Life is a Banquet (and some poor suckers are starv

[Disclaimer: I do not own the television series that this fanfiction is written for, nor any of the characters from it. I do not make any money from the writing of this story. tl;dr: Kripke's. Not mine. Am poor. Don't sue.]

Life is a Banquet (and some poor suckers are starving to death)

Fucking redcaps.

Dean never liked anything that fell into the fairy folk category anyway, but
redcaps held a special place in the "go to Hell and die" section of his heart.
Unlike most of their kin, these damn things were immune to iron and thus the
usual fairy-trapping tricks didn't do jack to them. And of course they had to go
and rub it in, all running around like frigging cheetahs in
iron boots, waving their stupid little hats
around and slinging blood everywhere which, aside from being rude and gross, was
just plain unsanitary. Seriously, that was human blood there and Dean was pretty
sure redcaps didn't pre-screen their victims for blood-borne diseases.

So this particular bunch of redcaps was chasing them all over this Godforsaken
stretch of woods in Wyoming that seemed to be composed entirely of
pollen-shedding pine trees, blackberry bushes, and poison ivy, taunting them
with obscene gestures and calling Sam a yakfucker and shit like that.

And that was bad enough, but then Dean just happened to look behind him and saw
one of them waving its schlong at him like a lasso and on a scale of one to ten
with one being "perfectly normal" and ten being "shit ain't right," this clocked
in at a solid bazillion. God, how the hell could they
run like that without some kind of support
for those things? They were hung like fucking
horses, didn't that
hurt?

"Best part of ye ran doon yer mum's hind legs!" it screeched at him and
okay, that was it. Casting aspersions on his and Sam's genetic composition,
Dad's sexual preferences, and Mom's species
in ten words? Normally Dean would be impressed with that level of trash-talking
proficiency but as it was, the little motherfuckers needed to die
now.

He took comfort in the fact that he and Sam knew something the redcaps
didn't--namely, that they were leading the little shits straight to a hole
they'd snipped in a chainlink fence, one that separated the woods from the back
end of a nearby junkyard. One that had a ginormous fucking industrial-strength
electromagnet on a boom, the kind used for moving scrap iron around.

A little lesson in Fairyology 101 for you here. Redcaps are so named because of
their ...well, their red caps. Yeah, kind of a no-brainer there, right? As has
been mentioned in passing earlier, their caps are red because they are covered
in human blood. If that cap were to dry out, the redcap wearing it would die.
Simple enough, right? Just keep them from killing anyone until their hats dry
out and they drop dead? Right?

Wrong. Because redcaps are also freaking fast.
And vicious. And smart. And immune to iron. And damn near invincible.
Yelling holy words--Bible verses, name of God, what have you--at them might slow
them down for a second, maybe make them lose a tooth or two. Holy water might
sting a little. Consecrated iron rounds do fuckall, consecrated silver might
make them stumble. But short of drying their stupid hats out or maybe chopping
their heads off, nothing would kill the little shits.

Now. Remember those iron boots? Funny thing about those is, short of lopping off
their own legs, they can't take the damn things off.

What happens when iron meets a ginormous fucking magnet?

Yep.

Long story short: when the woods emptied out into a dirt lot piled high with
debris and Sam zigged one way and Dean zagged the other way while yelling things
that suggested the redcaps' family trees did not branch and the redcaps ignored
Sam and homed in on Dean--well, that was exactly the plan. Sam hit some buttons,
and a series of loud clank! noises and a
lot of filthy language in shrill Scottish-accented voices indicated that this
plan had been a good one.

The rest of the plan called for Sam and Dean to turn on the equally ginormous
fucking industrial fans they'd maneuvered into the area earlier, wait for the
redcaps' stupid hats to dry out and the redcaps to die, and then turn the magnet
and fans off, put everything back where they'd found it, dispose of the corpses,
and go have a beer.

And for once, it looked like this was actually going to work as planned. An hour
later, the redcaps looked pretty damn dead; if they weren't, they were close
enough. Seven ugly naked dead midgets hanging by their feet from an industrial
electromagnet with bloodstained hats and gigantic wangs flapping in the breeze.
Nice.

Dean, for one, would never be able to eat Lucky Charms again.

"So," Sam said. "How are we gonna, uh..." He gestured at the dead redcaps.

Dean hadn't been thinking much about this phase of operations. "I dunno," he
finally said. "Maybe we could just leave 'em there? I mean, it's St. Pat's
weekend, gotta be some green paint around here somewhere..."

The look Sam gave him suggested this might not be such a hot idea.

So, plan B: find a tarp, lay it under the magnet, turn the magnet off, drag the
tarp full of dead redcaps to the incinerator, chuck 'em in, light 'em up, and
call it a night. And that seemed like it was going to work pretty well, too. Sam
turned off the Huge Fucking Magnet, the redcaps fell into a pile with wet
thudding noises and dull metallic clanks, Sam grabbed two corners, Dean grabbed
two corners, and off they went.

But they must have fallen out of step or the height difference must have caused
some unforseen problems or something, because about halfway to the incinerator
their load shifted and a single dead redcap slid out of the tarp and onto the
ground.

Which meant someone was going to have to put it back on the tarp.

Which meant someone was going to have to touch the damn thing.

Which was just plain gross.

Sam eyed the dead redcap on the ground, but did not let go of his two corners.
Dean also eyed the dead redcap on the ground, but did not let go of
his two corners.

Sam cleared his throat. Dean pretended not to notice.

"We, uh, lost one," Sam pointed out. And still did not let go of his two
corners.

"Huh," Dean replied. And still did not let go of
his two corners.

Here they were, in the middle of the night, trespassing on someone's commercial
property, having a Mexican standoff over the corpse of Lucky the Leprechaun's
perverted serial killer cousin. It was like the punchline to a really bad joke.

"...so maybe one of us needs to do something about it," Sam said.

"Yeah, go ahead and toss him back on there," Dean said as nonchalantly as he
could, as if he really expected it to be that easy.

"Nu uh," Sam shot back. "You do it."

"No, you do it."

"No, you."

"No, you!"

"Got my hands full." Dean tugged at his two corners of the tarp to punctuate
that.

"Yeah, well, so do I." Sam tugged at his
two corners. "And I came up with the
plan to catch 'em."

"So? I was the bait."

"I turned on the magnet," Sam grated out.
"Which is why these little bastards aren't playing
jump rope with your small intestine right now."

"Yeah, well, I--I--" Sam had him. Sam had
him and they both knew it. "Shit. Fine.
Fine. Put 'em down."

Sam shrugged and dropped his end of the tarp. For about half a second, Dean
pondered hauling ass with the tarp and leaving Sam here with the one that got
away. No, that wouldn't work. For one thing, he'd probably end up leaving a
trail of dead redcaps all the way to the incinerator, and that'd make more work
for both of them. For another, Sam would almost certainly murder him in his
sleep or get him drunk and write I (heart) sheep
on his forehead in permanent marker or something for that. So he just put
his end down and trudged back to the stray
dead redcap.

The worst thing about redcaps was the smell, this cloud of rotten meat and sour
milk and sulfur and blood and piss and day-old sex that hung around them. They
didn't smell any better dead, and Dean really didn't want to touch the damn
thing. He figured the boots were probably the cleanest part of the carcass,
relatively speaking; at least, he was fairly sure the brown stuff caked on the
soles was just mud. Fairly sure. Either way, Dean decided as he crouched down to
grab the thing's damn boots, he was going to go back to the motel and scrub his
hands with lye and steel wool and then soak them in a five-gallon bucket of hand
sanitizer for a week, because this was just
plain fucking disgusting--

"RAVENOUS CAVERNOUS RUMBLY
TUMBLY!"



Dean wasn't sure what exactly
happened there. It felt a little like he'd just been bitchslapped with a flatbed
trailer made of foam rubber. It didn't
hurt, exactly, but it knocked him back a
couple of feet; he was dimly aware of colliding with something tall, firm, and
warm that made oof! noises.

He came to his senses on his stomach, sprawled on top of and perpendicular to
Sam, just as the not-quite-so-dead redcap flopped back onto the dirt and rattled
out one last breath. "Jesus Christ!" Dean
wheezed. Two of the redcap's teeth tumbled out of its mouth. "Sam? You okay?"

"Yeah. You?"

"Think so." Dean rolled off Sam and staggered to his feet. All limbs present and
accounted for. No extra limbs. Downstairs brain and the twins present, accounted
for, and unharmed. Everything appeared to be the right color and shape and size.
"The hell was that all about?" What'd it say? Ravenous cav--what the fuck? No,
really, what the fuck!? Was that supposed to be a curse? Because if that
was a curse, it was the dumbest curse Dean
had ever heard. Little dudes needed to lay off the Harry Potter. Seriously.

"Dunno, but let's burn the damn things before any more of 'em decide they're not
dead yet." Suddenly, Sam seemed a lot more open to the idea of manhandling the
redcap back onto the tarp himself--after he poked it with a long piece of rebar
a few times just to make sure it really was dead. Dean had no problem with this.

---

Strange, Dean thought. Here they were driving back to the motel, covered with
mud and tree sex and both of their hands reeking of dead redcap, and all Dean
could think about was finding something to snack on. Well, he
had burned an awful lot of energy tonight,
all that running and shit, and he'd had--what, a mini-mart burrito, a bag of
Funyuns, and half a flat Jolt cola for dinner? Yeah, he probably just burned
that off and needed something a little more substantial to cap off the day,
that's all. The problem was going to be convincing Sam of that, though--he hated
the whole idea of the fourth meal, he bitched about never sleeping well if he
ate later than ten at night, he--

"Hey," Sam said suddenly. "Isn't there a Taco Bell up ahead? Can we, uh..."

Huh.

---

Thank God for the dollar menu, that's all there was to say about that. Sam
ordered one of everything on it. At least that's what it looked like. And
actually, that sounded pretty damn good, so Dean did likewise.

"Dude," said the kid manning the drive-through when Dean pulled up to the
window, in a tone that spoke of something like awe. "You guys musta got some
good shit." Dean wasn't sure what the hell
the kid was talking about until he made that little pinchy holding-a-joint
gesture.

Right.

Normally, Dean would have come up with some smartass thing to say about this.
The best he could come up with was "Drugs are bad, m'kay? Gimme my damn
burritos." Well, it was hard to be witty on an empty stomach.

The only thing that kept Dean from tearing into his food right there in the car
was the lingering smell. He was hungry, yeah, but not hungry enough to
contaminate his precious fourth meal with the stench of dead redcap.

---

Dean wasn't sure how Sam was sleeping, but
he was sleeping just fine.

And dreaming about happily wallowing around in a cherry pie the size of a circus
tent.

---

Sometime around six in the morning, some crazy snarling growling noise roused
Dean out of sleep. At first he figured it was just part of his weird dreams, but
then it happened again and he realized that it was his stomach.

Sam was gone, but he'd left a note in a conspicuous location:
brb. coffee.

What the note didn't mention: the two dozen assorted donuts and kolaches
Sam was getting to go with that coffee.



---

"I think we've got a problem," Sam said that evening as he slid into the booth
with a fresh plate.

"Can't talk," Dean said. "Eating."

"Yeah, exactly. Man, I'm serious. This is not
right. How much have we eaten today?"

"A shitload. Pass the soy sauce."

"And you don't think that's weird?"

Dean shrugged. "'M a growing boy," he said around a mouthful of egg roll.

"Dean."

"We have an active lifestyle."

"We ate a dozen donuts each this morning. And then we went to Waffle House. And
then we went to IHOP. And then we stopped at a 7-11 and got six bags of Fritos
and three cans of bean dip. And then we stopped at a Pizza Hut--"

"Hunting's hungry work, Sammy. We need the energy."

"You inhaled an entire pizza, Dean!"

"So? You inhaled two pizzas, Gigantor."

"Okay, well, that's--"

"Excuse me, gentlemen?"

Some guy with the word "Manager" on his name badge stood at the edge of the
table, looking a little unnerved, a little annoyed, and entirely flustered.

"Can't talk," Sam mumbled. "Eating."

"Um... well, yes, that's kind of what I..." The manager heaved a great pained
sigh.  "I'm going to have to ask you to leave now."

"Sign says 'all you can eat,'" Dean pointed out. "We haven't had all we can eat
yet."

"Sir, you've been here for six hours. I
think it's safe to say that if you haven't had all you can eat yet, you're not
going to."

"...oh." Dean swallowed his mouthful of egg roll. Looked up at the manager.
Cranked up the wattage on his best grin. "Y'mind bringing us a doggie bag?"

...what? It was a perfectly logical question, why was Sam bonking his forehead
on the table and softly moaning "brother, what
brother, I have no brother" at him?

---

"I can't believe they didn't even let us get our ice cream," Dean said half an
hour and fifty miles later. "Eh, just as well, that soft serve shit they've
always got sucks. Hey, keep an eye out for a 31 Flavors or something, willya? Or
a grocery store? Man, I could go for a pint of Cherry Garcia right about now--"

"Man. Yeah. Or some Half Baked. Y'know, the kind with the cookie dough and the
brownie ba--Jesus!" Sam threw his hands up.
"What the hell!? We just got kicked out of a Chinese restaurant for eating too
much and we're talking about stopping for ice
cream!?"

"Well, you know what they say about Chinese food, you eat it and you're hungry
again half an hour later--"

"Six hours! We were in there! Eating! For six
solid hours! I mean--" Sam flapped his hands around a little. "Does this
not weird you out at all!? Don't you think
it's kind of--dude, turn around, I think I saw a Marble
Slab..."

---

Normally, Dean couldn't stand to watch Sam eat certain things. Like bananas. Or
ice cream cones. Or big pickles. Or corn dogs. Or anything else remotely
phallic. Or anything else he had to lick and/or suck. Because the boy had one
nimble goddamn mouth, and watching it work
over a Popsicle or whatever tended to make Dean think capital-B Bad thoughts
about Sam licking and/or sucking other
things and seriously, that shit was just wrong. Hot. But
wrong.

Dean started to suspect that maybe, just maybe, something funny was going on
when he looked over at Sam and realized he was more interested in the ice cream
itself than what Sam's tongue was doing with it.

But he had caramel and Reese's chunks in
that shit, who could blame him?

---

"Hey," Sam said an hour after that, halfway
through his fifth can of Pringles. "I wanna try something."

"Huh," Dean grunted. Where was the nearest ATM? How much more cash could he pull
off this Visa before it died on him? Stupid mini-marts and their stupid not
liking credit cards. Did Sam's big idea have something to do with that? Because
listening to Sam sit there and make Pringles-munching noises was really starting
to drive him nuts, here he was trying to stretch his last pack of Corn Nuts out
until the next mini-mart and--

"Picture Dad having sex."

It took every tiny little crumb of self-control Dean could muster up to swallow
the damn Corn Nuts he was chewing and not spray them all over the dashboard.
Because that would just be wasteful and sad. "Auh," he said once the Corn Nuts
were down and he was fairly sure they were going to stay there. "Dude. No.
That's--just--auh."

"What? C'mon, man, you know he did--"

"Auh!"

"--I mean, hell, you and me? We're walking proof he did it at least
twice--"

"AUH! Stop! Jesus!
Stop!"

"Still hungry?"

Dean blinked a few times.

"...goddammit," he finally snapped. "Sam?"

"Yeah?"

"I think we've got a problem."

"No shit, Sherl--hey!!"

Revenge, contrary to popular belief, is not sweet.

Revenge tastes more like Pringles. Specifically, your smartass little brother's
last can of them.

---

"...do what now?" For some reason, Bobby
didn't sound thrilled to hear Dean's voice this evening. "Are you telling me
you're rattling me out of bed at 0-dark-thirty in the morning because you've got
the munchies!?"

"Um. Sort of." Dean cleared his throat.

"Uh huh." Long silence. "Smokin' weed is bad for you. Good ni--"

"No! We didn't--we took out some redcaps.
And one of 'em wasn't quite dead. And we think maybe it cursed us or something
because we've been hungry ever since."

"Uh huh. And how's that different from
normal? No offense, but I've seen the way
you boys eat these days--"

"It's different 'cause we got kicked out of a Chinese restaurant for eating for
six solid hours. And then we got ice cream. And then we got chips. And then--"

"Okay." There was a long pause. "Did you try thinkin' about your folks having
s--"

"Auh!" Dean pointedly ignored the snerking
noise coming from Sam's side of the room. "Yeah, we tried that. Thanks so much
for reminding me."

"And?"

Dean fidgeted with the phone and cleared his throat again. "...and then we got
corn dogs."

Pause. Snicker. "Yeah, you're cursed. Redcaps, you said? Lemme see what I can
find. I'll call you back in an hour." He hung up.

---

An hour was just enough time for Sam to frisk Mapquest for the nearest
McDonald's, Dean to go buy two of everything on the value menu before it closed,
and both of them to inhale the lot.

---

"So here's what you do," Bobby said an hour later. "Find you a grocery store.
Get you some apples. Carrots. Celery. Big ol' bunch of broccoli. Bag of
spinach--"

"And that'll break it? That'll break the curse?"

"Hell no, it won't break the curse! I just figured if you're gonna be eating
everything you see that doesn't eat you first, you might as well eat something
that's actually good for you."

Dean pulled a face. "Dude. No. That won't work. I'm, uh, allergic."

"To what? Vitamins?" There was some kind of a juicy crunchy noise after that.

Eating. Bobby was eating. Eating food. Juicy crunchy food. A pickle? It sounded
kind of like a pickle. Like a nice crunchy dill spear. Yeah. And where there was
a pickle, there was usually more food. A sandwich. A burger, maybe. Oh God, what
if he'd barbecued recently, what if there
was meat on the other end of this
call, wonderful delicious juicy tender
melt-in-your-mouth barbecued
meat,
with that chewy little rind of sweet-spicy-tangy sauce and mesquite smoke
on the outside and glorious tender juicy meat
on the inside and some soft white bread and real butter and sliced red
onions and pickles and potato salad and beans to eat with it, maybe a nice warm
peach cobbler with vanilla ice cream in the freezer just waiting to melt all
over it and--

Dean had to make himself think about Dad having sex again to keep himself from
drooling.

"So, what? You saying there's nothing you can do?"

Swallow. "Mph. No, I could bust it for you,
but I'd have to do it in person and it'd probably be gone on its own by the time
you get out here or I get out there.
Redcaps ain't so great at magic, probably the tradeoff for the iron thing.
Something really nasty like this? I'd give it... uh, about two-three days,
tops." Chomp. "If you've got a room, you
probably better stick there 'til it blows over."

"...so we're just supposed to deal until it
wears off," Dean said. Sam groaned somewhere off to his left.

"Mm." Swallow. "Pretty much, yeah. Sorry." Another crispy crunchy noise, softer
and thinner. It sounded a hell of a lot like a raw onion ring.

"Eh. 'S okay." God, this was driving him crazy, sitting here listening to Bobby
eat, and until the day Dean died he was going to blame what came out of his
mouth next on curse-induced insanity. It probably wasn't so much the question
itself that made Sam's head snap up across the room to direct a piercing
what the fuck? gaze at him as the
tone.

Because when Dean cleared his throat and said "So, uh... what are you eating?"
he did it in the same tone he would normally use to ask a chick on the other end
of a phone call what she was wearing.

Bobby didn't seem to notice. "Mf." Swallow. "Heh. Leftovers. I barbecued
yesterday. All this talk about eating, I was up anyway, figured I'd have me a
little snack."

"Yeah?" Oh God. There was meat on the other
end of the call. Good meat. Dean could feel his eyes glazing over, could feel
that corner of his mouth tug upwards, could see Sam giving him the
seriously, what the fuck!? look and did not
care. "Chicken or--"

It was probably a good thing Sam did what he did then, Dean realized later, or
he would have seriously embarrassed himself there. Sam yanked the phone out of
Dean's hand, stammered something that sounded like
"thanksBobbysorrytobotheryousolate, sorryDeanisbeingretarded,
bye," pushed "end," and put the phone way
out of Dean's reach.

"What the hell!?" Dean spluttered.

"What the hell, yourself!" Sam spluttered back. "Th--that's
weird! Stop it!"

"Stop what?"

"Dude, you looked like you were going to--to start having
phone sex with Bobby's
food! That's just--"

"He barbecued."

Sam shut up.

"Oh," he said. "...chicken?"

"Ribs."

Sam swallowed hard. "...oh."

And that was the end of that.

---

So
here's a disturbing question to ponder at three in the morning when even the
late-night McDonald's down the road from your crappy motel is closed and the
metric asston of McD's you just finished is gone and your stomach is making
noises like a Harley that needs tuned up:

Where the fuck was all that food going!?

Dean thinks about weird shit like this when he can't sleep, okay?
Especially when he can't sleep because he's
fucking hungry for no good reason. And at
that point, that seemed like a perfectly valid question considering the fact
that he'd eaten enough food in the last twenty-four hours to keep a small army
going for a week and he hadn't noticed any significant increase in--how do we
put this delicately--output.

So where was it going? Did the damn redcap give them some kind of mutant
tapeworm or something? Did it create some kind of dimensional portal in their
tummies? Did it hollow out their legs? Was there a forcefield or some shit that
just vaporized the food on contact? No, the food was hanging around long enough
for at least some of it to get put to use,
judging from the complete lack of headache and leg-wobbling that usually went
hand-in-hand with missing more than a meal or two, obviously it wasn't vanishing
into thin air at the end of his esophagus, so what the fuck was up with that?
Seriously, what?

He really needed to stop thinking about this, because it totally was not
helping. There was a stash of emergency
food in the Impala's trunk, sure; beef jerky and granola bars and vienna weenies
and a couple of MREs and shit. But that was for
emergency emergencies. That was for "we are
broken down in Buttfuck, Minnesota and covered in ten feet of snow" kind of
emergencies, not "it's three in the morning and we are really hungry" kind of
emergencies. No, not even "it's three in the morning and we are cursed and so
hungry we could eat fried lawn chairs and nobody in this Godforsaken town sells
food this late" emergencies. He was not going to break that out, he could wait
three hours, and if he kept telling himself he could wait and his stomach wasn't
actually trying to digest itself he was sure he'd eventually kind of believe it.

Sam huffed out a breath, made some whiny grumbly noise, and power-flopped onto
his stomach on the other bed. The mattress squeaked, but did nothing to muffle
the noises his stomach was making. Nor did it do much to muffle the whimpery
noise Sam made after that. It sure didn't do anything towards helping Dean not
focus on the noises his own stomach was making.

"Sam?"

Sam's stomach growled. Sam whined.

"You okay, Sammy?"

Huff. "I'm hungry." Growl. Whine.

"Yeah, me too." Dean's stomach snarled in
response to Sam's. It was like they were having their own conversation,
independent of their owners': daaaamn, man, I'm
sooooo empty. No shit? Me too. Sucks, huh? You can say that again. "But
Mickey D's doesn't open till six, so you might as well go to sleep."

"I can't." Growl. Huff. Turn. Flop.
Growl. "I'm
hungry."

And listening to Sam toss and turn and bitch about it sure as hell wasn't
helping. "Just try not to think about it," Dean finally said. "Okay?"

Turn. Flop.
Huff. "'Kay."

This lasted all of thirty seconds before Sam's stomach decided it was tired of
being ignored and let rip once more. Dean wouldn't have been surprised to hear
the neighbors pounding on the wall over that one. Sam, not to be outdone, made a
particularly pitiful noise in response.

Okay. Operation Just Ignore It didn't pan out. Time for Plan B. "You wanna watch
some TV?" Dean suggested.

Huff. Flop. "Sure."

Dean picked up the remote and thumbed the power button.

A Magic Bullet blender infomercial was on. Current demonstration: smoothies. No.

Click. George Foreman grill infomercial. Current demonstration: burgers. No.

Click. Applebee's commercial. No.

Click. McDonald's commercial. The one about someone missing snack time. No with
a side order of "fuck you, TV."

Click. Food Network, and to add insult to injury Emeril was making
pot roast no no no no no oh god NO.

Dean turned the TV off. So much for plan B.

He had to think fast. He had to do something before Sam started tossing and
turning and bitching again. "Hey," he finally said, tossing the remote back onto
the nightstand. "You remember that stupid game we used to play in the car so you
wouldn't keep asking if we were there yet? The one where I say a word and you
have to say a word that starts with the last letter of whatever I said? How
about that? Huh?"

Growl. Turn. Flop. "Yeah. Sure. Whatever." Huff. "You have to pick a category
first."

Shit. Okay. Category. Category. "I dunno ...animals?" Yeah. That'd be a good
safe one, right? Right? Right. "Uh... monkey."

"...yak."

"Kangaroo."

"Um... octopus."

"Seal."

Was that a laugh? "Lark."

Dean grinned. "Koala."

"Ant." Definitely a laugh.

I am an awesome brother, Dean told
himself...

...just fractions of a second before his mouth opened and "Turkey!" came out of
it.

"Aaaugh!" Sam powerflopped onto his back
again. "DEAN!"

"I'm sorry! It just--it just came out! I
didn't--"

Turn. Flop. Huff.

Shit.

With all other options exhausted, Dean huffed out a breath of his own, fished
his jeans up from the floor, found the car keys in a hip pocket, and tossed them
onto Sam's bed. "Get the emergency stash out of the trunk."

Sam had the keys in hand almost before they hit his mattress. He didn't even
bother putting his jeans back on, just dashed out to the damn car in his T-shirt
and boxers. He came back in half a minute later with what looked like the entire
emergency food stash.

Shit.

Sam's butt barely hit the bed before he was ripping open a bag of beef
jerky with his teeth and tearing the top off a box of granola bars with his free
hand. "You better hope we don't break down in the middle of nowhere before we
stock that back up," Dean grumbled as Sam made jerky disappear. "I'm serious,
dude. If we have to bail before this thing wears off and something Bad happens?
We're talking Donner Party."

Sam grunted some kind of acknowledgement of that and tossed a can of vienna
weenies and a pack of jerky onto Dean's bed before turning his full attention to
gnawing on his own chunk of jerky.

---

That was officially the worst night of Dean's entire life. Even worse than that
one time he had to sleep in a tree. Hey, at least the fucking tree had
fruit growing on it.

Quarter to six and Sam was out of bed, pawing at Dean's shoulder just as he
managed to kind of halfway get to sleep, turning on the puppy eyes and whining
for pancakes from McD's. Ferfucksake.

What really sucked about this was that Dean had the distinct impression that the
dream he'd just started having would have involved a scoop of ice cream falling
off the cone and onto his chest and Sam cleaning that up for him. With his
tongue.

---

"So I've got an idea," Sam said around a mouthful of pancakes.

Because Dean's mouth was a lot fuller than Sam's at that point but he felt
something needed to be said, he shook his head vigorously and made emphatic "nu
uh!" noises until he could swallow. "No way," he said once the words could come
out of his mouth without big chunks of bacon-egg-and-cheese biscuit coming with
them. "No. Last great idea you had was that
whole 'hey, think about Dad doin' it' thing--"

"Let's see if there's a Sam's Club around here."

Huh. That was so far out of left field that Dean didn't even think to make the
obvious jokes about it. "...why?"

Sam rolled his eyes. "Why the hell do you think!?
FOOD, Dean!"

"Oh." Dean frowned and shoveled in the last bite of biscuit. "Don't you need a
card or something to get in?"

Sam grinned. "Not a problem."

---

One pit stop at Kinko's, one fake letterhead, two fake business cards, two fake
employee ID's, and a thick layer of charm and bullshit later, Messrs. Benjamin
Linus and James Ford of Widmore Industries were the proud holders of two shiny
new Sam's Club corporate membership cards.

Good thing all that shit worked, because forgery and social engineering were
hungry work and a 40-count box of frozen White Castle burgers was just what the
doctor ordered.

---

One hour later, Messrs. Benjamin Linus and James Ford left Sam's Club with:

• 
  Gummi Worms: five pounds
  


• 
  Beef jerky, assorted flavors: ten pounds
  


• 
  Saltines: one huge-ass box
  


• 
  Peanut butter: one 64-ounce jar
  


• 
  Hershey bars: one 36-count box
  


• 
  Ice cream, vanilla and rocky road: five gallons each
  
  


• 
  Top Ramen, beef, chicken, and "oriental," whatever the hell "oriental" was
  supposed to be: one case each
  


• 
  Easy Mac: one case
  


• 
  Microwave popcorn in butter, cheese, and caramel flavors: one 12-pack each
  


• 
  Pringles, 3-can variety pack: five
  
  


• 
  Vienna weenies, plain and in barbecue sauce: one 24-can pack each
  
  


• 
  Frozen corn dogs: one 48-count box
  


• 
  Pulled pork in barbecue sauce: one 3-pound tub
  
  


• 
  Frozen pizza, huge, assorted: ten
  


• 
  Frozen White Castle cheeseburgers: aforementioned 40-count box
  

"Auh. Gross. Put that back."

"What? ...oh for God's sake, don't tell me you
still--"

"Yeah, I still! C'mon, I mean it, put that
shit back. I don't want it."

"Good. More for me."

• 
  Tuna salad: one five-pound tub
  

"Fine. Then I'm getting the ginormous friggin' box of Oreos. And you can't have
any."

"Whatever."

"Bitch."

"Jerk."

"Shut up."

"Make me."

• 
  Oreos: one ginormous friggin' box.
  
  

---

It occurred to Dean on the way back to the motel that he was really, really,
really glad they'd lucked out and gotten a room with a kitchenette, because
those pizzas probably weren't microwaveable.

Actually, if it came down to that, he probably would have been fine with soggy
nuked pizza.

Actually, at this point, he probably would have been fine with eating the damn
things right out of the freezer.

---

It further occurred to Dean that the kitchenette was sorely lacking in dishes
that weren't mugs and utensils that weren't spoons. Well, that's why God made
paper towels, right? And most of this shit didn't even need that much. Dean
slurped vienna weenies directly from the cans, barbecue sauce-or-broth and all.
Sam ate tuna salad directly from the tub, making sure to point out that he at
least was being civilized enough to use a spoon. Dean made gagging noises at
Sam's tuna salad and set about nuking ramen in a coffee mug.

The thing about making ramen in the microwave was, you had to keep an eye on
that shit at all times. Doesn't matter if you just stuck your finger in it and
it was still stone cold--the second you turned your back on it, it'd boil over
and there'd be water and soggy noodles all over the microwave and then you'd
have to clean it up and start all over. And Dean was just too damn hungry to
fuck with all that.

Keeping an eye on the ramen required Dean to turn his back on his ginormous
friggin' box of Oreos. It also required him to turn his back on Sam. And
wouldn't you know it, not thirty seconds into the three minutes Dean punched up
on the microwave, he heard the telltale crinkle of Oreo-shrouding plastic.
"Hey!" he barked, whirling around and
pointing an accusing finger in Sam's direction. "Take your stinking paws off my
Oreos, you damn dirty--"

Oh yeah. One more food Dean couldn't stand to watch Sam eat: Oreos.

Because Sam was one of those people who ate an Oreo by twisting the cookies
apart and licking the cream filling off.

Licking the cream filling off very. Very. Slowly.

"--ape," Dean squeaked.

Sam's tongue disappeared back into his mouth, covered with frosting. "Problem?"
And damn him, Sam looked Dean right in the eye and gave that Oreo another lick.

"N-no." Okay. No. Dean was not standing
here springing wood from watching Sam tongue-bathe Oreos
(Mine! some hysterical little voice
screeched in the back of Dean's head, somewhere the blood hadn't quite drained
from yet, my Oreos, he's eating MY OREOS, make him
stop!), he was not, he was not and
oh Christ that was fucked up on so many
levels he didn't even know where to start.

"Okay." Sam's tongue made one more long slow agonizing pass over the Oreo,
scraping off the last of the filling; he then popped the whole naked cookie
right into his mouth. "So you don't mind if I have a couple more? Is that cool
with you?" Without even waiting for an answer--not that Dean really
could answer--Sam reached into the box and
hauled out a small handful of Dean's Oreos. A small Sam-handful being, of
course, approximately fifteen pounds of Oreos. "Better check your ramen."

Dean swallowed hard. "Huh?"

Sam pointed at the microwave, where Dean's ramen was merrily burbling over the
edge of the mug. And, while Dean squawked and scrambled to deal with the mess
and couldn't do a damn thing to stop him, helped himself to another handful of
Dean's Oreos.

---

So Dean was perfectly willing to chalk the Oreo incident up as a one-time thing,
just call it a simple case of ha ha, got your
Oreos, whatcha gonna do about it? and eat his fresh mug of ramen and get
on with his life. And then Sam scooted over to the fridge, popped something in
the microwave... and came back with two corn dogs.

Oh God.

And if that wasn't bad enough, when Sam was done with the corn dogs, he ripped a
Hershey bar open and started on that. Well, okay, there was nothing wrong with
the way Sam ate the Hershey bar itself, but
after... oh
God.

 

Sam was a practical kind of guy, right?
Right. So of course, when he finished with the Hershey bar proper and started
sucking melted chocolate off his fingertips,
it was just because he didn't want any to go to waste and for the sake of
his sanity, Dean refused to consider any other explanation.

But the last straw? Was the fucking ice cream.

And the kicker there was, the way that went down was not only a total accident,
it was mostly Dean's fault.

See, after half an hour of watching Sam lick Oreos and suck chocolate off his
fingers and deep-throat corn dogs (okay, no, he wasn't
really deep-throating the corn dogs, but it
was close enough for Dean in his current state), Dean was... a little
uncoordinated.

So Sam was sitting there, cross-legged on the floor, shoveling ice cream into
his mouth from a mug (thank God they hadn't bought
cones) and watching whatever was on HBO
while Dean was reaching across Sam's lap for an Oreo, and maybe he zigged when
he should have zagged because his hand collided with Sam's forearm at a critical
moment and sent a heaping spoonful of Rocky Road tumbling right off Sam's
spoon...

...and onto his lap. High on his thigh.

Sam set his mug down and frowned at the blob of ice cream on his thigh. "Damn,"
he sighed. "Hey, pass me a paper towel."

Dean swallowed hard. Tried not to look at it. Failed catastrophically. Did not
pass Sam a paper towel.

Later, Sam would ask Dean what the hell he
was thinking, and Dean would cough and scratch the back of his head and mumble
something about the five-second rule. All he knew was, one second he was sitting
there watching a marshmallow wobble in a melting pool of
perfectly good chocolate ice cream on Sam's
thigh and the next, his head was in Sam's lap and his mouth was fastened to that
spot on Sam's thigh and all he could think about was sucking every molecule of
chocolate right out of the fibers of Sam's jeans.

"Dean!? Jesus Christ--"

It was barely a squeak, like Sam didn't have enough air to put behind the words.
That particular airy squeak didn't really register with Dean until he angled his
head a little more to the left and became suddenly and completely aware that Sam
was hard against his cheek.

Really hard.

For a few tense seconds Dean didn't dare move. Not even to finish chewing that
marshmallow. Not even when he heard Sam's spoon clatter into the mug. Not even
when he felt Sam's fingertips, still chilly from holding that mug of ice cream,
come to rest on the back of his neck. He just knew that any second now, Sam was
going to come to his senses, stab him to death with that spoon, and go looking
for some fava beans and a nice Chianti.

A muscle in Dean's jaw twitched. Sam's dick did likewise against his cheek.

Dean chewed and swallowed the marshmallow. Sam hissed in a breath.

"What are you waiting for?" Sam finally wheezed. "Do I need to drop some more
ice cream or something?"

Oh, fuck. There was only so much a guy could take, and Sam's ragged breathy
voice plus Sam's thigh under his mouth plus Sam's dick against his cheek plus
the thought of Sam deliberately dropping more ice cream for him to clean up with
his tongue... yeah, that was pretty much it. Dean didn't even bother unzipping
Sam's jeans, just turned his head and pressed his mouth to the swell of Sam's
cock, sucking him hot and wet through the denim, clutching at Sam's thigh with
the hand that wasn't holding him up.

"God--" The mattress squeaked softly as
Sam's head dropped backwards onto it, and Sam's whole hand curled over the back
of Dean's neck. "Don't stop, oh my God, holy shit, don't you
dare stop--"

Stop? Stop!? Was Sam fucking kidding?
Stopping was the last thing Dean wanted to
do. He mouthed his way up until he came across a particular spot near Sam's
waistband that was already a little damp. He guessed correctly that he'd found
the head of Sam's dick. Sucking on that damp spot like it was another bit of
fallen ice cream confirmed it, if the noises Sam made in response were any
indication. And if the noises weren't confirmation enough, Sam reaching down and
scrabbling uselessly at the fly of his jeans damn sure was.

Sam still had a little bit of chocolate on his finger. Just a little brown
smudge. Just enough for Dean to notice and want. And when he was done taking
care of that (by craning up and sucking it right off--how else?), he figured it
was only fair that he give Sam a hand with his jeans. Or, well, a mouth. One
solid jerk of his head and the button gave way; a little fiddling with teeth and
tongue and the zipper followed.

The great thing about boxers was, you didn't have to get a guy all the way out
of them to blow him. A little tugging on Dean's part and a little wriggling on
Sam's part and that was more than enough. God,
Sam tasted good. Dean didn't want to dwell on that too long because given
their current state, it might have ended up leading to some really disturbing
mental images, but Sam tasted good, salt
and sweet and just a little bit of soap and God,
Dean thought, if Sam tasted this good now, what the hell would he taste
like when he came--

"Jesus Christ," Sam wheezed again, and the
hand on the back of Dean's neck slid down to the waistband of his jeans. "Turn."

"Mrm?"

"God!"
For all the bitching Sam usually did about talking with his mouth full,
he sure didn't seem to have a problem with it right now. "Nngh.
Turn. On your side."

Oh. Gotcha. Honestly, Dean was kind of
thinking about doing that anyway, because if he didn't do something about his
own dick soon he was going to--well, actually, he had no idea
what he was going to do, but he was fairly
sure it wouldn't be good. He got his jeans unzipped and shoved down, but when he
went to get a hand on his dick, Sam batted it away.

Before Dean could ask what the hell was up with that (or, well, make another
little muffled inquisitive noise around his mouthful of Sam), Sam was toppling
over onto his side, bottom leg pulling up
to give Dean a thigh to use as a pillow, and--holy motherfucking
shit.

He had no clue what'd given Sam this idea, and he was sure as hell not
complaining.

Because all those things he'd been watching Sam do to ice cream cones and corn
dogs and Oreos and fingers for the last two days, Sam was now doing to his
dick and oh holy shit this was not going to
take long at all for anyone involved.

If nothing else, they damn sure had something to take their minds off their
stomachs now.

---

Sometime around two in the morning, while Sam worked on a corn dog and Dean was
sprawled across his lap munching on Pringles, Sam started... kind of... slowing
down.

"Oorgh," Sam said.

"You okay?" Dean asked, twisting around to see if anything weird was happening
up there.

"I, uh..." Sam laughed. And put the corn dog down.
"I'm full."

Holy shit, could it be? "Yeah?"

"Yeah." Sam laughed again, and then groaned a little and flopped over onto his
back. "Oh God. Ow. Oh God. I'm so full. I'm gonna
pop."

"...hey! I'm not full!" Dean pouted a
little. "Dude, I'm still starving. What the hell?"

"Huh." Sam frowned a little and rubbed his stomach. "Hey. I was behind you,
remember? It hit you full-on."

"...huh." Yeah, that made sense. "...I'm still hungry."

Sam laughed and groaned and shoved the paper towel bearing his unfinished corn
dog at Dean. "Here. Finish this. Please."

Dean grinned. "You just wanna watch me eat a corn dog. Perv."

Sam grabbed the nearest pillow and whomped him across the back of the head.

---

Two hours later, Dean was spooned up against Sam's back, full and happy and
food-comatose.

---

Believe it or not, there was actually a little food left the next day. The
perishable stuff stayed in the fridge after they checked out, with a note for
the maid to help herself. The non-perishable stuff went into the Impala's trunk
to replace the emergency stash.

Just in case.

---

"Pizza."

"Apple tart."

"Texas trash."

"Ham."

"My dick."

Splutter. "Dean!"

"What?"

"Your dick is not food!"

"You kinda thought it was a corn dog last--"

"Dude!"

"Okay, okay. Heh. Milk Duds."

"Sushi."

"Ice cream."

"Mushrooms."

"Spray cheese."

"E... E... ha! Escargot."

"Onion rings."

"BZZT."

"The fuck you mean, 'BZZT'!? Escargo--"

"--ends in 't.'"

"...it does not."

"Does too."

"What the hell is escargot, anyway? You
made that up, didn't you?"

"No I didn't! It's French."

"French, my ass. You totally made that up."

"I did not!"

"Okay, then what is it?"

"Snails. With garlic butter and--"

"Well then BZZT yourself! Snails aren't
food!"

"They are if you're French."

"We're not French. Snails are not food."

"They are if you're hungry enough."

"I'd never be that hungry."

"Right."

"Dude, I wouldn't even eat your nasty-ass tuna fish. I'd never eat
snails."

"So you're saying if someone put a plate of snails in front of you yesterday all
smelling like butter and garlic and stuff, you wouldn't have even
thought about eating them?"

They drove in silence for a minute.

"Top Ramen," Dean finally said, and Sam grinned.