SPN Fic: Lord of the Holes
I wrote this in honour of my good pal Kimonkey7 having finished Fortress and it being such an excellent bloody fic…what’s that? Oh, she hasn’t finished it yet? What’s up with that? Dear lord, that real life thing must be a bitch! Okay, I got her in trouble all excited the last time I suggested golf!fic, and so it’s pretty much my turn, isn’t it? Nothing better to do, really. Given that there’s not much to read out there. On account of someone hasn’t posted the last chapter of Fortress or whatever. Not as though we’re waiting.
And you know? She even made me swell icons and this is how I repay her. With golf!fic. I’m a baaaaaad person.
Course: A complete gen golf!fic in the great tradition started by Kimonkey7, so you can blame her. And Lemmypie. And maybe even Sasquashme, though that’s a stretch. She’s far too sensible for this nonsense, yet she inspires me regardless.
Holes: Sam and Dean have a rematch. Nothing goes according to plan.
Par: Yeah, okay. I know that I said on Friday that I wasn’t going to be ficcing for a while, on account of RL gearing up. But I meant LONG FIC, right?
Hazards: Some swearing. And golf. There’s golf. The entire great golf!fic body of work was inspired by this photo of Jensen. It’s too awful to contemplate for long.
Tee-off here:
____
Doubtlessly, Sam thought, days later, it was mascot that had decided it. A really buxom mouse, or some sort of rodent, in a Day-Glo pink tube top with an unrealistic semi-automatic gun wedged between its elbow and unlikely tit, topped with the words ‘Come n’ Git It!’
Hard for Dean to miss that sign, and ever since the scar on his chin had healed to a barely discernable squiggle not unlike a questions mark, Sam had been waiting for it. Dean had lost the last contest, had lost spectacularly, and his notion of ‘do-over’ was hardwired straight into his cerebral cortex.
Inevitable that this was coming, and the Impala swung wide into the crowded parking lot somewhere on the outskirts of what could have been Cleveland; Sam had been sleeping, hadn’t quite caught where they were until Dean had taken the turn off. That damn sign and a big parking lot. Surely an indoor paintball place wasn’t going to be this crowded at dinnertime? The disproportionate number of minivans to real cars must mean families were loading up on toilet paper at the Wal-Mart across the way. Or at the big box hardware store. Or choking down grease at the rib house, the one that had all those stupid TV commercials with the talking moose.
Dean cut the engine, a grin halfway there, but only flashed on the driver’s side where he likely thought Sam couldn’t see it. “So.”
“So.” Sam didn’t make it a question, knew better than that. “We running low on something? Need to take advantage of everyday low prices?”
Dean swiveled his head, raised his eyebrows in a look that Sam knew his brother thought conveyed ‘innocence’, but which was, in reality, a direct invitation to disaster. “R and R. C’mon.”
Given the almost X-rated mouse with the paintball gun, Dean probably thought the place was a Hooters. Topless paintball. Huh. Trust Dean to find that.
“My treat, Francis.” And was already out the car. He wasn’t mentioning the incident with the windmill at the Backtrack Fun Stop that had resulted in bloodshed, but Sam knew what this was about.
He also didn’t doubt, for one split second, that Dean would cover him in fucking paint. Which would mean laundry. More laundry. He stalled, sat impassively in the car, trying to think of a way out. A way out that Dean wouldn’t paste his ass with.
Finally, he got out the car, because Dean wasn’t waiting for him. “Hey,” he shouted after Dean’s back, hunched over in the late-day light, wind up, dank featureless suburban parking lot as anonymous as an advice column letter. Dear Abby: My brother is a reckless egotistical packet of walking testosterone just one evolutionary bracket up from a single cell amoeba. Should I let him shoot me with an compressed-air paintball rifle just so he feels more in control? Signed, BLASTED IN MIDDLE AMERICA
Dean turned, still with that look on his face, eyes gleaming in the slanting light. Anticipation, God help me.
“What?”
“It’s, uh…” Sam shut the door, knew he was fucked. He should never fall asleep when Dean was driving. It was unavoidable, but he should know better.
“What? Get yer ya-yas out, Jumping Jack.” He stretched, cricked his neck in a way that drove Sam nuts. “Or you can sit in the waiting area with the other pantywastes. Use the time to figure out where your killer instinct is vacationing. Me, I feel like shooting something.” Arms stretched wide, slightly provocative, partly inviting. Damn.
Dragging his heels with guillotine dread, Sam followed him. “You’ve always liked paintball, haven’t you?”
Dean’s brow crumpled. “What? No.” He stretched the last vowel out, and it hit three or four different tones.
Onto something here. Sam remembered that fight Dean had had with Dad. Tacoma, must have been ten years ago at least. “Yeah. You used to run away to play paintball. Irresponsible asshole. Why should I indulge your sick fantasy of stacked and armed mice? Huh?” He gestured to the anatomically improbable mouse etched on the smoked glass doors.
Come n’ Git it!
Dean was pretending like he didn’t know what Sam was talking about, but there’d been a twitch, his eyes had flicked to the side for one telling second. One hand hovered, then he yanked the door open. “Listen, you played putt-putt with your stupid little college boyfriends. I’d have a beer and blast both barrels with fucking loggers, man. So, you tell me which…”
Sam cut him off with a wave of his hand. He wasn’t going to win this one, all he was going to do was exacerbate the situation, wind Dean up into a frenzy. He might as well get his punishment over with.
Inside, another sign greeted them, along with the shouts of what might have been an entire elementary school’s student body, apparently after they’d ingested two metric tons of sugar. The sign read: Paintball closed for cleaning. Sorry for the inconvenience. Arcade and Lord of the Holes still open as usual.
The words glowed with blacklight. Sam stared at his brother, unexpectedly and profoundly relieved, only to notice that Dean’s white t-shirt wasn’t as white as it had looked outside. There was a huge dark splatter from shoulder to hem. Blood, Sam remembered. Didn’t come out all that well without bleach. Really noticeable in this environment, like he was a walking suspect from a CSI show.
Sam grimaced and held up his hands like he was crestfallen. His feigned disappointment was in direct proportion to his secret glee. No topless mice. Only a raftload of hyper kids and an arcade and a…
Well, I’ll be damned, because in many ways, the concept of ‘do-over’ was as firmly entrenched in Sam’s psyche as it was in Dean’s.
“Lord of the Holes, Dean. You want a re-match?”
Dean’s eyebrows quirked.
Thinking so hard Sam could almost see the subtitles.
“Putt-putt round two? Glow-in-the-dark putt-putt?” Like Sam was suggesting busting into a kindergarten to fingerpaint. “You are so on.”
Sam paid, of course. Dean’s magnanimity only extended to paintball; minigolf was on Sam’s dime. Twenty bucks and a half-hour wait because they were completely booked with birthday parties. Half Cleveland’s under-eight set was there, caked-up and ready to putt-putt.
Sam laughed hysterically as a gang of little boys wearing hairy plastic feet and large wizard hats ran smack into Dean, bouncing off his legs like Dean was nothing more than a piece of furniture.
“What the fuck is up with that?” Dean said suddenly and loudly, pointing at Sam’s face.
“What?”
“THAT,” Dean repeated, jabbing a finger at Sam’s mouth. “Your front tooth is fucking glowing, man.”
Sam didn’t understand. And then, suddenly, did.
“Oh, that,” he murmured. Oh god. Yeah. He was going to tell Dean about THAT. “One of my front teeth is fake. You knew that.”
So many bangs and bruises and broken limbs, who knew what Dean remembered? But Dean didn’t look convinced. “Really? When the hell did that happen?”
Sam shrugged like he didn’t know, but Dean’s eyes narrowed and Sam was only saved from an inquisition by their names being called out over the PA system.
Dean walked up to the desk. A chipper college student handed them their clubs, the pulchritudinous mouse posed alluringly on his chest.
“You know how this works?” the clerk asked with a big happy smile - probably high as a freakin’ kite to work in this hellhole, Sam thought - and pointed out the rules and regulations screwed to the wall. The decorative border looked like some teen geek’s idea of ancient runes.
Abandon Hope All Ye Who Enter Middle-Earth 18 Ring Course!
Your Fellowship must stay together.
Allow faster Fellowships to play through.
Do not wander from the Road to Mordor.
Each hole is par 3; six shots maximum per hole.
Watch out for the Orcs and the Ringwraiths; the Elves and Dwarves are your friends.
Do not swing your club above your waist.
Management is not responsible for personal injury.
Who will be Lord of the Holes?
“You keep a straight face when you tell me the rules,” Dean advised the clerk.
Sam couldn’t breathe he was laughing so hard.
To his credit, the clerk crooked a knowing smile. “Sure, Gimli. Here’s your balls. Don’t lose them.” And he handed Dean a Day-Glo pink ball, Sam a blue one. “A glow bracelet comes with admission. Do you want to wear it?”
Dean looked like he wanted to do something with that bracelet that wasn’t remotely about wearing it. “Keep it to impress your girlfriend,” he told the clerk. “Where do we start?”
The clerk’s smile dropped as he came around the counter, looked into the black recess of the enormous glowing course. “We’ve got three birthday parties in there right now. This last group is just getting off the first hole. Give it two minutes.”
As they waited their turn to tee-off from hole one (Hobbiton: pop your ball past the glowing dragon and into the birthday cake!), Sam watched as one child - skinny, dark, with a striped shirt that made him look like an escaped criminal - shouted at another kid who looked enough alike that it could be his brother: “You didn’t get it in the goddamn cake, Elliott!!! Get it in the goddamn cake you Squib!!!”
Sam looked at Dean, raised his eyebrows. Remind you of anyone?
Dean feigned confusion.
Then the boys’ mother tore them apart, and she certainly had Dean’s attention and that attention wasn’t confused at all. Christ on a fucking STICK, Dean was like Winnie-the-Pooh on the make, could find honey in any tree in the forest.
She flashed a beautiful and apologetic smile at them, hustled the kids onto the next hole and Sam followed Dean’s gaze before asking him if he wanted his humiliation before or after he’d watched Sam’s hole in one.
“No way,” Dean stipulated. “You always try that psychological shit on me when you go first, all passive-aggressive please-don’t-let-me-ruin-your-concentration, after-you type crap.”
“Okay, you lost last time, so I guess I can let you…”
“Shut up, asshole. I did not lose. We never finished the game. I was way ahead.”
“Well, your score was higher than mine, that’s true.”
Dean gave him a scowl and set his glowing pink ball between the two stenciled number ones.
He took the full six swings before Sam interrupted him to point out that’s all he was allowed.
Dean had perfected ‘fuck you’ in a facial expression, something that could be used as an international symbol for fuck you, in fact. Sam eyed up the shot like Jack Nicklaus, sighted the hole with his club.
Knew he was being an asshole, but this was so sweet he had to savor it.
“Hurry up, mister,” a kid behind them said, and Dean’s eyebrows shot up in a simulacrum of surprise and innocence that maybe worked with women who partied like it was 1999, but it certainly didn’t work with the group of eight-year-old girls coming up behind them.
“My brother’s a pro, sweetheart,” Dean smarmed.
Then got one look at the dad with them and shut up. Sam grimaced, made his shot and it rimmed the cup, dropped and rolled around like an ice cube in a glass of 18-year-old single malt. A thing of beauty.
Dean was already at the second hole, this one the Brandywine Bridge. The Ringwraith was on some kind of pulley system and kept zipping unpredictably in front of the hole. Sam waggled his brows. “Watch out for the wraith, Dean. Wraith’s not your friend, remember.”
“I want one of those Elves in the tube tops,” Dean muttered over his shoulder.
Wondering how even Dean could possibly equate a sexually-charged cartoon mouse with an Elf, Sam leaned on his club and watched impassively as his brother immediately sent his ball into the ‘river’, a gully to one side of the fairway that would doubtlessly take him about seven shots to get out of.
“Shut up, Freakytooth,” Dean said when Sam remained silent. The mother of the two brothers ahead of them was heard reiterating the rule about waist-high. Her voice was taking on a none-too-subtle quaver that could easily escalate to shrieking.
They played through The Prancing Pony and Riverdell before they caught up with the mother and the two boys, who were now scrapping over who got the first chance to get across the Mines of Moria while avoiding the Balrog.
The Balrog was pretty laughable; a cartoon fire demon, but Sam caught the flinch Dean gave and suddenly wondered if this was really such a good idea after all. Squaring his shoulders, Dean approached the boys.
Dean only made conversation because he also got to talk to the mother, of that Sam was certain.
“Hey,” he said to the older one. “Mind if we play through?”
“You?” the older kid said, face contorted in disbelief. “I’ve seen you hacking up behind us. We’re only slowing up because Squib here-”
“I’m not a Squib!! I’m not!!!” And the younger brother threw his club halfway across Moria, where it pegged the Balrog squarely on the head. The Balrog, painted on a piece of plywood, swayed precariously.
“Elliott!” the mother admonished, smiling quickly to Dean who gave back a ‘boys will be boys’ platitude.
Dear LORD, Sam prayed.
“It’s okay,” Sam calmed behind Dean’s back. Sam’s height sometimes freaked little kids out, so he hung back a little. “We can wait.” He retrieved Elliott’s club from where it had landed on what looked to be a dwarf’s tomb.
“Well, you’re not playing through us,” the older kid snapped, turning his back on Dean and marching to the next hole, which was up some stairs and into what looked like a tree fort.
“Fucking fairyland,” Dean muttered. Sam actually didn’t know if Dean had read Lord of the Rings, but he doubted it. Probably hadn’t even seen the movies (though he did know who Liv Tyler was, had demonstrated that during one filthy monologue through the more boring bits of Minnesota, which was to say, all of it). Sam had devoured the books when he was twelve and had had such an obvious and well-documented obsession that Dean must have soaked some of the lingo between relentlessly teasing Sam about hobbit sexual behaviors.
Apparently not as far as recognizing Lothlorien, though.
The vast hangar space glowed with painted leaves meant to look like a forest canopy, but in practice came across as an acidic nightmare vision of craptastic flora, Ray Harryhausen attempting ‘jungle’.
Silent wasn’t exactly the word to describe their wait, given that there were children shrieking all around them. But Sam didn’t like it when Dean was quiet, never had, preferred the running narrative; it was soothing, like the white noise of a bad air conditioner.
“You could concede, you know,” he prodded, trying to get a rise.
Dean didn’t even look at him, turned the pink ball in his hands, between his fingers, around, in, out, circling thumb. Artful, a magician’s trick to show off dexterity. Sticky fingers, all flash and dazzle, hiding stuff.
“I’m not conceding fuck all,” Dean said in a loud voice, bravado Casey-at-the-Bat big, and got a dirty look from the father coming up behind them.
Negotiating a par three in Lothlorien involved climbing a rope ladder and whacking their balls from one platform to another, taking a rickety rope bridge while an oddly masculine Galadriel gave them glow-in-the-dark come-hither stares.
Sam’s stomach hurt from laughing so hard.
By the sixteenth - Minas Tirith, complete with a big-ass Ringwraith riding what looked like a huge disgruntled iguana - Dean’s score sat at 90 and Sam was at 39. Dean had gone fucking tombstone quiet, gargoyle set to his mouth, had started deliberately goading the kid in front of him, even calling him a ‘Squib’ in front of his beautiful mother.
Elliott lost it again in Minas Tirith, hurled his ball across the Steward of Gondor’s funeral pyre, and Sam’s heart was in his mouth again, thinking of fathers and burning bodies. If Dean noticed, he gave no indication, just leaned against his orange-headed putter with the insouciance of an English Regency prince and told Elliott he should control his temper before he killed someone.
Sam apologized to the fuming mother even as Elliott’s older brother told Dean he was a jerk, which caused Dean to smile triumphantly. Like it was his point and maybe it was.
“I’ll get the ball, don’t worry,” Sam said, lifting a long leg over a reclining cut-out that might have been a terribly wan Faramir. “It's probably just over there by Osgiliath. I’ll be right back,” and shot his brother a dirty look that bounced off like Dean was wearing mithril.
He heard the older brother tell Dean that he ought to shove his ball up Dean’s ass and Dean said something else that made young Elliott burst into tears.
Sam dodged around the eight-year-old girl party, nodding politely to the enormous father (wearing a NYPD tee-shirt), and asked them if they’d seen a ball come this way.
It took Sam five minutes to find it - way past Osgiliath, inconveniently wedged in flooded Isengard, right in an Ent’s root system - and a moment or two to track down where Dean had joined the uneasy Fellowship of HoneyMom and Squibs.
In essence, it was all over by the time he returned, jogging up to Mount Doom spewing Technicolor lava, a large unidentifiable winged creature hovering overhead like an enthusiastic buzzard. The last hole was ringed in gold, with an inscription along the inside that Sam had to peer at to read properly: In the darkness bind them! Play again for $5!
Dean had three golf balls in his mouth.
Sam groaned.
Elliott was weeping in earnest and even the mother looked concerned. Dean seemed perfectly calm, bouncing on his feet like a fighter, happily allowing the three glowing balls to stretch the sides of his mouth wide, like he had a huge Day-Glo smile.
“I didn’t say he had to do it,” the older brother defended himself before Sam could get a word in. “He was bragging that he could fit four in. Well, he can’t, can he? He’s got three.” His voice dropped, a little disappointed. “I thought he could do four.”
The mother shrugged. “He said something about the cover of Exile on Main Street and how the guy on it was a pussy. Those were his exact words.”
Somehow, Sam didn’t doubt it.
But there was the next bit, of course.
“Spit them out,” Sam challenged Dean.
Dean just looked at him, eyes dancing.
“You can’t, can you?” Sam went on and Dean cocked his head to the side, just a little tilt that meant quite a lot. Sam turned away, shaking his head. “I don’t believe…”
“I can pry them out,” the boy said, ignoring his wailing brother. “Just get a fork from the concession stand and we can…”
“No!” Sam said vehemently. “I’ll take him to the ER. They’ll get it out there.”
Dean’s brows met over his nose, the quizzical, ‘the fuck we will, Sammy’ look he had.
Sam was having none of it. “Oh, yeah. This ends here, Tiger Woods.”
Dean gestured to the kid, beseeching him to make Sam see reason. By now, the NYPD dad had come up, assessed the situation. He offered to pop out the middle ball, which would be easiest, he said.
Like he had experience with such things.
“No, you’re not,” Sam announced firmly, pulling Dean along with him, Dean resisting so far as to yank his arm from Sam’s grip.
“Nuh-huh-nuh. Neyah?” Dean asked.
DaddyCop came closer again. “It’d be easy. I once knew a guy that had three pool balls stuck in his mouth. We took a screwdriver and…”
“…and broke his tooth, didn’t you?” Sam demanded.
The cop looked chagrined. That was, of course, what had happened. As Sam had cause to know.
As Dean now had cause to know.
Dean was just about on the floor, weeping with laughter, bits of saliva spattering around the balls wedged in his mouth.
How could Dean win, even when he had a fucking mouthful of golf balls on a stupid dare by a prepubescent CHILD? Sam wished a hole would open up in the floor, right there in Mordor, and that he could fling himself into it.
“You’re not trying to get it out, okay?” He shouted above the creepy Enya-inspired music oozing through the course. “I’m getting a doctor to do it.”
And Dean followed meekly this time, still laughing, but quietly. Before they hit the cold air outside, Dean clapped Sam on the shoulder once, and threw him the keys.
-30-
Oh, please don’t encourage me, because god alone knows there’s more where that came from.
-
And you know? She even made me swell icons and this is how I repay her. With golf!fic. I’m a baaaaaad person.
Course: A complete gen golf!fic in the great tradition started by Kimonkey7, so you can blame her. And Lemmypie. And maybe even Sasquashme, though that’s a stretch. She’s far too sensible for this nonsense, yet she inspires me regardless.
Holes: Sam and Dean have a rematch. Nothing goes according to plan.
Par: Yeah, okay. I know that I said on Friday that I wasn’t going to be ficcing for a while, on account of RL gearing up. But I meant LONG FIC, right?
Hazards: Some swearing. And golf. There’s golf. The entire great golf!fic body of work was inspired by this photo of Jensen. It’s too awful to contemplate for long.
Tee-off here:
____
Doubtlessly, Sam thought, days later, it was mascot that had decided it. A really buxom mouse, or some sort of rodent, in a Day-Glo pink tube top with an unrealistic semi-automatic gun wedged between its elbow and unlikely tit, topped with the words ‘Come n’ Git It!’
Hard for Dean to miss that sign, and ever since the scar on his chin had healed to a barely discernable squiggle not unlike a questions mark, Sam had been waiting for it. Dean had lost the last contest, had lost spectacularly, and his notion of ‘do-over’ was hardwired straight into his cerebral cortex.
Inevitable that this was coming, and the Impala swung wide into the crowded parking lot somewhere on the outskirts of what could have been Cleveland; Sam had been sleeping, hadn’t quite caught where they were until Dean had taken the turn off. That damn sign and a big parking lot. Surely an indoor paintball place wasn’t going to be this crowded at dinnertime? The disproportionate number of minivans to real cars must mean families were loading up on toilet paper at the Wal-Mart across the way. Or at the big box hardware store. Or choking down grease at the rib house, the one that had all those stupid TV commercials with the talking moose.
Dean cut the engine, a grin halfway there, but only flashed on the driver’s side where he likely thought Sam couldn’t see it. “So.”
“So.” Sam didn’t make it a question, knew better than that. “We running low on something? Need to take advantage of everyday low prices?”
Dean swiveled his head, raised his eyebrows in a look that Sam knew his brother thought conveyed ‘innocence’, but which was, in reality, a direct invitation to disaster. “R and R. C’mon.”
Given the almost X-rated mouse with the paintball gun, Dean probably thought the place was a Hooters. Topless paintball. Huh. Trust Dean to find that.
“My treat, Francis.” And was already out the car. He wasn’t mentioning the incident with the windmill at the Backtrack Fun Stop that had resulted in bloodshed, but Sam knew what this was about.
He also didn’t doubt, for one split second, that Dean would cover him in fucking paint. Which would mean laundry. More laundry. He stalled, sat impassively in the car, trying to think of a way out. A way out that Dean wouldn’t paste his ass with.
Finally, he got out the car, because Dean wasn’t waiting for him. “Hey,” he shouted after Dean’s back, hunched over in the late-day light, wind up, dank featureless suburban parking lot as anonymous as an advice column letter. Dear Abby: My brother is a reckless egotistical packet of walking testosterone just one evolutionary bracket up from a single cell amoeba. Should I let him shoot me with an compressed-air paintball rifle just so he feels more in control? Signed, BLASTED IN MIDDLE AMERICA
Dean turned, still with that look on his face, eyes gleaming in the slanting light. Anticipation, God help me.
“What?”
“It’s, uh…” Sam shut the door, knew he was fucked. He should never fall asleep when Dean was driving. It was unavoidable, but he should know better.
“What? Get yer ya-yas out, Jumping Jack.” He stretched, cricked his neck in a way that drove Sam nuts. “Or you can sit in the waiting area with the other pantywastes. Use the time to figure out where your killer instinct is vacationing. Me, I feel like shooting something.” Arms stretched wide, slightly provocative, partly inviting. Damn.
Dragging his heels with guillotine dread, Sam followed him. “You’ve always liked paintball, haven’t you?”
Dean’s brow crumpled. “What? No.” He stretched the last vowel out, and it hit three or four different tones.
Onto something here. Sam remembered that fight Dean had had with Dad. Tacoma, must have been ten years ago at least. “Yeah. You used to run away to play paintball. Irresponsible asshole. Why should I indulge your sick fantasy of stacked and armed mice? Huh?” He gestured to the anatomically improbable mouse etched on the smoked glass doors.
Come n’ Git it!
Dean was pretending like he didn’t know what Sam was talking about, but there’d been a twitch, his eyes had flicked to the side for one telling second. One hand hovered, then he yanked the door open. “Listen, you played putt-putt with your stupid little college boyfriends. I’d have a beer and blast both barrels with fucking loggers, man. So, you tell me which…”
Sam cut him off with a wave of his hand. He wasn’t going to win this one, all he was going to do was exacerbate the situation, wind Dean up into a frenzy. He might as well get his punishment over with.
Inside, another sign greeted them, along with the shouts of what might have been an entire elementary school’s student body, apparently after they’d ingested two metric tons of sugar. The sign read: Paintball closed for cleaning. Sorry for the inconvenience. Arcade and Lord of the Holes still open as usual.
The words glowed with blacklight. Sam stared at his brother, unexpectedly and profoundly relieved, only to notice that Dean’s white t-shirt wasn’t as white as it had looked outside. There was a huge dark splatter from shoulder to hem. Blood, Sam remembered. Didn’t come out all that well without bleach. Really noticeable in this environment, like he was a walking suspect from a CSI show.
Sam grimaced and held up his hands like he was crestfallen. His feigned disappointment was in direct proportion to his secret glee. No topless mice. Only a raftload of hyper kids and an arcade and a…
Well, I’ll be damned, because in many ways, the concept of ‘do-over’ was as firmly entrenched in Sam’s psyche as it was in Dean’s.
“Lord of the Holes, Dean. You want a re-match?”
Dean’s eyebrows quirked.
Thinking so hard Sam could almost see the subtitles.
“Putt-putt round two? Glow-in-the-dark putt-putt?” Like Sam was suggesting busting into a kindergarten to fingerpaint. “You are so on.”
Sam paid, of course. Dean’s magnanimity only extended to paintball; minigolf was on Sam’s dime. Twenty bucks and a half-hour wait because they were completely booked with birthday parties. Half Cleveland’s under-eight set was there, caked-up and ready to putt-putt.
Sam laughed hysterically as a gang of little boys wearing hairy plastic feet and large wizard hats ran smack into Dean, bouncing off his legs like Dean was nothing more than a piece of furniture.
“What the fuck is up with that?” Dean said suddenly and loudly, pointing at Sam’s face.
“What?”
“THAT,” Dean repeated, jabbing a finger at Sam’s mouth. “Your front tooth is fucking glowing, man.”
Sam didn’t understand. And then, suddenly, did.
“Oh, that,” he murmured. Oh god. Yeah. He was going to tell Dean about THAT. “One of my front teeth is fake. You knew that.”
So many bangs and bruises and broken limbs, who knew what Dean remembered? But Dean didn’t look convinced. “Really? When the hell did that happen?”
Sam shrugged like he didn’t know, but Dean’s eyes narrowed and Sam was only saved from an inquisition by their names being called out over the PA system.
Dean walked up to the desk. A chipper college student handed them their clubs, the pulchritudinous mouse posed alluringly on his chest.
“You know how this works?” the clerk asked with a big happy smile - probably high as a freakin’ kite to work in this hellhole, Sam thought - and pointed out the rules and regulations screwed to the wall. The decorative border looked like some teen geek’s idea of ancient runes.
Abandon Hope All Ye Who Enter Middle-Earth 18 Ring Course!
Your Fellowship must stay together.
Allow faster Fellowships to play through.
Do not wander from the Road to Mordor.
Each hole is par 3; six shots maximum per hole.
Watch out for the Orcs and the Ringwraiths; the Elves and Dwarves are your friends.
Do not swing your club above your waist.
Management is not responsible for personal injury.
Who will be Lord of the Holes?
“You keep a straight face when you tell me the rules,” Dean advised the clerk.
Sam couldn’t breathe he was laughing so hard.
To his credit, the clerk crooked a knowing smile. “Sure, Gimli. Here’s your balls. Don’t lose them.” And he handed Dean a Day-Glo pink ball, Sam a blue one. “A glow bracelet comes with admission. Do you want to wear it?”
Dean looked like he wanted to do something with that bracelet that wasn’t remotely about wearing it. “Keep it to impress your girlfriend,” he told the clerk. “Where do we start?”
The clerk’s smile dropped as he came around the counter, looked into the black recess of the enormous glowing course. “We’ve got three birthday parties in there right now. This last group is just getting off the first hole. Give it two minutes.”
As they waited their turn to tee-off from hole one (Hobbiton: pop your ball past the glowing dragon and into the birthday cake!), Sam watched as one child - skinny, dark, with a striped shirt that made him look like an escaped criminal - shouted at another kid who looked enough alike that it could be his brother: “You didn’t get it in the goddamn cake, Elliott!!! Get it in the goddamn cake you Squib!!!”
Sam looked at Dean, raised his eyebrows. Remind you of anyone?
Dean feigned confusion.
Then the boys’ mother tore them apart, and she certainly had Dean’s attention and that attention wasn’t confused at all. Christ on a fucking STICK, Dean was like Winnie-the-Pooh on the make, could find honey in any tree in the forest.
She flashed a beautiful and apologetic smile at them, hustled the kids onto the next hole and Sam followed Dean’s gaze before asking him if he wanted his humiliation before or after he’d watched Sam’s hole in one.
“No way,” Dean stipulated. “You always try that psychological shit on me when you go first, all passive-aggressive please-don’t-let-me-ruin-your-concentration, after-you type crap.”
“Okay, you lost last time, so I guess I can let you…”
“Shut up, asshole. I did not lose. We never finished the game. I was way ahead.”
“Well, your score was higher than mine, that’s true.”
Dean gave him a scowl and set his glowing pink ball between the two stenciled number ones.
He took the full six swings before Sam interrupted him to point out that’s all he was allowed.
Dean had perfected ‘fuck you’ in a facial expression, something that could be used as an international symbol for fuck you, in fact. Sam eyed up the shot like Jack Nicklaus, sighted the hole with his club.
Knew he was being an asshole, but this was so sweet he had to savor it.
“Hurry up, mister,” a kid behind them said, and Dean’s eyebrows shot up in a simulacrum of surprise and innocence that maybe worked with women who partied like it was 1999, but it certainly didn’t work with the group of eight-year-old girls coming up behind them.
“My brother’s a pro, sweetheart,” Dean smarmed.
Then got one look at the dad with them and shut up. Sam grimaced, made his shot and it rimmed the cup, dropped and rolled around like an ice cube in a glass of 18-year-old single malt. A thing of beauty.
Dean was already at the second hole, this one the Brandywine Bridge. The Ringwraith was on some kind of pulley system and kept zipping unpredictably in front of the hole. Sam waggled his brows. “Watch out for the wraith, Dean. Wraith’s not your friend, remember.”
“I want one of those Elves in the tube tops,” Dean muttered over his shoulder.
Wondering how even Dean could possibly equate a sexually-charged cartoon mouse with an Elf, Sam leaned on his club and watched impassively as his brother immediately sent his ball into the ‘river’, a gully to one side of the fairway that would doubtlessly take him about seven shots to get out of.
“Shut up, Freakytooth,” Dean said when Sam remained silent. The mother of the two brothers ahead of them was heard reiterating the rule about waist-high. Her voice was taking on a none-too-subtle quaver that could easily escalate to shrieking.
They played through The Prancing Pony and Riverdell before they caught up with the mother and the two boys, who were now scrapping over who got the first chance to get across the Mines of Moria while avoiding the Balrog.
The Balrog was pretty laughable; a cartoon fire demon, but Sam caught the flinch Dean gave and suddenly wondered if this was really such a good idea after all. Squaring his shoulders, Dean approached the boys.
Dean only made conversation because he also got to talk to the mother, of that Sam was certain.
“Hey,” he said to the older one. “Mind if we play through?”
“You?” the older kid said, face contorted in disbelief. “I’ve seen you hacking up behind us. We’re only slowing up because Squib here-”
“I’m not a Squib!! I’m not!!!” And the younger brother threw his club halfway across Moria, where it pegged the Balrog squarely on the head. The Balrog, painted on a piece of plywood, swayed precariously.
“Elliott!” the mother admonished, smiling quickly to Dean who gave back a ‘boys will be boys’ platitude.
Dear LORD, Sam prayed.
“It’s okay,” Sam calmed behind Dean’s back. Sam’s height sometimes freaked little kids out, so he hung back a little. “We can wait.” He retrieved Elliott’s club from where it had landed on what looked to be a dwarf’s tomb.
“Well, you’re not playing through us,” the older kid snapped, turning his back on Dean and marching to the next hole, which was up some stairs and into what looked like a tree fort.
“Fucking fairyland,” Dean muttered. Sam actually didn’t know if Dean had read Lord of the Rings, but he doubted it. Probably hadn’t even seen the movies (though he did know who Liv Tyler was, had demonstrated that during one filthy monologue through the more boring bits of Minnesota, which was to say, all of it). Sam had devoured the books when he was twelve and had had such an obvious and well-documented obsession that Dean must have soaked some of the lingo between relentlessly teasing Sam about hobbit sexual behaviors.
Apparently not as far as recognizing Lothlorien, though.
The vast hangar space glowed with painted leaves meant to look like a forest canopy, but in practice came across as an acidic nightmare vision of craptastic flora, Ray Harryhausen attempting ‘jungle’.
Silent wasn’t exactly the word to describe their wait, given that there were children shrieking all around them. But Sam didn’t like it when Dean was quiet, never had, preferred the running narrative; it was soothing, like the white noise of a bad air conditioner.
“You could concede, you know,” he prodded, trying to get a rise.
Dean didn’t even look at him, turned the pink ball in his hands, between his fingers, around, in, out, circling thumb. Artful, a magician’s trick to show off dexterity. Sticky fingers, all flash and dazzle, hiding stuff.
“I’m not conceding fuck all,” Dean said in a loud voice, bravado Casey-at-the-Bat big, and got a dirty look from the father coming up behind them.
Negotiating a par three in Lothlorien involved climbing a rope ladder and whacking their balls from one platform to another, taking a rickety rope bridge while an oddly masculine Galadriel gave them glow-in-the-dark come-hither stares.
Sam’s stomach hurt from laughing so hard.
By the sixteenth - Minas Tirith, complete with a big-ass Ringwraith riding what looked like a huge disgruntled iguana - Dean’s score sat at 90 and Sam was at 39. Dean had gone fucking tombstone quiet, gargoyle set to his mouth, had started deliberately goading the kid in front of him, even calling him a ‘Squib’ in front of his beautiful mother.
Elliott lost it again in Minas Tirith, hurled his ball across the Steward of Gondor’s funeral pyre, and Sam’s heart was in his mouth again, thinking of fathers and burning bodies. If Dean noticed, he gave no indication, just leaned against his orange-headed putter with the insouciance of an English Regency prince and told Elliott he should control his temper before he killed someone.
Sam apologized to the fuming mother even as Elliott’s older brother told Dean he was a jerk, which caused Dean to smile triumphantly. Like it was his point and maybe it was.
“I’ll get the ball, don’t worry,” Sam said, lifting a long leg over a reclining cut-out that might have been a terribly wan Faramir. “It's probably just over there by Osgiliath. I’ll be right back,” and shot his brother a dirty look that bounced off like Dean was wearing mithril.
He heard the older brother tell Dean that he ought to shove his ball up Dean’s ass and Dean said something else that made young Elliott burst into tears.
Sam dodged around the eight-year-old girl party, nodding politely to the enormous father (wearing a NYPD tee-shirt), and asked them if they’d seen a ball come this way.
It took Sam five minutes to find it - way past Osgiliath, inconveniently wedged in flooded Isengard, right in an Ent’s root system - and a moment or two to track down where Dean had joined the uneasy Fellowship of HoneyMom and Squibs.
In essence, it was all over by the time he returned, jogging up to Mount Doom spewing Technicolor lava, a large unidentifiable winged creature hovering overhead like an enthusiastic buzzard. The last hole was ringed in gold, with an inscription along the inside that Sam had to peer at to read properly: In the darkness bind them! Play again for $5!
Dean had three golf balls in his mouth.
Sam groaned.
Elliott was weeping in earnest and even the mother looked concerned. Dean seemed perfectly calm, bouncing on his feet like a fighter, happily allowing the three glowing balls to stretch the sides of his mouth wide, like he had a huge Day-Glo smile.
“I didn’t say he had to do it,” the older brother defended himself before Sam could get a word in. “He was bragging that he could fit four in. Well, he can’t, can he? He’s got three.” His voice dropped, a little disappointed. “I thought he could do four.”
The mother shrugged. “He said something about the cover of Exile on Main Street and how the guy on it was a pussy. Those were his exact words.”
Somehow, Sam didn’t doubt it.
But there was the next bit, of course.
“Spit them out,” Sam challenged Dean.
Dean just looked at him, eyes dancing.
“You can’t, can you?” Sam went on and Dean cocked his head to the side, just a little tilt that meant quite a lot. Sam turned away, shaking his head. “I don’t believe…”
“I can pry them out,” the boy said, ignoring his wailing brother. “Just get a fork from the concession stand and we can…”
“No!” Sam said vehemently. “I’ll take him to the ER. They’ll get it out there.”
Dean’s brows met over his nose, the quizzical, ‘the fuck we will, Sammy’ look he had.
Sam was having none of it. “Oh, yeah. This ends here, Tiger Woods.”
Dean gestured to the kid, beseeching him to make Sam see reason. By now, the NYPD dad had come up, assessed the situation. He offered to pop out the middle ball, which would be easiest, he said.
Like he had experience with such things.
“No, you’re not,” Sam announced firmly, pulling Dean along with him, Dean resisting so far as to yank his arm from Sam’s grip.
“Nuh-huh-nuh. Neyah?” Dean asked.
DaddyCop came closer again. “It’d be easy. I once knew a guy that had three pool balls stuck in his mouth. We took a screwdriver and…”
“…and broke his tooth, didn’t you?” Sam demanded.
The cop looked chagrined. That was, of course, what had happened. As Sam had cause to know.
As Dean now had cause to know.
Dean was just about on the floor, weeping with laughter, bits of saliva spattering around the balls wedged in his mouth.
How could Dean win, even when he had a fucking mouthful of golf balls on a stupid dare by a prepubescent CHILD? Sam wished a hole would open up in the floor, right there in Mordor, and that he could fling himself into it.
“You’re not trying to get it out, okay?” He shouted above the creepy Enya-inspired music oozing through the course. “I’m getting a doctor to do it.”
And Dean followed meekly this time, still laughing, but quietly. Before they hit the cold air outside, Dean clapped Sam on the shoulder once, and threw him the keys.
-30-
Oh, please don’t encourage me, because god alone knows there’s more where that came from.
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