Fic: Flirtin' with Disaster
Title: Flirtin’ with Disaster
Characters: Sam & Dean. Gen.
Rating: PG
Words: 1,875
Summary: People keep getting in Sam and Dean’s way during hunts. They kind of hate it, but secretly get kind of used to it.
For whenthewarsover from the prompt: They go back to saving people! hunting things! in the aftermath, but now everybody knows about the supernatural and people try to be helpful but just get in the way. Sam and Dean end up rolling their eyes a lot, going, "Sigh. Amateurs."
Thanks to estarmuerta and misfitloser2112 for helping me with my weird love affair with punctuation, among other mistakes. Any errors left are solely mine.
It's supposed to be a simple salt-and-burn. One spook haunting one run-down shack, scaring the bejesus out of the local neighborhood. Sam and Dean are close to excited about the simplicity of it all, after months of dealing with angels, demons, and words like righteous and apocalypse hanging over their heads. Now it's back to basics: saving people, hunting things. They couldn't be more thrilled. Except they could be, if only civilians would stop getting in their way.
“I thought it’d be fun, like an adventure. I mean, I’m thirty-three, life’s looking kind of boring. Thought I’d come out, bag myself a ghost, adrenaline rush and all that, and just go back to the office on Monday.” Slightly more round than tall, “Tim” as he’d told Sam his name was, wouldn’t shut up, and was seriously on Dean’s nerves.
“Did you even consider doing something more normal? Like, I don’t know, skydiving?”
“Dean…”
“No, Sam. I’m tired of it. This is our job, not the job of every pencil pusher on the planet. Look at him. His head’s bleeding and so’s his hand, and who knows what else. He’s probably got a concussion, and we can’t just leave him here to get himself hurt all over again while we go on our merry way.” Dean’s hands gesture wildly in Tim’s direction as he speaks and by the time he’s done ranting, his voice is bordering on frantic and both Tim and Sam have taken a step back from him.
Dean notices the slightly bemused look on Sam’s face and the slightly terrified one on Tim’s, and reins in his anger as he rubs a hand over his face. “I’m just…everywhere we go anymore, someone’s in the way. And if it’s not ‘Oh, we thought we could do it ourselves,” it’s a ‘oh, look, Sam and Dean Winchester, those boys who destroyed the world and then saved it all over again.’”
He takes a big sigh and expels the air slowly, hoping for some sort of calming effect. “I don’t know which one I prefer, but I’m damn sure I don’t like either one. Now let’s go burn the shit out of this thing, get Timmy here to the hospital, and be on our way.”
**
The next time it happens, it’s Sam’s turn to be annoyed. Dean had insisted on driving straight to the case, a small town in Nebraska with killings that sounded suspiciously vampiric in nature. It’s Sam who’s done all the research on the case, as usual, finding the common threads between cases and tracking each and every one of the seven victims back to one man residing on a farm in the middle of nowhere. It’s Sam who opens the squeaky screen door of the farmhouse with his gun aimed high. And it’s Sam who gets the first whiff of putrid, rotting flesh coming from within the house, so strong he’s out the door in five seconds flat and dry-heaving on the front porch steps.
Dean’s snickering behind him, probably just as annoyed at Sam that again, it seems like someone got here first, but he’s not going to pass up the chance to make fun of his baby brother’s weak stomach. And though he’d never admit it, he doesn’t quite mind avoiding a vampire confrontation, remembering their last one with Gordon and how it all could’ve gone so very wrong if only Sam hadn’t been as smart. But that was then.
He clears his throat and chuckles out, “You done there, princess?” as he smacks Sam on the shoulder. “Well, by that smell, I’d say someone got here before us. Either that, or there’s a hell of a pile of dead victims in there and there’s a vampire rampage still going on in this town. Frankly, I’m hoping for the former. Either way, we’ve gotta go in and look. You good?”
Wiping his chin off as he stands back up, Sam nods in confirmation, although his face is still a shade or two from normal. His throat’s scratchy when he speaks. “Yeah, good.”
Dean’s already halfway in the house by the time Sam catches up to him, his head tucked down into his shirt as far as it’ll go and still be able to see, and his gun still pointed out just in case. Not that the gun would do anything against a vampire, but it’s precaution just the same. At least that’s what Sam tells himself as they move room-to-room, floorboards creaking under their weight in the old house.
Finally they come to the kitchen, and the source of the smell is well-revealed. A headless body lays slumped down onto the kitchen table, a puddle of blood where the head should be. A quick look around the room finds the head wedged in the refrigerator door, propping it open slightly. Dean makes a face. “So that’s why it smells so bad. Rotten food, too. It’s like a two-fer special of rancid.” He tucks his gun back in his pants, and he can’t stifle the laughter that slips out when he catches a glimpse of Sam’s scrunched up face. “Come on, princess, let’s go. Job’s done, nothing left for us to kill.”
Sam follows Dean back out the house, taking a huge gasping breath the moment they hit the bottom of the front porch steps. “It fucking stinks in there, Dean. If someone was gonna kill it, why couldn’t they clean up the mess?”
Walking past him, Dean slaps hard on Sam’s back. “Eh, I do agree with you there. I mean, how hard is it to burn a damn corpse? Or a damn house that stinks worse than a shitcan!” He shouts the last part directly into the house, and Sam cocks an eyebrow as Dean tosses an entire matchbook onto the porch’s wooden frame.
“Overkill, much?”
“What? You wanna go and move that putrid, half-rotted body out of the house that reeks so terrible you’ll never be able to breathe right inside it again? I didn’t think so. Now shush and watch the pretty flames.”
**
Demons are no laughing matter to Sam and Dean after everything they’ve seen.
Dean’s practically snorting out beer the third time he says it. “Fingernail polish. She built a devil’s trap outta fingernail polish.” The last words come out rushed with a wheeze.
Sam too can barely contain his laughter. “That’s what she said. Said she was painting her nails watching the Sunday gospel on TV when her husband came in and hissed at the screen.” His voice takes on a higher-pitched tone as he imitates her. “‘I taught Latin for thirty years, been a church goer my whole life, too. Wasn’t a doubt in my mind demons existed, I just didn’t think I’d ever come face to face with one.’ Her husband was perfectly fine afterwards, by the way, other than wondering how he’d gotten home and why there was nail polish ruining his wood floor. Oh, man.”
“It’ll never not be funny. I wish I was there, story’s better than any $200 snagged shooting pool.”
“Yeah, you should’ve been. Although it is nice to have money to celebrate with, we could’ve made it somewhere else. And the look on your face would’ve been so priceless. Hot pink devil’s trap, this size.” Even using his giant hands as a measuring unit, the estimation is still much smaller than anything they’ve ever drawn before. “Not even sure it’d actually hold a demon. But apparently it did.” He pauses a moment to finish off his beer, makes a face when he gets to the metallic taste at the bottom. “You know, I’m glad we didn’t have to do it. One less demon to deal with all around.”
“With you there. I’m glad there’s not many demons around now. Don’t think I could deal with hoards of them ever again.” His last two words heavily punctuated,
Dean smiles and clinks his bottle against Sam’s.
They drink in partial silence for awhile, Dean occasionally muttering about the nail polish while Sam mostly eyes the customers in the bar. They’re on beers five and four, respectively, when Sam inhales to speak, grabbing Dean’s attention. “Hey, Dean.” The wrapper on the bottle slips off under his prodding fingertips, and he’s left with nowhere to focus but his brother’s face, now looking intently at him thanks to the serious tone of his voice. “You think with all these people figuring out what’s going on in the world, maybe it’s a good time for us to take a step back? I mean, the Impala’s got some years and miles on her, she’d probably appreciate the rest. And we ain’t as young as we used to be, either.” At that, Dean makes a face. “Oh, hey, like it doesn’t take you an extra five minutes to get out of bed in the morning anymore because you gotta stretch your legs. I see all, man.”
Shaking his head and taking another drink, Dean waves his other hand dismissively in Sam’s direction. “Well, whatever. But just because a bunch of do-gooders got it in their minds they can save the world don’t mean we just stop doing what we do. People still get hurt, especially people who think hunting’s some shiny glamorous life. Nothing more dangerous than a bunch of amateurs trying to get themselves killed. Besides, this point, I’m not even sure what else I could do.” Dean frowns and turns his attention toward a woman at the bar wearing shorts that should probably be illegal, and Sam knows it’s the end of the conversation whether he wants it to be or not.
**
Sam’s throwing his duffel in the impala’s trunk when Dean approaches. “Sam.” Sam jumps; Dean’s snuck up on him. Now there’s something that didn’t use to happen, Dean thinks. “So, I’ve been thinking about what you said in that bar, couple months back.” Dean thinks saying it is against the laws of nature or something, but he grits his teeth and spills it out anyway.
“You and me, we’ve been doing this so long I don’t even know how to do anything else. But in a way, you’re right. People don’t need us rushing around the country saving the day or whatever. They seem to be handling things pretty well without us. Which, kinda sucks, actually.” Sam’s got something of a lopsided grin growing on his face now, and Dean’s having trouble trying to say his piece without wanting to smack it off. “I figure, maybe, we can stick to one region more so than others, put a little less miles on the girl.”
Sam nods, not pushing much. “Any idea where?”
“Haven’t thought that far yet.” Dean shrugs, moment’s over. “Now get in the car; time’s wastin’ and we got work to do.”
Sam watches Dean for a moment as he heads to the driver’s side before slamming down the trunk and sliding into passenger seat beside him, smile thoroughly plastered on. “Yeah. It’s a three-hour drive to Lexington. We should get going if we want to interview anyone before nightfall.”
“Or before they dispatch the damn monster for us,” Dean chuckles over the low growl of the Impala as she starts up.
**
+ My mom was reading an article in the paper as I was desperately searching for a title, and it conveniently mentioned Molly Hatchet’s “Flirting with Disaster.” The lyrics seemed strangely appropriate.
Characters: Sam & Dean. Gen.
Rating: PG
Words: 1,875
Summary: People keep getting in Sam and Dean’s way during hunts. They kind of hate it, but secretly get kind of used to it.
For whenthewarsover from the prompt: They go back to saving people! hunting things! in the aftermath, but now everybody knows about the supernatural and people try to be helpful but just get in the way. Sam and Dean end up rolling their eyes a lot, going, "Sigh. Amateurs."
Thanks to estarmuerta and misfitloser2112 for helping me with my weird love affair with punctuation, among other mistakes. Any errors left are solely mine.
It's supposed to be a simple salt-and-burn. One spook haunting one run-down shack, scaring the bejesus out of the local neighborhood. Sam and Dean are close to excited about the simplicity of it all, after months of dealing with angels, demons, and words like righteous and apocalypse hanging over their heads. Now it's back to basics: saving people, hunting things. They couldn't be more thrilled. Except they could be, if only civilians would stop getting in their way.
“I thought it’d be fun, like an adventure. I mean, I’m thirty-three, life’s looking kind of boring. Thought I’d come out, bag myself a ghost, adrenaline rush and all that, and just go back to the office on Monday.” Slightly more round than tall, “Tim” as he’d told Sam his name was, wouldn’t shut up, and was seriously on Dean’s nerves.
“Did you even consider doing something more normal? Like, I don’t know, skydiving?”
“Dean…”
“No, Sam. I’m tired of it. This is our job, not the job of every pencil pusher on the planet. Look at him. His head’s bleeding and so’s his hand, and who knows what else. He’s probably got a concussion, and we can’t just leave him here to get himself hurt all over again while we go on our merry way.” Dean’s hands gesture wildly in Tim’s direction as he speaks and by the time he’s done ranting, his voice is bordering on frantic and both Tim and Sam have taken a step back from him.
Dean notices the slightly bemused look on Sam’s face and the slightly terrified one on Tim’s, and reins in his anger as he rubs a hand over his face. “I’m just…everywhere we go anymore, someone’s in the way. And if it’s not ‘Oh, we thought we could do it ourselves,” it’s a ‘oh, look, Sam and Dean Winchester, those boys who destroyed the world and then saved it all over again.’”
He takes a big sigh and expels the air slowly, hoping for some sort of calming effect. “I don’t know which one I prefer, but I’m damn sure I don’t like either one. Now let’s go burn the shit out of this thing, get Timmy here to the hospital, and be on our way.”
**
The next time it happens, it’s Sam’s turn to be annoyed. Dean had insisted on driving straight to the case, a small town in Nebraska with killings that sounded suspiciously vampiric in nature. It’s Sam who’s done all the research on the case, as usual, finding the common threads between cases and tracking each and every one of the seven victims back to one man residing on a farm in the middle of nowhere. It’s Sam who opens the squeaky screen door of the farmhouse with his gun aimed high. And it’s Sam who gets the first whiff of putrid, rotting flesh coming from within the house, so strong he’s out the door in five seconds flat and dry-heaving on the front porch steps.
Dean’s snickering behind him, probably just as annoyed at Sam that again, it seems like someone got here first, but he’s not going to pass up the chance to make fun of his baby brother’s weak stomach. And though he’d never admit it, he doesn’t quite mind avoiding a vampire confrontation, remembering their last one with Gordon and how it all could’ve gone so very wrong if only Sam hadn’t been as smart. But that was then.
He clears his throat and chuckles out, “You done there, princess?” as he smacks Sam on the shoulder. “Well, by that smell, I’d say someone got here before us. Either that, or there’s a hell of a pile of dead victims in there and there’s a vampire rampage still going on in this town. Frankly, I’m hoping for the former. Either way, we’ve gotta go in and look. You good?”
Wiping his chin off as he stands back up, Sam nods in confirmation, although his face is still a shade or two from normal. His throat’s scratchy when he speaks. “Yeah, good.”
Dean’s already halfway in the house by the time Sam catches up to him, his head tucked down into his shirt as far as it’ll go and still be able to see, and his gun still pointed out just in case. Not that the gun would do anything against a vampire, but it’s precaution just the same. At least that’s what Sam tells himself as they move room-to-room, floorboards creaking under their weight in the old house.
Finally they come to the kitchen, and the source of the smell is well-revealed. A headless body lays slumped down onto the kitchen table, a puddle of blood where the head should be. A quick look around the room finds the head wedged in the refrigerator door, propping it open slightly. Dean makes a face. “So that’s why it smells so bad. Rotten food, too. It’s like a two-fer special of rancid.” He tucks his gun back in his pants, and he can’t stifle the laughter that slips out when he catches a glimpse of Sam’s scrunched up face. “Come on, princess, let’s go. Job’s done, nothing left for us to kill.”
Sam follows Dean back out the house, taking a huge gasping breath the moment they hit the bottom of the front porch steps. “It fucking stinks in there, Dean. If someone was gonna kill it, why couldn’t they clean up the mess?”
Walking past him, Dean slaps hard on Sam’s back. “Eh, I do agree with you there. I mean, how hard is it to burn a damn corpse? Or a damn house that stinks worse than a shitcan!” He shouts the last part directly into the house, and Sam cocks an eyebrow as Dean tosses an entire matchbook onto the porch’s wooden frame.
“Overkill, much?”
“What? You wanna go and move that putrid, half-rotted body out of the house that reeks so terrible you’ll never be able to breathe right inside it again? I didn’t think so. Now shush and watch the pretty flames.”
**
Demons are no laughing matter to Sam and Dean after everything they’ve seen.
Dean’s practically snorting out beer the third time he says it. “Fingernail polish. She built a devil’s trap outta fingernail polish.” The last words come out rushed with a wheeze.
Sam too can barely contain his laughter. “That’s what she said. Said she was painting her nails watching the Sunday gospel on TV when her husband came in and hissed at the screen.” His voice takes on a higher-pitched tone as he imitates her. “‘I taught Latin for thirty years, been a church goer my whole life, too. Wasn’t a doubt in my mind demons existed, I just didn’t think I’d ever come face to face with one.’ Her husband was perfectly fine afterwards, by the way, other than wondering how he’d gotten home and why there was nail polish ruining his wood floor. Oh, man.”
“It’ll never not be funny. I wish I was there, story’s better than any $200 snagged shooting pool.”
“Yeah, you should’ve been. Although it is nice to have money to celebrate with, we could’ve made it somewhere else. And the look on your face would’ve been so priceless. Hot pink devil’s trap, this size.” Even using his giant hands as a measuring unit, the estimation is still much smaller than anything they’ve ever drawn before. “Not even sure it’d actually hold a demon. But apparently it did.” He pauses a moment to finish off his beer, makes a face when he gets to the metallic taste at the bottom. “You know, I’m glad we didn’t have to do it. One less demon to deal with all around.”
“With you there. I’m glad there’s not many demons around now. Don’t think I could deal with hoards of them ever again.” His last two words heavily punctuated,
Dean smiles and clinks his bottle against Sam’s.
They drink in partial silence for awhile, Dean occasionally muttering about the nail polish while Sam mostly eyes the customers in the bar. They’re on beers five and four, respectively, when Sam inhales to speak, grabbing Dean’s attention. “Hey, Dean.” The wrapper on the bottle slips off under his prodding fingertips, and he’s left with nowhere to focus but his brother’s face, now looking intently at him thanks to the serious tone of his voice. “You think with all these people figuring out what’s going on in the world, maybe it’s a good time for us to take a step back? I mean, the Impala’s got some years and miles on her, she’d probably appreciate the rest. And we ain’t as young as we used to be, either.” At that, Dean makes a face. “Oh, hey, like it doesn’t take you an extra five minutes to get out of bed in the morning anymore because you gotta stretch your legs. I see all, man.”
Shaking his head and taking another drink, Dean waves his other hand dismissively in Sam’s direction. “Well, whatever. But just because a bunch of do-gooders got it in their minds they can save the world don’t mean we just stop doing what we do. People still get hurt, especially people who think hunting’s some shiny glamorous life. Nothing more dangerous than a bunch of amateurs trying to get themselves killed. Besides, this point, I’m not even sure what else I could do.” Dean frowns and turns his attention toward a woman at the bar wearing shorts that should probably be illegal, and Sam knows it’s the end of the conversation whether he wants it to be or not.
**
Sam’s throwing his duffel in the impala’s trunk when Dean approaches. “Sam.” Sam jumps; Dean’s snuck up on him. Now there’s something that didn’t use to happen, Dean thinks. “So, I’ve been thinking about what you said in that bar, couple months back.” Dean thinks saying it is against the laws of nature or something, but he grits his teeth and spills it out anyway.
“You and me, we’ve been doing this so long I don’t even know how to do anything else. But in a way, you’re right. People don’t need us rushing around the country saving the day or whatever. They seem to be handling things pretty well without us. Which, kinda sucks, actually.” Sam’s got something of a lopsided grin growing on his face now, and Dean’s having trouble trying to say his piece without wanting to smack it off. “I figure, maybe, we can stick to one region more so than others, put a little less miles on the girl.”
Sam nods, not pushing much. “Any idea where?”
“Haven’t thought that far yet.” Dean shrugs, moment’s over. “Now get in the car; time’s wastin’ and we got work to do.”
Sam watches Dean for a moment as he heads to the driver’s side before slamming down the trunk and sliding into passenger seat beside him, smile thoroughly plastered on. “Yeah. It’s a three-hour drive to Lexington. We should get going if we want to interview anyone before nightfall.”
“Or before they dispatch the damn monster for us,” Dean chuckles over the low growl of the Impala as she starts up.
**
+ My mom was reading an article in the paper as I was desperately searching for a title, and it conveniently mentioned Molly Hatchet’s “Flirting with Disaster.” The lyrics seemed strangely appropriate.