Title: The Thing!
Author: kbk
Rating: PG-13 for language
Disclaimer: Kripke and WB - never me.
Summary: Dean is in a motel room, and there's a Thing in Sam's bed! Oh no!
Notes: This is me working to do cute. That's cute in the fluffy-and-adorable sense, not the semi-naked-Dean sense - that is, he is in this, but unfortunately there are no pictures. Sorry. But I think cuteness has been achieved.

"You could have told me this shirt is shredded," Dean remarked as he stepped out of the tiny bathroom. When he didn't get a reply, Dean pulled the towel off his head and looked at the bed where Sam had crashed as soon as they got to the motel. The covers were rumpled, but there was no Sam. "Also, you could have told me you were going out. Maybe offered to get me some fries."

There was no note, and the laptop humming on the table was still waiting for the start-up password. Of course, Sammy was a grown man who was perfectly capable of looking after himself and certainly didn't need his big brother's permission to go anywhere, but he had a nasty habit of getting himself kidnapped, and dammit, was it too much to ask that he at least called through the door?

Dean tossed the shirt onto Sam's bed, rubbing at his hair again, then stopped abruptly when something moved under the covers. It wasn't big, whatever it was - it had been hiding among the hills and folds of the disheveled linen - but Dean knew as much as anybody that size didn't necessarily matter. It could be a snake, or something equally venomous.

Dean shuddered, and pulled the nearest pistol, pointing it squarely at The Thing. Then he cautiously, carefully, quietly reached out and took hold of the bottom edge of the blanket, and, with a yank and a yell, the battle was on.

The blanket whipped through the air, and so did a pair of jeans and a T-shirt. A black ball of fluff no bigger than Dean's hand tumbled across the sheet, and rolled to a stop just a few inches from the edge. It let out a pitiful yowl.

"Whoa! Where'd you come from?" The Beast In The Bed was a kitten with long tousled fur and huge-looking hazel eyes that blinked mournfully at Dean. Dean tucked the pistol into his jeans and reached out a tentative hand. "I'm sorry, kitty, I thought you were something nasty." The kitten yowled again and batted at Dean's fingers with its front paws.

"There now," Dean said, voice instinctively gentling, the sweet-and-low tones he kept for kids and animals and nice southern girls, "friends, huh?" He wiggled his fingers and the kitten pounced on them, intent on the hunt, and totally blindsided when Dean's other hand scooped it up and brought it to his chest.

Dean stroked the kitten with two gentle fingers, ruffling The Thing's fur the wrong way and grinning when it glared indignantly at him. "Ah, don't be like that." He bent his head down and nuzzled the fur on top of the kitten's head, relishing the soft feel of it and breathing in the clean young-animal scent.

After a few long moments, Dean chuckled. "Man, am I glad Sam's not here. He would rip the shit out of me for this." The kitten bit Dean's finger, and he jumped, and cursed some, because the little bastard's teeth were seriously like needles.

"Hey! That was not nice!" Dean tapped the kitten on the nose, and it promptly bit him again. "OK, I'm warning you."

For a moment, it looked as though the kitten was rolling its eyes. Dean blinked. Then the kitten purred, so quietly Dean didn't so much hear it as feel it in the palm of his hand, and rubbed its head against Dean's chest. Dean smiled, and carried The Thing with him as he went to sit at the laptop.

It licked his fingers, raspy little kitten tongue that felt like nothing else, and Dean set The Thing down on his lap for a serious talking-to. "Do not try to ingratiate yourself," he said with a frown. "I can't keep you. What, am I going to put a litter tray in the back seat of the Impala, or something? I don't think so!" He turned his attention to the computer, bringing up a web browser and then a notepad - he generally preferred to work on paper, but sometimes cut-and-paste was a goddamn godsend.

"Don't worry, I'll find you someone nice before I go." The kitten yowled and started to knead at his right jeans pocket - right where the car keys were, Dean realized when they dug into his thigh. "Are you..." The Thing looked up at him, wide eyes shining, and yowled again.

"I'm losing it," Dean commented to thin air, but he picked the kitten up anyway and sat it in front of the computer. It stared intently at the keyboard, then balanced itself across it, with two paws at the bottom and one at the top, and used the last to tap out a message.

im your brother dipshit

It was really quite impressive - the kitten only used the backspace key four times. Dean absently punctuated the sentence, then looked again.

Yep. That was pretty much conclusive evidence, right there. The kitten was Sam.

"Well, shit," said Dean.

THE END