Sam & Fenrir ficlet

[icarus_chained]

You know, I think there's something wrong with my definition of the word 'drabble' -_-; For oneiriad , who wanted some Sam&Fenrir bonding

Title:  Monsters
Rating:  PG-13
Fandoms:  SPN, Norse Myth
Continuity:  *tilts head* Somewhere mid S5, maybe? *shrugs*
Characters/Pairings:  Sam, Fenrir. Mention of Dean and (obliquely) the Aesir
Summary:  You smell like blood ...
Wordcount:  607
Disclaimer:  Not mine

Monsters

Sam was having a bad day. That tended to happen a lot, especially of late. He was beginning, maybe, to give some credit to Dean's theory that there was some cosmic law of the universe saying that if your name was Winchester, your ratio of bad days to good was due a wholesale skewing towards the left hand side of the equation. Though Dean hadn't phrased it quite like that ...

He wondered for a second how Dean would phrase an explanation of his current predicament. "I'm getting sat on by a godwolf the size of a fucking semi, could use a hand"? Or possibly something more specific, like "There are teeth, really fucking big teeth, and did I mention that this thing kills gods"? Or "It's looking at me, right now, it's sitting on me and I just tried to kill it, and it's looking at me, could you maybe show up sometime in the next two seconds, please"?

Then the wolf opened his mouth and spoke, and Sam decided that if Dean were here ... he wouldn't be saying anything, at this point. He'd be doing what Sam was. Which was staring. A lot.

"Why did you attack me?" Fenrir asked him. More curiously than bitter, though there was an edge of that, too. Sam had heard it too often in his own voice recently to mistake it. The quiet bitterness, and a seeping exhaustion. "Even if you could win, I have done nothing to you."

Sam shrugged awkwardly against the dirt, resisting the urge to squirm under the feral, intelligent stare. "I ... I'm a hunter. I hunt monsters. It's ... what I do?" Or tried to do, anyway. When he wasn't releasing Hell on Earth and playing puppet to Devils ...

Fenrir narrowed his eyes, leaning close to press his nose and his jaw against Sam's chest, and Sam stopped breathing. Eyes wide, fingers clenching in the dirt where they were pinned, he stared at the massive head lowered against him, and didn't breathe. Fenrir, though, breathed deep. Long and thoughtful, tasting the air. Tasting Sam.

"You smell of blood," the godwolf said at last. "You smell of brimstone, and pain, and the red darkness. That is a monster's smell." Quiet, calm. Without judgement, and Sam turned his head away. Turned his head, and hoped with all his heart that Dean wasn't two minutes away, that Dean was miles away, that Dean wouldn't hear that. Hear the truth of that. One monster to another. You smell of blood.

"Yeah," he whispered, eyes squeezed shut. "I know. I ... know."

There was a beat, a pause, and then ... Then the godwolf stood back off Sam's chest, stood back to let him up, and when Sam opened his eyes, Fenrir was looking down at him with eyes full of an ancient tiredness, and the wry communion of shared bitterness. While Sam stared up at him in shock, the godwolf let him go, and lifted a lip in what might have been a snarl, but wasn't.

"Monsters don't regret," Fenrir rumbled. "They laugh as they bind you, and don't regret. I've seen them. They don't look away in shame." He shook his great head, grizzled and tired, and rested a paw lightly against Sam's arm. "Hurt me, and I will hurt you, human. But ... I do not think we are what the other hunts." The lip lifted again, and Sam realised, distantly, that it was meant to be something like a smile. Something like. "Monsters smell like blood. But so do their victims."

And Sam, sitting in the dirt before him, having a bad day, week, year, life ... Sam nodded silently.

Yeah. They did.