They spend Christmas night sacked out in the same motel room they've been in for almost three weeks. It sucks and Dean's starting to get twitchy, but he's not twitchy enough to let Sam drive his car and there's no way in hell he's hauling Sam's ass around at night. No.

So he's on his bed, watching the game. A game. It looks ancient. Dean can see huge seventies hair in the stadiums, and if he hadn't already checked the entire motel for ghost activity, he'd do it again. Sam thinks it's just a master tape that the office plays on loop or something, so that they don't actually have to buy cable.

At least that's what his brother had been muttering to himself while Dean took a nap under the bed that afternoon.

Speaking of his brother...

"Dude," Dean says, "Stop giving me that face. For once, this shit is your fault."

The big copper eyes peeking at him from over the bed manage to, somehow, get bigger. The cheetah just looks at him mournfully, managing to convey the same puppy-dog eyes Dean's seen most of his life. Which just isn't fair. At all.

Actually, it freakin' downright sucks, because they've got rules about being animals. None on the beds, for one, especially his bed, because Sam sheds something fierce and Dean? Does not like the thought of Sam's naked ass touching his covers.

And Sam is very much an animal right now.

"If you think I'm gonna let your ass up here just because you stare at me, you're stupider than I thought, Sammy."

Sam makes this pitiful little meowing/chirping sound and puts one massive paw on the bed. Dean thumps it with one of his boots, purely reflex by this point in time. Sam'd been doing this for about an hour now, just staring like Dean's gonna stop watching the football game so he can jump on the bed and watch whatever little girl movie he was fixated on.

His brother makes a completely pitiful noise of pain, spitting and almost hissing with it, before he narrows his eyes and puts the other paw on the bed. Dean goes to kick that one too, only suddenly Sam's jaws are around his boot, and, yeah, his boots are genuine leather, but he's not too sure that a freakin' cheetah wouldn't be able to gnaw through them like paper.

They ate bones and shit, didn't they?

Dean cautiously eyes his little brother and purses his lips. He's not sure that Sam would actually eat his foot off on purpose, but he's pretty sure he'd chew on it. Just because he's a bitch, even if he takes great delight out of pointing out that, technically, Dean's the one with the canine form.

He reluctantly lets his heel come off of the massive paw. Sam makes a low, pleased sounding rumble around Dean's shoe and heaves his huge-ass self onto the bed.

"You are such a friggin' cheater," Dean mumbles at him, and Sam just lets out this loud, rumbling purr and butts his head against Dean's hip.

Dean didn't try to break the rules. Dean paced around the motel room for hours on end until Sam got sick of him and then he wore a leash for an hour while he went for a walk.

"You really are a big pussy," he says moodily when Sam curls up next to him, head dropping onto Dean's stomach. He swears those big, copper eyes narrow at him and he can even hear the lecture in his head about respecting women coming in the morning, so he says, "As in a girly cat, Sammy. Girliest damn cat I've ever met."

He gives Sam's head an experimental shove and isn't really surprised when Sam just turns a little to give him a furious cat stare.

Dean shivers. He's always thought cats were creepy. Even ginormously huge ones that turned into your brother when the sun came up.

"It's still your fault," he tells Sam. He shifts a little, trying to get more comfortable with close to a hundred and fifty (and no, he does not wonder where Sam's extra fifty pounds go when he transforms. It's weird spell shit, it makes no sense anyway) pounds of big cat leaning on him.

He doesn't really succeed.

"Fat bastard," he grumbles. Sam stretches out from his tight curl, throws three paws over Dean's leg and gives him a patented little brother smirk, cheetah face and all.

Dean fans a hand against a patch of fur, right where the weird stripes on Sam's side look like a sideways D. With his other hand, he scratches behind one of Sam's ears and is rewarded with a purr and a long stretch, Sam's back arching into a perfect bow.

Dean scratches harder. The fur's always kind of surprisingly harsh against his skin and Sam sheds like no tomorrow; Dean flicks his hand after a second and watches a clump of yellow/black hair float down to land on his knee.

Sam butts his head against Dean's leg again and blinks up at Dean once, real slow, when he's got his attention. He's also purring, which has never stopped being amusing to Dean.

Massive cat. Little purr.

"Still your fault," he tells Sam.

His brother has the good grace to look somewhat ashamed. As ashamed as a cat looks, anyway, which isn't much. And then he flexes his claws in the air above Dean's leg and sighs heavily.

"I told you not to piss the pagans off," Dean continues, scratching a little harder as Sam's breathing made his other hand move, "But you? Don't ever listen to your big brother, even though we've established that I know everything. How do you think I ended up with boobs that one time, huh?"

Night and day curse, Bobby had declared when Sam'd called, Dean sulking because he wanted to go run around outside and Sam wouldn't let him do it by himself. Something about kids these days having grown up with Ladyhawk.

Whatever. It was Sam's fault and Dean took great pleasure in being able to call Bobby that night and tell him all about it.

He gives Sam's ear one last scratch before he settles his hand on his stomach. Sam purrs a little louder and balls up again, reaching so that he can shove his way under Dean's forearm, into the cradle his elbow makes. That big head comes to rest on Dean's shoulder and Dean'd be smacking Sam and calling him a girl if they were human, but they'd figured out pretty quickly that turning into animals meant they had very, very little concept of personal space.

And... other issues. Sam's cuddling was less mortifying than the fact that Dean's stuck his wolf-nose into Sam's crotch on four separate occasions.

"You know," he tells Sam when he realizes that those are whiskers tickling his chin and pretty fucking big fangs resting against his throat, "I'm not sure I'm comfortable with this."

Sam's tongue comes out to rasp hard and painful across the hollow of Dean's throat. His purring feels like it's making his bones vibrate. "Fucker," Dean says affectionately.

The cheetah makes a chirping sound at him, loud in his ear, and Dean swats Sam on his... flank, he guesses that is.

"Merry Christmas, Sammy," he says, crooking his arm a little more to scratch at that spot behind Sam's ears that always seemed to itch, "Next time, keep your opinions on 'converting demons to angels with the power of positive vibes' to yourself, dingus."

Sam purrs and doesn't sound all that put out with being a cheetah on Christmas. Dean gives his side a fond little pat and tries to enjoy his ancient football game.