. Unprotected.

Without walls.

It feels wrong, scares him in a way nothing supernatural ever could. Sam stoops to pick up the discarded socks and shoes, feels the heat of embarrassment creep up the back of his neck.

"Jeannie offered to do the laundry. I think those pants are about to walk off on their own."

Dean clears his throat, rolls up to totter precariously on the edge of the bed. "Really? Cuz it kinda felt like your fingers doing the walking from my end of things. You could've woke me up. I'm not a baby." He tries to stand enough to shimmy the jeans down past his hips, sways precariously and falls back with a grunt.

"Jerk," Sam says. From his position on the floor it's one smooth movement to grasp the pant legs and pull them the rest of the way off.

"What I'm a jerk for not wanting to be molested in my sleep?" He sits up, still leaning.

"Can we drop the molestation charges for a second? It's getting old, kinda like your whole, 'I'm fine' routine." He holds his palm out, straight-armed and determined, but looks away as he says, "Shirt."

Dean grunts and finishes undressing, wads the button-down into his hand. Sam bites back whatever's warring with his otherwise gentle nature and sighs. "You're sick. I don't know why you can't just say something instead of waiting until you're passing out in awkward positions on other people's furniture." He chances a sideways glance up at Dean's face, and this time Dean looks away.

With a whoop of breath that's most likely intended to back a bellow of 'I am Dean Winchester, hear me roar,' Dean starts to argue, but the breath betrays him and kicks him in the stomach, instead. Still kneeling on the floor, Sam can't miss the moment when the yell ricochets off something in Dean's chest, making his ribcage jerk and lock down. What comes out is a cough-wheeze so weak Dean dismisses it by clearing his throat. He glares back at Sam for too long, obviously trying to decide whether he should try that again or change his tactic and spare his pride. He goes with the latter, swallowing hard before saying, "I'm not sick. Just tired." When he can't hide the wince as he scoots himself back into the nest of pillows, he adds, "And sore..." another wince, "from doing all YOUR digging, allergy boy."

He manages to keep his voice even, but Sam notices the convulsing of his throat and the tiny roll of his belly that belies dissention in the ranks. Mind over matter only works for so long before the matter rebels with fingers waggling in ears and razzberry-o-doom on its tongue. Dean's sick. Sam knows it. Dean knows it. Dean's body knows it. His upstairs brain is just down for the count.

Sam's been here before. Often.

"Fine." Rising from the floor with the armload of laundry, he jerks back the bedclothes with one arm, says, "Don't hog the whole bed. I'll take this out to Jeannie and come back. You want me to bring you anything? Water? Aspirin? Pepto B..."

"Roll of duct tape for your mouth and a rubber sock so I won't get my foot dirty when I kick your ass..."

The glare that's supposed to accompany the snark has the unfortunate consequence of bringing Dean's eyelashes into close proximity. In his condition, they're like magnets, and he falls asleep mid-sentence.

Sam smirks, a little amused. Looking down at the armload of laundry and back at Dean, he raises his eyebrows, squares his shoulders and walks away. Dean's sick all right. He's also sleeping in dirty underwear. Sam's so not going there. Ever.

XX

When he comes back later, juggling two juice bottles, three different kinds of pain reliever/fever reducer, a heating pad, muscle rub, and a patridge in a pear tree, Dean has, of course, completely ignored his request not to hog the whole bed. He's scattered hither and yon, face down with each arm on a pillow and his head wedged between in a dry land version of dead man's float. Sam stares, donning a facade of mock disbelief just to camouflage the 'awww' he feels creeping into his cheeks. No way does he find his brother's sleeping antics cute, not even with his boxer briefs slid down to half-moon position. He also doesn't want his mind to jump automatically to the crack-drama of Twin Peaks. But you don't always get what you want. What Sam really needs about then is some whipped cream and a cherry... whoops... and an extra arm, because he's carrying way too much to be fixated on Dean's future career as a plumber. He tightens his grip on his... God, he did not just think to call it his booty... ahoy, Pirate Sam... tightens his grip on... all the junk... er, stuff... he's carrying and looks around frantically for a place to set it down.

"Now that is a sight for sore eyes." This time, Sam drops both the Tylenol and the Advil as Jeannie comes in behind him. He blushes red and wonders if there's any way he can pull the covers up over Dean without acknowledging that he knows exactly what sight she's referring to.

"Makes me wanna find the talc," she says wistfully. "Nothing brings out the mother hen in me like a couple of nice, round cheeks."

Defenseless, Sam can do nothing but flinch as she punctuates the last word by squeezing his face for the dozenth time that night. She seems unsympathetic to his plight and adds a bottle of NyQuil to his load.

"We're out of the good whiskey," she snickers. "Best I could do in a pinch." Then, she looks over at Dean again. "It don't look like he's gonna turn over any time soon." She sighs. "My loss, I suppose."

Sam's arms, burning by now, go numb, probably due to all the blood in his body rushing to his cheeks. Women leer at his brother all the time. But this is just dirtywrongbad. The supplies all fall to the hardwood floor like candy out of a pinata. Without thinking, Sam bends to pick them up.

"Good genes, I see."

He jerks around, meets her dancing eyes at approximately the location where his ass has just been. It's obvious she's teasing, just to make him blush, but women her age should not be that good at... innuendo. They just shouldn't.

She pats his shoulder. "I'll pull out the sofa bed for you, dear. You'll sleep better in the living room."

He shrugs and nods. "Okay, sure." It sounds logical enough, simple.

But since when is anything in Winchester Wonderland ever simple?

TBC

A/N: Whattaya know? I don't have anything to add. Pish. Posh. No cliffie. Don't make me regret it.