Chao Patties

PG-13 • gen

Dean picked up something marked java creme foam bath and wasn't sure whether he was supposed to wash his hair with it or dip donuts in it.

Thirty-One Fucking Flavors, right here in the bathtub. Jesus wept.  

WARNINGS: Bad words, grossness involving small creatures found in tequila, Mary Sue.

In which Dean needs some help with a job and Andy is a bitch.

---

Nobody likes me, everybody hates me
Think I'll go eat worms
Long thin slimy ones, big fat juicy ones,
itsy bitsy fuzzy wuzzy worms.

This was really going to suck.

Not for the first time, Dean thought maybe he should have offered to take the missing dudes in California and let Dad handle the hoodoo ring instead. Aside from the fact that he hadn't heard a peep out of Dad in a week, there was also the fact that these were people he was dealing with here. Bad guys or not, pumping them full of lead and/or silver probably wouldn't be the best way to go about this.

He was going to need some serious help here.

Dad was better with this shit than he was. Dean tried calling Dad again, got his voicemail again.

Sam was way better with this shit than he was. Dean stared at Sam's entry on the speed dial for about five minutes, said "fuck that noise," and put that plan right the hell out of his head.

Who else was really good with this kind of stuff? And fairly close by?

...

...

...aw, crap.

Desperate times called for desperate measures, and this? This was about as fucking desperate as measures got.

---

Welcome to Groveton, Texas. One farmer's market, one feed store, one gas station, one greasy spoon, one ice house (as in "crappy corrugated metal building with pool table, rednecks, and beer," not as in "where you buy ice"), one supermarket, one print shop, one city hall/public library/jailhouse, one K-12 school, four liquor stores, and seventeen churches.

Population: 183. Sa-lute.

True to the East Texas stereotype, the directions to the house did include the words "turn off the paved road."

There was one car in the driveway: a '56 Nomad that was ...well, no longer primer-colored, that was new. Now it was shiny black with a little kachina doll hanging from the rear-view mirror, a blue glass thingy that looked like an eye hanging from the tailpipe, and three stickers on the rear window: one pentagram, one conventional bumper sticker that read warning: nothing in this car is worth your life, and one sticker that bore a grinning pastel pink Happy Bunny and the words boys are funny when they try to think.

No trace of J.D.'s van.

Which meant no witnesses, other than the ginormous blob of hairy orange cat parked on the front porch. And if that huge-ass thing was the adult form of the nasty little kitten that'd been here before, the cat would probably be more than happy to ignore any potential violence. The cat hated him. The cat had expressed this by pissing on his bed no less than six times last time he was here--two of them while Dean was in the bed.

Oh, this just kept getting better and better. Not.

Dean killed the Impala's engine, took a deep breath, and calmly and rationally told himself that he had grown and put on some weight since the last time he'd been here. So unless she'd hit one last late growth spurt, that meant Dean had a four-inch height advantage and that the chances of him getting his ass thoroughly kicked first thing in the door were substantially slimmer than they had been then.

He then proceeded to remind himself that the same four-inch height difference didn't help Sam all that much against him.

Fuck.

Might as well get this the hell over with.

He trudged down the short dirt-and-pea-gravel sidewalk to the house, shuffled up the three steps to the huge-ass front porch, and raised a hand to knock on the door.

Before his knuckles hit the wood, the door opened and there stood a five foot seven bucket o' crazy in a T-shirt emblazoned with the SEAL insignia and the words "My dad can kick your dad's ass."

She was totally doing that on purpose.

"Hey," Dean said, turning the aborted knock into a lame wave at the last second, and good thing; really, the last fucking thing he needed to do was knock on her forehead.

---

When Dean was fourteen, he and Sam and Dad had spent the summer here with J.D. Baines and his daughter Andy, stocking up on knowledge and ammo. And during that summer, Andy had taken it upon herself to dispense a little ...training.

Well, she called it "training."

Dean called it "getting the shit kicked out of him for breakfast, lunch, and dinner."

Okay, okay, so maybe he shouldn't have dissed her car--in his defense, it hadn't had the body work done yet and it'd looked like a heap of hammered dogshit, but maybe he shouldn't have said so in so many words. And maybe he shouldn't have shot her cat in the ass with that rubber band gun--twice. And maybe, just maaaaaybe, he shouldn't have hit on her and then asked her if she was, y'know, into chicks when she told him she would rather kiss a wendigo. Again, in his defense, she wasn't what one would normally consider "hot," but she was seventeen and had tits and a driver's license and a sweet (if currently ugly) car... and he was fourteen and male. You do the math.

So yeah, she beat the hell out of him. A lot. Oh, she was careful never to break any bones or otherwise damage him in any way that would require stitches or any more medical attention than an ice pack and a few Band-Aids, but still, that crap was just ridiculous. And Dad wouldn't do shit about it but shrug and tell him to hit back next time.

And it wasn't like he wasn't trying to, but... well, let's just say whoever first uttered the immortal words "you hit like a girl" had obviously never been hit by Andy Goddamn Baines. She had three years, six inches, and a good fifty solid pounds on his skinny ass at the time. Seriously, look up brick shithouse, built like a in the dictionary when you get a chance, it's got a picture of Andy there.

Now Dean was taller, but she was still older and still built like a brick shithouse and--

"...Dean!? Holy crap!"

--and she was looking at him like he had a third ear growing in the middle of his forehead.

"Ho. Lee. Crap," she repeated, looking him up and down (and up, and down, and up and down and oh hell this was not putting Dean's mind at ease in the least). "Oh my God, dude, what the hell happened!? You were the ugliest fourteen-year-old I've ever seen in my whole life--" She made this gesture that gave Dean the creeping willies, this flapping of hands that was somewhere between pointing and feeling him up at a distance. "I mean, damn, what'd you do, fall out of the sexy tree and hit every single branch on the way down!?"

Dean wasn't sure which was more likely to give him nightmares later: the thought of Andy kicking his ass, or the thought of Andy checking said ass out.

---

Now this was totally not right, because there was this smell coming from the kitchen. A good smell. The kind of smell that made Dean's stomach perk up and go um, dude? dunno if you noticed, but we're kinda empty in here, you wanna fix that sometime soon?

"I made some soup." Andy explained, heading off away from the kitchen. "Help yourself. I gotta finish getting your crap together."

Dean approached the kitchen and the steaming pot therein as if he expected the boogeyman himself to come leaping out of it.

Okay. So. Exactly how stupid did she think he was? Seriously.

The soup was poisoned. Had to be. No, nothing that would kill him, of course not, but a few days of moderate discomfort? A couple days of gastric distress at both ends? An interesting rash, maybe? A little of that dye that turned your pee bright red? So not out of the question.

He lifted the lid and sniffed. Well, it didn't smell poisoned. Actually, it smelled pretty good. There were no obvious eyes of newt or lizard legs or sheep 'nads or whatever the fuck else she used to put in her "food" floating around in the pot.

He did see hunks of potatoes and red onions and what looked like hamburger meat floating around in some creamy yellowish liquid that looked and smelled like it consisted mostly of milk and cheese. Damn. It smelled like heaven in a Dutch oven. Dean's stomach made a very loud and demanding noise that translated roughly to bitch, quit staring at that and send it down.

It did occur to Dean that what looked like hamburger meat might not have actually come from a cow, though. The Squirrel And Dumplings Incident of 1994 came to mind. To this very day, Dean was still suspicious of any chicken-and-dumplings-like dish he did not personally observe the preparation of. He took a quick look into the trash can to check for quills or rattles or hairless tails or hospital bracelets or anything else that might shed some light on the origin of that meat. There was nothing suspicious in the trash. There was a wrapper with a label bearing a Brookshire Brothers logo, a barcode, a price, and the words "GROUND CHUCK." Holy crap, it really was hamburger. Like, from a cow. Hot damn, where did they hide the bowls?

...wait.

This was too good to be true.

Remember who you're dealing with, Dean thought. What if she cursed it?

And okay, yeah, cursed soup, now that was just silly. But... it was possible, right? After all, he was here because Andy knew her shit when it came to weird crap like that; was it such a stretch to think that maybe, just maybe, she had a few new mostly harmless but nasty little tricks she was dying to try out? The kind that wouldn't actually hurt him but could make him turn purple or grow a horn in the middle of his forehead or some shit? Hell, she'd done it to Sam once--and she liked Sam! Was it possible that maybe, just maybe, she'd done something like that to the damn soup to fuck with him just for the sake of fucking with him? Hell, yes!

Dean poked around in a few drawers until he found a spoon. He dipped it into the soup and gave it a cautious lick. Not that quantity would make much difference if it was cursed, but...

He did not die, puke, itch, turn pretty colors, grow horns, or encounter any other unpleasant surprises. And on top of that, the soup was good.

Definitely too good to be true but fuck it, he was hungry.

He found a bowl, filled it, and carried it to the kitchen table. "When did you learn how to cook?" he yelled across the house. "'Cause this is actually kinda edible."

"Oh man, thank God, I was starting to think you were an incubus or a pod person or something." Andy yelled back. "But no, you're still a choad, nice to see that didn't change."

---

Three bowls of more than "almost edible" soup later, Dean was still alive, still his natural color, and still had not grown horns. "So where's your dad?" he yelled.

"Arkansas," Andy yelled back. She emerged into the living room with an armload of what could only be described as Totally Weird Shit. "Some hikers got torn up something fierce, the one that got away's blaming the Boggy Creek Monster which is total bullshit, Daddy's thinking maybe--"

"Why's it bullshit?" Dean interrupted around a mouthful of potato. Andy shot him a mildly disgusted look.

"'Cause whatever did this has really sharp fuckin' claws. And the Boggy Creek Monster? Is a sasquatch." She deposited her payload of Totally Weird Shit on the table and parked her ass in the chair across from him. "Dude, I've met the Boggy Creek Monster. My cat is a greater threat to public health and safety than he is and I have scars to prove it."

"You met the--" Dean rolled his eyes. "You are so full of shit."

Andy just quirked an eyebrow at him. "So what, you wanna handle this hoodoo problem of yours by yourself? I mean, since I'm so full of shit?"

Dean squeezed his eyes shut and tried as hard as he could to kill Andy with his brain. He opened his eyes. Andy was still alive. Damn. "Fine. Whatever. So what's he think it really is?"

"Not sure. We were thinking hellhound. Maaaaaybe chupacabra." She held up a hand. "I know. I know. Kinda out of goatsucker territory, but the wounds look right for it. And after that he wants to swing through Oklahoma to check out some kind of haunted junkyard or something, but that one sounds relatively tame--" that being hunter-speak for "we're fairly sure it hasn't killed anyone yet" "--so he might come home for a couple days first. Depends on how hairy this job ends up getting."

"Mm." Dean scraped the last few crumbs of potato and meat out of the bottom of his bowl. Okay, the soup was fine. It was more than fine. It was fucking fantastic. He was actually finding it difficult to not lick the bowl. He would sooner lick a chupacabra than admit this, of course. "And you're not with him because...?"

Andy looked at him like he'd just asked if fire was hot. "Um, the paying job? The other family business?"

Dean shrugged. "So?"

"So," she echoed, "we're slammed and there's a guy in the press room that had an awesome resume and interviewed like a champ and is turning out to be a gigantic tool. So far he's managed to piss off prepress, the rest of the press room, and the entire bindery room and those ladies have the patience of goddamn saints. I may have to fire him and do his job myself until I can find a replacement. ...hey, you need some extra pocket money? I mean, it'd be part-time, minimum wage, and cash under the table but I could show you how to run the little one-color press, you could do that for a week or two while I look for someone permanent--"

Dean just snorted and shook his head.

Andy gave him another nasty look. "What?"

What what!? God, this woman's priorities were all kinds of messed up, weren't they? "So fucking around at the print shop's more important than helping your dad out, huh?"

Oh, that was not a happy look she was giving him. Seriously, what the fuck was her problem? "Hello? I'm keeping a roof over our heads, food in our fridge, gas in our cars, and silver bullets in our guns. I am helping my dad out, you dick." Andy rolled her eyes and made this snotty little snorting noise. "Looks like it's more than you're doing for yours, anyway."  

Oh no she did not. Dean put his spoon down and glared. "Excuse me?"

"Well, I'm just assuming, 'cause I'm not seeing him here." Andy glared right back. "So fucking around with some Mickey Mouse hoodoo ring's more important than helping your dad out, huh?"

Three solid days on the road. Tired. Not happy about having to come here. Not happy about having to come here because Sam was off having a life. Not happy about not hearing from Dad for longer than he was really comfortable with. Not a good combination to begin with, but then she said that, and... later on, Dean would ask himself what the fuck he was thinking, but he didn't even realize what he was doing until he felt the impact and heard the fleshy whap! noise of his fist hitting...

...her palm.

Which had just come up about where her face had been. Her face, meanwhile, was now about six inches farther to his left. And just to make sure he didn't try anything else, her other hand was wrapped tight around his wrist, holding it right there.

What the whorehopping fuck did I just do!? Dean thought crazily, staring at Andy's fingers folded around his hand and wrist. Don't hit girls unless they hit you first, they pull a weapon on you, or they're possessed, Dad warned somewhere in the back of his mind. Don't hit Andy first, she'll fucking kill you, his own fourteen-year-old voice amended. Fuck. Fuck. Stupid. Very stupid. Andy was definitely going to kill him for this. Or at least make him bleed a lot. Or break a bone or two. Or--

--or not.

"All those times we used to beat the crap out of each other, you never threw the first punch. No matter what I said to you, no matter what I did to you, no matter how pissed off you were. Not once," she said, perfectly calm, slowly letting go of Dean's hand. "And now you wanna just up and take a swing at me? Shit ain't right, man."

Dean got hold of himself, scrubbed a hand over his eyes, and sat back down.

Andy got up, walked over to the fridge, and removed two cold bottles of Corona from it. She knocked the caps off on the edge of the nearest counter, brought them back to the table, and set one down in front of Dean.

"What's going on?" she asked him.

None of your beeswax, Dean thought.

And then he told her.

---

"And he does this all the time?" Andy finally said after silently chain-smoking three cigarettes and grinding her teeth the whole time.

Dean shrugged. "He usually doesn't go this long without checking in, but--"

"Jesus." She shook her head and looked... well, pissed. "Daddy calls in every day, even if it's just 'hi, I'm not dead, bye.'" She shut her eyes and took a deep breath. "There's gotta be something of his in your car, maybe something he's written on, I could--"

Dean held up a hand. "I know where you're going with that. No."

"Dean, I'm not gonna hurt him. You know that."

"I said no." Dean eyed Andy's cigarettes and pondered his own week-old emergency stress relief pack out in the car. "Could I, uh..."

Andy gave him a hairy eyeball, but she nudged the pack at him anyway. "Dude, I don't even have to do anything to him as such. I could just whip up some kind of dinky little servitor, y'know, some harmless little critter that'll just go poke his conscience once or twice and then leave him alo--

"No, Andy." Dean took one of Andy's cigarettes, lit it, and spluttered for a minute. Gack. Hello, menthol. "I don't want you to. Okay? He's gotta have a good reason."

Andy shrugged and lit another cigarette. "Fair enough." Jesus. Half a pack in the time it'd taken Dean to tell her about this? Oh yeah, she was pissed. "...can I call him up and rip him a new one, then? Is that okay?"

Dean opened his mouth to say no, not cool, don't do it.

"I'll be civilized. No, really, I will. I'll try not to say 'fuck' more than, oh, five or six times." She grinned a little. "...a sentence."

He busted out laughing instead.

---

So, as he'd told himself before, this wasn't his usual kind of gig where he could just go kill things and burn corpses and go have a beer and a blowjob and call it a night.

But, the way Andy explained it, at least it wouldn't be quite as hairy as he thought.

"This would have been easier if you had some names or some hair-n-fiber or some footprint dirt or something," she said, pushing a Ziploc bag of some weird powdery stuff across the table at Dean. "But it's still not so tough. Especially since all you really have to do is use the shit they believe in against 'em. So. This is hot foot powder. Sprinkle that in any doorways or paths they have to use to get to the places where they get together. They won't be able to cross it. Once they figure out it's there, they'll be able to cancel it out but it'll take a while and it'll buy you some time for this..."

Andy pushed another Ziploc bag at him, this one filled with chunks of resin and bits of roots and leaves and stuff like that. "Now here's the tricky part. You're going to have to get into whatever rooms they're using and burn this. Be careful with it, 'cause it--"

Dean could not resist the sudden and overpowering urge to stick his nose in the bag and sniff. This, he would tell himself later, was one of the dumbest fucking things he had ever done.

He thought his nose was going to leap off his face, run out the door, and fling itself down the old well out back, wailing "TAKE ME HOME, JESUS" all the way down to its watery death and sweet release from its torment. Dean did not want to know what the fuck was in that bag. It smelled like Andy had scraped a day-old dead skunk off the highway, mashed it up with garlic, liverwurst, rotten sauerkraut, and used cat litter, and stuffed it into a dirty sock like some kind of hideous knockwurst of pure vile reeking death. Dean sealed the bag back up and shoved it as far away as possible because he was seriously going to hurl if he had to inhale one more molecule of that shit.

"--okay, I was gonna say it smells like decomposing ass, but you kinda noticed that." Of course the evil bitch was laughing at him, too. She did, at least, have the compassion to open a window. "So you start it burning, and then you run like hell. Partly because every malicious trick they've ever laid down is going to bounce right back at 'em and you don't want to be anywhere near that, and partly because it's gonna stink like a motherfucker in there." She shoved a little red flannel bag across the table next. "And this is to keep them from homing in on your ass after you're done. It goes in your left hip pocket before you get there and it stays there until you're--dude!  Don't open it!"

"Ow!" Dean yanked his hand back, rubbing at a spot that was probably going to sprout a bruise later thanks to Andy's damn ring smacking it.

"What are you, five years old? Do you have to smell and poke and fuck with everything? 'Cause you sure as hell don't want to open this one." She pushed one last item across the table: a brown paper sack containing something roughly the size and shape of a small mayonnaise jar. Which it was. Or had once been. Now it was something called a "witch bottle." The cap end had been dipped in red and black wax a few times over, and the jar was half-full of rusty nails and pins and staples and scraps of barbed wire and other wicked pointy metal things, and...

And, uh...

Dean shuddered.

"Do I want to know what the metal shit's swimming in?" he asked, even though he had a pretty good idea already and was trying his damndest to block out the mental image of where it might have come from and how she might have gotten it into the jar.

"If you have to ask then no, you don't."

Okay, that was just gross. Effective, yes, he knew. But...ew. Just--ew.

Andy put the nasty-ass thing back in the bag. "Next morning, you bury this on their property. That'll keep them from ever using that ground again, so in the highly unlikely event that they get back into the business, they'll have to find somewhere else to do it. Then you throw that red bag I just told you not to fuck with into the first moving water you come to on your way out of town; if they figure out what you did, they'll chase that instead of you. And just to be on the safe side, don't leave anything they can link to you behind. If you chew your fingernails, don't spit them out. If you get your clothes caught on barbed wire or something, don't leave any bits hanging on it. Wear a beanie or something so you don't leave any hair behind. Don't drop any trash, especially if it's touched your mouth. No candy wrappers, no ABC gum, no bottle caps, no cigarette butts, and for God's sake nothing with your handwriting or your name on it. Put salt and black pepper in your shoes so--"

"So they'll taste better if I get lost in the woods and I have to boil 'em for soup?"

"No, smartass, it's to keep you from leaving a psychic impression in your footprints. So if your buddies decide to try fucking with you that way, all they get is dirt and not, y'know, you."

"Oh." Dean nodded. "Well, that totally makes sense. Why not throw in some garlic too?"

"Huh. It couldn't hurt, I gue--"

"Or a few bay leaves? How about some oil and vinegar? Bacon bits? Couple of crouto--" Andy punched him in the arm. "Hey! What the hell was that for!?"

"Could you shut your cakehole for five minutes!?" Andy spat. "Man, I'm trying to fuckin' educate you here!"

"What? I'm listening! Hot foot powder in the doorways, burn the stinky shit, bury the nasty bottle, don't litter, don't shed, Colonel's secret blend of herbs and spices in the shoes. Gotcha. Keep educating."

"Don't spit, bleed, or come on anything."

Dean did spit, right then and there. All over the table. Well, it was that or choke.

"What the fuck!?" he finally spluttered. Andy looked mildly amused and handed him a napkin. "Dude, do you really think I'd--seriously, what the fuck!?"

"Just covering all the bases, bud." Andy just beamed across the table. "Just in case. I mean, no offense, but I know your sick ass."

"I hate you," Dean grated out. "So much."

Andy beamed. "You're welcome!"

---

So Dean's original plan was to come in, get what he needed, say thank you, bail, and spend the next week until his little hoodoo friends got together to do their thing again and he could find out for sure where they got together in crappy motel rooms and the back seat of the Impala. Yes, it was after nine, and would probably be well past midnight before he came to any semblance of civilization. So? He'd made worse trips at less civilized hours and he would be perfectly fine.

Now all he had to do was convince Andy of that so she would get the fuck out from between him and the door and stop threatening to beat him with fireplace tools if he didn't put his stuff down and crash in the guest room for the night. Because apparently all of a sudden she gave a shit about him or something.

Yeah. Dean didn't get it either.

When it became clear that Andy wasn't going to let him leave until he'd gotten a somewhat decent night's sleep, he dropped his bag of Totally Weird Shit (okay, he didn't actually drop it on account of the contents of that witch bottle; he set it down very very gently) and asked very nicely if he could at least go out to the car and get some clean clothes out of the trunk so he could take a shower and change. She wasn't even going to give him that much slack... until he played the "oh well, I've only been on the road for like three days without a shower, one more won't kill me, right?" card.

This had the desired effect. Andy made a face Dean wished he could have packaged and sold on eBay and stepped way the hell out of his way.

The cat scooted into the house just as Dean scooted out of it.

This will come into play shortly.

---

Okay. So you know how most girls that do that "tomboy" thing kind of grow out of it and eventually turn into, y'know, actual girls? Andy didn't. She was still stomping around in 501's and T-shirts and big clodhopper boots, still zooming around in her old-school monster muscle car, and probably still didn't own a single skirt, pair of pantyhose, crumb of makeup, or pair of shoes that didn't have steel toes. If anything, she looked like even less of a girly girl now, with her hair all chopped short like that. She just didn't give a shit about any of that girly crap. Never had, and apparently never would.

Or so Dean thought, anyway. Turns out there was one area where she totally did... the bathtub.

That, or she was fucking with him hardcore.

A simple bar of soap, was that too goddamn much to ask? Because she had everything but in here.

Girly shampoo. Girly conditioner. Face scrub. Hand scrub. Foot scrub. Everywhere-else scrub. Eleventy squillion bottles and jars and bars and pots of shit from Bath & Body Works and the like. Soap with flower petals in it and gritty shit and green clay shit and fizz bombs and those little bath oil thingies that looked like paintballs and God only knew what else. Strange and arcane substances with phrases like tea tree oil and shea butter and warm vanilla and honey walnut on the labels. Dean picked up something marked java creme foam bath and wasn't sure whether he was supposed to wash his hair with it or dip donuts in it.

Thirty-One Fucking Flavors, right here in the bathtub. Jesus wept.

He ended up formulating a brilliant plan while he waited for the water to heat up. That being: to sneak down the hall to the master bedroom/bath, borrow a bottle of nice plain manly shampoo and a bar of nice plain manly soap from J.D.'s bathroom, sneak back, and have a nice plain manly shower.

Andy's voice in the living room stopped him halfway; he was sure he'd been caught. He froze where he was. Maybe if he stood very very still he would blend into the wallpaper and she wouldn't notice--

"...was a chupacabra? ...oh damn, how many... holy shit! Did you... okay, okay, whew. ...no sir, never heard of 'em running in packs that big..."

Dean let out a quiet "whew" of his own there. She was just talking to J.D. He was good. He took another two mincing little quiet steps down the hall...

"Oh, hey, Daddy--guess who's here?"

...and then he froze again.

"Pfft. I wish. No, Dean's here... y'know, John's--yeah, him! ...yeah, I know!" Long pause. "No, he just needed... ... ...no sir, I did not. No. ...I'm not! Daddy, I'm not beating him up. I hit him one time because he was being an asshole, but I didn't--no, Daddy, I didn't curse him either--no sir, not even a little curse, I just--well, because he needed some help and he asked nicely. ... um. What? ... ... ...Daddy! NO! EWW! NO I DON'T, DON'T EVEN GO THERE!"

Dean really didn't want to know what brought that on.

"ANYWAY. ...sir? ...uh, well, he doesn't really know. ...he keeps--no sir, he hasn't called here, I was gonna ask if you've heard from him in the last couple days--"

...now what the hell was this about?

"No sir, I tried Caleb, he hasn't heard anything either, haven't called anyone else yet... you will? Yeah, that'd be great--oh, and if he does call you before you get home, could you tell him to let Dean know he's not, y'know, dead or anything? ...yeah, he's kind of freaking out about it..."

Okay. He'd heard enough.

One? He wasn't sure whether to be grateful or really pissed off about this. On the one hand, it was ...reasonably nice that Andy was concerned about the Dad situation.

On the other hand, it was still none of her beeswax.

And two? He was not freaking out.

Really.

---

So Dean ended up not stealing any of J.D.'s nice plain manly shower things, because he'd already left the water running longer than he really should have while he eavesdropped on Andy's phone call and if he let it go much longer, she was bound to realize something was up. He ended up popping caps and sniffing, trying to find the least-girly-smelling stuff possible, and settled on shampoo that smelled like Sunny D and this liquid soap body wash shit that smelled kind of mildly vanilla-ish.

It didn't occur to him until it was far, far too late that this combination would leave him smelling like a Dreamsicle.

Great. Could have been worse. Could have been Cocoa Java Maple Nut Marshmallow Creme or whatever.

He was almost tempted to shave with her stupid girly pink leg razor and leave it unrinsed on the counter just to get her back, and then he remembered that he kind of wanted to see Sam again before he died and decided against that. Besides, the damn thing had like fifty blades on it and honestly, more than two was overkill. Also just fucking scary.

So he just used his own razor, pulled on some clean clothes, and shuffled across the hall to the guest room.

Had the bedspread been a different material, or a different color, something very bad might have happened here. But the bedspread was a Family Dollar gold satin model, and the large wet spot right in the middle of the bed stood out like a sore thumb.

So did the one on the pillow.

The cat was in the room, sitting on the windowsill and giving him this smug little look. Well, until he hopped back onto the bed, onto the other pillow, squatted, and--oh come on, he couldn't really be--okay, what the fuck? How much pee could one cat possibly hold!? Did he have a couple of extra bladders? Was he just made entirely of sentient pee? No, really, what the fucking fuck!?

"Andy!" Dean roared. The cat sat down on one of the few remaining dry spots on the bed and looked up at Dean as if to say oh yes, I remember your punk ass, welcome back to Hell, enjoy your stay. "Your cat pissed on the bed!"

"What!?" From the living room, down the hall: clomp clomp clomp clompclompCLOMP. The door flew open, Andy took one look at the bed, took one look at the fucking cat, and crossed the room in two huge steps. "How'd he--BATLIN! OUT!" She made a loud and scary noise that sounded something like geeonouttahere! at the cat and clapped her hands. The cat peeled out on the bed, rucked the comforter up into a pee-soaked pile in the process, and scooted out the guest room door. Andy gave chase, herding the damn cat towards the living room. Dean heard the front door open, heard that geeonouttahere! thing again, and then heard the door slam and Andy's clodhopper feet come clomping back down the hall.

"Son of a bitch!" Andy growled, stripping the bed of sheets and pillows. "Like I didn't have enough shit to do, now I have to do laundry. Thanks a lot, asshole."

"Hey, I didn't pee on the bed!" Dean spluttered. "Don't take it out on me!"

"No, but you let the damn cat in, didn't you?" Andy whipped the bedspread off onto the floor and started hucking pillows and sheets into the center of it. "Dude, he did that last time you were here! Why'd you let him in!?"

Oh, this was going to be a very, very long night.

---

Andy's exact reply to Dean asking if he could crash in J.D.'s bed, seeing as how J.D. wasn't there and the guest bed was covered in cat pee: "Oh fuck no."

At least the sofa was long and comfortable. That was the good news.

The bad news: sleeping on the sofa meant Dean didn't sleep until Andy did. And it was Friday night, the print shop would be closed tomorrow, and Andy wasn't ready to go to bed.

At least they had satellite out here, so he could stay on his end of the couch and she could stay on her end of the couch and they could watch TV and not have to, y'know, interact any more than they had to.

And beer, so what interaction there was would be a lot less painful.

---

"Y'know... I remember when MTV actually played music videos." Andy tossed the remote onto the coffee table in disgust. It knocked an empty Corona bottle off onto the floor. "Five hundred channels of nothing on. Thank God for DVD. Anything in particular you wanna watch?"

"Dunno." Dean shrugged and gestured at the stacks with his beer bottle. "What do you have?"

"Eh." Andy pawed through stacks and racks of DVD cases. "First season of Lost... some Monty Python... bunch of bad Japanese horror flicks, Ringu and Ju-On and all that shit--" She shoved a fat stack aside and peered down the next row. "Uh... this weird version of Nosferatu with Type O Negative music... bunch of Star Trek..."

"Dude, you're bitching about what's on TV and you're pulling out that shit?"

Andy studiously ignored him, moved on to the next stack, pulled out something with a cover that used way too much red, and made a snorking noise. "Oh man, I thought I got rid of this. This is so fucking bad, but at least it's got that guy from Smallville in it. God. I would so do him."

"Lemme see that," Dean said, holding out a hand. Andy flipped the case at him over her shoulder. Dean caught it, got a good look at it, and... okay, that unsettling feeling he'd gotten when Andy said that thing about the sexy tree? That, times ten. "He, uh... he kinda looks like me."

Another snotty little snort. "Bitch, please. He's way hotter than you."

Dean wasn't sure whether to heave a sigh of relief or flip Andy off for that. He ended up doing both.

"Dumb as a bag of hammers in this one, but still way hotter than you. ...oh, hey, there's all the awesome bad kung fu movies..."

"Meh. C'mon."

"Aaaaaaand--" Andy beamed. "Porn."

Dean just... kind of stopped breathing for a second while his brain went abort, retry, fail? at him. He could not possibly have heard that correctly.

"With hot lesbians." Beam.

Okay, maybe he could have heard that correctly.

Fuckin' A! Dean's brain burbled happily, and he bit his tongue to keep it from sending that shit on to his vocal cords. Because--just--no. Hell no. Believe it or not, there were some boundaries of propriety even Dean would not cross. Watching porn--hot lesbians or no hot lesbians--with someone he would never ever ever ever ever fuck was one of them. "Are you shitting me?" he said instead.

"Yeah, I am. Oh hey, look! Drunken Master. Appropriate, huh?"

Risking death by blunt force trauma with fireplace tools, getting the fuck out of here, and sleeping in the Impala in the middle of Bumfuck, East Texas was starting to sound better and better.

That, or getting up and grabbing another beer.

The beer required less effort. It won.

---

One of the movies contained a young Jet Li, and Dean worried that this might have made the movie not quite bad enough to be funny, even after... four? five? However many beers. His fears were unfounded, because it was subtitled, not dubbed, and the translation job done by the subtitling team was... not exactly all that and a bag of chips.

Dean blinked. Reading subtitles was bad enough sober, but... "...did that say 'please taste this velvet and ram's penis' or am I already that fucked up?"

"Both. You want another beer?"

"Sure," Dean replied, against his better judgment.

---

One interesting thing Dean learned that evening: the funniest phrase in the English language was "Japanese cudgel play."

It was even funnier when one was totally shitfaced.

It sounded like a synonym for jacking off, for one thing. Dean said so. "No, really," he said. "Battling the purple-helmeted warrior. Wrestling the one-eyed trouser snake. Engaging in... Japanese cudgel play."

Andy clamped a hand over her mouth to keep from spraying beer all over the place when she burst out laughing. Then she called him an asshole and punched him in the arm again.

It was even funnier still when one was totally shitfaced, had run out of beer and started on tequila, and someone else was sitting there randomly slipping that phrase into conversation. As in:

"I'm going to the kitchen. You want anything?"

"Got any Corn Nuts?"

"No, but I think we've still got some Pringles, and some Japanese cudgel play, and some Fritos..."

Another thing Dean learned that evening: tequila burns like a motherfucker when you laugh it up your nose.

---

"Whoa, hang on, don't drink that. Give it here."

Dean blinked at the empty space in his hand where his shot glass had been until Andy took it away from him for no apparent reason. His brain wasn't running on all cylinders anymore, and the only intelligent thing it could produce in response to the sudden lack of tequila was no, mine. Which was a far sight more intelligent than anything his mouth could produce; all it had to offer was an indignant little "Meh!"

But then Andy went "here, take this one," and put a full shot glass back in Dean's hand, and it was all good. She got up in a hurry after that, wobbling off towards the kitchen and then back again after a moment.

Dean must have been really shitfaced, because he could have sworn the movie just said something about wigs (as in, fake hair) made of heroin (as in, the drug) and that had to be the funniest fucking thing he had ever heard (or hallucinated) in his entire life--yes, even funnier than "Japanese cudgel play"--and he could not. Stop. Laughing.

...why was Andy looking concerned and whacking him on the back? Oh, right, because he couldn't breathe limes. At least, he thought it was a lime. Limes were the only solids that went with tequila, right?

Right.

---

Something was poking Dean in the shoulder and saying "hey" to him.

"Wuh," he replied. What?

Poke. "You passin' out?"

"Nuh." No.

"Yes you are." Poke.

"Nu uh." No, really, I'm perfectly awake. And sober. Honestly.

Poke. "Uh huh." Poke.

"Snrgkzz." Bitch, would you stop fucking poking me!?

Pokepoke. "Pussy."

"Mnh." Elephants on aisle three, turn down the grapefruit and call Oprah. ...wait, what? Oh, I need to lie down for a minute.

"Ohferfucksake. Here."

Click.

Dark. Dark was nice.

Horizontal. That was also nice.

Warm. That... that was very nice.

---

Warm? Gone.

Phone sounds.

Words.

There was drunk and Texas smeared all over the words and it made them so slippery that Dean couldn't make much sense of them, other than cain't pick up y' goddamn phone and hail's 'matter 'thyew and y' fuckin' jarhead. And most of them sounded angry and he decided it'd be best to stay away from those. He was afraid they might sting, and that they might even be poisonous, and he was pretty sure he didn't have any medicine to put on Texas poison word stings.

More phone sounds, then warm again, then more words. There was still drunk and Texas all over the words, but at least most of the angry had fallen off them. As long as Dean was careful to not step in the angry, it wouldn't sting. Not that stepping was going to be an issue, because there was a problem with his leg bones. It wasn't that they were gone. No, Dean still had leg bones. Dean had many leg bones. He just wasn't sure how they were supposed to fit together. Maybe they were on backwards. He wondered what he'd done with the instructions. Probably threw them away. He never needed them. Except when he did. And then they were always in Japanese or Swahili or some shit anyway and the pictures sucked, they were always all to take and put ankle A around on femur B and stuff. Femur. Heh. Was a femur a leg bone? Didn't matter. It was a funny word. Femur. FEmur. feMUR. Feeeeeemur. Femurfemurfemur... oh, wait. He forgot. There were words here.

...jus' like y'said, voicemail... ...he's prob'ly fine, just bein' a dumbass... 's okay, any minute now he's gonna call n' tellya his phone's broke n' he wants ya to meet 'im in--pfft, I'unno, Buttpoke, Montana 'r some shit when yer done here... 's okay, everything's gonna be okay...

There were other words, but they were too small and he had to throw them back and then they swam away and besides, he couldn't have done anything about them anyway because he couldn't remember where he'd put his face.

---

The first thing Dean was aware of was a horrible pounding in his head, like there was a particularly pissed-off demon driving iron spikes through his temples. From inside his skull. Opening his eyes didn't help at all. Light just pissed the demon off even more and made it pound even harder, and if that wasn't bad enough now it was pounding spikes dangerously close to whatever part of his brain controlled the urge to puke.

Dean forced himself to focus on something in the real world. Anything. Like the coffee table in front of the couch he was lying on...

...oh.

Well, that'd explain everything, wouldn't it?

That pounding in his head and that queasy feeling in his stomach? It wasn't a demon.

It was worse.

It was a hangover.

There were at least twelve ex-beers on the coffee table. And a pair of shot glasses, a salt shaker, and a few sad-looking scraps of green rind, which meant there must have been some tequila in the picture at some point. Dean swallowed with a painful dry click and hoped that a) it hadn't been the kind with the worm and b) if it had been the kind with the worm, he hadn't eaten it.

That would explain the magnitude of the hangover; tequila-on-beer was not a combination any sane human would voluntarily ingest. But it didn't explain why couldn't he move his... oh.

Oh.

Oh no.

No no no no no no Jesus God NO.

Dean lay on his back with a hangover pounding in his head and a lot of dead air where there should have been memories of the previous night and, for the first time in his life, prayed to all that was sacred and holy that he had not fucked the girl that was still snuggled up on his chest.

Even worse: the arm he could move?

Around her waist.

OhjesusmaryandjosephNO.

He did a quick inventory. His jeans: present, accounted for, on him, and zipped. Her jeans: present, accounted for, on her, and presumably zipped; no fucking way was he about to reach down there or roll her over to verify that. The rest of their respective clothes: exactly where they were supposed to be, other than Dean's jacket hanging off the back of a chair. No condom wrappers among the carnage on the coffee table. No unexplained scratches, bruises, or teeth marks that he could readily see or feel.

Which, his brain ever-so-fucking-helpfully reminded him, did not necessarily rule out dry-humping.

Oh God.

Okay. Oh God. Okay. There were ways to check that, right? If they'd done that, he'd be sticky, right? Was he sticky? Oh God. He thought he might be sticky. Oh God oh God oh God.

Dean wriggled a little. Carefully, so as not to wake Andy up or even worse, his--okay, best not to even think about that. At least the Wood Fairy had passed him by this morning, but of course Andy's hip was right goddamn there and if his dick did wake up, it might not particularly care whose hip that was.

He stopped wiggling for a second, pictured a tequila worm, and thought about the possibility that that disgusting thing might have been swimming around in the tequila he'd been drinking. Actually... swimming? No. No living organism could survive being submerged in tequila for that long. Which meant that the hypothetical worm in his tequila had been dead. Disgusting dead worm floating around in tequila he'd been drinking. And even if he hadn't eaten the actual hypothetical pickled dead worm, he might have ingested hypothetical pickled dead worm parts. Yep.

Pondering this didn't do much for the state of Dean's stomach, but it pretty well killed off any possibility of an unwelcome boner so it was all good.

He wiggled a little more. Not sticky, at least as far as he could tell without, again, reaching down there and/or rolling Andy over, neither of which he intended to do.

Thank God.

Still... if she woke up and found herself in this position...

That would be Bad.

Also, it would be just his luck that J.D. would walk in the door like, say, right about now.

Oh, sure, J.D. was a pretty laid-back dude. But seeing evidence of mass slaughter of innocent alcohol and his precious daughter passed out on a Winchester--the one no father in his right mind would want to see his precious daughter passed out on--just might be enough to reawaken whatever vestigial SEAL-psycho might lie dormant under that easygoing exterior, and... best not to think about that either, because that?

That would be Really Fucking Bad.

So. First order of business: get Andy the fuck off him. If he played this right--if he could pull off the "I don't know how we got into this position and I don't really like it" angle--then maybe, just maybe, she'd let him off with all his reproductive organs intact.

"Hey." Dean cleared his throat. "Andy. Get off me."

Andy wriggled sleepily, scratched her nose by rubbing it on Dean's shoulder like a damn cat, and mumbled "nuh uh."

This was not the reaction Dean was expecting.

He lifted a hand that felt like it had a sack of bricks tied to the wrist and nudged at Andy's shoulder. "C'mon. Get up." When that didn't work, he tried lying. "Gotta pee." When that didn't work, he tried scare tactics. "Gonna hurl."

"Fuck you." Andy wriggled some more and grunted and forGodsake snuggled up against his chest. "'M comfy."

...okay, well, maybe she just wasn't actually awake yet, but she didn't seem to be in any great hurry to kill him.

Still, Dean knew his ass needed covered in this situation. He nudged at Andy's shoulder again. "Y'know you're on me, right?" he asked. Just so he could say he did.

"Dude. Sh'up," she mumbled back. "Tryin' sleep."

Well, okay then.

And actually... not that Dean would ever admit it but this wasn't so bad, having Andy all splatted out on his chest like this, all snuggly and sleepy and, y'know, not trying to kill him. She wasn't exactly his first choice of human blankets (or his second choice, or his sixteenth choice; she barely edged out prickly pears in Dean's "things I wish to cuddle with" rankings only because she was a little warmer and not quite as spiny) but she was nice and warm and comfy and she smelled good, like faint cigarette smoke and girl shampoo and okay, yeah, this wasn't bad at all and the warmth and weight of another human being draped over him might be enough to lull him back to sleep long enough for the worst of the hangover to--

--oh shit, was that a car?

Yes. Well, no, actually, it was a van.

And it was coming up the driveway.

"Um. Andy?" Dean swallowed again. His throat felt like it was lined with sandpaper. That had been used to scrape dried cat crap off a piece of rusty metal. "If your dad came home right now and saw, uh, this... he wouldn't, um, kill me or anything, would he?"

Andy picked up her head, blinked fuzzily at Dean, grinned sleepily, and burbled "Yyyyyyup!"

"Oh shit!" Later, Dean would swear on a stack of assorted holy books that he could hear the adrenaline being dumped directly into his bloodstream, fwoosh, just like that. Totally awake, in full fight-or-flight-and-preferably-the-latter mode, he tried his damndest to wriggle out from under Andy. She wasn't budging. "Oh shit, dude, your dad--" Andy swatted at his shoulder and mumbled for him to shut the fuck up. "Andy, c'mon, get off me--oh shit, Andy, please, get the fuck off me--"

Andy giggled and did that snuggling thing again and did not move otherwise. There was the sound of a key in the front door and oh fucking hell.

The only thing left to do was to bodily shove Andy the hell off him, and even that wasn't working too well. It would have worked a lot better if she hadn't been laying on the arm he needed to push her in the direction of off. And he couldn't push her in the direction of off with the other arm without running an unacceptable risk of grabbing her boobs, and wouldn't that be a hell of a thing for her dad to walk in on?

The door opened.

"Just me," J.D. announced from behind the inexorably opening door. "Andy? Dean? You guys up yet, or--"

Sudden and total silence.

Dean must have had some kind of near-death out-of-body experience there, because he could see this entire horrifying scene laid out before him from all angles, every mortifying detail presented in cinematic clarity.

The Certain and Imminent and Most Likely Really Messy Death of Dean Winchester. In glorious Technicolor.

He could see the terrified deer-in-highbeams look on his own face as the front door slooooowly swung open, creaking like it had been flown in directly from Transylvania. He could see Andy sprawled out on him in a most compromising position (and only now was he noticing where exactly her legs were in relation to his, and let's just say that was so totally not helping Dean's case here). He could see every incriminating empty beer bottle and every incriminating bit of lime rind and the oh-so-incriminating empty tequila bottle (and oh Christ it was the kind with the worm and even worse, the fucking worm was NOT IN THE BOTTLE!) on the coffee table, sparkling merrily in the ever-widening bar of sunlight the sloooooowly opening door let in as if to draw attention to themselves and to Dean and Andy, as if to say gaze Ye, O Master of this House, upon the effects of our influence! Look Ye in horror upon the violation of Thy most precious child by this poor dumb bastard who hath not enjoyed our quality responsibly!--save for the ones that lay within the boundaries of the ominous shadow that stretched across the room like the Grim Reaper himself, come to perform his terrible duty on Dean's sad sorry hung-over ass.

Andy, oblivious to all of that shit, picked up her head about an inch and a half, grinned, chirped "Daddy!" and then plunked her head back down onto Dean's chest like absolutely nothing was wrong with that.

Bitch.

Dean swallowed. "I, uh," he said in a voice that sounded way more weak and girly than he would ever admit... if he survived to admit anygoddamnthing, anyway.

The door closed. There stood all six ex-SEAL feet and six ex-SEAL inches of J.D. Ex-SEAL Baines, aka Andy's Ex-SEAL Daddy, with what Dean suspected was a huge fucking bag of guns, knives, silver bullets, holy water, assorted trinkets, and other things he would not need if he wanted to kill Dean fucking dead, squinting and blinking like he wasn't really sure he was seeing what he was seeing.

I am a dead man, Dean thought. Dead. As a doornail. Deady McDeceasedpants. M-O-O-N, that spells "dead." So. Fucking. Dead. I am going to DIE. God, what the fuck was he going to do about this?

Okay, no, he was not going to panic. A large pile of shit was about to hit a very large fan. What was the most logical thing to do? Blame it on Sam!

What? Well, of course this was Sam's fault! It was all Sam's fault! Look, if Sam was still around, Dean wouldn't have had to come here and get shitfaced and wake up with a fucking hangover and a crazy bitch on his chest and her dad about to fucking kill him, right? Right? Fuckin' A right! Boy oh boy, if Sam knew what was good for him, he'd be hoping and praying that J.D. salted and torched what was left of Dean when he was done because if he didn't? Oh, Dean was so going to haunt him for this, Sam would never have another second of privacy in his life again, Dean would pour Coke in his underwear drawer every morning, kill the hard drive on every computer he ever touched, put tacks on his chairs and gum in his hair, draw stick figure porn all over his term papers, personally see to it that Sam never got laid again EVER, I swear to God, Sammy, I will haunt your ass until you DIE--

J.D. grinned.

Dean made some embarrassing little teakettle-like noise in the back of his throat.

"Hey Dean," J.D. finally said. He put his huge fucking bag of guns and knives and whatever else down and hung up his jacket. "What's up?"

Not my dick sir no sir absolutely not sir, was the first thing that came to Dean's mind. "Buh," was the first thing that came to Dean's mouth.

"Long time no see." J.D. wandered off towards the kitchen, still grinning. "You been staying out of trouble?"

Dean whimpered something that sounded like oh Jesus! C'mon, the man had to be doing that shit on purpose!

"Um," Dean replied. He babbled something about New Orleans and hoodoo people that probably made no fucking sense whatsoever. It didn't even really sound like English in his ears.

"Ew. Man. Sounds like fun. Not." J.D. emerged from the kitchen with half a cereal bar in his mouth and wandered off down the hall towards his bedroom, making one stop to dig his journal out of the Huge Fucking Bag O' Weapons. "Have to fill me in on the details later. I'm beat. 'Night, kids."

"'Night, Daddy," Andy murbled against Dean's shoulder, lifting a hand in a half-assed wave.

"Muh," Dean said.

The bedroom door closed.

Dean heaved a huge sigh of relief.

The bedroom door opened.

Oh God, Dean thought, gritting his teeth and bracing for mayhem.

"Hey, Dean?" Dean could have sworn J.D. was trying to not crack right the fuck up. "My daughter? Is a grownup. She can take care of herself. And if there was a problem here she woulda whooped your ass already. 'Night."

The bedroom door closed again.

Okay, Dean thought, what the fuck just happened here?

And if that'd been the end of it, that would have been surreal enough.

However, in the immortal words of so many late-night kitchen gizmo commercials: But wait! There's more!

Not two seconds later, Andy was rolling off Dean and onto her feet, wide-awake and sure-footed as could fucking be, fishing her cigarettes out of the pile of dead soldiers on the coffee table and lighting right up. Off she went to the kitchen, walking as straight and even a line as you please. "So anyway, you made it about halfway through Iron Kung Fu before you finally passed out. I put Deadly Shaolin on next, but man, it's subtitled and I couldn't even read the fuckin' things by--oh shit, I think I drunk-dialed your d--eh, he'll get over it. You want some greasy eggs or some toast or something? Because you seriously look like hammered dogshit." Bottles rattled in the fridge as she yanked the door open.

"The fuh?" Dean sputtered, sitting up too fast and watching the room sway and listening to Andy bop around and make way too much damn noise in the kitchen. Had she been that awake and that not-hung-over this whole time? Had she known full well that J.D. wasn't really going to kill him? Was she just fucking with him!? Wait, why was he even asking himself that? Who exactly did he think he was dealing with here? Of course she was fucking with him!

"Gonna kill you," he groaned, flopping back onto the couch and flinging an arm over his eyes.

Andy went right on rattling bottles and clanging pans onto the stove like she hadn't heard a word. "I thought you were gonna barf in the middle of Sister Street Fighter, though. That part with the fuckin' wigs made out of heroin? I mean, you laughed so hard you just about choked on the worm--"

Quite suddenly, the demon was back. And it was poking Dean's stomach in all the wrong places with a big blunt stick. "...the what?"

Andy's grinning face appeared in the doorway to the living room. "The worm. From the tequila?" And damn her, she must have seen the blood drain from Dean's face then, because she just grinned even wider. "Oh damn, dude, I'm so sorry, I totally forgot, you've got issues with eating gross stuff, right? Like tuna scales and squirrel-and-dumplings and... worms? Well, no, wait, it's not actually a worm. Didja know that? It's really a bug larva, so it's more like a great big maggot--"

"You are an evil, horrible person and I hate you and I hope you die," Dean wanted to say.

"Hrghlk!" was what Dean actually said as he lurched upright and bolted for the kitchen with both hands clamped over his mouth.

He was too busy puking into the kitchen sink and flipping Andy off to notice a third shot glass, the one sitting on the counter next to the sink, the one Andy had taken away from him last night and brought in here.

The one containing a few drops of tequila... and the worm

 

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