Clutch
bloodwritesDean doesn't know where Sam went, wishes he did when a tentacle whips out of the oil-slick darkness and wraps around his ankle. He's got about half a blink to yell before he hits the water and his mouth fills, and it's fetid, warm, sliding down his throat with more body than water has a right to have, bubbling back up as he chokes and coughs.
His machete is back up there on the bank, dropped as he tried to hold on, but now he's in the water with the thing they're hunting, and he's already on the same path as the last three guys this happened to.
They dragged themselves out of the woods after hours in the swamp, went crazy, then disappeared, never to be seen again. Fuck that. That's not gonna be Dean.
He takes a huge gasp of air as his head breaks the surface, then curls up under the water to get his hands on the weird, slimy limb coiled around his ankle, and tries to free himself.
Immediately, more tentacles appear, snaking themselves around his wrists. The thing is strong, pulls his arms up and away easily, and another curls around his waist. Lungs burning, it lifts him, and he sucks in air before it drags him under.
The water flows around him. They're moving, further from the bank, further from the last place he saw Sam. The next time he's almost out of air and it lifts him again, he starts to yell instead, to scream. Gets out "Sa—" before he's yanked under again, and he's got no air, his lungs are burning, feels like his head is going to explode. Right before he's about to give up, about to open his mouth and fill his lungs with swamp water, his head breaks the surface again.
He fills his lungs, gasping, not knowing where his next breath will come from, not willing to risk it all on yelling—not this time.
As soon as oxygen starts to stabilize in his body, as he expects to be pulled down again, another tentacle whips out of the water, and it thrusts into his mouth, filling his throat, and he chokes as it triggers his gag reflex.
It tastes slimy and fishy and he can't breathe through it, sucks air in through his nose, groans and thrashes as his throat contracts. Kicks at the water, until another tentacle holds his last free limb and spreads him apart. He's starfished beneath the water, only his face above the surface, and he can only see the sky, the crescent moon lightening the tops of the trees.
He's still, for just a moment, but he can feel the thing moving, the water shifting around him. More tentacles slide over his clothes, and his panic shifts into terror as they start to pull at his jeans.
It starts to make sense, some of what the guys who came before him had said before they disappeared, and Dean knows he's going to come out at the end of this alive, but it's not going to be good, he's going to go through hell, then he's going to go nuts, and it's Sam that'll have to deal with it.
Maybe there's still a chance for him. They still don't know what happened to the guys after they disappeared, from their homes, from hospitals and institutions. If they can figure that out, maybe they can undo whatever this thing, this monster, is about to do.
His jeans loosen as he feels the button tear, the zip wrenched open. They're dragged down his thighs, past his knees, get stuck around his ankles because his boots are still on. His boxers are torn away, brush his thigh as they float and finally, sink, and tentacles slide over his bare skin.
Dean bites down with a grunt as a finger-like tentacle slides between the cheeks of his ass, but another one forces it's way into his mouth, holds his jaw open so he can't use his teeth. He grunts again, groans, as the tentacle breaches his hole and pushes inside him. He's covered in this slick, slimy stuff, and it's in his mouth, too, wonders if there's something in it that's going to make him lose his mind, spares a brief thought as to whether it might be better if it was already working.
But no. He's still Dean, he's still in his head, and there's a fucking tentacle shoved up his ass, squirming and wriggling and working its way deeper inside him. His rim burns with the stretch as the girth increases, stings, like he'd expect, though the ache right up inside him as the thing opens him up is not something he'd ever thought about.
He curses his cock for a traitor as it starts to get hard, adrenaline and fear and the thing up his ass pressing, rubbing, stabbing at his prostate making him see stars. It's not fair, and he's disgusted, bile choking him and burning his nose as it seeks a way out, but his dick is stiff and throbbing as blood rushes to it and makes his head spin.
All he can do is hope it'll be over soon, doesn't know for sure what this creature wants, if it's confused, thinks he's something worth mating with. Hurry up and get off, he thinks. Just come and get the hell off me and let me go.
Something touches his cock. Something soft and slimy and...it pulls him in. He doesn't know if it's a mouth or what, doesn't want to think about it. Long as there's no teeth, long as it's not going to bite his dick off. Best case scenario, at this point.
The tentacle in his ass starts to go to town, stabbing, pressing, pulsing against his prostate. Whatever is wrapped around his cock starts to suck, and this is insane. He's being raped by a monster but he's going to come and how's he supposed to tell Sam what happened once it's all over?
That's if he can even speak when this thing is done with him.
He tries to disappear. To block it out, to retreat into his mind, but it doesn't work. He's trussed up like a turkey, tentacle fucking violently into his ass, two stuffed into his mouth, a monster sucking his dick, and when he comes, he's all there, every bit of him is present for it.
He's still shuddering when he realized it stopped. When the thing up his ass stops it's assault. Still stuffed right up there, but still. It continues to suck, until Dean's balls are empty and it pulls off, but it keeps him trussed and it keeps him full.
He's light-headed. It could be the cold and it could be panic or shock, and it could be exhaustion. This stuff on his skin, down his throat, up his ass, maybe he's being poisoned. Maybe it's gonna make him crazy.
They drift. Feels like forever, but he doesn't have any fight left in him. Everything's hazy, altered. Like a crazy dream he'll barely remember when he wakes.
It happens so slow he barely notices when it starts to move again. It's all over, at first, like the entire creature is pulsing or swaying. The tentacle inside his ass swells. Bigger and bigger until he's groaning around the limbs in his mouth, his rim burning as something moves down and tries to force its way in.
His body gives and it moves past his rim, further inside him. He's barely recovered from the shock when another swelling pushes at him, but this time, slips in much easier.
Again and again, something moving down the length of the tentacle—or maybe it really is the monsters cock, and he's being filled with monster come—pushing deep inside him. He loses count, the hazy confusion not helping, but he starts to feel tight and full and like he might burst.
Maybe it's been hours. It finally starts to slow, and then, when he's waiting for the next one, it doesn't come.
He expects to feel a warm gush when the tentacle slithers free, but it doesn't happen. Then they're moving again, and Dean can see the shore.
Dean rises up out of the water, and the tentacles stuffed into his mouth like a living, fishy gag, slip free, but all Dean can do is choke. He coughs up swamp-water, kicks as the coils around his limbs loosen.
They reach the bank, and the creature lifts him out of the water and pushes him up the muddy shore.
The world might be hazy and confusing, but he's still a hunter, so at the moment it releases him and he finds purchase, Dean swings around, grabs the tentacle that until a blink before was wrapped around his waist, and he heaves.
The thing comes up out of the water and Dean sees it in the light from the Moon, and it's a shapeless mass surrounded in masses of flopping, flailing tentacles.
Dean gives it a kick before it lands on top of him, rolls, grabs his dropped machete, and he comes down with all of his weight behind it.
It slides easily into the spongy mass at the center, into the soft ground beneath, pins it like a butterfly under glass.
Dean kneels over it as it lets out a bubbly shriek, squirming and flailing weakly, and then finally goes still.
He manages to haul his jeans back up before he pitches over into the mud and everything fades to black.
He wakes to hands on him, to Sam's voice, urgent and scared.
"I'm up," he says, voice a rasping whisper, hands weakly pushing Sam away. "I'm okay."
"You don't look okay," Sam says, but there's relief in his voice as he helps Dean to sit up. "You've been in the water. Lost your shirt."
"Not all I lost," Dean says, and regrets it, because Sam'll ask questions Dean's not prepared to answer. He looks for the creature, half afraid it's not dead, that it will have slithered away, half disappointed because it's still there, skewered to the ground with his machete.
They've never seen one before, and there's no lore. Sam'll want to poke at it, see what makes it tick. He'll want to record what happened to Dean, compare it to the testimony of the men that came before him. He'll want to stay with him when he goes insane, lock him up good and tight so he doesn't disappear.
"I found one of the missing men," Sam says, as he helps Dean to his feet.
Everything hurts. Dean's ass burns, and his insides still feel full and tight. He waits for a gush of fluid from his body that'll soak his jeans, but it doesn't come. "Was he dead?"
"Bones were stripped clean," Sam says. "Found his wallet nearby." Sam let's go of Dean's arm. "Can you walk?"
Dean nods. "It ate him?"
"Something did." Sam goes back, pulls the machete out of the creature, then pulls a tarp from his bag and rolls the creature up in it. "There were shells. Eggshells."
"Gators?"
Sam doesn't reply.
They drive for hours. Dean sleeps most of the way, never quite forgets that the creature is dead and wrapped in a tarp and stinking up the trunk. All he wants is to shower, over and over and over again, but the swamp and the creature has dried on his skin. It feels tight, like it's shrinking around him, but he couldn't just say it, couldn't tell Sam to stop somewhere so he could wash it off because that would be admitting what happened to him.
Deep down, Dean's aware Sam already knows. Wouldn't be so silent if he didn't. They both heard what those other men said, the stories they told. No one believed them.
"How many eggshells?" he asks, as the sun inches over the horizon and they cross the state line into south Dakota.
Sam's real quiet. Eyes on the road. A hand, pushing his hair out of his eyes. Then: "Dunno for sure. Maybe half a dozen? I didn't pay enough attention. I didn't know." The apology is there in his voice. Tight. Sympathetic. A trace of desperation. "We'll figure this out."
Dean's skin itches as it stretches out over his swollen middle.
Bobby knows something. It's the only explanation for why he's not hollering at them for dumping out what smells like week old fish guts onto his porch.
There's an expression on his face Dean hasn't seen since he took to the Impala with a tire iron. Pity, and a whole lot of fear. "You and me both," Dean says, before Bobby even opens his mouth. "Mind if I use your shower?"
Bobby waves him into the house. The door barely closes behind him before the hushed, urgent voices start outside.
It doesn't matter how hot the water is, Dean's never going to scrub off the crazy. He knows it's too late.
He's got one advantage over the guys that went before him. He doesn't have to tell his story, doesn't have to relive it with people who won't believe him.
"Gonna have to lock me up," he says, to no one, as he follows the path of the water with his hand as it flows down over his abdomen. There's something in there.
He doesn't want to think about it.
There are books spread out when Dean gets downstairs. Sam and Bobby are on the couch, sober and worried.
Dean doesn't want to know. Heads to the kitchen, opens the fridge for a beer. Hopes Bobby is well stocked with whiskey because he plans to get very very drunk.
He downs two bottles before he ventures out into the living room. Sits down with a third, opposite the other men, opposite the books. They're obscure, in languages he can't identify, and they're old. Cracking leather and mildewed pages.
"The panic room," he says. "You lock me up."
Bobby stares at him with that same look on his face.
"We've got time," Sam says. He turns a book around so Dean can see the pages. "There's lore."
Dean glances down, sees a woodcut of tentacles wrapped around a man, and he slams the book closed, shakes his head, but there's no shifting the image. "I'll take your word for it."
Sam swallows hard, purses his lips. "Based on the other vics, you've got a couple weeks before you start freaking out."
"I'm already freaking out, Sam," Dean snaps.
Sam clenches his teeth. "Before you head for water."
Dean wants to block it out. He knows what happened to him. He knows what the bones mean, what the eggshells mean. He looks at Bobby. "Got some of that rotgut lying around? Could do with a glass. Or ten."
Bobby barely moves. Reaches beneath the couch. The bottle he hands over is almost full.
Dean screws off the cap and drinks. Drinks until he feels warm.
"These books tell you how we're gonna get it out?"
"That's not a good idea," Bobby says. "All the lore where its been tried..." He grabs for the bottle, yanks it out of Dean's hand.
"The hosts always died," Sam says.
"Hosts," Dean says. "Hosts?" He watched something on the Discovery Channel once, about a wasp that laid its eggs inside a caterpillar.
"More like," Bobby says. "More like seahorses." He passes the bottle back to Dean. "If baby seahorses ate their daddy after they hatched."
Dean tastes bile. It burns his throat. He washes it down with whiskey. "Hosts die, seahorses get eaten. Failing to see the hope here." Another drink. "Sounds like the best outcome is a bullet, before I lose my mind."
"No, Dean," Sam says, defiant. "that's not an option."
"I die anyway." he empties the bottle. "I'd rather do it on my own terms."
"No, you don't," says Sam. "Only if you're alone. I won't let that happen. I'll be there, and I'll take care of them, before they get anywhere near you, I promise."
Alone. Like the bones back at the swamp. Stripped clean by god knows what hatched out of those eggs. Eggs like the ones inside him right now.
"So they're not gonna burst outta me like Alien?"
Sam shakes his head. He opens the book again, turns the page.
Dean looks down. Another woodcut. This time the man is surrounded by hatchlings like lumpy crabs, and the eggs are still coming.
"No fucking way." The bottle breaks on the floor as Dean leaps to his feet. He wants to run, but there's nowhere to go.
It's not right. He's not a goddamn incubator. "I can't." He rubs his hands over his face, over his head. "How—? You know what? Fuck this."
He heads for the door. Stops on the porch with the door banging behind him. He can't leave. Can't risk getting too far away and letting more of those things loose on the world.
And getting eaten.
He sits, heavy, on the steps. Wishes he had another bottle of whiskey. Maybe if he spends the next few weeks drunk, it won't be so bad.
Sam and Bobby dissect it. Dean watches from a distance, the smell not the only thing that makes him want to throw up.
They lay out tentacles as long as a man is tall and Dean catches snippets of conversation on the wind, like 'ovipositor' and 'mating arm', and his mind twitches back in time and sends him flashes, snippets, and he knows exactly what went where when he was in the water with it.
Sam crouches, slits the creature open, and dozens of translucent globes the size of fists spill out over the ground. Dean bends double and loses his breakfast.
He tries to wash the bad taste away with whiskey, but it won't stay down.
"Talk to me," Sam says.
Dean's in the bathroom, washing his face. He looks at Sam in the mirror and shakes his head. He can't think of anything to say that'll make Sam feel better, and nothing will make Dean okay with this.
The days are passing too fast, and it's not because Dean's spending them drunk because he can't. He throws up as soon as he drinks beer, whiskey, coffee. Like they're pumping something into his system that rejects it, then turns around and demands mountains of food, and water, so much water.
Dean's swelling up like a balloon. He hides it under his shirts. They moved today. Flickering, rolling, squirming. If they're eggs, they don't have hard shells.
Maybe that's a good thing. He doesn't like to think about it, but eventually they have to come out.
But hard shells might have kept them contained. They'll eat through soft shells and Sam won't be able to keep up.
Dean stands at the kitchen window. Fills a glass of water. Drinks it. Watches, as, out in the yard, Sam and Bobby build something that looks like a giant crayfish pot out of re-bar and wire.
There's an itch under Dean's skin. It's been building for days. He keeps looking for his keys, but Sam's hidden them.
He can smell water. There's a creek somewhere north, and it's too clean, too fresh, too active.
But he can follow it. Somewhere it'll come out deep. Somewhere suitable. Somewhere safe.
He slips out under cover of darkness, walks away from the house on foot.
He heads for water.
Lights flicker and the rumble in the distance is unmistakable. He doesn't try to hide, isn't capable of running, so he doesn't bother.
He doesn't even want to. Not really. He's running on instinct and apathy and apathy wins.
By a hair.
Dean lets Sam push him into the back seat of the Impala, do the requisite check for injuries. Then Sam slams the door closed and jumps back in the front. He guns the engine, and heads back to Bobby's.
They lock Dean in the panic room. They bring in something that looks like an oversized kiddy pool, but when they start filling it, Dean's need to head for water starts to ease.
They bring in the rebar cage, and when they're not looking, Dean checks it over.
He needs to know it's gonna hold them. Because he can feel them, and they're strong, and he can almost hear them, and they're determined, and he understands them, and they're hungry.
It starts in the early hours of the morning. Dean can't see outside, but he can feel it. The lights burn 24 hours a day, but he can feel the darkness.
His insides feel like they're tearing apart. Muscles he shouldn't have, or didn't know he had, clamp down and push, and he screams, and seconds later the door bursts open and Sam's there, and all Dean feels is relief.
He's been in the pool since the sun went down, waiting. He's pruney and shivering, his jeans floating against the side because he knew what was coming, and he feels like he should cover himself, like he should care, but he doesn't, and only half of that is the pain.
"I'm here," Sam says. The side of the pool dips under his weight, water spilling onto the floor as he leans over to hold onto Dean. "I'm right here."
The first one seems to take forever. Dean can feel it, and it's not soft like they were before. Somehow, at some point, the shells have hardened, and he remembers how they felt going in, he remembers how the first one felt, like he was going to tear in two...
But he didn't. The creature that did this to him didn't injure him. It needed him.
He finds a kind of peace in that. A kind of purpose in the pain, and he knows he has a place. They need him, they need him to help them into the world.
He pushes. Guides the first egg out into the pool with his own hands. It's slick, slippery in the water, but he holds it, cradles it, brings it to the surface where the shell can dry—
He cries out when it's wrenched from his hands. He fights to get it back, but it's already gone, and the next is so close, he's got to push again.
He gets lost in the rhythm of Sam's voice as the eggs keep coming. One after another, Sam takes them, and Dean knows why, but there are instincts at work here, and he fights, until another moves down to take its place.
Then there are no more. Dean doesn't realise at first, not until he's out of the pool, dripping water and the slimy slick running down the inside of his thighs all over the floor, and he's dragging at Sam's wrists and crying out as the final egg goes into the cage.
"Please let me—" he begs. "Please I need to—"
Then Sam's arms are around him, wrapping him in a blanket and pushing him away from the clutch. "Is that it?" he asks. "Is that all of them?"
"They need me," Dean begs.
"Yeah," Sam says. "For dinner. Dean, if they hatch and escape, they will eat you. They will eat me."
That pulls Dean up short. "Yeah," he says. "I remember." He looks at his brother, at the pleading on Sam's face. "What do I have to do?"
"I need to know if that's all of them," Sam says.
Dean touches his belly. It feels loose, empty now, after weeks of feeling taut and full. The cramping is gone, it's over. "Yeah."
Sam lets Dean go, just for a moment, slams a heavy grate over the opening to the cage and latches it. Then he's back, and he strips the blanket from Dean's body and drops to his knees, touching Dean in ways and in places that Dean wants to shrink away from, because it's private.
"I need to know you're okay," Sam says. "Make sure you're not injured, bleeding."
Dean glances at the eggs and thinks that after passing what looks like a good bakers dozen of them, he should be injured, but, apart from feeling a little stretched out, he feels fine. "I'm good," he says, pulling the blanket back around himself. "I'm okay."
"I think there's some kind of hormone," Sam says, still tugging at Dean's body, taking liberties. "An anesthetic effect or—"
"Are you kidding me? Did you not hear me yelling my head off back there? Cramps like you wouldn't believe, Sam." He looks back at the clutch just in time to see—and hear—the first shell crack open. "Oh my god."
Part of him—a big part—wants to get closer, to be close when the offspring emerge from the shells. But the woodcuts in the book he saw weeks ago flash in his memory. "I don't wanna get eaten," he whispers, and grabs for Sam's wrist. "Sammy, I don't wanna get eaten."
Sam guides him to the door. "Okay. We're done here."
Bobby unlocks it from outside, and slams it shut when they get safely out of the panic room. Then he pulls a lever beside the door. "We're not taking any chances," he says. "Reversed the fan. Gonna suck all the oxygen out. Hopefully the creepy critters will choke to death."
Dean lets out a sob. He can't help it. Sam grabs him, pulls him toward the stairs. "Keep us updated," he says to Bobby as he takes Dean away.
to be continued...