Chapter 2

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.