SPN Fic - Even Living Legends Need Eggs (Gen, R) 2/2
Sam spends a few minutes half-heartedly concocting a plan to get Dean out of Mapleville, but faking Dean’s death would take a fucking lot of work (and knowing their luck, the town would want to preserve the body for a museum exhibit or something equally creepy), and sending him via airmail to Wisconsin, while an entertaining thought, probably isn’t something the postal service allows. He even considers Dean’s two surefire answers for any problem (burning stuff and blowing shit up) but they don’t seem likely to help here. He’s drawing swirls in a spill of salt on the table when a bottle thunks down in front of him, followed by a young man.
“Hey,” the guy says, gesturing with his own half-full bottle. “You looked like you could use a drink.”
Sam gives him a quick once-over, but besides a haircut that belongs in the late eighties, the guy doesn’t trip any of his weirdness meters. Plus, he seems to be the only person in this joint who’s offering, and Sam could really use the beer right about now. “Yeah, thanks.” He drains half the bottle in one long pull, not even caring that the beer’s lukewarm and has the bitter taste of a cheap brand.
“Vincent,” the guy says, holding out a hand. “I saw those girls over here earlier - asking about Dean, I bet?” At Sam’s nod, he shakes his head. “Ridiculous.”
“Yeah,” Sam says with feeling, relieved to be in the company of someone who finds the situation as ludicrous as he does. “Man, you wouldn’t believe how often that happens to me. Girls at bars are always trying to get me to introduce them, or tell them Dean’s life story, or whatever.” He takes another gulp of beer.
Vincent laughs. “You poor thing. How do you get rid of them?”
Sam details his strategies - he’s got different ones depending on the level of annoyance - and Vincent just shakes his head in disbelief. They both laugh over a time Sam told a particularly pushy woman that Dean was allergic to sex - and that even the slightest arousal could make his whole body swell up like a marshmallow.
“That’s awful,” Vincent says, signaling the first waitress Sam’s seen all afternoon for two more beers. She looks pissed at the request, casting a longing glance at the cluster of people around Dean, but heads grudgingly back to the kitchen. “But I suppose she deserved it for being so dense. I mean, come on. Just look at the guy.”
Sam thinks that’s a little harsh, and opens his mouth to say so, but Vincent leans in and says, “And don’t tell him I said this, but all the leather and flannel? It’s kind of overkill.”
“Overkill?” Sam asks blankly.
“Yeah, you know. I mean, I’m not saying every guy has to fit the well-dressed stereotype, but he’s kind of verging on overcompensation, there.”
It’s probably a good thing Sam only has his fresh beer halfway to his lips when Vincent’s remark sinks in. On the other hand, this leaves his jaw free to drop open.
Vincent doesn’t seem to notice, busy watching something over Sam’s shoulder. “Hey, say hi to your brother from me, okay?” He grabs his beer, waggles his eyebrows at Sam, and disappears. A second later, Sam feels a hand come down on his shoulder, and turns to find Dean standing there, a vague frown on his face.
“Who was that guy?” he asks, watching Vincent weave through the tables.
“No one,” Sam says. “What’s up?”
Dean steals a sip of Sam’s beer, then makes a face. “Gross, dude. The stuff they’ve got on tap’s way better.”
“Then stop stealing mine, jerk,” Sam says, locking his hands around the bottle protectively. The town’s been fattening Dean up all afternoon, like some kind of weird sacrifice, so it figures that he got the good beer.
Dean rolls his eyes. “Whatever.” He leans down, lowering his voice. “They’re about to head over to the field for the game. Now would be an excellent time to execute any plans you might have to get us the hell out of here.”
“Uh, yeah,” Sam says, staring at the bottle. “About that. I’m not really - “
They’re interrupted by an argument escalating by the door - a group of townspeople arguing about who gets to give Dean a ride to the high school. “No problem, guys, I’ll just take my car,” Dean calls, but they ignore him, finally settling on a game of paper-rock-scissors to settle the issue. A tall woman with red hair and biceps big enough to beat a grizzly in arm wrestling trumps Mayor Dave’s paper, and shoots Dean a smile that’s less friendly than outright predatory. She jingles her keys, pointing at a monster pickup truck outside the café, and Dean smiles weakly at her, the hand on Sam’s shoulder tightening like a vise.
“Seriously, any minute now,” he hisses.
“I need a bit more time,” Sam replies. He can feel the heat of Dean’s glare without even looking up. “I’ll meet you at the field, okay? I have to pick up some stuff.”
Dean makes a disgusted noise, but he stops trying to crush Sam’s shoulder blade and goes over to where the red-haired woman’s leaning against the cab of her gargantuan trunk, one boot propped on the metal running board.
* * *
It’s actually not a lie - not entirely, anyway. A plan hit Sam like lightning when he was watching the great haggle over the honor of transporting Dean, and he does need a few items to pull it off. Luckily, in a small town like this, what he needs is only a short walk away, and fifteen minutes later, he’s ready. He drives across town to the high school, following the one-way flow of traffic, and leaves the car in a nearby field serving as overflow parking, since what looks like every car in a ten-mile radius is crammed into the paved lot.
He dials Dean’s cell phone number as he comes around the metal bleachers, but it’s not necessary - the tight knot of people at the foot of the stands is more obvious than a flashing neon sign. Speaking of flashing neon signs - Sam does a double take at the scoreboard, where the home team’s name is lit up above a collection of zeros.
“The Impalas?”
Dean’s exasperated huff comes over the line. “Dude, just be glad they settled for that. They wanted to be the Winchesters at first, but I said no.”
“That’d be a terrible team name,” Sam says absently, scanning the group for a Dean. He sees a familiar head tilt irritably and grins. “A football team named after a rifle? Not exactly the image a school would want to promote.”
“Right, like some pansy-ass deer is really that much better.”
“Did you just insult your car?” Sam asks with interest.
“Shut up, Sam,” Dean says, but Sam can hear the grin in his voice. “Where the hell are you?”
“At the edge of the bleachers, to your right. Next to the pep band.” As if to prove his point, a piccolo player next to him blasts a shrill arpeggio. Sam raises a hand over his head as he sees Dean turn around.
“Stop waving, dude, you’re like, impossible to miss. Fucking giant,” Dean mutters. “Be there in a sec.”
* * *
It’s more like ten minutes, but Sam doesn’t blame Dean for detouring the long way around the bleachers. It’s safe to say neither of them have quite recovered from the incident with the undead marching band, but Dean was the one who had to listen to their shrill cacophony for hours on end as they marched the field, so Sam understands if the sight of teenagers with instruments is a little too much now.
“Tell me you’ve got a plan,” Dean says, dragging Sam further under the cover of the bleachers.
“Yeah,” Sam says, thinking of the two boxes he’s got stuffed in the trunk of the Impala. “I thought of something at the café.”
“Good, because being on the field in front of the entire town once was kind of enough for me,” Dean says, looking around suspiciously before ducking further into the shadows.
“About that,” Sam says. “You never did tell me what exactly happened. How did a jackalope get here, anyway?”
“Can’t we discuss this later? Like when this town’s a hundred miles behind us?” Dean asks, but Sam just shrugs, and he rolls his eyes. “Fine. Some kid bred the thing, of course. He wanted revenge against the cheerleaders.”
“So he decided to breed an antelope and a rabbit into his own attack monster?”
“It’s a small town,” Dean says dryly. “Nothing else to do. So, anyway, it took me a while to figure out who it was. My first suspect was this geeky kid who had a crush on the head cheerleader - poor dude asked her to a dance and she laughed in his face. But then I asked him about it, and he said it was all a dare, just for a laugh, that she wasn’t even his type.”
“And you believed him?”
“Not at first,” Dean says. “But when I asked him what his type was, he said, uh.” He scratches the back of his neck. “He said it was tall, handsome, and usually wearing a little less plaid, but he was willing to make an exception.”
Sam can’t stop the delighted grin from spreading across his face. “Aww, that’s so cute. Your very own - wait a minute. Did this guy’s name happen to be Vincent?”
“How did you know that?”
“We’ve met,” Sam says. “By the way, he says hello. And he leered, but I’m not going to repeat that for you.”
“Appreciate it,” Dean mutters.
“So, it wasn’t Vincent,” Sam prompts. “Who was it?”
“Well, Vincent did have some valuable information, besides his advice on plaid. He told me that one of the guys on the football team was bitter toward the cheerleaders - apparently he’d wanted to be the first male cheerleader.” Dean raises his eyebrows. “Unfortunately, Mapleville not being the most forward-thinking town, the cheerleaders laughed him out of auditions and he got stuck on the football team instead. And when Vincent added that he’d been struck by lightning over the summer, I knew he was the guy.”
“Wait, what?” Sam asks, bewildered. “Lightning?”
“You can only breed a jackalope during a lightning storm,” Dean says. “Duh.”
Sam doesn’t even want to know why Dean knows that, or why he thinks anyone else would. “Okay. So then what?”
“So then I read all the lore on jackalopes, and it said the best way to stop one of them was to leave a glass of whiskey outside wherever it’s living - they drink it, and then they’re supposed to be easier to catch.”
“I’m guessing that didn’t work out.”
“Well, it drank the whiskey, all right,” Dean says, shaking his head. “But the fucker was apparently an angry drunk, and the whiskey just made it want to go on a rampage.”
“But you wasted it before it could hurt anyone,” Sam guesses.
“And then the town went batshit and gave me a key to the city and dedicated the yearbook to me and started composing odes to my bravery,” Dean says. “And I had to distract them so I could sneak out of town, which is the only part of the experience that I’d really like to repeat. You got a plan, or what?”
“Yeah,” Sam says, coming to a split-second decision. “But it’s going to take me a while to set it all up.” He pauses, measuring Dean’s expression, then says, “I think you should go out there.”
“Excuse me?”
“I think you should give the speech,” Sam says.
The crowd’s been growing more excited as they’ve been talking, making Dean’s reply difficult to hear, but Sam doesn’t have to make out the individual words to know the message is “no fucking way.”
Sam pulls Dean further back, away from the bleachers and the noise of the crowd.
“Look,” he says. “We do jobs like this one all the time, and most of the time, nobody bothers to say thanks. We’ve been run out of town and beaten up and arrested, all for trying to help people. Why not take advantage of the one time someone wants to thank you?”
Dean shakes his head. “Sam, if I was doing this job for the adoring fans, I’d’ve quit a long time ago. Let’s just get out of here.”
“No,” Sam says firmly, watching Dean’s eyebrows shoot up in surprise. “I know this wasn’t the most glamorous job, but you did save the cheerleaders and the football team. You save people all the time - you deserve some recognition.”
Dean flounders for a second, staring at Sam, then says quietly, “We save people. I don’t do it alone.”
“But I didn’t kill a ferocious rabbit on a drunken rampage,” Sam points out. “So this one’s all you.”
Dean still looks like he might protest, once he recovers from the shock, so Sam lets his eyes go wide and watery and fakes a sniffle. “You’ve always been my hero,” he says in a warbling falsetto, reaching out to touch Dean’s face.
Dean knocks his hand away with a “shut up” out of reflex, but he’s smothering a smile, and Sam grins back.
It might have taken a bit more cajoling to get Dean out onto the field, or he might have caved right there - they’ll never know, because at that moment, the football team comes thundering down the path behind the bleachers, fresh from the locker rooms and pumped up on adrenaline and pep talks. One of the players spots Dean, shouting to the others, and Sam barely has to nudge him and his brother’s swept up in the rush, carried out onto the field. Dean sends a glare over his shoulder as the team rounds the corner of the bleachers, but Sam just smiles and waves.
* * *
Five minutes later, after the players have been introduced and the opposing team brought out, the announcer makes a proclamation about a special guest. The crowd goes wild at Dean’s name, and the story following it is even more exaggerated than the version Sam heard from the cheerleaders, full of danger and intrigue usually reserved for Bond flicks. He tunes the words out as he heads to the car, letting the drone cover the noise he makes as he sets up his plan, and he’s nearly done when there’s a brief lull. He stops to listen as his brother’s voice comes over the booming loudspeaker.
“Uh, hi there. Um. I’m Dean. Guess you all know that already.”
Sam doesn’t have to see Dean to know exactly what he looks like - he can hear the barely-concealed panic in his brother’s voice, the tight edge under his words, and knows Dean’s probably smiling just a little too wide and shifting his weight from foot to foot in that nervous way he has.
The crowd doesn’t seem to care, however, and catcalls follow his introduction.
“Right,” Dean says, the word echoing off the bleachers several times before dying out. “Well. I’m not real good with speeches, so I’ll just say thanks to you all for welcoming me back. Seriously, I’ve never seen a town so friendly before in my life - I’m kind of afraid you’re all undead, or serial killers, or something.”
If it hadn’t been late fall, Sam’s sure he would have heard crickets chirping in the silence following Dean’s words. Sam normally thinks Dean’s jokes are about ten times less funny than Dean does, but when the attempt is that lame, he knows it’s his cue to begin the distraction. He flicks open his lighter.
Dean coughs awkwardly. “Um, anyway. Good luck to the Impalas on their game tonight, and here’s hoping it’s a homecoming free of deranged rodents. Or deranged animals of any kind. Or deranged people, which can be even - “
But his explanation is mercifully cut off as the fuse Sam lit ignites and travels around the perimeter of the parking lot, and the first firework goes off. Luckily for Sam, Mapleville is the kind of small town that celebrates the Fourth with a frightening intensity, and the fireworks he picked up on sale are the serious kind, not the little snap-crackle-pop type that wink out after a bit of lame fizzing. It takes about a minute for the fuse to light every firecracker, enough time for Sam to hightail it back to the Impala and have her running and ready for escape, but even as he pulls out of the field, he can see that he doesn’t have to worry about catching the townspeople’s attention. The explosions have set off a dozen car alarms, and amidst the still-airborne sparks swirling through smoke and the frantic honking, the crowd streaming out to the parking lot will be busy enough to miss their team’s mascot zooming by.
Sam bypasses the parking lot, taking the Impala straight from the field up the short incline to the road, then speeds the block or so to the actual field. He’s hoping Dean’s still in the middle of the field - in hindsight, a plan for meeting up would have been a good idea. Sam shrugs and takes the car off the road again, bumping over the gravel shoulder and coasting toward the bleachers. Thankfully, Dean seems to have some kind of internal homing device where the car is concerned, and comes running as soon as the Impala’s headlights break around the corner of the metal stands. Sam skids to a stop just long enough for Dean to throw himself into the passenger seat, then he hits the gas again, tearing up soft grass and dirt under the tires. The football team and a gaggle of cheerleaders behind them give a loud cheer, and Dean waves as Sam guns the car onto pavement and whips her around heading out of town. They blow past the chaotic parking lot, and Dean stares at the mess of people and cars.
“Dude, what the hell’d you do?” he asks, turning around to continue watching as Sam presses the gas pedal to the floor.
“Just some fireworks,” Sam says nonchalantly. “I figured the noise would be enough of a distraction, and then there was the fire part, which, you know. Can’t go wrong with fire.”
“Burning stuff and blowing shit up,” Dean says, impressed. “I’m proud of you, Sammy.” He settles back into the seat. “When I got out of here last time, I only managed to blow up things.”
Sam isn’t remotely surprised. “Please tell me it wasn’t something important.”
“Apparently not important enough to make them hate me, or even like me a little less,” Dean says with a sigh. “It was just a silo of soybeans.”
Sam risks looking away from the road to stare at his brother.
“What? A little heat to build the pressure, and boom, the fuckers’ll blow sky-high. They’ve got these metal lids on top, and man, those things take off like fucking flying saucers,” Dean says happily.
“Your hatred of vegetables is baffling,” Sam says.
“Dude, soybeans are not real food,” Dean argues. “They’re, like…used to make fake shit. And weird milk.”
Sam’s contemplating the energy it would take to set Dean straight, and whether it’s even worth it, when something niggles at the back of his mind. “Wait a minute. Where was this silo?”
Dean points off into the distance, vaguely west, exactly where Sam saw the rusting remains of a metal silo on his drive to the football field, accompanied by a small sign. He hadn’t bothered to read it at the time, but he can guess now what it probably says - “this silo saved from useful production by the great Dean Winchester,” or something similar.
Dean cracks up when Sam tells him, but Sam just shakes his head. “Only you would blow up a silo and get a plaque devoted to your pyromania.”
“Just face it, Sam,” Dean says, grin bright in the dusk. “You’ve got the coolest older brother on the planet.”
“Whatever.”
“By the way,” Dean says, rifling through his box of tapes, “Some chick asked me if she could see my tattoo, and when I said I had no idea what she was talking about, she laughed and grabbed my ass. You know anything about that?”
Sam grabs a tape from Dean’s hand and shoves it into the stereo, letting Zeppelin drown out any possible reply.
Dean punches him on the arm, but settles back against the seat, fingers tapping his thigh in rhythm with the opening strains of When the Levee Breaks, and the road flies by beneath the car as they leave town for good.
* * *
A/N: Everything about jackalopes came from the Wikipedia page here, which is worth a look just for the terrifying description of a jacamelope. Title is from the Firefly ep "Jaynestown."