~DW~

Dean swatted Sam in the back of the head, sending his brother's hair flying. "Told you it was a coyote spirit."

"I never said it wasn't." Sam ducked and scowled, dodging a second swat by looping around the front of the Impala.

"You said it was a raven spirit. Coyote, raven. Raven, coyote. Two different things, there, Sammy."

"Bite me. And it's Sam."

"A hot coyote, too. Foxy, you might even say." Dean paused by the driver's side door, took a moment to preen. She did have the good taste to flirt with him at the bar, after all. Didn't give Sam a second look because obviously, she didn't go for beanpoles with hair like a wookie.

"Whatever, Dean. 'Foxy' or not, she's still on the loose so just get in the car and let's go. We can't do jack without ammo."

"You can't do jack because you're not me."

"Thank god."

"Aw, Sammy—"

"SAM."

"Don't be sad 'cause you're half the man I am, Sammy. Embrace it." Dean buffed his nails on his leather coat and slid behind the steering wheel. He couldn't see Sam's responding face, but he was positive it involved narrowed eyes and a girly sneer.

"You're such a bag of dicks," Sam said as he took the shotgun seat, shoehorning his long legs under the dashboard.

"Nope, just got the one. S'all I need, Sammy. Allllll I need."

From the corner of his eye, Dean saw Sam grind his jaw. Little brothers were so much fun.

As the big black car growled away from the only saloon for miles, and dusk dropped upon the desolate highway, a woman spied on them from the top of a small bluff. Her long black hair caught the wind, eyes glittering gold-green like a wild animal snared in headlights. She kept watching until the car was nothing but a spec on the horizon. And then she grinned with all her white sharp teeth, threw her head back, and howled. Coyote was pleased.

By the time they'd reached the optimistically named Sunbeam Motor Lodge in Sweet Home, Oregon, Dean's stomach had growled no fewer than seven times, loud enough to make Sam jump. Dean was fucking starving. Like, no-food-for-two-days starving. They'd skipped lunch, so he reasoned he had good cause to be famished. He checked them into the motel and before Sam could stretch his legs, Dean was back and driving them towards that Chinese buffet they'd passed on the way in, a mile or two down the road.

Wasn't a big town—three traffic lights, by Dean's count—so they couldn't afford to be choosey. Sam wouldn't care, anyway. How the hell the kid managed to live on twigs, leaves, and the odd bean burrito was beyond Dean's understanding.

oOo

"So, I guess we're not tracking the coyote tonight, then?" Sam was eyeing the precariously loaded plate in front of Dean as he picked at his own spring roll. Dean's second precariously loaded plate, to be accurate.

And Dean wasn't close to feeling full yet. "Nah. She might be suspicious. We should give her a few days, let her think we ain't tracking her," he reasoned, between bites of pork pot sticker. "Gotta give Bobby a call anyway, see if we've got the latest intel on how to gank these suckers."

"Should get some smudge sticks while we're out, too. Wouldn't hurt."

"Yup. These are killer dumplings. Have you tried—?"

Sam's brows drew together and he shook his head, looking mildly bemused.

Dean shrugged. "Your loss. Crab Rangoon?"

"No, uh, thanks."

"And dude, this stuff with the peanuts—"

"Kung Pao chicken."

"Yeah, that stuff." Dean plowed through another mouthful, mixed with the most incredible, stickiest white rice he'd ever tasted. He could only nod and roll his eyes in clear approval, his cheeks stuffed full. Once he'd polished that off, he continued on to the beef and broccoli, and though he didn't particularly care for vegetables as a rule, whatever they'd put in the sauce made the broccoli takes like amazing little trees of deliciousness and—

"Dean."

—and then there was this soup. He thought it'd be slimy because it did look kind of slimy but no, it was chicken, bits of egg, and heaven. In a bowl. "Mmph?"

"Breathe, man. No one's gonna take your food away, alright?" Sam was half-grinning, half-amazed, and Dean slowed his roll just enough to realize his plate was empty. Again.

"Buffets are awesome," he explained. Wasn't his fault Sam couldn't see the glories of the all-you-can-eat scenario. He stood up and went for a third plate.

After plate number four, Dean had surreptitiously unbuttoned his jeans, hiding the physical evidence of his feast behind his t-shirt, and by plate five, he was finally starting to feel satisfied. He wasn't sure his belly could contain much more, and he had to breathe a bit gingerly as he leaned back and rubbed his tight, swollen paunch. Despite being stuffed to the gills and aching slightly, he felt…content. Surprisingly content. Full and warm and sleepy.

Sam put down the newspaper he'd scammed from somewhere and looked over at Dean with raised brows. "You done?"

Dean cleared his throat and sat up, making some vain attempt at obscuring his gut. Wasn't working; the mound was clearly outlined by his t-shirt, no disguising it. "What? I was waiting for you."

Sam snorted a laugh and tossed him a cellophane-wrapped fortune cookie.

Happy life is just in front of you. Lucky numbers: 11, 16, 30, 43, 45, 48.

Dean squeezed the fortune into his pocket and ate the cookie. Then he ate Sam's cookie.

~SW~

Sam woke up the next morning to a noticeably silent room. Dean wasn't snoring or showering or breathing and after a snap of adrenaline, Sam was awake enough to find the note left on the nightstand for him:

Went out to grab b'fast. Don't freak out, freak.

"Ass hat," Sam grumbled. But Dean rising early had its perks. Sam could shower as long as he liked, so he did. He used every damned drop of the hot water, took his time, jerked off, and he wasn't the least bit sorry about it. He shaved, dressed, and was just sitting down at the laptop to find the nearest New Age shop when he heard the Impala's trademark rumble. Sweet, because he was starting to get hungry and he needed coffee like burning.

After a minute or two, keys rattled and a boot thumped on the door. "Hey, Samantha, got my hands full here; a little help?" Didn't surprise Sam that the doors were so thin, he'd understood every word.

What did surprise him, however, was Dean. For a couple of reasons.

First off, there was the quantity of food Dean had wrangled for breakfast. A big flat box of donuts, three bags of breakfast sandwiches from various drive-thrus and a pair of large coffees nestled in a cardboard drink carrier. But the capper was when he sat everything down on one of the beds. Sam had to gawk. He downright gawked. Couldn't help himself.

Something was very, very wrong.

Dean was distinctly pudgy. Overnight, he'd packed on maybe twenty pounds, by Sam's guesstimate. His jeans were snug, he had the soft start of a double chin, and from the looks of his middle (and the crumbs on his shirt), he'd already eaten breakfast. A fair amount of breakfast. Dean's stomach was a conspicuous bump under his t-shirt.

"Jesus, Dean!" Sam felt nailed to the spot.

"Yeah, yeah. We've got an issue," Dean grumped, rubbing at his belly and dislodging the guilty remnants of a muffin. Or two. Or three. "I think I got whammied."

"You think?" Sam fairly squawked.

Dean lifted his hands, palms up, in a befuddled gesture. "So we start looking for hex bags and sigils and shit. Car's clean, already checked her." He flipped open the box of donuts and pulled one out, eating nearly half a chocolate-glazed in a single bite. His brows arched in appreciation. "These are damned tasty, man."

Sam snapped his mouth shut. This was not looking good.

By day's end, Dean had resorted to sitting around in his boxers because his jeans wouldn't make it past his knees. He'd struggled and heaved, but there was simply no getting them over his ass. His t-shirt covered maybe half his middle, stopping just short of the growing bulge of love handles at his sides. He didn't seem nearly as bugged about it as Sam was feeling, though. Dean had propped himself up on a bed, TV remote in hand, noshing on a bag of Cheezy Poofs or whatever he'd found in the snack machine around the corner, while Sam paced and fretted and dragged his hands through his hair.

"This is nuts," Sam announced with complete certainty.

"I know, man. I know. But you gotta sit down; you're wearing out the carpet." Dean held out the bag for Sam to share, but Sam was having none of it.

"Don't you get it? What if, I mean, when is this gonna stop? We can't just sit here watching you—" Sam flapped his hands helplessly.

Dean frowned and tugged ineffectually at his shirt. "Hey, now. Don't be mean. I'm sensitive."

"This isn't a joke, Dean!"

Dean sighed and rocked himself out of the bed. "Well, freakin' out ain't gonna help. It feels like a curse to me. And curses can be broken, right?" He got two beers from the mini-fridge humming in the corner and shoved one into Sam's hand. "We just gotta figure it out, is all."

Okay, maybe he was right. It did have all the hallmarks of a classic come-uppance curse, which was usually short-termed and often expired all on its own. Sam nodded, more for his own benefit than Dean's, and uncapped his beer, taking a long swig of liquid hope. "Fine. We give it another day. But if this thing doesn't seem to be slowing down by then, we make tracks to Bobby's. Deal?"

"Deal." Dean knocked his bottle against Sam's and sat back down on the bed, his belly bouncing long after the mattress had stopped.

They fell asleep that night to the dulcet tones of the mini-fridge running and the constant gurgling of Dean's stomach.

~DW~

The next morning, it was Dean's turn to rouse last; he jolted himself awake with a snore. It was still absurdly early, judging from the colorless glow leaking through the curtains. Sam had left a note in his rushed scrawl on the flipside of Dean's note from yesterday. Gone running, was all he'd written. Sam always ran when he was stressed out.

Dean rolled onto his back, stretched, before noticing a breeze across his middle, an uncomfortable constriction under his arms, and when he tried to sit up, it took him three attempts. He grunted, swung his legs over the edge of the bed, and his palms landed on a daunting mound of overstuffed belly. His belly.

It had grown massive overnight. His t-shirt was choked over the swell of it, rucked up under his arm pits and way too tight for any sort of comfort. Fending off a flicker of panic, he hauled himself to his feet and swayed as his center of gravity seemed to resituate heavily, like a blow-up punching bag. Slowly, dreading the discovery, he looked in the mirror over the dresser.

"Holy shit," he mumbled.

He barely recognized the guy looking back. Chipmunk cheeks, a pillow-sized roll of midsection flooding out overtop his distressed boxers, even his arms were fleshy and plump. This situation was't slowing down. He cupped his hands experimentally under his stomach, which was weighty and rippled like Jello. Turning around, he caught a glimpse of his broad backside. Just…whoa. He was not looking forward to a visit with Bobby over this.

The door rattled open and Sam stepped in, still breathless, his sweats damp and his hair hanging in tendrils. "Holy shit," he said, eyes widening when he caught sight of Dean.

"Yeah. My thoughts exactly." Dean tried to be game about it, but he felt his smile flag and a curl of worry start in his chest.

"No, no, I mean, um, it could be worse?" Sam shut the door behind and made a beeline for Dean, pressing a finger into his fat middle.

"Stop, Sam! I'm not the Pillsbury Dough Boy. Christ."

Sam pulled back quickly, his brow a mess of furrows. "Sorry! I just. How…how do you feel?"

"I don't know! How am I supposed to feel?"

"Does anything hurt?"

"Well, no." Dean mused on the question for a second as he squirmed out of his tight t-shirt. Dammit, he liked that t-shirt. "I guess I feel okay."

"What?"

"I mean, I feel kinda alright." Dean shrugged, just as baffled as Sam was. "Nothing aches or anything. Though I s'pose we should buy me some Big 'n Tall stuff before my circulation gets cut off. I dunno, Sammy. Not even hungry right now, so maybe this—" he gestured to his whopping middle "—is it, huh?"

Sam nodded a little desperately. "Let's hope."

There were a few awkward moments of Sam trying very hard not to look at Dean and Dean looking far too much at himself in the mirror before Dean huffed a sigh. "Go rinse off, man. You smell like sweat and angst. It ain't pretty."

Sam nodded again. "Sorry. I just—"

"Go, Sam."

"Right."

~SW~

There was a Walmart just down the road and after his shower, Sam ran out and grabbed a selection of jeans (in various sizes because neither of them had a clue as to Dean's current girth) and a few 2XL t-shirts—which still proved to be roomy, much to Sam's relief.

This time, it was Sam's stomach that rumbled first, and Dean insisted they hit a greasy spoon in town for food. Sam was hardly keen on the idea, giving Dean all manner of loaded glances, but Dean swore up, down, and sideways that he felt fine. Normal, even. Sam eventually relented, and they wound up at Addi's Diner. Dean ordered the blue-plate special, and Sam requested pancakes with a side of fruit. Typical for both of them. Sam watched Dean as he casually buttered his toast, peppered his eggs, nothing hurried or urgent about his actions, and for the first time in two days, Sam was really starting to believe this curse was temporary, that this was the extent of it and now all they had to do was get Dean back in shape and the world would be on-track again. No big.

Then Sam started eating.

As soon as he put that first bite of pancake in his mouth, Dean's stomach growled. Loudly. He looked over at Sam with hoisted brows. Sam swallowed, stabbed a strawberry with his fork and popped the fruit in his mouth. Dean's belly answered with another forceful complaint, and Dean cautiously picked up a strip of bacon, nibbled it. Sam followed by eating a grape. As if on cue, Dean's stomach roared again.

"Fuck it," Dean said. As though a starting flag had dropped, Dean launched into his breakfast with all the zeal of a competitive eater. Almost before Sam could pull his hand away, Dean was stealing food off his plate too. All Sam could do was stay clear and watch, stunned.

After nearly twenty minutes of ceaseless eating, Dean finally showed signs of stopping. Even their waitress was side-eyeing their table; she'd brought him biscuits and glasses of milk and a side order of Canadian bacon and another short stack of pancakes and…

"Oh, god," Dean moaned, dropping his fork to an empty plate and stifling a burp.

It wasn't simply that he'd just eaten a ton of food, it was that the curse seemed to have fully triggered, and Dean was far bigger than he'd been when they'd arrived at Addi's. Bigger everywhere. The 2XL shirt was no longer roomy. Fat padded his face and swallowed up his chin, made little sausages of his fingers. His t-shirt strained over the globe of his belly, which pressed into the edge of the table and practically sealed him into the booth.

This would be nigh impossible to explain to a civilian; they were lucky it was a weekday and the diner was nearly empty.

"Get to the car," Sam hissed. "I'll take care of the bill."

Dean was in no position to argue. Hell, he was barely in a position to squeeze out of the booth.

By the time Sam had hustled back to the Impala, Dean was in the passenger seat and the car was idling. He was rubbing his hands over his bulging abdomen and Sam didn't have to question the miserable look on his face. Dean had lapped his enormous belly over the open waist of his brand new jeans (42's, if Sam remembered correctly), settling the weight on his thick thighs, and a wide slice of pale, freckled skin plopped out beneath the hem of the t-shirt.

"We'll fix this," Sam said with a surety he didn't feel, guiding the car out of the parking lot.

Dean bounced as they bucked over a pothole. "How? One more meal like this and—"

"I have a theory."

"A theory?"

"Yeah, but you've gotta promise let me test it, Dean. Pretty sure it'll buy us time on our way out to Bobby's, okay?"

Dean shifted, palming his great bloat of belly, and didn't argue. As far as Sam was concerned, silence meant consent.

~DW~

Sam packed up and checked them out of the Sunbeam Travel Lodge while Dean changed into the 44" jeans. FORTY-FOURS. And they still pinched. He stopped bothering to cover that bit of fat that just wouldn't fit in either the jeans or the t-shirt, and he couldn't even lace up his stupid boots. Who got fat on their feet? Who? Dean Winchester did, apparently.

Sam, to his credit, didn't say anything further about Dean's size. They traveled in as straight a line as possible towards Sioux Falls, South Dakota, only stopping for gas and piss breaks. When Sam got too tired to drive, Dean took over. It seemed—though it could've just been wishful thinking—that the space between his gut and the steering wheel was getting a little more generous, if only by small degrees.

Somewhere around Bozeman, they decided to stop for the night and when Dean stood up, he was sure some of the weight was drifting away. The jeans were starting to droop and that annoying pocket of belly flab was no longer shoving out of his clothes.

Sam was grinning when Dean modeled his 42's again. By morning, he was into the 40's.

"You'd better find yourself a belt," Sam said as he threw their bags in the trunk. "Big Boy jeans aren't cheap. I'm not buying you any more."

"Hey, at this rate I'll be America's Next Top Model by the time we get to Bobby's."

"You watch that show?"

"What? Hello, models, Sammy."

"It's Sam." The response was habitual. Sam tossed Dean the keys. "You got the wheel."

Dean snagged them from mid-air and grinned. "Hells, yeah. You drive like a gramdma. Baby loves me better."

"Whatever, jerk. At least I can see my feet."

"Ho ho ho. Funny, stretch."

They chewed up highway for an hour or two, debating Kiss vs. Motley Crew and how they were going to put a cap in that coyote spirit's ass as soon as they got this curse sorted out. Dean checked in the rear-view mirror every few miles, pleased to find himself looking more and more like, well, himself—the puffiness retreating to the point he could almost see cheekbones again.

Gradually, Dean realized they hadn't eaten in ages. He was starting to feel the edges of hunger gnaw at his insides, but only normal hunger. Not the ravenous beast that had him devouring everything within reach. Not the crazy, supernatural sort.

Dean kept driving anyway, half-afraid the other shoe would drop and all of a sudden, he'd find himself eating the leather off the car's seats, but it never did. Sam had nodded off against the window so Dean made the executive decision to take an exit and hit a Mickie D's. He was pulling up to the drive-thru speaker when Sam blinked out of his catnap.

"Chicken McSomething, Sammy?"

"It's Sa—what? No. Um, nothing for me. Thanks."

Dean scowled. "Why not? You too good for McFrenchFries or McWhoppers or McAnything? When was the last time you ate, man?"

"When you did." Sam stretched his arms across the roof of the car and yawned. "Just get me a coffee. Large. Two creams, one sugar. Thanks, miss."

Dean started to object but Sam cut him off with a finger leveled at Dean's steadily shrinking belly. "You said you'd let me test my theory," Sam warned. "So shut it."

In a rare instance of generosity, Dean shut his cake hole except to eat his fast food. And it didn't seem to lead to further gluttony, either. Sam sipped his coffee, and they drove straight across the Mount Rushmore State, aimed at Bobby Singer's scrap yard.

oOo

Bobby readjusted his ballcap for the twelfth time and slumped back in his creaky desk chair. He was surrounded by piles of books, dust motes floating through the glow of an old lamp that sat atop a particularly precarious stack. Dean noted the motion from the corner of his eye and looked up from his own tome; the words had started to swim anyway. It was late and after driving all day, he should've gone to bed hours ago. But neither he nor Sam felt much like sleeping, all cursed and shit, not when the man most likely to solve all their problems had rolled up his sleeves and was ready to work.

This, however, was not Bobby's "By George, I think I've got it!" face.

"I dunno, son," he said gruffly. Because gruff was Bobby's default.

Dean scrubbed at his eyes and drained the last dregs of his beer. "What does that mean? 'I dunno, this thing has probably run it's course' or 'I dunno, I think Sam's right'?"

At the mention of his name, Sam stirred from his sprawl on the couch, a book open on his chest. The lighting, or lack thereof, cast his eyes into deep pockets of shadow.

"Means I got nothing conclusive and we might wanna test Sam's suspicions. Just 'cuz. Least we can rule something out."

Dean had just gotten back into his old clothes, though they still pinched. He looked down at the residual paunch that puffed over the top of his waistband, but his curiosity won out. "Alrighty then. Let's do this."

Sam perked up, frowning. "You sure?"

Already standing, Dean gave Sam a tolerant glare and moved into the kitchen. "What'll it be, Sammy? Toast? Left-over pizza?" There was a pause as Dean opened the 'fridge. "Mystery meat? Don't even know what that is…"

"Toast. Toast sounds perfect."

"Toast it is!"

Dean set about making toast the way Sam liked it—a slick of peanut butter on wheat—and by the time he'd returned, Bobby had cleared off a spot at the desk and Sam was waiting. Sam didn't seem particularly eager to test drive his theory, his mouth tugging down at the corners, but he had to be hungry. With a flourish, Dean put the plate in front of his brother.

"Dig in, Sammy."

Sam cleared his throat, cracked his knuckles, and picked up a slice with his fingertips, as if the thing were fragile or made of smoke. He took a small test-bite, and then a second. A third.

In the awkward silence of Bobby's old living room, Dean's stomach wailed. Sam dropped the half-eaten toast and Bobby sighed. Dean would've taken a moment to feel disappointed, but he'd already turned on his heel and was heading back into the kitchen. There was left-over pizza with his name all over it, waiting in the refrigerator.

By midnight, he'd almost eaten Bobby out of house and home. Empty cartons piled up on the counters and he'd sure as hell put a dent in the pantry surplus. Bobby eyed him incredulously, his mouth slightly agape, as Dean lounged on the couch, jeans unfastened and belly spilling out in a widening, basketball-sized lump.

"Well, that answers that," Sam said flatly.

~SW~

Sam stood on the front porch the next morning and waved as Bobby's truck barreled away from the house. He was heading for one of the Native American reservations a few counties over, in the hopes of either talking to someone who knew something, or to comb through the tribe's resource material for information. He probably wouldn't be back until tomorrow so in the meantime, Sam and Dean were given strict instructions to stay put and not get their fool asses into any more trouble. To which they both readily agreed.

The porch groaned as Dean stepped out onto it. He was back in the 42" jeans and 2XL t-shirts, and was taking the situation really well, all things considered. Sam scritched at his own empty belly and felt a vague, melancholy yearning for Frosted Flakes.

"How you feeling?" he asked as Dean rolled up beside him. And by 'rolled', Sam really meant rolled.

Dean shrugged. "Feeling a little…peckish."

"Peckish?" Sam snorted.

"Hey, I read."

"Bobby told you that word, didn't he?"

"Shut up. So what if he did?" Dean hip-checked Sam and nearly sent him over the edge of the porch.

Sam righted himself and shoved back. "Not funny, Dean."

"Oh, come on. It is. Just a little." When Sam just grunted, Dean heaved a sigh. "Breakfast?"

"What, are you nuts? Can't."

"Sammy, man, this isn't fair. You gotta be hungry."

"Dean. How much do you think you weigh?" He gave Dean his most earnest stare. Of course Sam was hungry, but not withering away, and he didn't dare eat until they figured out the parameters of the curse, just how far it would go.

"Hell, I dunno. Hey, maybe Bobby's got an old scale around the place. He's hoarded everything else…"

And so began the search. Dean's eagerness to find it was a little suspicious, but they didn't have much else to do. Sure enough, in the upstairs bathroom under a pile of old towels, there was a scale. Sam fiddled with it for a few minutes, getting the calibration right and since he had a pretty good idea as to his own weight, he confirmed the scale's accuracy by stepping on it first: 192. Close enough.

He stepped off and hoisted his brows at Dean. "Have at it."

Smoothing his shirt over his belly, Dean got on the scale, barefoot. He jutted his chin forward but no amount of leaning was going to give him a glimpse of the numbers beneath his girth. "Um, Sammy—"

"Yeah, yeah." Sam crouched, squinted, exhaled long and low. "287. And just so you know? The scale only goes to 300."

"Son of a bitch," Dean mumbled.

oOo

By noon, they'd played rummy, watched game shows, anything to avoid thinking of lunch but the world conspired to make it difficult. Every other commercial was pushing fast food or 'Top Chef' or breakfast cereal. Every time Sam's stomach rumbled, Dean gave him a woeful look that got on Sam's last nerve, certainly exacerbated by low blood sugar. Dean admitted he was hungry too, but he wouldn't eat if Sam couldn't eat, which annoyed Sam even more. Food became the big ol' elephant in the room.

"I'm taking a nap," Sam said, dragging his surly self upstairs, away from temptation. He only had to weather another day before Bobby got back; might as well spend it unconscious.

The respite didn't last nearly long enough.

When the fragrance—nay, the perfume, the undeniable olfactory glory—of frying bacon drifted upstairs, Sam nearly cried. He hid under the pillow, hoping to smother the smell but it was stuck in his brain like an obsession. Tossing and turning didn't help; he couldn't convince his stomach that it didn't want food. He cramped and rubbed at his empty middle, miserable.

And to cap it all off, he heard Dean downstairs, singing to himself, happy as the proverbial clam. Mmmm, fried clams. With hushpuppies and a wedge of lemon...

"All right. That's it." Sam threw off the covers. He could play dirty pool with the best of 'em.

Yanking off his jeans like they'd somehow offended him, Sam put on his running clothes and sneakers, and plastered on a forced smile before going downstairs.

"Gonna go for a run," he announced airily, giving Dean a salute.

"Wait; I'm almost done with the BLTs—"

"Aw, how thoughtful."

"But you love BLTs." Dean looked mortally wounded, a spatula drooping in one chubby hand.

"Have a field day, Dean." And Sam headed off at a lope.

Wasn't easy to get in the zone, get his energy up, but Sam had run track at Stanford—ran his whole damned life—so it was only a matter of time before he hit his stride and let his mind wander, his breathing coming in measured pulls despite the gnawing hunger. After a fashion, though, the odor of frying pig was replaced by the smoky bite of burning wood and damp leaves in the air, autumn on the verge. He was beginning to feel detached, as though his brain and his body were two different machines. He could think of other things, of breaking curses and how little he knew of Native American lore, while his feet pounded the earth and his heart drummed and eventually, he didn't even notice the ache in his belly.

When he returned to Bobby's, he felt emptied but succinct, streamlined and clear-headed. He'd decided that if it were, indeed, a coyote spirit who had done this to Dean, to them, they might have better luck appeasing the spirit and begging for release than counter-spelling the magics. Would certainly be worth researching.

Dean had left a sandwich and an apple on the table for Sam, and was probably in the living room watching TV, from the sounds of it. Sam found it surprisingly easy to throw the meal in the trash.

The following morning, Sam ate the apple and Dean ate an entire box of Honeynut Cheerios with a gallon of milk. Sam tightened his belt a notch and Dean graduated back up to the 44s. Bobby returned just after 1pm, looking sidelong at them both.

"Don't think I'll ever get used to this," he groused, dropping a small stack of books and notes on the desk.

Dean shrugged and wadded up the bag of chips he'd been snacking on. "Got us a way outta this?"

"An offering, an appeasement," Sam volunteered, and Bobby put a finger to the side of his nose.

"Bingo," he said. "There ain't nothing we can do if Coyote doesn't wanna lift the curse. We gotta do some class-A groveling and hope the spirit takes pity on you numbskulls. And if that don't work? Well, you two had better hope it works."

~DW~

Three days.

Three days of research and burning sage and drinking tea made of bitterroot and various other herbs and spices, one black-market eagle feather and a dozen guessed-at chants later, and they were no closer to a cure. Sam gave up and had a bowl of soup; Dean gave in and ate until he couldn't move.

By week's end, Dean wasn't expanding like before but found the 44's tight and uncomfortable. He was getting oddly fatalistic about the mountain of flesh around his middle. He'd never minded a dubious diet and a little extra weight; it usually worked itself out into muscle. There was no 'making muscle' of this weight, though. Not at these dimensions.

And yet, there was a certain freedom to eating whatever he wanted, to being grounded to a spot. To feeling eminently full and unmovable, permanent, with nothing else in your thoughts but the next meal.

Sam, however, still fought for Dean by clearly curbing his own intake because it did seem to make a difference, slowing Dean's spread. Dean was hard-pressed to get much more than fruit into his brother for breakfast, and then Sam frequently went running through lunchtime with minimal dinner and was in bed by ten. He was sleeping so much more than he should've been, probably so that he wouldn't be awake and hungry.

A month and a half into their stay, Dean had worn an enormous sag in Bobby's couch. It was his spot, and he seldom left it. Sam would nod off beside him, his increasingly sharp shoulder jabbing into Dean's arm, and Dean would feel pangs of worry at how thin Sam was getting, how the hollows in his cheeks sunk under the cheekbones and how he could trace Sam's tendons in stark detail beneath shirts that just kept getting bigger and bigger. Sam's knees and wrists were nothing but bone, while Dean's were layered in rolls. It chafed at everything Dean was raised to be: Sam's protector.

Something had to give, but what? Dean had no idea. They'd tried sacrifices, rituals, offerings. Dean wasn't short of begging, especially when he'd caught sight of how many of Sam's ribs he could count. All of them.

And Sam, the stubborn shit, would starve himself just to keep Dean under a ton, though they didn't actually know how much Dean weighed. Bobby's old scale had long since ceased to be useful.

On a nondescript Wednesday, they'd all decided to head to the grain and feed store for odds and ends, and because Bobby said his damned couch needed to breathe. They loaded up in his truck, Dean's side dipping substantially, Sam's jutting hip wedged into Dean's thigh. Their reflection in the store window as they walked through the parking lot was almost laughable: Dean's near-waddle and swaying paunch beside Sam's ramble of pipestem limbs, Bobby bringing up the rear with a distinctly crotchety-old-man expression.

They were working their way towards the back of the store when Bobby grunted, catching his attention. Dean could use a breather anyway; he was starting to wheeze, moving all that new weight around.

Bobby nodded to his left, to the big glass face of an old industrial scale, the kind that looked like what they used in carnivals for those weight-guessing games. Probably handy for large quantities of feed there in the store.

"Git on," Bobby said.

Sam pulled up beside Dean, brows canted. When Dean hesitated—because did he really want to know how big he'd gotten?—Sam elbowed him in the gut. Felt like a poke with a sharp stick.

"Go ahead." He prodded. "You don't have to see your toes to read the numbers on this one."

"You go ahead, Mary Kate," Dean shot back.

"Fine." Sam shrugged and stepped up on the platform. The arm whirred across the face of the scale smoothly, bobbing up to 170 before dropping back down to 160, and then settling back up to rest upon 164. He was fully dressed in jeans, boots, and a heavy coat because he was always cold these days. And Sam was almost 6'5". No wonder he looked like a scarecrow.

"You ain't been that since high school," Dean said, appalled.

Sam looked far less glib than he had a few minutes ago. "Your turn," he mumbled, stepping back.

Dean cleared his throat, glanced around to see if anyone else was watching. There was a dark-haired woman an aisle over, but she had her back to them, examining hoes. Dean hauled up onto the scale. It creaked, the arm shooting up past 200, past 300. It bounced down and up, down and up, in smaller margins until it finally leveled. Dean almost didn't want to read the number, but Bobby had no such qualms.

"328?" he said, too loudly for Dean's liking. And then, as if that weren't bad enough, he whistled.

"Huh," was all Sam said, but it was the way he said it. Stunned.

Dean swallowed. "I, uh. Wow. That's...a lot."

"Yeah," Sam agreed, still with the stunned voice.

They all just stared at the number for a few uneasy seconds.

And then the wheels starting turning in Dean's brain. Years of looking for coincidences in attack patterns and causes of death had trained his subconscious to suss them out, almost autonomically.

"I'm two Sams. Exactly." Dean looked over his shoulder to Bobby, the motion causing the arrow to quiver.

Sam leapt to his own conclusion. "So, if I drop more weight, you will too. And you won't die of a fucking heart attack before you're thirty."

"Whoa whoa whoa, that is NOT what we're gonna do!" Dean lumbered off the scale and grabbed Sam by both of his thin arms. "You're on the verge of keeling over as it is."

"I am not," Sam said, digging in his heels but Dean shook him like a doll.

"Sam. You are. I saw you. When you dropped the mail and stood up too fast the other day? You nearly face-planted and I ain't having any of that. Not while I'm still kicking. So you eat some god-damned lunch. And I'll get off my god-damned ass. And we'll figure this out, capisce?"

Sam rolled his eyes and grimaced but Dean cut him off before he could pull words together.

"We do this as a team," Dean commanded. "Or we don't do it at all."

And then there was clapping.

At first, Dean thought it was Bobby but when the guy looked just as confused, they followed the sound to the dark-haired woman who had been browsing the garden tools.

"Now that, I like," Coyote said, her eyes dancing.

Dean almost snarled. "You bitch."

Sam reached for the gun in his coat, eyes narrowed to deadly slits.

"Come now, I think you've learned your lessons, Winchesters One and Two. Don't make me change my mind." She grinned, and Dean saw fangs.

By the time Bobby had spun around to figure out what the hell was going on, she had vanished.

The peculiar tingle of magic raced over Dean's skin, and he was feeling lighter already.

~fin~