Marshmallows
Marshmallows
Word Count: 600
Rating: PG
Characters/Pairing: (Gen) Dean, Sam
Warnings: teeth rotting sweetness
Summary: Coda to S10e03 Soul Survivor. Just a bit of sticky, gooey, fluffy sweetness, inspired by a bit of sticky, gooey, fluffy sweetness.
Sam toasts the best marshmallows.
Dean's are hit or miss. Sometimes they're good. Sometimes they're cold in the middle, or sometimes they're burnt black on the outside.
It happened sometime the summer Sam was eight years old. The boys had spent a lot of that summer with Bobby, who let them sleep in an old tent behind the house when the weather cooperated. They had built campfires and roasted marshmallows and hot dogs until Bobby, who was the adult least likely to fuss about their eating habits, had told them to eat a vegetable for cryin' out loud.
Sam had studied the task like he did everything else, and by the first of August, he had attained marshmallow perfection.
His were always perfectly golden brown on the outside, to the point you could actually slip the crisp husk off and eat it alone, gooey and warm and sticky on the inside.
He had offered one to Dean, who had then declared Sam the Official Winchester Marshmallow Cooker for All Time. Sam had prided himself on his marshmallow toasting skills ever afterward.
Somewhere along the way, the marshmallows became something more. When Dean got his heart broken by a girl in Minnesota, Sam dragged him outside and toasted marshmallows for him. When Dean was sick or hurt, when a hunt went south and innocent people died, when Dad hurt Dean's feelings but was oblivious to the fact, Sam toased marshmallows for Dean.
After all, any ritual involving fire can't be considered a chick flick moment.
Then Sam went away and there weren't any marshmallows for a long time.
Their second case together, out in the woods in Colorado looking for a wendigo, Dean built a fire and cooked marshmallows for Sam.
They were probably stale to begin with, or at least that's what Sam said with a sad smile after eating two of the burnt, dried things that came from the end of Dean's stick.
Then he picked up the stick and proceeded to create marshmallow masterpieces to share with his brother.
The lack of marshmallows after Sam's return from Hell probably should have tipped Dean off that something was wrong, but having seen what Alistair could do with fire and sticks, Dean had just written it off as lingering trauma.
There had been a few marshmallow fires over the next few years, but none since the trials
That was why, the day after he was cured of being a demon, less than 36 hours after he'd tried to de-brain Sam with a hammer and threatened to rip his throat out, Dean had no idea what to expect when Sam texted asking him to come to the dungeon.
Sam's back was to the door, but Dean could see that he knelt in front of the bowl they used for summoning fires.
"Sammy?" he asked.
The man on the floor turned slowly, and presented Dean with one perfectly toasted marshmallow.
Dean hoped his voice didn't crack too much when he said thanks.
Sammy smiled shyly. "Pull up a floor, man." he gestured to the empty space on the other side of a six pack of beer. "I got two bags."
They sat in the dungeon for two hours, drinking beer, eating marshmallows, and sharing stories of weird things they had seen in their time apart as if they had just been on separate hunting trips.
When the bottles were empty and the fire was dying out and Sam had quit wiping his sticky lips, Dean looked at his brother and said "Sammy, what do you say we go to the beach?"