The Production and Decay of Strange Particles, Sam/Dean, Don/Charlie preslash, PG-13.

[mirabella]

Title: The Production and Decay of Strange Particles
Fandom: Numb3rs/SPN crossover, Sam/Dean, Don/Charlie preslash, PG-13
Summary: Don's life has taken a turn for the really weird. He might cope better if he weren't so worried that Charlie's taking home all the wrong messages from the Winchester brothers. Early S2 for both series.
Warning: Spiders.

A/N: Many thanks to sutlers and doro for the beta work, and thetankisclean for helping me try to figure out a title. The one I wound up with is the title of an Outer Limits episode. Also, I don't know what models are actually used in the Vollrath articles, because Springer Verlag is a stingy bitch opposed to the free dissemination of knowledge and won't let me have a full-text PDF.




The first indication Don had that his file review wasn't going as planned was the feeling of slightly damp paper moving, slowly and stealthily, against his cheek. The second was the sudden awareness that the muscles of his shoulders and neck had tangled into a Gordian knot that promised to seize up and garrote him if he moved too fast.

"Whuthhl," he said. Without the paper under him, his lips were smooshed into something that he suspected was the tablecloth.

There was a soft snicker above him. Don entertained vague revenge fantasies.

"C'mon, Donny," Charlie whispered, one hand on the back of Don's neck and the other on his shoulder. "Sitting up now, okay?"

Charlie, and Don's files were open. Don sat up so fast that his back froze into a bright red column of pissed-off muscles. "Son of a –"

The hand that had been on his shoulder slapped down over his mouth. "Don, it's three in the morning! Dad's asleep. Keep it down."

There was pain, annoyance, and Charlie to deal with, in that order, but the first order of business was to slap the manila folders strewn across the table closed and stack them together as best he could without actually moving his back or shoulders. Charlie made a small, annoyed sound and brought the hand over Don's mouth back to his shoulder, prodding and adjusting until Don felt like his spine might actually function at some point in the future.

"I've got a higher clearance than you do, you know," Charlie told him, half-asleep and sulky, and Don sighed, rubbing his eyes against the light from over the table.

"This isn't a clearance thing. It's just, it's a bad case, that's all. Sometimes there's still stuff I don't want you to see."

"But –"

"No, Charlie," Don said, quiet but final. "Not this one."

Charlie plopped down in the chair next to him. He was stripped down to boxers and a t-shirt, and his bedhead was truly astonishing. "I can help," he wheedled.

Don groaned and then had to fight back a giant yawn. "You don't even know what it is. You just want to help because I won't let you."

"I always want to help," Charlie said softly, so wistful that Don frowned up at him.

After a minute he sighed and reached up to ruffle Charlie's hair. His muscles protested the movement, and he ignored them. Charlie tilted his head into the touch like a cat – no such thing as impulse control at three in the morning, was what Terry always said – so Don scratched him behind the ear. "I know, buddy," Don said. "Just, sometimes I don't want to let you, okay?"

"Is it that bad?"

Don's finger snagged on a tangle in Charlie's hair. It took a minute to work his way free. "Yeah," he said. "That bad."

Still looking a little like he wanted to argue, Charlie rolled his shoulders, snapped his head to the side to crack his neck, and yawned. "Come upstairs," he said. "It's too late for you to drive home."

"Nah, I should go."

"You should get some more sleep. In an actual bed. Come on, let's get your stuff gathered up."

Don didn't really particularly want to go home. If he had to get in the car and drive he'd just wind up deciding more sleep wasn't worth it and inhaling a pot of coffee when he got back to his own apartment, and that wasn't going to help him figure anything out. "Okay, okay," he grumbled, and began scooping up his files, evading Charlie's hands as he tried to help.

A photo started to slip out of one of the folders. Don slapped it back in so fast that he nearly dropped the other folders, his fingers grazing hard over Charlie's as Charlie made to catch the photo himself.

Charlie aimed a look at him, narrow and suspicious and far more awake than he had been. Don hoped like hell that no part of Charlie's brain was crawling up the photo like skin covering a wireframe, some sort of weird mental Photoshop equation reconstructing the rest of the image from the thin slice he'd seen. Sometimes it was hard for Don to tell where Charlie's math abilities ended and Neuromancer began.

"Not this one," he said again, and gave Charlie a brief smile. "C'mon, back to bed."

"Go," Charlie insisted, herding Don ahead of him like a tired, cranky sheepdog puppy. Herding sheep bigger than it was. Don needed more sleep.

He got it, but not as easily as he expected. Not until the sounds of Charlie shuffling his way back into bed had faded into silence, until Don had listened long enough to be sure Charlie was settled in.

Don punched his pillow up, turned over, and thought about the contents of those folders. Thunder rolled, low in the distance, and Don went to sleep trying not to miss the way Charlie had crawled into bed with him during thunderstorms when they were just kids.



"My docks are full of Yakuza," Henricksen said when he picked up the phone. "Whatever it is, I don't have time."

Don laughed. "Technically, I think those are my docks. Don't be poaching."

"Hey, I gotta stand around on 'em in this weather? Fuckers are mine." There was a sound like a door closing, metal on thin metal like a tactical ops trailer, and the sounds of the docks in the background dimmed under the sound of rain on the roof. "Eppes? Is that you?"

"The one and only."

"That brother of yours still keeping you on your toes?"

"Charlie? Always." Don gave a half-assed snort and rubbed a hand over his face. One o'clock in the afternoon and he was flagging already. Megan was sitting in front of files looking like the end of days, David and Colby had just about come to blows over the coffeemaker, and just about everyone else in the building was giving their work area a wider berth than usual. "Had to beat him off this new case with a stick. I'm afraid I'm gonna have to tell security not to even let him in the building."

Henricksen made a hrm sound. "Bad one?"

"Those Yakuza of yours. You misplace any?"

"I don't know, let me call roll. Why, you find some?"

Don flipped through the photos in front of him, one after the other. He'd been over every detail of them a hundred times and they still made him glad he'd skipped lunch. "I've got six John Does. The first two have Yakuza tattoos."

"Just the first two? You sure they're related?"

"Oh, yeah. We're sure." Don blew out a breath and closed the folder. "They look like something ate them."

There was a dubious silence on the other end of the line. "Did something eat them?" Henricksen asked with the sangfroid of a man who had seen stranger things than mountain lions in the course of his job.

"The coroner doesn't know. Doesn't know what kind of weapon was used to dismember them. Doesn't know how their insides got halfway liquefied. Their bones were cracked open and it looks like the damn marrow got sucked out –"

"Jesus."

" – and they don't know what did that either. They were bound with some sort of sticky ligature but the lab can't tell us what kind or how, just that it wasn't any form of tape they can match. We can't find their heads."

"You got yourself some giant spiders, Eppes, my man. Call William Shatner."

Don frowned, twirling a pencil around in his fingers. "Some freak thinks he's a giant spider, maybe? I can run it past my profiler."

"Hard to say without seeing the pictures. I can stop by tomorrow. I've got to go lean on some mobsters anyway, might as well ask if anyone's pissed off a lunatic in a Spiderman costume."

"Victor," Don said. "Thanks, man. I know you've got your own problems down there."

"A man can only smell dead fish for so long," Henricksen said philosophically.



"Well," Megan said finally, when she was done staring blankly at Don, "okay. I guess that's not without precedent."

"You've got precedent for people thinking they're spiders?" David asked, giving her the side-eye.

Megan blew a strand of hair out of her face. "Thinking they're spiders? No. Thinking they have some sort of totem animal who acts through them? Not unheard-of."

"But this is a totem bug," Colby protested.

"Spiders aren't bugs," Charlie said from the door. "Bugs are insects and spiders are –"

"Charlie, get out of this room or I will end you," Don said.

"I brought you lunch. Well, by now it's probably dinner," Charlie said quietly, and Don couldn't even look at him because if Charlie pulled out the hurt puppy-dog eyes right then Don thought he might actually cry.

"Shit," he said, and rubbed at his eyes. "Okay, thanks, buddy. Just, can you take it to the conference room down the hall? I'll be there in a minute. Maybe I could use a break anyway."

"Okay," Charlie said, and knocked his fist lightly on the doorjamb before disappearing down the hall trailing the smell of pizza in his wake. Don's stomach growled.

"Did he bring enough for everybody?" Colby asked wistfully, craning his neck to see.

Don opened his eyes and found Megan fixing him with a steely look of disapproval. "Look," he told her and everyone else, "Charlie does not get involved in this one. Okay? There's nothing he could do but give us an idea where the next victim will be, and it's a tight enough kill area that we know that already. No Charlie on this case, no this case around Charlie. Got it?"

"Got it," his team chorused. Don pretended not to see David and Colby giving each other covert meaningful looks. If there was actually going to be a pool started on how long it was going to take Charlie to wear Don down, Don didn't want to know.



"Hey, sorry about that," he said a few minutes later, kicking out a chair next to where Charlie sat at the head of the conference table. Outside the windows the sky was black with storm clouds, rain pelting down in intermittent gusts driven by the wind. "It's just this case."

It was a big day for nonverbal communication. Charlie's smile was perfectly affable, but the entire rest of his face was saying I could help you but you're too stubborn to ask and you keep yelling at me so I'm just going to sit over here and not help, neener neener. "Dad wanted me to come drag you back to the house for dinner. I told him it probably wasn't gonna happen."

Don gave a short laugh and reached for the pizza. "Not today. How was work? You and Larry get that thing figured out?"

"Not yet," Charlie said, and he was off, talking about Somebody's Radius and Somebody Else's Theorem and more Greek letters than spring break in Palm Beach. Don ate his pizza, drained his soda, and let Charlie's voice wash over him, happy and comfortable. He didn't always have time for the math talk, but it was hard now to remember why it used to bug him so much when they were kids.

It was Charlie, that was all, like his breathing from the next room at night, and sometimes Don woke up in his own apartment listening for something that was missing. He could take a few minutes now to sit and listen to the sound of Charlie being happy, store it up to tide him over when…

It occurred to Don that his brain was wandering to strange and uncomfortable places. He shook it off, grabbed another soda, and paid attention to his brother.

Colby knocked on the door just as Charlie was illustrating a second-order factor structure in the pizza box lid with pepperonis and mushrooms. "Got a minute, Don?" he asked, eyeing the pizza covetously.

"Do you want some?" Charlie asked him, pushing the box forward. Colby was at the table liberating a slice before Don could set down his drink.

"Why, yes, Colby, I do have a minute," Don said dryly.

Colby had the grace to look embarrassed, but not too embarrassed to stuff what looked like half the slice into his mouth. "Didn't have lunch," he said apologetically once he'd swallowed. "Victor Henricksen wants you."

Don raised an eyebrow. "He's here?"

"No," Colby said, and his eyes flicked to Charlie and back. "At the docks."

Don sighed and picked up a paper napkin to wipe the pizza grease off his hands. "Get David and Megan and let's roll. Charlie, I'm sorry, I've got to –"

"Oh, hey, no," Charlie said. "Look, take the pizza with you. I should get back to work anyway."

"You take your bike here? Can we drop you off at Dad's?"

"No, I'll call him. Go, it's fine." He smiled at Don, fond and genuine, and Don considered himself forgiven. "Come over tomorrow, okay?"

"Don," Colby said, sticking his head back into the conference room.

"On my way," Don said, and ran his hand over Charlie's curls for luck.



"Eppes, did you curse me?" Henricksen asked.

The alleyway between two rows of cargo containers was lit up with strobing flashes, forensic technicians tripping over each other in a frantic attempt to preserve the scene before anything else washed away. Overhead, Victor's men were unrolling heavy oilcloth tarps between the containers to keep the rain off the alleyway; a few yards away, a handful of LAPD officers huddled together in the dubious shelter of another container, looking resentful. Victor Henricksen was a fine agent with many impressive skills, but successful and diplomatic liaising between the Bureau and local law enforcement was not one of them. Some days it was trying him too high to ask him to tolerate other FBI departments.

"Seriously," he went on, clearly getting on a roll. "You call me about the Curse of the Spider People or some shit, and three hours later I have a body on my docks."

"The first one was close to here," Don told him. "A shed in an empty lot a couple of miles from – hey, what did you say?"

A woman with CORONER blazed across her jacket squinted up at him over the leg half-floating in a pool of oily rainwater. She looked vaguely familiar but Don couldn't remember her name. "I said this one was the first one. The body's been here a couple of weeks. I'll be surprised if there's anything left of the crime scene except the body, with the rain we've been having, but I'll let you deal with that side of it."

"Thanks," Don said, and rubbed his hand over his mouth. There was something he didn't like about this, right now, and it wasn't getting his victims out of order. He looked around one more time, noting the forest of yellow crime scene tape and the distant audience of curious dockworkers and reporters with telephoto lenses. "Megan."

Megan moved to his side, glaring at the scene as though it had personally offended her. Knowing Megan, it probably had. "Don?"

"What are the odds that our guy is going to hang around and watch?" Don asked quietly, keeping his hand where it was. Victor shot him a speculative look.

Frustrated, Megan shook her head and went back to scowling at the scene. "This kind of peri- and postmortem mutilation – that's disorganized, classic Richard Trenton Chase type of behavior. If he is acting out delusions about totem animals, or totem spiders or whatever, he's floridly psychotic. If he were hanging around here, someone would have seen him – he'd have wandered right out into traffic with blood on his shirt. But he wouldn't have brought weapons to the scene and taken them away, either. Organized killers do that, but organized killers don't kill seven men within walking distance of each other and then leave the bodies where they fell with minimal attempts to hide them. This guy's a mixed bag in ways I've never seen. If he were a little more disorganized – maybe he would, but we'd see him. If he were more organized, I'd say he was at home following the media, watching us on the news. As it is, I couldn't tell you."

"Huh," Henricksen said.

Don glanced up at him. "Ringing any bells?"

"Yes and no," Henricksen said. "I've been hunting a guy who sends that kind of mixed signals, but… I don't know. The guy's a sick fuck and there's not much I'd put past him, but the eating people, that would be new."

"People decompensate," Megan said.

"That they do," Henricksen said, but he didn't sound convinced. Finally he sighed and clapped Don on the back.

"Leave your guys here, and the two of you come back to the ops trailer," he said. "I'll introduce you to Dean Winchester."

Don nodded, rubbing at the back of his neck and wondering about the crawling feeling that someone was watching him.



"Any new leads on that case you were working on?" Charlie asked two days later, deceptively innocently.

Don glared at him and set down his fork. "Okay, number one, I told you you can't help this time. Number two, Dad made this amazing lasagna, and I want to eat Dad's amazing lasagna, so I don't even want to think about that particular case. Anybody want another beer?"

"Wow, that must be some case," Dad observed, looking a little more carefully at Don than he had been.

"Beer. Going once, going twice," Don said pointedly, shoving his chair back and heading into the kitchen.

"Get me one too?" Charlie called after him, conciliatory. Don knew better than to think he'd given up.

He pulled two beers out of the refrigerator and twisted off the caps over the sink, habit from his college days when there was no telling how many drunk people had tripped over a given six-pack. Some case, yeah, it certainly was. Don couldn't even place exactly what it was that disturbed him so much about it – aside from the obvious, and FBI agents saw an awful lot of the obvious. Maybe it was the internal organs. Don felt pretty strongly that internal organs should stay inside the body, in the shape and location God made them.

It was getting to him. That whole day at the docks he hadn't been able to shake the feeling that something was watching him like he was Dad's lasagna on legs, and he'd had it off and on ever since. Uneasy, he glanced up and out the kitchen window, but it was dark out and the lights were on in the house, and all he saw was his own reflection and the kitchen behind him. Still uneasy and now a little disgusted with himself too, he looked away and gathered up the bottle caps.

"Hey, do you want some –" Charlie asked from right behind him, and Don caught himself just in time to keep Charlie's nose from breaking on the edge of the sink.

"Don!" Charlie squawked frantically, trying to twist his way free.

Breathing hard, Don let go and stepped back, raking trembling hands through his hair. "Fuck, Charlie, how many times have I –"

"Boys! What's going on in there?" Dad bellowed.

"Nothing, Dad," Charlie called back, scowling at Don and trying to shake feeling back into his arm and shoulder.

"Charlie snuck up on me and I sort of overreacted," Don said, then sighed and took hold of Charlie's shoulder to rub it out. Still scowling, Charlie moved unhesitatingly into Don's grip like Don hadn't just tried to brain him on a Kohler faucet, making Don feel small and miserable.

"Sorry, buddy," he said, too low for Dad to hear. "This case just… I don't know, it's got everybody in all sorts of weird paranoid knots."

"C'mon, Don, just let me help," Charlie whispered. "The bodies are so close together if you gave me ten minutes to find the centroid I could probably give you –"

"Charlie," Don said, bracing his hands on the sink around Charlie's hips. He had four or five inches on his brother and wasn't above looming over him when the occasion seemed to call for it. "How the hell do you know how far apart the bodies are?"

Charlie looked completely unrepentant. "When I brought over the pizza, you had a map up."

A two-second glance from across the room, and of course Charlie had not only seen the map but processed scale and distance. He could probably recreate the map in pizza sauce with anchovies for dead bodies. Don sighed and headbutted Charlie gently, foreheads knocking together not hard enough to bruise. "Can you just not?" he asked tiredly. "Just this once. For me, just to make me happy, can you stay out of it? Please."

Charlie's hands crept onto Don's forearms, trembling a little – still reacting to Don's nearly breaking his nose, and didn't that just make Don feel like brother of the year. "I don't like seeing you like this."

Don pulled away and looked into the sink to see if there was any chance of salvaging the beer. There probably wasn't; most of it was down the drain by now. "Yeah, well, I don't like being like this, so just… don't make me have to worry about you too, huh?"

"This is a very long beer run," Dad pointed out, leaning in the kitchen doorway with his arms crossed and a look on his face like whatever his boys were plotting, he wasn't going to have it.

"Sorry, Dad," Don said, pulling replacement beers out of the refrigerator. "We're good now. Right, Charlie?"

"We're good," Charlie echoed, looking guilty as hell and vaguely panic-stricken, probably out of sheer reflex.

"Hm," Dad said, eyeing them skeptically. "Well, the lasagna's getting cold. Come eat."

Don handed off one of the fresh beers to Charlie and followed him out of the kitchen. At the door, though, he turned out the kitchen light and turned back, taking a long look out the window. There was nothing outside but the yard, as far as he could see; so he went back into the dining room, hoping the lasagna hadn't gotten too cold while he was in there letting this goddamned case crawl right up his spine and rent space in his brainstem.

Charlie's hands were unsteady on his silverware for the rest of dinner. It did a good job of taking Don's mind off the case, but he wasn't really all that grateful for the reprieve.



"…sunsets, long walks on the beach, and frisky women," said Dean Winchester on the main wall monitor, smirking.

"Is this guy serious?" Don wondered.

Henricksen clicked the mouse and the image froze. "No," he said grimly. "He's an arrogant asshole and he's messing with the interrogators. When he's being serious, the guy can charm the birds out of the damn trees. There's a defense attorney in Arkansas, the only reason that woman isn't sitting in jail on an aiding and abetting charge is that I'm pretty sure Winchester's going to need her again at some point and I want to be there when he shows up at her office. A defense attorney. Wouldn't you think they'd heard everything? But she thinks he's some kind of goddamned folk hero."

"Victor's right about the mixed signals," Megan said, tapping fretfully at the file folder in front of her. "Arson, grave desecration, murder, breaking and entering, credit card fraud, bank robbery – it sounds like John Dillinger and Ed Gein went through that teleporter in The Fly together."

"There's an image," David said. "There are two of them though, right? So one's John Dillinger and one's Ed Gein?"

Henricksen double-clicked and arranged another video window by the first, muting the sound and cutting Sam Winchester off in the middle of taking the Fifth with weary exasperation. "Problem is, it's not like Winchester's hauling his crazy brother around and trying to keep him from ripping people apart 'cause of his soap dish poisoning. The brother's more organized than Winchester is. 4.0 GPA at Stanford, acceptance to Stanford Law –"

"But you said he dropped off the grid after his girlfriend died in an apartment fire," Colby pointed out. "So, what, one day he snaps, barbecues the girlfriend, and takes off with his brother?"

"We're trying too hard to make this fit," Don said, raking a tired hand through his hair and probably leaving it standing on end. "The bodies were all found in dark, secluded places; just because the coroner couldn't find any defensive wounds doesn't mean they stood there and watched someone walk right up to them. It could still have been a blitz-style attack."

"Weird things happen around Winchester," Henricksen said. "Your spider guy? Is a weird thing."

"So you think he's a lead?"

"I think you should keep an eye out for him. If you see him, he could very well be your guy. Until you see him, I'd focus my investigation on that Japanese shipping line. You've got a kill area centered around the docks and now three victims out of seven with Yakuza tattoos."

"Yeah, how are the Yakuza feeling about that, by the way?" Don fumbled for his coffee cup. It was too late to be drinking it; he was going to be up all damn night.

"They're quiet," Henricksen said. "I don't like how quiet they are. They're too quiet for an organized crime syndicate that's lost three guys now. They're quiet like I'd be if I'd accidentally brought Spider Guy over on my ship with me and was afraid if anyone found out I'd have to take him back."

Don frowned. "You think that's the case?"

"The last ship on that line came in two weeks before the killings started," David pointed out. "Isn't that a long time for someone like this to lay low?"

"How often do spiders get hungry?" Colby laughed.

"If he thinks he's got a totem spider, that's a valid question," Megan said. "How often do spiders get hungry?"

"Wait, wait," Don said. "Henricksen, rewind and put the sound back on Winchester. What just happened in that video?"

Henricksen slid the cursor back until Don gestured to him to stop, then unmuted and hit play.

" – think your little brother's going to do in prison?" someone said off-camera. "He's a big guy but he's never been inside. Me, I'd shank him before he became a threat. You think he's going to live long enough for some White Power gang to recruit him?"

On the monitor, Winchester's idiot grin slipped, just a little. Just for a moment, something cold and almost feral took its place; and it was probably imagination and too much coffee, but Don was pretty sure if he could somehow pick up a phone and call Winchester right now, Winchester would be able to tell him exactly who was talking, what he looked like, where he lived, and what route his wife used to take the kids to school.

"Aw, Sam'll do just fine," Winchester said, smile like sheet ice on the freeway. "After all, he's got me to take care of him. Know what I mean?"

Yeah, Don thought. Yeah, Winchester, I do.



It was almost midnight before he got home. The light on his answering machine flashed, blocky red 3 blinking into the dark, but he ignored it – anyone he actually wanted to talk to could have called him at work if it were important. Or, in Charlie's case, shown up at the office. Maybe in Dad's case too. And he still hadn't quite gotten over the weirdness of walking into the kitchenette and finding Larry there passing judgment on the coffee like the FBI building was a Holiday Inn and Larry was claiming his free Continental breakfast. Sometimes Don thought he needed a few more boundaries in his life.

Reluctantly giving up on sleep, Don changed and headed out for a run. It was dark between the streetlights, too many clouds overhead blocking out the moon, and the streets were still slick from the rain. He tried to focus on his breath, on the rhythm of his feet hitting the pavement, but couldn't quite get there; his brain was too full of the case, of Winchester and his brother and the Yakuza. There was something wrong in Don's life when the clock on a case was ticking not just toward another death but toward the point when Don wouldn't be able to hold out against Charlie's big, pleading eyes and would have to give him something to math at. He would have sworn those eyes weren't nearly that effective when they were kids.

Breathe in, breathe out, feet on the pavement. Winchester off-balance exactly once during the interrogation, when someone threatened his brother. Charlie's fingers around Don's forearms, shaking. The single worst moment of Don's life so far was not when his mother died but when a sniper nearly took Charlie out.

That crawling feeling of being watched was back, settling cold on the back of his neck.

Don stopped in the dark of a shadow between streetlights, dragged in a deep breath, and looked around. The street was dark and quiet, no lights on in the houses, no sound but the distant hum of traffic outside the neighborhood. No one else's footsteps, no possums or stray cats startled out of cover. Whoever was out there – and Don was either actually losing his mind or someone was out there – wasn't moving now, wasn't doing anything but watching. His hand went automatically to his pocket, which was empty because he'd left his damn cell phone at home, and Don cursed inventively in the silence of his own head.

If he'd picked his shadow up at the docks, it might be their killer. Don weighed the risk of a hit man with infrared goggles against the gain of staying where he was, in dark clothes and in shadow, and making whoever was following him break cover. He knew who in the neighborhood had dogs and what backyards he could cut through to get home without retracing his route. He had no gun and no cell phone.

He really, really wanted to know who the fuck was following him.

After, he wasn't even sure what he'd seen, or if he'd seen anything at all, or actually what in the hell was going on. But he caught her at the edge of his peripheral vision as his gaze swept by, standing just at the outer range of a streetlight in the thin shadow of a sycamore tree – a woman, or a teenage girl, flowing white dress that rippled in time with the breeze that shook the leaves over his head, long flow of black hair over her face and down to her waist like something out of a Japanese horror movie. Don's head snapped back around and she was gone, only shadows of the sycamore's leaves drifting over the grass where she'd been standing. The breeze picked up around him, heavy with the smell of rain, and the feeling of being watched faded but the hairs on the back of his neck were sure as hell not going down any time soon.

"I am losing my goddamn mind," Don whispered to himself, but he took the backyard route home anyway.



Three days and no leads later, Charlie showed up at the office, carefully not going any farther into the bullpen than it took Don to catch sight of him.

"You don't understand," Charlie said, with that set to his jaw that Don swore had meant trouble since Charlie was six months old. "Dad is genuinely going to kill me if I don't bring you home for dinner. Seriously, Don, I'm in a corner here. I've got to come home with my brother or on – wait, I didn't, that was kind of an unfortunate –"

Don had to laugh. "Charlie, take a breath. If your face gets any redder it's going to explode, and I don't want Dad on my case either."

"So come for dinner," Charlie said stubbornly. "Dad's making pot roast. We can have some beers and watch the game after, you can fall asleep on the couch and stay over –"

And that right there reminded Don, who had been in danger of forgetting for a minute between Charlie's pleading and Dad's pot roast, why he hadn't seen his family in days. "Charlie, I can't."

"Why not?"

"Look, just tell Dad –"

"No, Don. Tell me, because I haven't seen you for days either and it feels like you're avoiding me." Charlie blew out an exasperated breath and stuffed his hands in his pockets. "You were really on edge the last time you were over. You bring work home and you're always on, but not like that. If you won't let me help you, at least let me – let me help you take your mind off it."

Don was going to have to check himself in somewhere. First he was seeing Japanese ghosts, now everything Charlie said sounded like an innuendo. And he still had to find a way to tell his brother that he couldn't come over because he was convinced someone was following him, and no he hadn't seen anyone following him, but whoever it was, he thought he might already have led them straight to Dad and Charlie once and he wasn't going there again. Literally. "Charlie, look."

"No. Charlie, look always comes before no, and no is not an acceptable answer."

"When this case is done, I swear, I'll come over and we'll shoot hoops, maybe have a barbecue," Don said, hopelessly. "Tell Dad we'll play a round of golf. Yeah, I know you hate golf, I'll make it up to you, just… Charlie. Not now."

Charlie looked like there were about a hundred things he wanted to say, but he didn't say any of them. Instead he just nodded, looking resigned and mature and not like he'd just been trying to pester his big brother into coming over to eat. "Okay," he said.

Relieved, Don clapped him on the shoulder. "Thanks, buddy. Listen, I've got to –"

"But you have to call Dad and tell him."

"Oh," Don said. "…Sure."



"Good of you to drop by," Dad said, setting a platter full of pot roast down into the middle of the table.

"Sorry I haven't been able to make it over, Dad," Don told him. "I've been really swamped."

"I can tell. You're jumpy," Dad answered, settling into his chair. "You only get twitchy like that when it's a bad case. Anything you can talk about?"

"No," Don said with maybe a little too much force, then gave Dad and Charlie a conciliatory smile. "Let's talk about something that's not work."

"We could talk about how you're not dating anyone," Dad said. Across from Don, Charlie's smile slipped a little.

"That's going to lead to talking about work again," Don pointed out.

"Everybody works, Donny."

"Maybe I don't know anybody I want to date right now. Can you pass me the salt?"

"I'm gonna go get some water," Charlie said, pushing back from the table and leaving Don to stare after him.

After dinner and before the game, Don took out the trash. Charlie followed him out, his shadow sharp on the ground in the light of the motion sensor.

"So, I have to ask," he said. "Can I help now?"

"You know, maybe you can. There's a fraud case we've been –"

"Don," Charlie said.

With a beleaguered sigh, Don stuffed the bag down into the can and turned back to Charlie. "When you were little you used to come and sleep with me when you had nightmares," he said. "You remember that?"

Charlie gave him a small smile. "The monsters didn't like your room."

Don laughed, and had to look away from the adoration in Charlie's eyes. "Yeah, well… I liked that," he said softly, a confession he'd never thought he'd make. "You were off in your own world so much of the time and everything that was important to you was stuff I didn't understand at all, but that – that I could do. That was the one thing you needed your big brother for, to keep the monsters away."

Charlie ducked his head and nudged the toe of Don's shoe with his. "Come on, man. I always needed my big brother."

"Yeah, well, just…" Without thinking, Don reached out and tilted Charlie's chin up, curls falling soft over his hand. "Can you let me do that for a little longer, Charlie, huh? Can you let me be the big brother and keep the monsters away sometimes?"

"I liked it better when you kept the monsters away by letting me sleep in your bed instead of by staying away yourself," Charlie said. "I'm an adult, Don, I can handle the monsters. I don't want to scare them off if they take my brother with them."

"It's just a while longer, Charlie, I swear."

"No. It was years."

"Boys? The game's starting," Dad called, and Charlie jumped back like Don's hand had burned him.

"Coming, Dad," Don hollered back, then turned back to Charlie. "Look, I promise if there's anything about the case I think you could help with without getting too deep into it, I'll give it to you. Okay? I'll look, maybe there's something. But you gotta stop asking."

Charlie took an unsteady breath and ran a hand through his hair. "Okay. I'm sorry, it's just… this has me wound up and I don't even know why."

"This case makes everyone it touches squirrelly," Don grumbled. "Come on, let's go back in. And for god's sake come out here and clean up this weekend. The back fence is one big spider web over by the gate."



It was a small span of Los Angeles the kills were spread over – or at least the ones they'd found. Whoever it was seemed to be hunting in a certain area, which made it a reasonable assumption that he was located in that area, either working or living. And searches of that area were turning up nothing – acres of storage containers and warehouses and ships that would be almost impossible to corner anyone in, a warren. Like it or not, they needed to narrow it down; and it was that and an uncomfortable sense that the clock was ticking toward the next murder that finally sent Don to CalSci at dusk on a Friday night. For some value of "dusk," anyway, since the sky had been black all day. The sooner the damn rainy season ended, the better Don would like it.

The halls were dark and empty in Charlie's building. Even at CalSci, students probably had other plans for Friday night. Probably. Creating working prototypes of keg taps powered by cold fusion or something. All Don really had to go on was how Charlie had spent Friday nights when he was in college, and since Charlie had been thirteen years old in college, Friday nights had involved spending a lot of time sitting on the couch with Mom.

Don had missed his brother. He hadn't really realized it then but he realized it now, sharp pang of wistful loss in his chest that was a little ridiculous when Charlie was right down the hall.

There was a square of amber lamplight falling into the hall from Charlie's open office door, and the low murmur of voices – one student at least who hadn't been invited to the cold fusion kegger, or something. Meaning to tip Charlie off to his presence and then wait outside until he was done, Don stuck his head around the doorjamb, and –

"FBI! Freeze! Get your hands in the air and get down on the ground, move!"

Charlie jumped a foot in the air, chalk snapping like mortar, and too close to him, too goddamned close, Sam Winchester put his hands in the air, looking rattled.

"Don, what – he's a student –"

"He's not a goddamned student, Charlie, now get away from him! You, down on the fucking ground or I'll put a bullet in your –"

"Like hell you will," Winchester said from behind him, and the sound of a gun cocking ratcheted loud in the hallway. Don moved into the room, keeping his aim on Sam, maneuvering into a position where he could see them both without getting within Sam's reach. Winchester moved in closer, not close enough, too well-trained to give up the gun's distance advantage, and Charlie, Jesus Christ, was still standing there, half Sam Winchester's size and right within his striking range. Don tightened his grip, safety off and four pounds of pull on a five-pound trigger.

"Move. Away," Don told Sam.

Sam kept his hands in the air. "Okay, look. Everybody needs to stand down a little here, okay?"

Well, that was just fucking lovely. Sam Winchester, arsonist and suspected murderer with a fetish for digging up dead bodies, was standing within arm's reach of Don's brother and had the goddamned gall to sound like he was trying to be the voice of reason. Don saw red.

"Don, just stop for a minute," Charlie said, sounding like he was trying hard to be calm and authoritative. It was a little unconvincing, the way his voice was shaking. "Whoever this guy is, he's been in here for fifteen minutes without doing anything threatening, so maybe we can all just calm down a little before someone gets shot."

Don was trained in hostage negotiation tactics. He was good at it. Hostage-takers, would-be suicides, crazy people with guns, they trusted him. It was sort of a gift, and Don liked having it, liked using it to defuse situations where someone might get hurt. "Fuck that," he said. "If he doesn't get down on the ground I'm going to blow a hole in him."

"You even look like you're about to and it'll be the last hole you ever blow," Winchester said, taking a step closer.

"Dean!"

"Not now, Sam."

"Jesus, just –" Sam turned back to Don. "Look, I get it, okay? I'm a big guy, I've got a pretty long list of warrants, and I'm right next to your little brother. Which is why he's going to move back now so he's not standing right next to me and he's got the chalkboard between him and Dean's gun. Okay? Then he'll be safe, and Dean's going to drop his –"

"No way, Sam. Him first."

Sam threw a beseeching look at Charlie, who finally got the picture and moved back out of his reach.

"Not good enough," Don said. "You, Winchester. You're going to get away from the door, Charlie's going to walk through it, and if you so much as look in his direction I'm going to blow your brother's head off and then I'm going to blow off yours. Got it?"

"Um, no, that's really not a good idea," Sam said. "Look, you're not going to believe anything we say right now, or tonight, or maybe ever, and that's okay, you don't have to. But you need to believe this: you're both in a whole lot of danger, and it's not from us."

"Yeah, it is," Winchester said.

"Dean, I swear to god – "

"Okay, it's not just from us," Winchester conceded.

"Look, the truth is your brother is safer inside this room than outside it," Sam told Don. "And everyone is going to be safer if you and Dean both just put your guns down. You keep yours, he keeps his, everyone keeps their heads in one piece, because otherwise it's going to be your brother standing here with three headless bodies –"

"Two," Charlie corrected automatically. "Unless one of the bullets ricochets, and your brother would have to move over by –"

"Charlie will you shut the fuck up!"

"Please," Sam said softly. "You're Don Eppes, right? A week ago you were at the Port of Los Angeles investigating a murder that you think is tied to a Japanese bulk carrier ship called the Ebisu. Since that ship docked there have been seven murders, and ever since you were at the docks you've felt like something was following you. Am I right?"

"Yeah, and it looks like I was right about that," Don ground out. Two guys the size of the Winchesters, with a classic car that stood out like a sore thumb, if he'd managed to miss them following him he was going to –

"You were, but it wasn't us following you," Sam said.

"Someone's been stalking you and you didn't say anything?" Charlie demanded shrilly.

"He didn't say anything 'cause he didn't believe it," Winchester said. "FBI agents aren't too imaginative."

"I think the word you're looking for is 'delusional'," Don snapped.

"It's not a delusion, dumbass," Winchester snapped back. "You knew it was there. We're telling you it was there. So either you believe it's there or you believe we're reading your mind. Which delusion do you want to buy into?"

It was Larry who saved him from answering, wandering into the room with his eyes fixed on the journal open in his hands. "Charles, I know you're busy but I want you to – oh my god!"

Winchester was closer now, weight shifted a little to respond to a new threat. It should have been a simple matter to take three steps to the side and take the weapon out of his hand, breaking a couple of his fingers in the process if Don was lucky. As it turned out, it wasn't.

The nearest chalkboard cracked under their weight as they slammed into it, all elbows and knees and grappling for purchase. Winchester's gun fired into the ceiling and Don let go just long enough to punch him dead in the face; Winchester shifted his grip so he was holding the slide of Don's gun, keeping it from firing, and when Don kicked his legs out from under him, Winchester took Don down with him, catching him right in the forehead with a headbutt that made his vision go black for a second. Both guns were still in play and Don had left Charlie undefended and this fight needed to be over right the fuck now, so he landed a solid knee to Winchester's groin and was about to break his wrist and then break his neck when two things happened: Winchester abruptly disappeared out of Don's immediate line of sight, and someone grabbed Don by the collar and yanked him to his feet.

"Enough – enough!" Sam yelled. "Dean, back off!"

Don tried hard to take Winchester out right the hell there, but Sam had six inches on Don and the sheer laws of physics, which he was going to blame Larry for later, limited his effectiveness.

"Look, if you don't get him to listen he's going to die because the – god motherfucking Dean – the thing that's been following him is going to rip him apart," Sam said desperately, and just like that Charlie was in Don's space, one hand wrapped around the slide of his gun like Don had taught him to do, dammit.

"Don, stop," he shouted. "Stop, just listen, okay? They knew someone was following you. Just let them tell you who it is."

The red cleared out of Don's vision far enough for him to see that Winchester was easing down, panting in his brother's grip, trying to wriggle clear but not attacking, not now. Don twisted his gun out of Charlie's hand and moved Charlie behind him, still on edge but willing for the moment to step back until he could reevaluate the situation, get control of it back after he'd been stupid enough to lose it.

"Is it okay to come out now?" Larry asked from behind the desk.



"I know you're not always stupid like this," Charlie whispered as he blotted a damp paper towel against Don's split lip.

"You don't understand what these guys are, Charlie," Don whispered back. "I don't know what the hell they were getting ready to do to you, but –"

"But whatever it is, Sam had fifteen minutes in my office to do it, and all he did was talk about the binomial distribution and ask about the pictures of us on my desk," Charlie answered sharply, then glanced over his shoulder to where Sam was cleaning his own brother up with considerably less patience but no less affection than Charlie. "He's actually got a much better understanding of it than some of my students."

"Who are these guys, anyway?" Larry demanded. "Are we hostages? I don't feel like a hostage, but they said we… no, wait, did they say we couldn't leave or we shouldn't leave?"

"Okay, how about we get started with you telling me who's following me and why it involves you," Don said, a little more loudly than he probably had to.

Winchester shot him a glare and rose, batting Sam's hands away. "Look, you just do what we tell you and we'll get you through this alive. You keep trying to take point and you'll wind up in a dozen pieces with your guts turned to sludge just like those bodies you've been finding."

Don set Charlie back and stood as well, unimpressed. Winchester might have had three inches and some pounds on him, but Don was a goddamned federal agent, and he didn't exactly spend his life rotting behind a desk. "Listen, Winchester. I haven't shot you. I haven't called for backup. Hell, I haven't even called Victor Henricksen, who would beat orphans and grandmothers out of the way with a nightstick to get up here and twist your head off your shoulders. I've cut you all the goddamn slack I'm going to cut tonight. Start talking."

"Can we just call a time-out on the alpha male contest for five minutes?" Sam asked, glowering at Dean. "Agent Eppes, have you seen a woman in a white dress, with long black hair?"

The look on Don's face must have answered for him, because Charlie was right there with the righteous wrath. "Don, you saw her? You thought someone was following you and you actually saw someone and you didn't –"

"No, Charlie, I did not see her!" Don snapped. "I just, I thought I did, just for a second, but when I looked back she was gone. I was tired, I'd had too much coffee, and she just vanished into thin air, so no, I very briefly thought I saw someone like that but I didn't, okay?"

"She's your killer," Winchester said bluntly.

"The hell she is," Don told him. "A woman wouldn't be strong enough to do to those bodies what was done to them. Most men wouldn't be strong enough. You two, on the other hand –"

"She's a jorogumo," Sam said. "It's a Japanese spirit that can change forms between a spider and a woman. They prey on human men. We've never heard of one here, so you're probably right and she came in on the ship from Japan."

"Sort of like tarantulas coming over on banana shipments," Winchester said, unhelpfully.

There was a very long silence. Don spent it trying to think past the sinking feeling in his gut, because he'd known the Winchesters were delusional but he hadn't known how delusional, and it was looking like Megan's totem spider was a lot closer than he'd thought.

Like, in this room with his little brother, close.

"So," he said finally. "You're saying Henricksen was right when he said a giant spider was eating these people."

Winchester couldn't have looked more offended if Don had slapped his mother. "Fuck you, Henricksen called this before we did?"

"I doubt he thinks it's a jorogumo, Dean."

"Doesn't matter, he still got to the spider place first. God damn it. Like I didn't hate the guy enough already."

"Hey, it's not a big deal," Don said, stepping to the side so he was covering Charlie and Larry. "I know maybe you feel like he's stepping on your turf, but he was just joking, that's all. You guys are the ones who know the truth, okay?"

"I told you you weren't going to believe us," Sam sighed. "Look, we're not crazy, and right now I'm kind of afraid you're going to find that out the hard way. The jorogumo in spider form is bigger, faster, and stronger than any of us. Bullets might kill her in her human form and they might not, but the only way we know for sure to kill her is to cut off her head. We think she's targeted you and your brother because…" He trailed off with a grimace. "Okay, this is going to be really awkward."

"The jorogumo are like black widows - they mate with male spiders who wander into their webs and then eat them," Winchester told him. "You walked right into her web back there at the docks, now she's fixated on you as dinner and a quick fuck, and not in the order those things usually go in."

"We didn't see any evidence that any of the victims had had sex right before dying, consensual or otherwise," Don pointed out.

"So she's skipping the quick fuck part. She was on that cargo ship a long time and she had to be hungry, maybe they were just food. You're the first one we know of that she's followed out of the web."

"The point is," Sam went on, "I came here tonight to find out more about you, if you'd been acting strange or off-kilter lately, and when we got here we noticed that that tree outside this office window, which you can go now and look at if you don't believe me, has an awful lot of spider webs in the branches. A lot of spider webs."

"She's been here," Winchester said. "The question is why. She fixated on you, not him, and Charlie there hasn't been down to the docks."

"The part of her that's primed to behave enough like a human to fool men into coming close, maybe that part gets jealous. She sees competition for a mate, maybe she wants to eliminate it," Sam said. "The spider part of her thinks it's pretty obvious how to deal with smaller unwanted males. You eat them."

"Um," Larry said from the window, cupping his hands between the glass and his face to shut out the dim light from the room. "It's pretty hard to see in this light, but it would take a very strange arachnid migration model to produce that kind of –"

"Larry," Don said.

"He's right, there are an awful lot of webs in that tree," Larry said, getting to the point.

"Larry!" Charlie protested. "You can't –"

"That doesn't answer the question of why it would think Charlie was mate competition," Don said, loudly. The first rule of dealing with psychotics was not to try to argue their delusional structure, but Don was still hoping that if he let them say everything they had to say they'd wander off and let Don get Larry and Charlie safe.

Sam, to his marginal credit, looked embarrassed. Winchester didn't. "The two of you are really close," Sam said, rubbing the back of his neck. "I've been around you for like half an hour and to tell you the truth, if I were a giant spider who had never heard of incest taboos I'd probably think he was mate competition too."

Don wanted to protest that on sheer principle, because that was a disgusting accusation and fuck if he wanted Charlie tarnished with it. And then he thought back on the last couple of times he'd been at Dad's, and saw… him and Charlie in the kitchen, Charlie caught against the sink in the circle of Don's arms with their heads together, so close that a breath would have turned it into a kiss. And outside, when Don was taking out the trash, the two of them standing close and Don's hand on Charlie's face for longer than it should have been.

Fuck, Don thought, his stomach churning at more than just the idea that he might have put Charlie at imaginary risk of being eaten by imaginary giant spiders. Fuck.

"I made Don's spider jealous," Charlie said, flatly. "And now it wants to eat me. Do I have that right so far?"

"You don't have to believe us," Sam said wearily. "I promise. Go ahead and think we're nuts. Just let us get you home in one piece and stay there until we sound the all-clear. What do you have to lose?"

That was starting to rattle Don. Psychotics got spitting mad when you questioned their delusional structure, and here Sam kept saying Don and Charlie didn't even have to buy in. "Okay. We can do that. We walk out of here, we'll go straight back to my place and hole up until you let us know we're clear."

Winchester swore tiredly and rubbed a hand over his face. "Sam, they walk out of here and he's going to be on the phone with SWAT teams and Henricksen before he gets out of the parking lot."

Sam was silent for a minute, chewing on his lip. "So, what now? You want to abort this one and walk away?"

"We can't abort it, Sam, Jesus. The fucking thing's killed seven people. It's gonna kill both of them."

"Look, Dean, I know, and I'm gonna feel like shit about this one for a long time, but if it's their lives or ours…"

"Then it's mine," Winchester said, tossing Sam a key ring. "Leave me supplies and hit the road. I'll call when this is taken care of."

"Excuse us," Sam said tightly, grabbed Winchester's arm, and dragged him out into the hallway.

As soon as they were out of sight, Don herded Larry and Charlie into a huddle by the window. "Okay, listen to me. Are you guys listening?"

"What else would we be doing?" Larry asked.

Don wasn't going to dignify that with an answer. "Okay, I think Charlie's right and we're not in any immediate danger, but if we can split them up then we're out of the situation. Winchester knows how to fight, but he's not getting the drop on me again, so as soon as Sam's out of the picture I'm going to take him down and you two are going to run like hell, you got me?" He reached into the pocket of Charlie's jeans, fished out his phone, and swapped it for his own. "Take Larry's car. As soon as you're on the road you call my team and call Victor Henricksen. The numbers are all in my contacts. Go to the FBI offices and do not stop moving until you get there."

"But Don –"

"Charlie, this is not the time to be arguing with me. Do as I say. And – god, okay – keep an eye out for a Japanese woman in a white dress. Just because she can't turn into a spider doesn't mean she doesn't exist, and she might be a witness. Do not get close to her, just keep an eye out, okay?"

"It would be fascinating if she could turn into a spider," Larry said, sounding for once as if he'd rather be fascinated in theory than in practice. "It would be an entirely new branch of, I don't know, zoophysics? Maybe?"

"It would suck," Charlie told him. "It would suck and it's impossible because there is no mathematical way for those molecular bonds to –"

"Guys," Don said. "You with me? As soon as I throw a punch, what do you do?"

"Run," Charlie said sullenly. "Call your team and Victor Henricksen, go to the FBI office, wait to find out if you're dead."

"Aw, Charlie," Don sighed. "Buddy, look, nothing's gonna happen to me, okay? You hear me? But I can't be trying to protect you at the same time or something will happen, now just do as I say."

"What if they don't split up?" Larry asked. "Sam doesn't sound very happy."

Don cocked an ear. The discussion outside was too distant to be intelligible, but there was no mistaking the heat in it. "Oh, now that's weird," he said slowly.

"What?" Larry and Charlie asked in unison, then gave each other the side-eye.

"Weren't they afraid I was going to call for backup as soon as I hit the parking lot? And then they walk out in the hall and leave us here with cell phones."

"Because you're a trained and highly competent federal agent and they know you'd rather deal with this yourself than put your beloved little brother in the middle of a full-scale hostage situation?" Larry guessed.

"Yeah, criminals usually don't have that much faith in the feds. Look, you guys stay here, I'm going to go check this out." Don checked his gun over, made sure it was in working order after the eventful day it had had, and headed for the door.

The Winchesters were around the corner in the lobby, between Charlie and Larry and any door they could get to in good time. Don kept his hand on his gun and moved silently toward them, slowing down when he got close enough to hear.

" – think this is what Dad would have wanted, Dean? Really?" Sam's voice, hushed and furious.

"Yeah, I think this is what Dad would have wanted! Come on, Sam, me and Dad were never gonna die in our beds. You go out like this, saving people – "

"You go out being eaten by Spiderwoman at twenty-seven? Dean, that's not heroism, that's, I don't even know what that is. Oh, wait – how about ignominious? How about me sitting in hunting bars for the rest of my life saying 'Yeah, I had a brother once but he got eaten by a giant spider while trying to keep the federal agent whose ass he was saving from throwing him into Sing Sing'? It's not worth it!"

"You look at those people in there and tell me it's not worth it."

"Nothing is worth losing you," Sam whispered. "Nothing. Nothing ever was."

"Sam," Dean said, improbably gentle.

"Dean," Sam answered, almost too quiet for Don to hear. He edged reluctantly closer. "This thing is big and it's hungry and we aren't going to win fighting it from the front and the FBI from the rear. If Eppes doesn't believe us we need to back off and come back when he does."

"Man, you saw the guy," Dean sighed. "He'll believe in that thing when he sees it coming at him and by then it'll be too late."

"You're right," Sam said, resigned. "So what's the plan?"

"Dunno, but we'll come up with one. Okay?"

"Okay," Sam echoed, all little-brother faith, and Don did not want to see anything of Charlie in Sam. And it sounded like they were wrapping things up, so he stepped around the corner with a half-formed plan of heading them off long enough for Larry and Charlie to get to the parking lot.

Then he froze, honestly unable to make his legs work and move, because goddamn, it looked like "incest" was the word of the day all around.

They were just kissing. Don found himself grasping at that fact, like it made a difference, like it made it any better. Sam leaning against the wall, bringing himself down eye level with Dean; Dean cupping Sam's face like it was something fragile and precious, mouths clinging and parting like there was nothing more worth doing in the whole world in that moment. Don found himself turning around and walking the other way as silently as he'd come, his head full of a white staticky nothing – and beneath the static, oddly or not, Charlie: bent over his work, absorbed and intent, bathed in the glow of the amber desk lamp that loved his skin and the shadows of his face.

Somehow Don didn't see her until he blinked and she was there, down at the other end of the hall with the door to Charlie's office almost exactly halfway between them. She was holding a baby swathed in colorless blankets, pale arms wrapped tight around it and black hair spilling like a waterfall over her downturned face, the hem of her dress swinging ragged over her bare feet. Shit, Don thought, and moved carefully forward, hands lifted and visible, nonthreatening.

"Hey, hi," he called, keeping his voice low. "I'm Don Eppes, I'm with the FBI. Can I ask you a few questions?"

There was no response. He wondered if she spoke English.

"Look, you're not in trouble, okay? I'm not gonna hurt you, I just need to –"

"Eppes, get the fuck back!"

Don half turned, looking back to see the Winchesters skidding to a stop behind him, guns raised. Incredulous, Don stepped between them and the woman.

"You fucking lunatics, she's holding a baby!"

"That's not a baby," Sam said tightly. "It's an egg sac."

The woman said something in Japanese, soft and pleading. Don turned back to see her holding the baby toward him, jostling it meaningfully, then pulling it back into her arms, hair falling down again over her face.

"It's one of their strategies for getting victims within reach. She's trying to tell you it's yours," Sam said.

"I think I would have remembered that," Don said distantly.

A spider the size of Don's hand crept out from under the baby's blanket, yellow-banded legs sliding out first and then a slim body, crawling slowly up the woman's arm to disappear under her loose sleeve. Below the hem of her dress, another spider's forelegs slipped out to probe delicately at the air and then settled onto her foot. She didn't even twitch.

"Holy shit," Don said, and wasn't even conscious of covering the distance toward Charlie's office until he'd put himself between her and the door and was looking at her down the barrel of his gun. "Put the blankets down on the floor! Down, wakarimasu ka?"

"Don, what are you –" Charlie demanded from behind him, sounding shaken.

"Charlie, you get the fuck back in that room and you lock the door until I say different. You, blankets down!"

"Don, it's a –"

"It's not a goddamn baby, now you do as your brother says," Winchester barked.

Another spider, or the same one, crawled up out of the neck of the woman's loose dress, slid up her hair, gathered its limbs, and jumped, making for the wall next to her. Don shot it out of the air on pure reflex.

"Not ba – oh, shit," Winchester said.

"Charles, I think we should just, um," Larry said weakly.

The limbs that slid out around the woman's body – over her head, around her ribs, around her hips, easing around her ankles like the tendrils of vines – were yellow-banded and slender, spider limbs the length of a baseball bat and growing longer until if they were stretched out instead of curled around her like a corona they would have brushed the ceiling and walls on both sides. Hair parted on the crown of her head in half a dozen places, drawn back by invisible hands, and underneath it black glassy orbs shone dully in the dim light. She shifted her weight forward and the limbs moved with her, opening claws against the wall as her feet began to lift from the ground.

Don's brain locked with an almost audible click into the same focus he took into firefights, his finger came down smooth on the trigger, and the world dissolved into noise and light and the target in front of him.

When he stopped firing, and the guns behind him stopped firing, the hallway was filled with acrid smoke red-lit by the exit signs. He could still see her in it, limbs searching forward, different lengths now where he'd shot them in half one after the other – and then she was gone, and Don slammed another clip into his gun and went into the smoke after her.

His eyes burned and watered but he could still see shapes, enough to see her if she was there. She wasn't. The smoke thinned as he passed from the hall into the one that crossed it and she wasn't there either; nothing was, in either direction, but closed doors. Don's gaze traveled up to the ceiling and found nothing but shadows.

"Where the fuck did she go?" he wondered aloud.

"We hurt her," Winchester said, reloading as he came out of the smoke behind Don. "My guess is she went back to ground, but now she's pissed off. She's gonna come for you and your brother hard and fast, so we need to –"

"Get somewhere more defensible, yeah, I figured that out for myself," Don snapped, unreasonably irritated and still shaking from the adrenaline. "Get my brother and Larry and let's go."

"Yeah? You know where we're going?"

"My place. I live in an apartment, lots of light and people. Spiders like the dark, and this one hunts in it. We'll be as safe there as we would be anywhere but my office, and I really don't think you want to walk into the FBI building with me." The low murmur of voices came from the hall behind him, and Don winced at the unmistakable sound of Charlie throwing up. "Then Charlie's going to look at those maps I brought him and tell me where this bitch is, and I'm gonna take a flamethrower to her before she gets within a mile of him again."

"We don't take civilians on hunts," Winchester said shortly.

"Yeah?" Don snapped the safety back on and stuck his gun into its holster, his eyes not leaving Winchester's. "Well, how about that? Neither does the FBI."



"Why are you doing that?" Larry asked, green but interested.

Sam glanced up at him as he poured lighter fluid on top of the salt on top of what was left of the spider Don had shot. "Most supernatural things, salting and burning will destroy them," he said. "If you salt and burn a body it gets rid of the person's ghost. With something like this, I'm mostly making sure it'll stay dead."

"Really?'' Larry asked, sounding a little dubious. "But… salt, now, I wonder –"

Winchester dropped a match onto the spider and watched it burn on the asphalt of the parking lot. "We'll put you in touch with a guy, doc," he said.

Sam looked up from his crouch, looking equal parts amused and horrified. "You're gonna hook him up with Ash? Dean, things will blow up that probably shouldn't."

"This isn't happening," Charlie whispered, his voice shaking. "There's no, there's no way this is even possible, nothing adds up."

Don slid an arm around him, palm flat on the top of his head and turning him away from the fire. "I know, buddy. Stay with me. We're just gonna take this one step at a time and have a good long freakout when it's all over with, okay?"

Charlie nodded, pressing his forehead against Don's collarbone, fists clenching in the smoke-soaked cotton at Don's waist. Sam stood and met Don's eyes over Charlie's head, understanding more than Don wanted him to.

"It's toast," Winchester said. "Let's roll."



"Here," Charlie said, tapping the map and looking hopefully up at Don.

Don hated to step on that hope. "No good. There's nothing there but an empty lot."

"What exactly would not be nothing?" Larry peered at the map under Charlie's finger. "Is this an orb-weaving spider? Because I think they ingest their webs in the evening and then –"

"Anything like skulls," Don said. "She carries off the heads. We haven't been able to find them. Find the heads and we'll find her."

"Look at this," Sam said, shifting his laptop around so everyone else could see the screen. "Jorogumo also refers to an actual spider, Nephila clavata, which has yellow-banded legs and spins an orb web."

"What does it matter what kind of web it spins?" Winchester asked, frowning.

"It may not, but…" Charlie trailed off, chewing at his lip.

"Vollrath, 1985?" Larry offered, cryptically.

"No, 1997, it's been raining," Charlie answered, equally cryptically.

"But it wasn't raining when the ship first got here, so the 1985 model would initially fit and then –"

"No, it's nested in the '97 model, just with the implicit path coefficients fixed at zero. I need temperature and humidity ranges for the last two weeks, daily and overnight," Charlie told Sam. Sam pulled a notebook and pen toward him with one hand and typed with the other.

"Fitting the body locations?" Larry asked.

"And Don. We know he was in the, um –" Charlie drew circles in the air with his finger.

"The, uh, the capture-spiral mesh," Larry filled in.

" – the capture-spiral mesh a week ago."

"So this is solvable, right?" Don prompted.

Charlie looked up at him. "When I first started at CalSci, we had a guest lecturer from Oxford give a talk on the geometry of orb spider webs," he explained. "Spiders sit at the center of the web and wait for prey to fly in and get stuck, but not all the strands of the web are sticky. Only the spiral strands are. The straight radii the spider walks on aren't, so when the prey are small enough not to stick to multiple strands, you'll only find them in certain areas. The construction of the web follows certain geometric patterns, so if you know things like the size of the spider, the atmospheric conditions, and the locations of small caught prey, you can work backward to find the center of the web – if we treat the web as theoretical here instead of something that actually is stretched out over miles of Los Angeles and Long Beach, and if we assume that the… that the spider part is predominant and the humanoid part doesn't influence anything but immediate prey-luring behavior. Here, grab a pen and mark down exactly where you went while you were there."

Don did as he was told, then stood back and left Charlie and Larry to their muttering and their hastily scribbled equations, glad to do it for more reasons than one – Charlie absorbed in a practical math problem meant Charlie too distracted to freak out and start on P versus NP. He stood watching them for a moment, then headed into the living room to recover his coffee – no beer, not tonight, which was sad because of all the nights when he damn well needed one – and think about what to do next.

The Winchesters needed to go. He still didn't trust them, not entirely, and being caught with them would be the career-ender to end all careers. Don had a fire axe in the closet with the extinguisher, because he was nothing if not prepared and also had worked his share of arson cases; it wasn't huge, but it would cut through a neck given enough force behind the blow. Those little sea salt mills Charlie made him buy weren't going to cut it, but grocery stores carried salt and he was pretty sure they carried lighter fluid. He had a spare set of tac gear; he didn't have the assault rifles that usually accompanied it, but he did have a regular rifle, buried in the back of his closet where no one else looked, and a silencer that would keep it from bringing security guards, cops, or federal agents running.

He also had a brother and a Larry who would be pretty damn defenseless if that spider thing came for them while he was out hunting, and no one he could trust to babysit without Larry and Charlie spilling their guts. Shit. Maybe the Winchesters would have to stick around for a while after all.

Don had been a lot happier with the world when all it contained were rapists, arsonists, and serial killers. Giant man-eating spiders were just adding insult to injury.

"How long is this gonna take?" Winchester asked as he wandered into the living room, clearly bored.

"No telling," Don said curtly, pitching his voice under the sound of Charlie and Larry talking math at each other with occasional input from Sam. "Sometimes he can pull answers out of a hat, sometimes it takes days."

"Yeah, well, let's hope it's the hat one this time, 'cause I'll be honest, I don't think you have days."

Don ground his teeth. "Look. I get that you're used to dealing with people who'd panic and freeze up if someone yelled Fire in an empty theater. Weird coincidence: so am I. I also spend a pretty significant part of my work life going into hostile terrain to do unpleasant things to people who, number one, are perfectly willing to hurt me real bad to keep me from doing it, and number two, are smarter and better armed than spiders."

"And smaller, and not as fast or as strong, and are vulnerable to bullets, and you've got backup when you're facing them," Winchester snapped. "I'm pretty sure on balance this is worse."

The sounds of math had stopped. Don risked a glance over and saw Charlie and Sam staring at him and Dean with identical looks of purse-mouthed disapproval. Larry looked like he was wishing for a koi pond to commune with. Irritated at every single person in his apartment including himself, Don stepped closer to Winchester and lowered his voice. "You're right. You know how to fight this thing."

"Now, see, there you're –"

"Which is why I need you to stay here with Larry and Charlie while I go after it, in case it decides to circle around and take Charlie out first."

"Okay, no, I take it back." Winchester blew out an aggravated breath and rubbed his forehead. "What is it with you, huh? Why is it so hard for you to deal with the fact that this time you're the civilian and you need to sit the fuck down and let the pros take care of this? What happens in your line of work when the civilians decide they're going to deal with their problems on their own? I bet they fuck it up sixty ways to Sunday, don't they?"

He was right. He was right, and it pissed Don off worse than anything else Winchester had done tonight. But this was Charlie's life, and Don had spent way too much of his life letting other people take care of his little brother – who was watching them now, palms braced flat on Don's kitchen table, with a look on his face that promised serious hell for Don later.

Winchester's eyes slid toward Charlie, then back to Don, and his lips curled in a smirk that made Don want to step between him and Charlie and back him down. "Yeah?" Winchester said, smug and knowing. "We gonna have to settle this with a dick-measuring contest over who can make his little brother scream the loudest?"

Don's punch landed before he even knew he was throwing it, snapping Winchester's head back and around. Sam shoved his chair back on what looked like reflex, then settled back in it with his arms folded and glared at his brother.

"Wow, Dean, and you were doing so well with the logic and using your words and everything," he drawled.

"You know," Larry said, "if I had to pick an ideal time for a dick-measuring contest of any sort, this would probably not be it."

"He might be a jerk but he's right and you know it, Don," Charlie told him. "You can't go up against this without backup. I… I still don't believe in it but I saw it, and you – you can't. Okay? You can't."

"Sorry my brother is such an ass," Sam said to Charlie.

"Likewise," Charlie said.

"Can we maybe get back to the equations now?" Larry asked plaintively.

Winchester rubbed his hand across his cheekbone where the bruise was already spreading and glared at Don. "Look, compromise," he said grudgingly. "You're handy in a fight, I'll give you that."

"Thanks," Don said dryly.

"Don," Charlie warned.

"Sam stays here with the rest of the Dweeb Squad, you and I go. I follow your lead if we have to deal with people, you follow mine once we find her lair. We help you cover the tracks, you give us a day after we hit the road before you tip off Henricksen. Deal?"

Reluctantly, Don nodded. "Yeah, okay," he said slowly. "Deal."

A slow smile spread over Winchester's face, bright and impish, and for the first time Don could see the whole birds-charmed-out-of-trees thing. "Scout's honor?"

The corners of his mouth wanted to tug upward, but he fought them back down, mostly. "I was never a boy scout."

"Yes, you were," Charlie protested indignantly. Don closed his eyes in exasperation.

Winchester chuckled. "Little brothers. Can't live with 'em, can't keep 'em in the trunk. Sam, quit making the bitchface and find us a lair."

"Downloading the email stream of a place the size of the Port of Los Angeles takes time, Dean."

"Hey," Don said quietly as Winchester turned to head back into the kitchen. Raising an eyebrow, Winchester turned back. "What you said about me and Charlie. Don't go there again."

Winchester's expression turned rueful and he looked back at Charlie, who was scribbling with great determination on a sheet of printer paper. "Eppes, man, I'm pretty sure you're gonna get there without me leaving you a trail of breadcrumbs," he said, just as softly. Clapping Don on the arm, he ambled back into the kitchen to lean over the back of Sam's chair and investigate what he was doing. It didn't take long for Sam to settle back against him a little, easy and comfortable, nothing that would look out of place if you didn't know what you were looking at.

Don looked away and caught Charlie's eyes on him, still and unreadable, and decided he needed a beer after all.



He would have sworn he wasn't going to sleep that night, but Charlie's whispered Hey jolted him into disoriented wakefulness.

The apartment was dark and quiet. Don lifted his head and saw the Winchesters curled on the floor in a pile of limbs and blankets; Charlie was sitting on the couch next to him, and Larry was nowhere to be seen. "Where's Larry?"

"I sent him to bed around three. He's in your room. I hope that's okay."

"Yeah, 'sfine. What time is it now?"

"Almost five," Charlie whispered apologetically. "The first set of models we used didn't successfully predict the locations of the bodies, but then we realized that we couldn't use the location of the docks themselves as a structural boundary, we had to use the –"

"Charlie," Don said, rubbing his eyes. "I've been awake for twenty seconds. Do you know where the lair is?"

"To within a very narrow statistical tolerance. Also, Sam found email that seems to corroborate our findings. The first equations I ran were off by three-quarters of a mile."

"Well, good, we can – shit, I guess we can't. We can't go there while it's light out."

"Not if you're going to be burning giant spiders," Charlie agreed, his laughter a soft breath over Don's face.

Don sighed and dropped his hand back down onto his stomach. "You okay, buddy?"

"I just," Charlie began, then gave a painful attempt at a smile. "No. Not really. Don, can you…"

"Sure, what?"

Charlie's knuckles nudged tentatively at Don's side in a scoot over gesture. "Keep the monsters away?"

Don stared at him for a minute, then had to laugh. "Okay, but if we fall off the couch it's your fault. Come here."

Charlie climbed on the couch and a good five minutes of tossing, turning, and jostling for position ensued until Charlie spooned back against him, commandeered Don's arm for a pillow, and settled down into something that was – if Don could overlook the hair in his face – reasonably comfortable for both of them. "Okay?" Charlie whispered.

"Yeah," Don answered, and yawned. "Go to sleep."

"Don?"

"Hm?"

"Last time you were over at Dad's – those spider webs all over the back gate, do you think they were hers?"

"I hope not," Don whispered back, and slid his free arm around Charlie's shoulders.

Charlie was warm and compact in his arms, different in his proportions than Don's body remembered; his hair smelled sweet and clean where it settled against Don's mouth. God, it felt so good, Charlie's heavy weight and the soft whisper of his breath over Don's skin; endorphins, Don told himself a little desperately, a natural reaction to touch, nature's way of priming him to take care of his little brother. Don closed his eyes and tried to breathe deep, wondering if Charlie could feel the thudding of his heart.

"You punched Dean," Charlie breathed, barely audible.

Don slipped his fingers into Charlie's hair and stroked, small and slow. "Yeah, buddy," he whispered. "I did."



"You shouldn't do this," Charlie said tightly, cinching the buckle on Don's Kevlar vest with enough force to bruise his ribs.

"Ow!" Don protested, trying to wriggle away. Charlie kept a tight hold on the straps. "What, you want to just sit here and wait for it to come to us?"

"No. But you could stay here and let the Winchesters go after it. Sam says it won't get in past the salt lines. You don't have to be the big bad hero all the time."

"Hey, Charlie. Breathe," Don soothed, catching him by the wrist. "Come on, slow down."

"Remember when I wanted to fix the furnace myself and you wouldn't let me because you said I'd blow up the house with me and Dad in it and you made me call a repairman? Maybe, maybe the Winchesters are like furnace repairmen, Don, and I think you should –"

Don wrapped an arm around Charlie and tugged him close. "Easy, buddy," he whispered into Charlie's hair. "Come on, don't make me get Larry in here with a paper bag. Breathe, okay?"

"I am breathing," Charlie protested, muffled against Don's vest. He slowed down a little, though, focusing until he'd matched his breathing to Don's, long slow inhales and exhales.

Don stood there for a minute more, inhaling the smell of his own shampoo in Charlie's hair, breathing for both of them, in and out. It was warm, and nice, and… he let go and nudged Charlie back.

Charlie took a step back. "You know, I'm not the girl," he said suddenly.

Don gave him a dubious look. He had no idea where Charlie was going with this, but it didn't sound like it was going to be anywhere good. "No, you're the math geek. You're the brains, I'm the brawn, remember? Don't start having problems with our arrangement now." Please, I'm begging.

"I don't like our arrangement right now."

Sighing, Don sat down on his bed and looked up at Charlie. "We've been through this already, Chuck, okay?"

"Don't call me that."

"Okay, but come on, I've got a dangerous job. You know that, Dad knows that, everybody knows. How is this different from – from walking into a bank robbery that's got a high chance of turning into a firefight? Or hunting armed fugitives? I do those things a lot, I thought you were used to it by now."

"Seriously?'' Charlie asked thinly. "You seriously don't see the difference between a bank robber and a woman who can – who can apparently turn into a spider despite the fact that there's no way she should be able to, who you don't even know for sure how to kill?"

"Okay, I was sort of ignoring that part until I really have to deal with it," Don admitted. "That's what's bugging you, isn't it? Not knowing."

Charlie looked away and picked at the hem of his shirt. "All probabilistic models have some nonzero probability of failure," he said; it was an admission, Don knew, and a hard-won admission at that. "But this one, I don't even know what variables to put in, or whether I can trust the variables I have, because according to the variables I have none of this should even be possible. That thing, it shouldn't, it can't even exist. Math has always been almost the only thing I really knew inside and out, it always has answers, always, and now – now it's like I look at it and suddenly it's turned into a language I can't even read."

"Hey, hey, just because you got some new data?" Don reached out and caught Charlie's fingers, stilling them before they did any more damage to the hem. "Charlie, you love new data."

Which wasn't true, really. Charlie hated new data that didn't fit into his established parameters. But he'd always been able to assimilate it eventually, more or less; Don just hoped to god he'd be able to do it in this case too, because this wasn't sounding too promising.

"I don't love new data that wants to eat my brother," Charlie snapped.

"Look, nothing is gonna eat me, okay?" Don said, tugging on Charlie's hand to make him look up. "This is weird shit and I don't love it either, but you got an equation for us, right? You got us a location for the lair? That's gonna help, so whatever this thing is, this new, scary thing, it's not immune to math."

"I'd feel a lot more comfortable if I knew it wasn't immune to bullets or Kevlar either. And look, we don't know yet that the equation works and –"

"Charlie. It'll work," Don told him firmly. "And also? You totally are the girl right now."

Charlie flushed and yanked his hand back. "I am not."

"Okay, no, you're still the math geek," Don conceded.

Charlie made a face and sat down by Don, twisting his fingers together in complicated patterns. "I want to go with you," he said after a minute. "Not just sit here wondering if you're okay. I always sit here wondering if you're okay, and I guess I'm used to it now but I hate it every time. And I can't go with you because I'd just get in the way. Sam gets to –"

"Hey, we're not the Winchesters, okay?" Don reminded him. "There are a whole lot of things they do that wouldn't work for us, and even more that wouldn't work for Dad or the FBI, so we're just gonna keep being the Eppes brothers and let the Winchester brothers be who they are, okay?"

Charlie raised his head to look Don dead in the eye, and Don couldn't read the expression on his face but it made his breath come a little faster anyway. "That's what we're going to do, huh?"

Don swallowed hard. He wanted to clap Charlie on the knee and say Yeah, it is, all hearty and sure of himself, but suddenly he couldn't. Not when he wasn't sure what Charlie was asking, or what answer he wanted. Especially when he didn't even know what answer he really wanted to give.

Fucking Winchesters. He and Charlie had been fine not knowing about things that go bump in the night.

"Come back," Charlie whispered. "I'll hunt it down, Don, I swear I will."

Don slid a hand around the back of Charlie's neck and pulled him close, letting Charlie just cling for a minute, for as long as he needed to. "No, you won't, buddy," he whispered back. "You're gonna stay safe. You hear me? 'Til the day you die, you're gonna stay away from this thing if I don't make it back."

"Yeah," Charlie said, voice harsh and choked, and Don could feel Charlie's breath coming hot and shallow against his neck. "Okay. That's what I'll do."

Winchester rapped sharply on the bedroom door. "Eppes, you ready to – hey, nice tac gear. The FBI supply that or do you get it yourself from somewhere?"

"No, Dean," Sam said from somewhere out in the apartment.

"C'mon, Sammy, you know we could use it," Dean called back.

"Space is at kind of a premium in that car, in case you hadn't noticed."

"Don't talk smack about my baby. She's got room for a couple of tac outfits. You ready, Eppes?"

Don rubbed the back of Charlie's neck, and felt him shiver under the cool leather of Don's gloves. "Yeah," he said. "Let's do this."



"Jesus, this place," Winchester said, tapping his fingers restlessly on his knee and staring out the passenger window at the sea of cargo containers. "You lose something in here, you'd never find it again."

Don shot him a glance. "Speaking of which, how did she track Charlie and me all over LA?"

Winchester shook his head. "Sometimes things get your scent and there ain't nowhere you're safe. I don't know how it works. I don't think anyone knows. Be glad it was her and not a vampire; those fuckers are really mean."

Don decided that he hadn't actually just heard the word vampire. "So how did you know she was after me to begin with?"

Winchester winced a little. "You're not gonna like hearing this."

"Lay it on me."

"Sometimes film and video can pick things up that people can't see. Ghosts, for instance. Certain kinds of creatures. Some of these things, they're like energy forms, they don't quite live on the same plane we do. We don't know where they go when they're not here. We don't know how they appear and disappear." Winchester glanced over at him. "We do know, Sam and me, that when you left the crime scene last week and drove past the photographer for the Long Beach Press-Telegram, she was sitting in the back seat of your car."

Don slammed on the brakes, nearly sending both of them into the windshield. "What the fuck?"

"So we knew she was probably after somebody in there," Winchester continued, irritatingly unperturbed. "We just didn't know who until we got out to CalSci to talk to your brother."

"So how do we know she's not in here now?" Don demanded.

Winchester reached into his jacket and pulled out something that looked like a well and truly repurposed Walkman. "We know 'cause I swept the car with this before we left. It's an EMF meter. Sort of like a supernatural geiger counter." He thumbed a switch and the meter crackled dimly, one red light lighting up and another flickering. "There's still residual EMF from when she was in here last week, but if she was here now this'd be lighting up like a Christmas tree."

Oh, god, Larry's going to want one, Don thought, and nearly beat his head on the steering wheel before he took a breath, got himself back under control, and got the car moving again. "So she hitchhikes. Sort of."

"Yeah, I guess spiders do," Winchester said with a grimace. "I'm gonna spare you the stories Sam told me about the ones in Australia. I didn't put my damn visor down for days."

"Shit, I hope she's not still back in LA. If this equation doesn't work out, Charlie's going to lock himself in the garage again and I may never get him out this time."

Winchester gave him an odd look at that, but didn't ask. "We injured her. You hurt a thing like that, it goes to ground in its lair. She knows she's got a place to hide and a food supply here. Your brother was right, this is where she's gonna be."

"Yeah, but if you take a spider out of its web, doesn't it just build another web?"

"Jorogumo don't. They're associated with places – pools, waterfalls, abandoned shrines. This one probably holed up in an empty cargo container and didn't leave it until she had no other choice. How far through the search area are we?"

"About halfway," Don said, glancing down at his GPS. "So tell me about the murder charges in Milwaukee. They had witnesses, fingerprints, even a corpse."

"Wasn't me."

"Yeah? Just someone who looked like you, huh?"

Winchester looked vaguely embarrassed. "Well… yes and no."

Don looked blankly at him for a moment before realization hit him like the flush creeping up his neck. "Some thing that looked like you?"

"Shapeshifter. If I'd known it was gonna be such a pain in my ass I'd have passed the hunt off to –"

"Wait, wait, it turned into you? Can the jorogumo do that? Because Larry and Charlie are gonna open the door to something that looks like me and let it right the hell in!"

"Okay, first, no, it can't. Second, by now Sam will have put the fear of God into them about going near the doors and windows, and Sam ain't gonna let anything in that can't cross that salt line by itself and uninvited. Third, what's that up there?"

Don ground his teeth. You couldn't put the fear of God into Larry and Charlie. Don had tried. Someone could get turned into a pillar of salt right in front of them and they'd get all wrapped up in discussing the physics of it and the wrath of God would go in one ear and out the other while they were debating ion charges or something.

Focus. Getting scattered and distracted was going to be as fatal here as it was in a home invasion. Don followed Winchester's line of sight, peering into the dark. A handful of wide, squat domes blocked the light from across the bay, only visible as black outlines against distant halogen white. "Some kind of bulk storage containers."

`"So how come they're not lit up?"

Don flipped his high beams on and pointed to a leasing billboard mounted on a chain-link fence. "That's why. They're probably empty. They're not exactly conveniently located, and the docks aren't doing the business they used to."

"Yahtzee. Big, dark, empty, and right in the search area. Let's check them out."

He'd expected to have to use the bolt-cutters he'd brought with him, but the fence opened onto the parking lot in front of the domes. Shaking his head a little at the lack of security, Don killed the lights and pulled in. There were six domes, two rows of three, maybe thirty feet tall and twice as far across; only a few minutes apiece to search if they were open spaces inside. He cruised to a halt and within a few minutes they were suited up and ready to go in, Don with a silencer-equipped rifle slung across his back, Winchester with what looked like a samurai sword across his.

There was maybe a minute when Don was tempted to trade part of his tac gear for the sword, but he didn't. There was more than one way to separate someone's head from their shoulders, and Don was carrying a lot of big guns. "So – decapitation, huh?"

Winchester glanced up at him from where he'd been fiddling with the EMF meter. "There could be other ways. We're still waiting to hear back from a contact of ours on that. The beauty of decapitation, though, is it works on pretty much everything."

"So have you used it on a lot of things?" Don couldn't help asking, his voice interrogation-sharp.

"Nothing you'd have a hope in hell of dealing with your way," Winchester snapped back. "Come on, let's roll. The sooner we get this thing taken care of, the sooner I can quit sharing a zip code with Henricksen. Fucking LA, it gives me the creeps."

Don swallowed his retort, even if it nearly choked him going down, and headed toward the domes. If there was a certain petty satisfaction in making Winchester follow him instead of the other way around, he wasn't admitting to that either.



The first three domes were empty, only dust on the floor and in the steel-girded rafters as far as their flashlights could reach, and the EMF reader was silent and dim.

"She knows we're here, doesn't she?" Don asked, sweeping his light over the door to the fourth dome.

"Yep. She's known since we came onto her hunting grounds." Winchester pulled out the EMF meter and aimed it at the door. It had been stubbornly silent in the face of the other three domes, but now it lit up like New Year's in Vegas, splitting the quiet with a shriek of static until Winchester turned it off.

"Found her," he observed. "Or found something."

"It damn well better be her," Don said, pitching his voice low and sliding the rifle around and into his hands. "I'm not exterminating every random monster we find out here tonight."

Winchester brought the bolt-cutters out of his pack and snapped the padlock off the door. "Just the ones that want to eat your brother?"

"Just those," Don said, and raised the rifle as Winchester moved aside and carefully pushed the door open.

There was nothing blocking the doorway. That was all he could tell in the dark. Crouched by the door, Winchester shone his flashlight into the dome, illuminating a dust-covered floor and brief flashes of the far wall.

"Suppose we could just burn it down with her in it?" he whispered, not sounding too hopeful.

Don looked askance at him. "You know how many hazardous chemicals there are on these docks? You light up a bonfire in a trash can and there'll be four fire trucks and a hazmat team on the scene before you can toast a marshmallow."

"Damn. Okay, Plan B." Winchester reached carefully past the door frame, drew a hand through the dust on the floor, and brought it back up to sniff at it. Apparently satisfied, he pulled a handful of flares out of his pack.

"I'd ask if you're sure that's safe but I'm pretty sure the answer is no," Don observed.

"And you'd be right. I just know it's not grain dust on the floor. That shit goes up like napalm." Winchester lit a flare and tossed it into the dome. Don moved forward, crouched in the doorway across from Winchester, and looked up.

The first thing he saw was the severed head, partly shrouded in red-stained webbing and dangling down on a thin cable like some sort of gruesome Christmas ornament fifteen feet above the ground. The webbing ran through the slack mouth like a gag, tangled in the hair and wound down over the weirdly clean cut through the neck, and Don tracked it back up to the thick web that nearly obscured the frame of girders that made up the dome. In the light of the flare the webbing was neon red; and in its depths, at the top of the dome where the light almost didn't reach, Don could just make out the broad stretch of spindly legs and a dark mass of a body. Outstretched, she was bigger than his SUV – and then she was gone, in a sudden flurry of limbs that set the web trembling and took her god knew where.

Don pulled his head back and leaned back against the wall. "Fuck everything in the entire world," he said.

"Yeeeah, that ain't good," Winchester said, tugging the door closed.

"I thought I shot her legs off!"

Winchester shrugged. "They're back. Things regenerate like that sometimes."

"Yeah, well, where I'm from when you blow off someone's limbs they stay blown off."

"So next time you blow somebody's limbs off you'll know to count your blessings. But look, we got some advantages here, okay?"

"Now would be a good time to tell me about them," Don informed him.

"First, this thing, she's not too bright. She's way more aggressive than real spiders, but she still eats 'cause people walk right up to her to get eaten, just like you were gonna do at CalSci. Second, and man, I hate to keep harping on this, but – the way she fixated on you, and you walking right back into her web, she's gonna think you're here to fuck. And that means she's gonna take on human form at least as long as it takes to lure you in. If one of us can get up behind her while she's human-shaped and take her head off, we won't have to face off against her while she's spider-shaped."

"How likely is that?"

"Hey, people win the lottery, you know?"

Don groaned, rubbing a hand over his face. For a minute he was silent, and then made himself say it. "Look, you need to get out of this even if I don't. Charlie said if I didn't come back he was going to…"

"Yeah," Winchester said quietly. "I figured."

"You have to stop him from doing that. Maybe he'll listen to you if he won't listen to me, but that thing will tear him apart if he gets within ten feet of her."

"I can try, man, but… the thing is, some people? They can lose someone to something like this, even someone it hurts them bad to lose, and they're never gonna quite be the same, but they go on with their lives more or less the way they were. They go to work, come home, spend time with their friends and their kids, and yeah, they know things about the world now that they wish they didn't, and maybe they put salt lines down over their windows now before they go to bed, but they aren't hunters. Mostly that happens when whatever killed the person they lost is dead now itself, when they've got closure or whatever the hell Sam calls it. If this thing kills you and I don't kill it, your little brother ain't gonna be one of those people. I can tell you that right now. Losing you to this would hurt him in ways he can't even understand yet. And yeah, hunting's gonna eat him alive even if this bitch doesn’t. So I don't know what to tell you, Eppes. You're just gonna have to live through tonight."

"Goddammit," Don sighed, and hefted his rifle. "Okay. We got a plan?"



It turned out that Winchester, when a fire of sufficient intensity was lit under him, could move faster than just about anyone Don had ever seen. And Don, who knew from fire, thought that if there was a hotter one than trying to draw an unbroken fifteen-foot salt circle by flarelight as the guy covering your ass kept cracking off rifle shots to warn off the giant spider creeping too close over your head, he just hoped neither of them ever burned in it.

"Okay, move," Winchester called, drawing his gun out to cover Don. "For fuck's sake don't break the circle."

Don looked up into the web, found the jorogumo, and ran. She didn't rush him like she'd tried to rush Winchester when he first came out onto the floor; Don didn't know if that was because of the whole creepy fixation thing or because the half-panicked shot he'd sent right across the chitin of her thorax had been enough to dissuade her from trying that shit again any time soon.

"You sure she'll come down and not just wait us out?" he muttered, settling into the circle beside Winchester.

"Nah, bitch is mad now," Winchester said. "You dinged her with a couple of those shots and I think I hit her in the eye with a flare. A real spider might sit up there and sulk, but not this one."

"Wait, I don't see her." There were flares scattered around them in a circle, outside the salt, hissing like snakes; but they were made to be seen, not to see by, and Don wasn't sure they were much of an improvement over the dark.

"There she comes," Winchester said grimly, pointing with the barrel of his gun. "C'mon down, honey."

She was in human form, mostly. Her arms and legs were too thin and too long, but they ended in hands that looked human, and she was creeping head-first down the long line of the web where it met the wall maybe twenty yards away. Long, snarled hair snagged on the spirals of the web, and Don remembered what Charlie had said about the radii because it was that or think about how the hair was sticking behind her, pulled out of her head by the strand, apparently unnoticed. In the light from the flares, her eyes were red-rimmed and bloodshot.

A foot from the floor she vanished, and when Don turned to look for her she was standing just outside the salt circle, watching him with two human eyes and six arachnid ones. Don jolted back, fortuitously clearing the way for Winchester, who was there in a flash with a broad sweep of his blade aimed right at her neck.

It didn't connect. In the blink of an eye there was nothing where she had been but a plume of oily smoke that twisted and surged but didn't cross the salt line. "Well, shit," Winchester said.

Don nearly killed him. "Well, shit? Really?"

"No, man, it's cool, we just… need a new plan. She still can't cross the salt line or she'd have done it by now." Winchester pulled out his phone, and what he saw when he glanced down at it didn't make him any happier. "Check your phone, man, I've got twenty-four missed calls and no voice mail."

"You want me to check my voice mail? Now?"

Dean had his phone to his ear. "Breathe, man. We can't stand here in the salt circle all night. Sam's gonna have to come up with something. If he answers his fucking phone, goddamn. Sam, you asshole, call me when you get this! I tried to cut off her head and it didn't fucking work. Find some different lore before she figures out how to get across the salt line."

The jorogumo was back in human form, breath scraping so harsh in her lungs that Don could hear it over the flares. Her face was contorted now, jaws split like mandibles, a thin trail of something that could have been either blood or saliva in this light dripping down onto her dress. Don fumbled for his phone, almost dropped it, and found a dozen missed calls. "Shit. Charlie."

"She's here with us," Winchester reminded him.

"He could be in trouble."

"We're in trouble!"

"Shit," Don said, brought his rifle up, and shot the jorogumo point-blank in the head. Her head snapped back, then forward, incomplete now and missing a few of those horrible glassy eyes. A thin, shrill hiss bubbled up from her throat and spider legs crept out from behind her. The two middle ones slipped around to tug open the front of her dress and Don did not even know what the fuck those were in her skin until she started weaving silk from them, fast and deft, yellow-banded limbs whispering Jacob's ladder between them.

Don shot her again, or tried to. She flickered just for a moment and his shell went straight through. Something hit his leg with almost enough force to break it, the world spun around him, the ground hit his back hard enough to knock the wind out of him, and before he could get his balance back the web line she'd caught him in had dragged him nearly to the salt circle. Winchester landed on him hard, pinned him in a full-body grip that had some hard-core wrestling training behind it, and slashed off the web with his sword. Don was still trying to get his breath back; Winchester rolled them back toward the other side of the circle and came up on all fours over Don, one hand shoving him back down onto the ground while the other emptied a clip into the jorogumo's spinnerets. Don got it together enough to yank his pistol out of his thigh holster, bruising Winchester an inch from his balls in the process, and shot for her limbs.

He'd never really thought about what kind of noises spiders made, if they made any at all. Of course, he hadn't really thought about spiders being fucking enraged, either. For the record, it sounded a lot like an entire chorus of fingernails on chalkboard, until she vanished into smoke again, and then it sounded in his head like the worst, sickest hangover he'd ever had.

"Bitch, come back here," Winchester muttered.

Don prodded him. "Off."

Watching the dark around him, Winchester climbed to his feet and offered Don a hand up. One of the flares, the first one Winchester had lit, guttered and died.

"Hey," Don said. "Does it seem to you like she's not any too anxious to get around those flares?"

"Well, would you be – no, wait, you're right," Winchester said slowly.

"You got any more?"

"Yeah," Winchester said with a grimace. "In my pack. Outside. You wait here, I'll –"

The door creaked open. Beyond it, there was a tense, waiting silence that Don had felt on every home incursion he'd ever been on. "FBI, identify yourself," he barked, and god help him, if it was Charlie he was going to –

"What in the fuck is going on here?" Henricksen asked, moving carefully through the door with his gun trained right between Don and Winchester.



Fast as thought, Winchester's gun came down against Don's temple. Don might have been worried about that if he didn't know for a fact that that was the gun Winchester hadn't yet reloaded. "Stay back, Henricksen," he warned. "I've got a hostage."

"A hostage," Henricksen repeated. "Who's armed to the teeth and wearing Kevlar. And you're holding him hostage in the middle of the night with no one around to make demands on."

"I can explain that," Winchester said, after a minute.

"Oh, for God's sake. Victor, get over here and get in the salt circle and don't break it –"

Don was half-turned away from Henricksen, and that was how he saw when the shadows on the other side of the circle rolled inward and then vomited out a ten-foot spider stretched high on her hind legs.

Henricksen didn't even freeze for the split second it took his eyes to go wide. Don took Winchester down and bullets streaked over both of them, hitting what eyes the jorogumo had left and turning them into a foul black spray.

"Henricksen, get the fuck in the circle!" Winchester bellowed. Henricksen dove and rolled, landing neatly inside the salt line. The jorogumo wavered, vanished, reappeared in human form with half her head and empty eye sockets and crawled toward the salt line like she was trying to find it with her hands.

"You and I are gonna talk about this, Winchester," Henricksen warned.

Don scrambled back away from the jorogumo's reaching hands. "Now what? We blow pieces off her until she stops moving?"

"Got my vote," Winchester said.

"Fire," Henricksen said, and suited action to words, blowing a hole through the jorogumo's hand. "Not that kind. Eppes, your brother called me. He's on his way here –"

"What?" Don bellowed.

"Yeah, I know, okay? He says it has to be fire and if you ever turn your phone off again he'll beat your ass with a tire iron. Does someone want to explain to me why the fuck that thing is not dead right now?"

The jorogumo was crawling around the perimeter of the salt circle, head down to the ground, searching for a break in the line. Don had a feeling it wouldn't take much of one and she'd be right in there with them. Spider legs pushed out of the skin of her back, wrapping around to her ruined spinnerets and pulling bloody silk from them for another rope.

"I could have lived my life and died and not seen that," Henricksen said.

"Just stay braced and low to the ground, man, she uses that shit like a lasso," Winchester warned. "Listen, you two are gonna have to keep her occupied while I go get the rest of the flares."

Two more of the flares around the circle went out. The rest were dimming, bringing shadows closer to the circle like the swell of high tide.

"You step outside this circle and she's going to eat you," Don told him. "We're running out of ammo."

"Look, it can't wait," Dean snapped. "Remember how fast she grew her legs back? She's gonna grow her head back, and her, her web-thread-things, and she's gonna be just as bad and twice as pissed, now cover me!"

"Dean!" Sam called from the doorway, and Don was too busy almost puking to see him throwing Winchester's pack to him and dodging back outside, because Sam there meant Charlie there.

"Charlie, you stay the fuck in the car!" he yelled desperately.

What was left of the jorogumo's head snapped toward Sam, then back toward the circle. Her hair pushed itself aside and a flat black eye gleamed out of it, regenerated and whole.

"No, you don't, bitch," Winchester said, struck a flare, and slammed it right into her abdomen.

The jorogumo screeched and grabbed onto his arm, fast as lightning, striking at him with a mouth full of thick, venomous fangs. Henricksen grabbed hold of Winchester and yanked; Don came off the ground with a roundhouse kick that knocked the fangs off-course. A shotgun blast ricocheted deafeningly in the open space and when the jorogumo turned to face off against the new threat, Henricksen rolled a flare under the hem of her dress.

It caught, and she burned, stuck halfway into a transformation that left her with a malproportioned spider's body and a human head, her dress burning around her in a flame that smelled like dusty bones. Winchester grabbed the salt canister and flung a handful onto her; Sam came closer, wary, and blew what was left of her head onto the concrete, stopping the shrill insectile shriek.

"So," Don said after a minute, when he was pretty sure the body wasn't going to move again. "Is it always like this?"

"Hell, no," Winchester said. "Usually we burn things after they're dead. Sam, you dumbass, get in the circle. You know better than that."

Sam stepped fastidiously over the salt line. "Agent Eppes, Charlie's out in the car with a salt line around him," he said. "You should –"

Don was already moving.



In the car turned out to be a little bit of a misstatement. Charlie was crouched on the hood of the Winchesters' muscle car, glaring back and forth between the salt line and the door to the storage dome. When he saw Don he went still for a long moment, then climbed carefully down and walked right over the line.

"Charlie," Don said helplessly, running a hand through his hair. "What the hell are you doing here? I thought you were home, I thought you were safe. Do you know what Dad would do to me if –"

"Shut up, Don," Charlie whispered, threading his fingers into the hair at the back of Don's head and clenching. "You didn't, you didn't answer your phone, and Sam found out it had to be fire that killed her and when you wouldn't answer your fucking phone I thought…"

"Charlie, hey," Don said, sliding his hands up Charlie's arms. It would be easier if he had a sister, he thought dimly; she'd cry and he'd fold her in his arms and comfort her, and it wouldn't be Charlie shaking like a leaf and refusing to look at Don at all. "It's okay, buddy."

"Shut up," Charlie said again, and somehow he'd gotten closer, so that when he lifted his head the tip of his nose ran along the line of Don's jaw in a feather-light touch. "You don't get to do this again. Ever."

"Hey, not planning on it, okay?" Don said hoarsely. "I think the Winchesters have it taken care of. You and me, we're just gonna… gonna go back to how we were and keep a lot of salt on hand, okay?"

Behind him, Victor's voice was raised in that I know you are not even thinking about lying to me tone. The Winchesters' voices rose with it, Dean protesting and Sam holding on to weary rationality by the skin of his teeth.

"You used to let me sleep with you when I had nightmares," Charlie breathed, and Don closed his eyes and just – let himself despair at how very close Charlie's mouth was, how close Charlie's whole body was, and how very, very badly Don never wanted anything to hurt Charlie ever again. Guilt and misery made him set Charlie gently back; because fuck what the Winchesters did or thought, it was wrong and Don had seen love go bad that way too goddamn many times.

"You want the bed or the couch?" he joked weakly.

Charlie's hand tightened and for a minute he visibly wavered on the verge of saying something really snide and pissy. "What part of I am probably going to sleep with you for the rest of my life wasn't clear, Don?"

"The part where eventually Amita's going to have objections?"

"You have met Amita, right?" Charlie shook his head, frustrated. "Don, just, I want to go, okay? Let's go home."

Don leaned his forehead against Charlie's. "Where's Larry?"

"Your place. The jorogumo's dead, right? I'll call and tell him to dismantle the flamethrower and –"

"Oh my god," Don groaned. "Get back inside the salt circle. We're rolling in five minutes."



In the end, Don escaped more or less unnoticed. A couple of handshakes, some quiet thanks, and then Henricksen pushed him out the door by sheer force of will and went back to grilling the Winchesters about cases that weren't even in their official files. Don hovered long enough to be sure that Henricksen was in fact-finding mode and not in arrest mode, made a note to check back and make sure that state of affairs continued, and took Charlie home.

By the time they got there, Larry had tactfully disappeared. Don looked suspiciously around and didn't see anything that looked like it had been co-opted to make a flamethrower. Then again, he had no idea what in his apartment could be co-opted to make a flamethrower, though clearly Larry did. Don counted himself lucky it hadn't been a laser.

Charlie was standing in the middle of the living room, white and shaking.

"Hey," Don said gently. "Hey, buddy. Bedtime now, okay? Come on, go brush your teeth. I'll find you some sweats and a t-shirt."

Charlie gave him a look. "You seriously think I can sleep?"

Don rubbed a hand over his face. Sleep was in fact not looking like too viable an option. "Okay, change of plans. We get changed, we get out the leftover pizza, and we watch stupid movies until we pass out on the couch at dawn. That sound better?"

Charlie edged down a little. "Yeah. That sounds better."

Changed and ensconced on the couch, his feet tucked under the cushions by Don, he looked like he was breathing a little more freely and his shoulders began the slow process of disengaging from his ears. Don had put something mindless into the DVD player while Charlie was in the bathroom; so mindless he couldn't even remember now what it actually was except that it was one of a large collection of movies involving explosions and improbable terrorist groups and no fucking spiders, and he hit the play button on the remote and watched the menu screen come up with a sort of distracted curiosity.

"I hate this movie," Charlie said in what sounded like satisfaction, wriggling down further into the couch.

"Good," Don said, and took a hit off his beer. "You can explain to me all the things that are wrong with it."

Charlie was silent for a while, though, until the first car blew up; and then he said, "This guy Ash, that the Winchesters know. He thinks the jorogumo secretes some sort of pheromone that disinhibits aggressive and sexual responses."

"Hey," Don said, and put his hand on Charlie's bare ankle. "Thought we were done with that for tonight."

"No, I just meant…" Charlie looked down, picking at the hem of his t-shirt, which was actually Don's t-shirt so Don reached over and removed Charlie's fingernails from the thread. "You and Dean were kind of throwing off sparks, you know? And you were gone a long time. And never mind, it's none of my business."

Don stared at him for a minute, then muted the TV right as the hero was getting ready to give some big righteous speech to a drug dealer. If Don ever gave a righteous speech to a drug dealer, he hoped the dealer laughed right in his face. "Charlie. Are you seriously asking me if I fucked Dean Winchester?"

"No!" Charlie protested, turning scarlet and keeping his eyes fixed on the hem he was clearly jonesing to wreak havoc on. "I wouldn't. I wouldn't ask because it's none of my business."

"No, you're just dying for me to tell you," Don observed, and sighed. "Buddy. No. Okay? No for a dozen different reasons, not the least of which is that he's not my type. C'mon, you said this pheromone disinhibits sexual responses, right? Disinhibits doesn't mean creates. You should know that, you have to look up that word every time Dad uses it in Scrabble because you always think it's got three Ss."

Charlie was watching him, still in the dim light. Don realized it suddenly, heard the apartment go silent when he stopped talking, and almost wished he'd let Charlie keep ruining his shirt. "I know that," Charlie said. "I just wanted you to say it out loud."

Don took an unsteady breath and looked back at the TV, where a gunfight was going on in silent slow-motion. "Yeah, well," he said, and turned the volume back up. The remote shook a little between his fingers. "I said it. Now get comfortable and watch the movie, okay? I want you to get at least a little sleep tonight."

"Pass me another slice of pizza," Charlie said, and then was quiet again, and Don watched the rest of the movie with Charlie's pulse beating like a bird's wing under his fingers.



When he opened his eyes to slanting afternoon sun, his back was a mess from sleeping all twisted up on the couch, Charlie was drooling on his stomach, and he had two voice mails.

The first was from Victor Henricksen, who sounded a little drunk and a lot cranky. He was pretty obviously trying hard to be charitable and not blame Don for the sudden appearance of monsters in the world, though he didn't have any compunctions about blaming the Winchesters. Mostly he appeared to be pissed off because one of his biggest and longest-running cases had collapsed around his ears, which would have pissed Don off too, and the crux of the voice mail seemed to be that he and Don needed to meet for coffee and reexamine a couple of other cases in this new light.

The second was from a number Don didn't recognize, and at first, listening to it, he wondered if someone had managed to butt-dial him at a really awkward moment. Then he caught Dean's name, and Sam's voice tight with pleasure, and his grip on the phone went white-knuckled.

Think Eppes is giving it to his little brother right now? Winchester asked, husky and drawn-out so that Don could almost fucking hear the smell of sex and leather seats in his voice.

God, I – fuck, Dean, oh fuck – hope so, Sam panted.

Charlie was tucked in tight against Don, the hem of his t-shirt hitched up over his sweats to expose a slender stretch of olive skin, not stirring. Don closed his eyes, swallowed convulsively, and told himself to hang up the goddamned phone.

Fuck, that'd be hot, Winchester said. Bet Eppes'd just – just get a grip on those curls and hold the fuck on, y'know? You think Charlie'd beg for it?

Sam laughed breathlessly. I think, oh god, I think he already is, Dean, come on, quit screwing around.

So to speak, Winchester said, and did something that made Sam howl.

Don snapped the phone closed and stared blankly at the wall for a long time. Fucking Winchesters. Don was blaming them for the monsters too.

But he didn't delete the voice mail; and he didn't move his hand from where it was resting, fingers wound into Charlie's hair.

Comments

[jennaria]

If I have giant spider nightmares tonight, it will be all your fault.

Other than the whole giant spider thing, however, this was a great story. I will freely admit that I know barely anything about either fandom, but you got them to mesh beautifully. And jeez, the Japanese have more than their fair share of creepy supernatural things, don't they?

[mirabella]

They really do. It makes me kind of cranky. I don't even think the French have native monsters, except maybe werewolves.

Glad you liked it - thanks!

OH DON

[sutlers]

is basically my reaction to this story. OF COURSE CHARLIE THINKS YOU FUCKED DEAN WINCHESTER, I MEAN WITH YOUR TRACK RECORD. It is okay, Charlie doesn't judge, he knows you can't help yourself. Also the storage container scenes are amazing, I don't know if I told you that before, but you have a real knack for the horrific.

Re: OH DON

[mirabella]

Dude. Don could come back from the grocery store and Charlie could be like "DID YOU FUCK THE BAKED GOODS?" and it would be entirely warranted.

Thanks! And thanks for the help on it. Much appreciated.

[ghyste]

I’ve never seen an episode of Numb3rs (though I think I’ll have to now) but I really enjoyed that. Sam and Dean actually giving a shit about each other, creepy spider monster and Victor Hendricksen – it’s a win, win, win situation.

[mirabella]

Ugh, do Sam and Dean still not give a shit about each other? That's a big part of why I quit watching. Why would you have a show pretty much dependent for its success on the chemistry between two characters and then poison the well that completely?

As far as I know that doesn't happen with Numb3rs, so you should at least check out the first season. I'm going to put up another screencap recap soon.

And I'm glad you liked the fic - thanks!

[ghyste]

It's a bit of a YMMV situation with Sam and Dean's relationship. The writers (and, to be fair, many of the fans too) seem to believe that everything that needed fixing from S4 has been. I don't.

[mirabella]

You know, probably the only sensible thing I ever read in Cosmo was a survey comment from this woman who said she knew it was time to file for divorce when the therapist asked her if, if everything changed that she wanted, it would be enough, and she realized the answer was no. I think Sam and Dean hit that point for me pretty early in S4; like it quit being The Epic Love Story of Sam and Dean and turned into The Tedious and Protracted Tale of Sam and Dean's Long-Overdue Divorce That All Their Friends are Sick of Hearing About.

So yeah, basically, even if everything that needed fixed got fixed, I don't even see anything in their post-S2 relationship that's worth fixing. It's sad because I still really like the first couple of seasons of the show, but all I see after that is two people who can't stand each other who hang around each other more or less because they have to, and I'm not so much into that.

[ghyste]

Yeah, I quit on shows when I get to that stage too. Sadly I still care enough about this one to hope - though S6 may well cure me of that :)

[mandalaya]

It's kinda hard to regain that earlier sweetness when apparently Kripke's vision all along was to pit the brothers against each other in a cosmic battle in S5. Once the magic is gone, it's quadruply hard to get it back - as in marriages really. I agree with you (ghyste) that the writers didn't fully patch that up - in fact, I thought their efforts were trite, even though I really wanted to believe and be transported back to the feeling of those earlier seasons. Maybe S6 will get there.

[mandalaya]

I probably shouldn't have read this late at night, as it gave me the general heebie-jeebies and I kept expecting a murderer to be in the house - one of the reasons I periodically swear to avoid crime procedurals like Numbers. But I like your take on the brothers Eppes, so maybe I'll give that more of a try and focus on that rather than the frightening preponderance of psychotic killers in our society as reflected by tv shows.

Anyway, good story! This was my favorite line: "I don't love new data that wants to eat my brother," Charlie snapped. Hee! I thought you made the intersection of the two shows pretty seamless. And I enjoy picturing Dean having sex with pretty much anyone, Sam included :)

[mirabella]

Thanks! I'm glad you liked it.

Numb3rs really does focus more on the relationships among the characters than a lot of shows in its genre do, so it's probably a better bet along those lines than Bones or CSI or something like that. Plus the Eppes brothers are hot and Don is apparently completely incapable of keeping his pants zipped, so that's sort of a neverending source of entertainment right there.

Did you fuck Dean Winchester?

[charybdis]

No. Okay? No for a dozen different reasons, not the least of which is that he's not my type. That list starts with, "Sam would kill me," and ends with, "He is not Charlie."

The container scenes had me cringing (in a good way), especially the bit with the hanging head.

Best of all were the 'My love for my brother is scary and probably also unhealthy' parts: Dean in the interrogation room, Don knowing exactly what he means, Sam refusing to split up. And I loved how Dean totally called Charlie's obsessive nature. If this thing kills you and I don't kill it, your little brother ain't gonna be one of those people. I can tell you that right now. Losing you to this would hurt him in ways he can't even understand yet. And yeah, hunting's gonna eat him alive even if this bitch doesn’t.

Re: Did you fuck Dean Winchester?

[mirabella]

That list starts with, "Sam would kill me," and ends with, "He is not Charlie."

Ha, it's true. Especially the part where Sam is half again Don's size. I was actually going to put a line in there to that effect, but I wound up not doing it.

I'm glad you liked it. Thanks!

[ravurian]

Oh holy shit, this was excellent. I may have to go track down Numbers right away.

The thing that I love about your stories - quite apart from the way you alter your style to match that of the source material; quite apart from the intensity and creativity of your characterisation and language - is that you make the stories themselves interesting outside the context of my interest. Or, wait, that's a terribly lame and obvious thing to say. What I mean is, sometimes one looks at a pairing, sometimes at a concept, and the story is the pairing or the concept. You seem to consistently tell stories in which the pairing and concept are integrated parts serving the story itself. Argh. I'm saying this badly. Maybe I should just summarise: I really enjoyed reading this.

[mirabella]

Thank you! You really should check out Numbers. It's fun.

And no, I know what you mean. I'm not sure I could explain it any better, but I do try to write so that those elements are integrated, so I'm glad to hear it's successful.

I'm glad you liked it, and thanks for letting me know.

[ravelqueen.livejournal.com]

ahh, well that was fun^^

Even though I only have the most rudimentary knowlegde of Supernatural I enjoyed this story very much. Especially because you got me hooked on Numb3rs in the first place and you are right it is hard to find really good developed longfic in this fandom.

Also the spider thing...ugh very vivid.

I loved the Don/Charlie interaction because they are just so adorable and cool

furthermore that vampire sequel....would be awesome ;)

[mirabella]

Yay, a convert! It's hard to find fic in this fandom, period. I don't know why that is. CSI has a ton.

I'm glad you liked it - thanks!

[adria]

I have only the most superficial knowledge of Numbers, but you made me care about Don and want to know what was going to happen with him and Charlie.

Victor Henriksen, my favorite! ♥ It's so good to read some Henriksen fic. I loved the monster, the way you built the tension, and the outside view of Sam and Dean.

[mirabella]

I'm glad you liked it - thanks!

Victor needs to be in more fic. He's awesome.

[jain]

There aren't enough words in the English language to describe how awesome this story is. Seriously, I love every little bit of it. The voices and characterizations are perfect, the monster plot is deliciously creepy, the crossover is seamless. Maybe the best part is the two brotherly relationships; I really liked the comparison and contrast between them. Also, way too many laugh-out-loud lines to count and a whole lot of hotness. (Not to mention that you kind of made me ship Don/Dean towards the end, which was unexpected but not entirely unwelcome. I was still totally invested in Sam/Dean and Don/Charlie in this particular universe, but I now firmly believe that Don/Dean should occur somewhere and somehow.)

[mirabella]

LOL, I think you're right about the Don/Dean. I did not actually intend their interactions to be quite so heavy on the testosterone-filled alpha male sexual tension, but it kind of wound up that way.

I'm glad you liked it - thanks!

[anotherslashfan]

You totally rock crossovers! Although I don't know Numb3rs, both worlds just seem to fit each other perfectly well. And it's so cool that you found the parallels between both universes in the way the brothers relate to each other and made that into the link. I also really loved how you integrated Henrickson - canon never did right by him; and here he got to rock.
Thank you for this story!!!

[mirabella]

Thank you! Yeah, I think the show could only have benefited from more Victor. He was awesome.

[crocodile]

Man, this was amazeballs, really incredible. The tension between the brothers Eppes and how Don doesn't even notice it at first, gah, love it. <3

[mirabella]

Thank you! I'm glad you enjoyed it.

[(Anonymous)]

If you get me into Numbers fandom, I will be very displeased with you.

-Jadedhavok.

[hidari-blue.livejournal.com]

THIS. THIS IS MY FAVORITE THING EVER.

[cleflink]

Hee. This was so much fun (which is a funny thing to say about crazy demon spiders, but I'm getting used to fandom stretching my boundaries like that). So true to both canons and I love the parallels between the Eppes brothers and the Winchesters; Don and Dean would so not get along (and I love that Don always calls him Winchester, not Dean).

Larry and Charlie were super awesome. The flamethrower line made me laugh and I love Don's mental thought about the reaction they'd have to someone turning into a pillar of salt. Nothing like science/math geeks. ^_^

[(Anonymous)]

This was completely brilliant. I loved the interaction between both sets of brothers, thought the monster-huntiong scenes were excellently done.

Loved this.

[(Anonymous)]

I was drawn in by the Inception fic and stayed for the Numb3ers/SN crossover. I cannot begin to describe my love for this. Sam and Dean, Don and Charlie, all the creepy goodness of the spider monster, pitch perfect.

[jain]

I was randomly reminded of this story and reread it, and it's just as wonderful as when I commented on it in 2010. Awesome case fic (both Numb3rs-style and Supernatural-style); perfect characterizations, not just of the main quartet but of Larry and Henricksen and Alan; and sparkling dialogue. Really lovely work!