Chapter One

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Sam panted heavily in the aftermath of a kill that had taken a toll of his physical and mental energies.
He looked down at his brother sprawled awkwardly beneath the gnarled tree that the swamp creature had hurled him violently against.

Dean had once commented on Sam's unique manner of winding down after a kill, saying that his panting was absolutely normal
for one who had the puppiest puppy-dog eyes on the planet, at which Sam had duly let loose his most annoyed expression
causing Dean's smirk to become even deeper, as if his brother's bitch-face was the ultimate proof of Sam's dog-like attributes.

Sam cracked a fond smile at the memory as he stretched out his left arm, hand opened wide, waiting for Dean to take it and pull himself up.

His big brother was completely covered in slime, for he had taken the brunt of the Quagmire's attack, and for an instant Sam was transported
back to one other time that Dean had been similarly covered from head to foot in foul-smelling putrid goo; it had been when his brother
had come for him at Stanford and they had hunted the 'Woman in White'.

X

God, they had been so young and innocent then, raised in the hunting life, already knowing and having experienced so much, but unaware
of the destiny that awaited them; eternally afraid of losing each other; not suspecting that their bodies had already been marked down
for possession by Michael and Lucifer and that death was fundamentally the least of their worries.

X

Dean's right hand made contact with Sam's, the touch pulling his thoughts back to the here and now, and he clasped it firmly, his long fingers
closing around it, his powerful shoulders flexing as he made ready to take on the non indifferent weight of his dazed older brother; to pull him up.

"Dean, are you okay, man?" he asked as his sibling came shakily to his feet.

"Yeah, I'm fine, Sammy. Stop fussing; it'll take more than some slippery gunk-shooter to take out the great Dean Winchester."

Sam lingered an instant until his brother seemed steady enough on his feet before releasing his supporting hand….or at least he tried to, as
the spiteful appendage wouldn't obey the direct command from his brain, and stayed stubbornly clasped around Dean's hand.

"Dean…, " he croaked, his voice panicky.

X

His eyes met his brother's as understanding washed over them and they tried to separate their hands, but they seemed to be well and truly stuck together.

"What the hell, dude; get your giant paw offa' my hand," Dean hissed threateningly, images of what he and Sam holding hands could provoke in onlookers.

"I'm trying, Dean," Sam replied, annoyed at his brother's tone of voice." How was I supposed to know that the Quagmire's slime
was super glue in disguise? There was hardly any lore on this freaking thing."

But try as they might, their hands were well and truly stuck together and wouldn't budge even as they exerted all their forces,
something which the Winchesters had in abundance!

Sam was finally the first to surrender to the impossibility of freeing themselves and he griped at his brother as he continued
to yank away at the offending hand, almost unbalancing Sam with the force of his pull.

Then when he saw Dean unsheath his knife to try and prise their hands apart he knew he had to call a stop.

X

"Dean don't!" he yelled alarmed. "Put that knife away! There's nothing we can do here. We've still got to burn the son-of-a-bitch's body.
We can worry about this later."

"Are you crazy Sam? How are we gonna do anything with our hands stuck together like this?" Dean replied waving the knife around as he sounded off.

"Well," Sam went for a calm tone of voice, trying to smooth down Dean's ruffled feathers. "I've got my right hand and you've got your left, so we'll just have to work in tandem until we find a way to solve this little problem. There's no way we're going to get our hands separated by just pulling on them, so let's finish the job and head back to the motel and see what we can come up with."

He could feel the tense muscles in Dean's hand relaxing as he pondered the common sense in Sam's words and resheathed his knife.

"Right, come on then. Let's send this crap off to Purgatory or wherever these fuglies go, and try to creep back to our room without anyone seeing us like this," he grumbled.

"You realise that I'll have to drive my Baby one-handed. She won't be happy about that!"

X

Sam just rolled his eyes as he poured the accelerant over the body and waited for his very 'attached' brother to crank up the cigarette-lighter left-handedly, not commenting as Dean had to try innumerable times before succeeding and throwing it onto the creature's gruesome body, watching in satisfaction as it burst into flames.

TBC