The Beehive State
Title: The Beehive State
Rating: PG-13, Gen
Spoilers: Season 3
Disclaimer: I don't own the Winchesters or SPN. Yet. Also, I have nothing against LDS. They just happened to fit the story.
Notes: HAPPY BIRTHDAY, montisello!!!
Summary: Dean hated The Beehive State...
THE BEEHIVE STATE
Sam was panicking. He hadn’t even left the parking lot yet, but his upper lip was beaded with sweat, his hands were shaking, and his heart was doing the tarantella. He was fourteen years old, but he had a license that said otherwise and he was driving the Impala by himself for the first time because Dean was missing.
Dad was back at the hotel, pacing like a caged tiger. There was a warrant out for him in Utah and if he got pulled over in his current state-black eyes, swollen jaw, temper on a lit fuse-questions were going to be asked and at least one arrest would be made. So Sam was flying solo on this one.
Dean hated Utah, so it figured he would pick Provo go to missing in. To be fair, it wasn’t entirely his fault. The last couple of days had gone to shit, even by Winchester standards. To say that the Christmas City poltergeist had gone badly was like saying that Titanic was in the black. This one had been a real bitch. Dad went down first, felled by a barrage of Books of Mormon. Dean had shoved Sam into the cellar and had-unbeknownst to Sam-held the door shut with his right hand while Sam finished the exorcism.
Fanny McBride was the third wife of a Mormon Seventy, sealed to him shortly before the Second Manifesto. She died in childbirth, but not before finding out that she and her husband had been excommunicated. No way was the third Mrs. McBride crossing over to endless fire and brimstone. And when she found out that the Winchesters were there to send her to her eternal fucking rest, Fanny put up quite a fight. She’d done her level best to break down the cellar door but Dean would rather eat broken glass than expose Sam to the flu virus, much less a 100 year old battle axe who wasn’t ready for the undiscovered country.
So Dean kept one hand on the doorknob and the other on his shotgun. But he couldn’t reload without letting go of the door which meant leaving himself exposed to the spirit. While Sam was finishing up the busy work, Fanny was slowly pulling Dean’s shoulder out of its socket. Dean hadn’t told his family, of course, until they were safely behind a line of salt at the motel. And by then, the muscles were too inflamed and the ligaments were too tight for Dad to take care of it.
Hadn’t stopped him from trying, though and Sam had to listen to his brother scream all the way to the ER in Provo. Dad waited in the car-the fucking warrant, again-until Sam and Dean returned, Dean with a sling and prescriptions for three different painkillers.
And when Dean woke up this morning, apparently he’d availed himself of all three. And then, high as a fucking kite, stepped outside into Utah in January for some fresh air. That was half an hour ago. Now, Sam sat in the cold car, staring at the black top road in front of the motel. It was six to five and pick ‘em if Dean had headed east or west and pretty soon Sam was going to have to guess which. No pressure.
The decision was rather propitiously made for him by the sudden appearance of not one but two squad cars on the road. Lights flashing, sirens wailing, they flew eastward. Well that made things easier. Sam put on his blinker and turned after them at a more sedate pace. He was suddenly, insanely worried about his brother. Dean attracted trouble like a lightning rod under the best of circumstances. And now he was out there in the cold somewhere, stoned out of his mind, and drawing enough attention to call down Provo’s finest.
Sam wished desperately that he weren’t alone and wondered how Dad and Dean did it, watched out for him and worried about him all day every day without going completely nuts. The squad cars pulled into the lot of a small mom and pop convenience store, Sam following them and parking behind the store, out of sight from the street. He took a deep breath, gathered his courage, and went inside.
And thank God, there was Dean. He was standing on one side of the check-out counter, gesturing wildly with his good hand while the dour clerk on the other side kept her arms crossed. On the wall behind her were two gilded portraits: Joseph Smith and Brigham Young. Sam’s heart sank. Religious fanatics were the same everywhere: scary. Sam believed in a God of some kind and he prayed silently every night. But the zealots…they rankled him because they made him nervous. No matter what creed, what stripe, they all wanted to tell him about the eternal damnation he was headed for. And if there was one thing Sam was certain of, it was this: The Winchesters were not headed for hell. As screwed up as they were, the family had paid their dues and the cosmic ledger was balanced.
The two cops stood on either side of Dean, clearly wanting to resolve this amicably. Sam, in the same spirit, hung back and held his peace for a moment. Dean had a knack for talking himself out these situations and Sam was, quite frankly, a little out of his depth here. Usually Dean was saving his bacon, not the other way around.
“Please, lady, I’m begging you here,” Dean said and he sounded genuinely distraught. The clerk narrowed her eyes at him and pressed her lips so tight together Sam thought she might break her face.
“Sir, please step away from the counter,” said Cop #1.
“It’s a simple request. Please. I have money.” With his good hand, Dean started digging through his jacket, coming up with a spare twenty. “Take it. Please.”
“I’m going to have to ask you to step outside, son,” Cop #2 warned him. Dean turned towards him, holding up an open palm.
“Look, officer, I have had a shitty couple of days and I don’t want any trouble,” he cleared his throat. “I just want a beer.”
Uh-oh.
“Sir, I’m afraid that’s not possible,” said Cop #1.
Sam knew his brother better than anyone else in the world, even Dad, and he was the only one in the room who realized that Dean was about to lose his temper. Sam was too late. He should have spoken up earlier or driven faster because this was it. It was like watching time-lapse photography of a gathering storm: blink-and-you-miss-it blue sky followed by lightning with no warning. He could see the hitch in Dean’s shoulders, even under the sling, and the way his eyes went completely still while he took one last breath.
“Would somebody please tell me why Carrie Nation here won’t sell me a fucking six pack?” his brother yelled, a desperate plea directed at the ceiling.
“Dean!” Sam blurted out, stumbling forward. Dean turned and grinned at him in surprise, like he'd just dropped through a trapdoor or something. He probably didn't know what day of the week it was, much less what state he was in.
“You know this man?” asked Cop #1.
“He’s my brother.” Sam sighed. “Look, officers, he dislocated his shoulder last night. He’s in a lot of pain. And I think maybe he accidentally mixed some of his medications.”
The clerk made a loud noise of disgust.
“Go suck an egg, lady,” Dean suggested.
“We’re leaving,” Sam said.
“Not without the beer!” Dean stood his ground. Sam was pretty strong for a fourteen year old, but Dean still had almost a foot of solid muscle on him. He wasn’t going anywhere and to be perfectly honest, Sam thought his brother had earned a beer, contraindications or no. But that wasn’t really the point right now.
“Dean,” Sam hissed between his teeth. “We’re in Utah.”
“Utah? Still?” Dean looked around him like he was seeing the store for the first time. His pupils were the size of dinner plates. As fast as he had lost his temper, he regained it. The time-lapse storm had passed followed by a wet, bleaker landscape.
“Yeah, dude. Still Utah. Can we go, now?”
Dean sighed, the world-weary sigh known by big brothers the world over. So many layers of meaning in one unvoiced exhalation: Dude. Can you believe this shit? Why me, Lord? Suffer, I am.
“Can I at least…” Dean looked down at his shoes. He was wearing an expression that Sam had never seen before. Dean looked like a little kid, not a warrior or a brother, but more like somebody’s son. A little kid.
“What, Dean?” Sam prompted quietly.
“Can I at least get some coffee before we go?”
Sam smiled, the grateful and exasperated smile known by little brothers the world over. So many layers of meaning in one facial expression: Dude. You’re killing me here. I gotcha covered on this one. Give me a chance.
“Yeah, Dean. You can get some coffee.”
“Hot drinks are not for the body, or belly,” said the clerk, speaking for the first time. She looked smug, self-satisfied, and downright pleased with herself. “I am a God-fearing woman and there is no coffee in my store."
“Christo,” Dean said.
“I say it does refer to tea and coffee,” she quoted again. “Tea and coffee are what the Lord meant when he said ‘hot drinks’. All saints who remember to keep and do these sayings, walking in obedience to the commandments, shall receive health in their navel and marrow to their bones.”
“Come on, son,” said Cop #2 gently. Dean looked like somebody had just killed his hamster. If Sam didn’t know better, he’d say that his brother was approaching tearfulness.
“You know what?” Dean said quietly. “I don’t mind the whole crazy gospel thing. I really don’t. Some dude reading glowing rocks inside somebody’s top hat? Jesus visits the Indians? I eat crazy shit like that for breakfast. It’s the coffee that gets me. And the beer. But mostly the coffee. What kind of prophet…what kind of God says no to coffee? What kind of faith requires decent men and women to forego the simple pleasure of a hot cup of caffeine?”
Sam was almost speechless. This was the closest Dean had ever come to a statement of personal faith (beyond ‘let’s go kill some evil motherfuckers’) and it figured that it would revolve around sinful drink of some kind. One of the cops, #2, was nodding, clearly feeling Dean’s pain, but the clerk could clearly give a rat’s ass. Sam decided that he pretty much hated her.
“You’re perfectly free to choose death both as to things temporal and to things spiritual,” she smarmed. “Satan is tempting you so that you might be miserable like unto himself.”
And that’s when Sam decided he’d had enough. Most of the time he was willing to play nice in front of the civilians. He drove around the country with his family and he learned how to kill bad things even though he really wanted to play soccer and write history papers. But his Dad insisted he had a higher calling, so Sam went along with that most of the time. But sometimes, lately, the whole gig was starting to tick him off. Sam was a smart, observant kid and he was getting to be pissed off about how the schools, the hospitals, and the world in general treated Dean: like he wasn’t smart enough, like he didn’t work hard enough, like he ought to contribute more to society. Dean was a good guy. Dean was a hero. Dean fought real evil every day. And he deserved better than to be compared with Satan.
“Watch it, lady,” Sam said, perfectly aware that he was mimicking his father’s tone, his father’s body language to a T. Cop #2 raised his eyebrows and muttered something about casting the first stone.
“I think it’s time that you boys moved on,” said Cop #1.
“In a minute.” Sam didn’t take his eyes off of the clerk. “My brother may sin a little more than most, especially the gluttony and lust ones. And wrath. And probably pride. But that’s not the point. The point is...he’s loyal, he’s brave and he takes care of me. So watch your mouth, lady, when you talk about him. He’s a good person and in all honesty, you ought to be throwing him a fucking parade.”
Dean turned and blinked at Sam. “Let’s show this lady the tail lights, then.”
Sam took his disoriented brother by his good arm and guided him out to the car. The Impala was still and quiet. Sam was in the driver’s seat and it just seemed so very, very wrong. Dean shifted a little, trying to focus his eyes and failing miserably. He settled for gazing in Sam’s general direction.
“What you said back there…You really think so?”
“Yeah,” Sam looked at him. “I really do.” Dean smiled and Sam could see that little kid again. So he called his Dad and said they would be there soon and yes, Dean was fine, but he really needed a cup of coffee. Dad asked for one, too. Sam headed towards the nearest Starbucks, which was guaranteed to have caffeine of some kind.
“God,” Sam muttered, thinking of the hard line Mormons and the huge expanses of rock-cluttered desert and the sound of his brother screaming in the backseat of the Impala. “I can’t wait to get the hell out of Utah.”
“I dunno,” Dean muttered. He was wearing a young, dopey smile. “The Beehive State isn’t so bad.”
Fin!
Dear montisello ,
HAPPY FREAKING BIRTHDAY! I'm sorry that I can't e-mail you a G&T. The bar downstairs makes something called a Mango Collins, a delightful concoction that combines my favorite fruit and my favorite liquor. And if I could send it to you, I would. But since I can't, I wrote you this little ficlet. It's about an incident that I mentioned in passing in another fic that you commented on. It is mostly a shameless Winchester fangirl manifesto and I think it would be best if paired with birthday cake or a large margarita. Enjoy.
-July
*hugs montisello*
Rating: PG-13, Gen
Spoilers: Season 3
Disclaimer: I don't own the Winchesters or SPN. Yet. Also, I have nothing against LDS. They just happened to fit the story.
Notes: HAPPY BIRTHDAY, montisello!!!
Summary: Dean hated The Beehive State...
THE BEEHIVE STATE
Sam was panicking. He hadn’t even left the parking lot yet, but his upper lip was beaded with sweat, his hands were shaking, and his heart was doing the tarantella. He was fourteen years old, but he had a license that said otherwise and he was driving the Impala by himself for the first time because Dean was missing.
Dad was back at the hotel, pacing like a caged tiger. There was a warrant out for him in Utah and if he got pulled over in his current state-black eyes, swollen jaw, temper on a lit fuse-questions were going to be asked and at least one arrest would be made. So Sam was flying solo on this one.
Dean hated Utah, so it figured he would pick Provo go to missing in. To be fair, it wasn’t entirely his fault. The last couple of days had gone to shit, even by Winchester standards. To say that the Christmas City poltergeist had gone badly was like saying that Titanic was in the black. This one had been a real bitch. Dad went down first, felled by a barrage of Books of Mormon. Dean had shoved Sam into the cellar and had-unbeknownst to Sam-held the door shut with his right hand while Sam finished the exorcism.
Fanny McBride was the third wife of a Mormon Seventy, sealed to him shortly before the Second Manifesto. She died in childbirth, but not before finding out that she and her husband had been excommunicated. No way was the third Mrs. McBride crossing over to endless fire and brimstone. And when she found out that the Winchesters were there to send her to her eternal fucking rest, Fanny put up quite a fight. She’d done her level best to break down the cellar door but Dean would rather eat broken glass than expose Sam to the flu virus, much less a 100 year old battle axe who wasn’t ready for the undiscovered country.
So Dean kept one hand on the doorknob and the other on his shotgun. But he couldn’t reload without letting go of the door which meant leaving himself exposed to the spirit. While Sam was finishing up the busy work, Fanny was slowly pulling Dean’s shoulder out of its socket. Dean hadn’t told his family, of course, until they were safely behind a line of salt at the motel. And by then, the muscles were too inflamed and the ligaments were too tight for Dad to take care of it.
Hadn’t stopped him from trying, though and Sam had to listen to his brother scream all the way to the ER in Provo. Dad waited in the car-the fucking warrant, again-until Sam and Dean returned, Dean with a sling and prescriptions for three different painkillers.
And when Dean woke up this morning, apparently he’d availed himself of all three. And then, high as a fucking kite, stepped outside into Utah in January for some fresh air. That was half an hour ago. Now, Sam sat in the cold car, staring at the black top road in front of the motel. It was six to five and pick ‘em if Dean had headed east or west and pretty soon Sam was going to have to guess which. No pressure.
The decision was rather propitiously made for him by the sudden appearance of not one but two squad cars on the road. Lights flashing, sirens wailing, they flew eastward. Well that made things easier. Sam put on his blinker and turned after them at a more sedate pace. He was suddenly, insanely worried about his brother. Dean attracted trouble like a lightning rod under the best of circumstances. And now he was out there in the cold somewhere, stoned out of his mind, and drawing enough attention to call down Provo’s finest.
Sam wished desperately that he weren’t alone and wondered how Dad and Dean did it, watched out for him and worried about him all day every day without going completely nuts. The squad cars pulled into the lot of a small mom and pop convenience store, Sam following them and parking behind the store, out of sight from the street. He took a deep breath, gathered his courage, and went inside.
And thank God, there was Dean. He was standing on one side of the check-out counter, gesturing wildly with his good hand while the dour clerk on the other side kept her arms crossed. On the wall behind her were two gilded portraits: Joseph Smith and Brigham Young. Sam’s heart sank. Religious fanatics were the same everywhere: scary. Sam believed in a God of some kind and he prayed silently every night. But the zealots…they rankled him because they made him nervous. No matter what creed, what stripe, they all wanted to tell him about the eternal damnation he was headed for. And if there was one thing Sam was certain of, it was this: The Winchesters were not headed for hell. As screwed up as they were, the family had paid their dues and the cosmic ledger was balanced.
The two cops stood on either side of Dean, clearly wanting to resolve this amicably. Sam, in the same spirit, hung back and held his peace for a moment. Dean had a knack for talking himself out these situations and Sam was, quite frankly, a little out of his depth here. Usually Dean was saving his bacon, not the other way around.
“Please, lady, I’m begging you here,” Dean said and he sounded genuinely distraught. The clerk narrowed her eyes at him and pressed her lips so tight together Sam thought she might break her face.
“Sir, please step away from the counter,” said Cop #1.
“It’s a simple request. Please. I have money.” With his good hand, Dean started digging through his jacket, coming up with a spare twenty. “Take it. Please.”
“I’m going to have to ask you to step outside, son,” Cop #2 warned him. Dean turned towards him, holding up an open palm.
“Look, officer, I have had a shitty couple of days and I don’t want any trouble,” he cleared his throat. “I just want a beer.”
Uh-oh.
“Sir, I’m afraid that’s not possible,” said Cop #1.
Sam knew his brother better than anyone else in the world, even Dad, and he was the only one in the room who realized that Dean was about to lose his temper. Sam was too late. He should have spoken up earlier or driven faster because this was it. It was like watching time-lapse photography of a gathering storm: blink-and-you-miss-it blue sky followed by lightning with no warning. He could see the hitch in Dean’s shoulders, even under the sling, and the way his eyes went completely still while he took one last breath.
“Would somebody please tell me why Carrie Nation here won’t sell me a fucking six pack?” his brother yelled, a desperate plea directed at the ceiling.
“Dean!” Sam blurted out, stumbling forward. Dean turned and grinned at him in surprise, like he'd just dropped through a trapdoor or something. He probably didn't know what day of the week it was, much less what state he was in.
“You know this man?” asked Cop #1.
“He’s my brother.” Sam sighed. “Look, officers, he dislocated his shoulder last night. He’s in a lot of pain. And I think maybe he accidentally mixed some of his medications.”
The clerk made a loud noise of disgust.
“Go suck an egg, lady,” Dean suggested.
“We’re leaving,” Sam said.
“Not without the beer!” Dean stood his ground. Sam was pretty strong for a fourteen year old, but Dean still had almost a foot of solid muscle on him. He wasn’t going anywhere and to be perfectly honest, Sam thought his brother had earned a beer, contraindications or no. But that wasn’t really the point right now.
“Dean,” Sam hissed between his teeth. “We’re in Utah.”
“Utah? Still?” Dean looked around him like he was seeing the store for the first time. His pupils were the size of dinner plates. As fast as he had lost his temper, he regained it. The time-lapse storm had passed followed by a wet, bleaker landscape.
“Yeah, dude. Still Utah. Can we go, now?”
Dean sighed, the world-weary sigh known by big brothers the world over. So many layers of meaning in one unvoiced exhalation: Dude. Can you believe this shit? Why me, Lord? Suffer, I am.
“Can I at least…” Dean looked down at his shoes. He was wearing an expression that Sam had never seen before. Dean looked like a little kid, not a warrior or a brother, but more like somebody’s son. A little kid.
“What, Dean?” Sam prompted quietly.
“Can I at least get some coffee before we go?”
Sam smiled, the grateful and exasperated smile known by little brothers the world over. So many layers of meaning in one facial expression: Dude. You’re killing me here. I gotcha covered on this one. Give me a chance.
“Yeah, Dean. You can get some coffee.”
“Hot drinks are not for the body, or belly,” said the clerk, speaking for the first time. She looked smug, self-satisfied, and downright pleased with herself. “I am a God-fearing woman and there is no coffee in my store."
“Christo,” Dean said.
“I say it does refer to tea and coffee,” she quoted again. “Tea and coffee are what the Lord meant when he said ‘hot drinks’. All saints who remember to keep and do these sayings, walking in obedience to the commandments, shall receive health in their navel and marrow to their bones.”
“Come on, son,” said Cop #2 gently. Dean looked like somebody had just killed his hamster. If Sam didn’t know better, he’d say that his brother was approaching tearfulness.
“You know what?” Dean said quietly. “I don’t mind the whole crazy gospel thing. I really don’t. Some dude reading glowing rocks inside somebody’s top hat? Jesus visits the Indians? I eat crazy shit like that for breakfast. It’s the coffee that gets me. And the beer. But mostly the coffee. What kind of prophet…what kind of God says no to coffee? What kind of faith requires decent men and women to forego the simple pleasure of a hot cup of caffeine?”
Sam was almost speechless. This was the closest Dean had ever come to a statement of personal faith (beyond ‘let’s go kill some evil motherfuckers’) and it figured that it would revolve around sinful drink of some kind. One of the cops, #2, was nodding, clearly feeling Dean’s pain, but the clerk could clearly give a rat’s ass. Sam decided that he pretty much hated her.
“You’re perfectly free to choose death both as to things temporal and to things spiritual,” she smarmed. “Satan is tempting you so that you might be miserable like unto himself.”
And that’s when Sam decided he’d had enough. Most of the time he was willing to play nice in front of the civilians. He drove around the country with his family and he learned how to kill bad things even though he really wanted to play soccer and write history papers. But his Dad insisted he had a higher calling, so Sam went along with that most of the time. But sometimes, lately, the whole gig was starting to tick him off. Sam was a smart, observant kid and he was getting to be pissed off about how the schools, the hospitals, and the world in general treated Dean: like he wasn’t smart enough, like he didn’t work hard enough, like he ought to contribute more to society. Dean was a good guy. Dean was a hero. Dean fought real evil every day. And he deserved better than to be compared with Satan.
“Watch it, lady,” Sam said, perfectly aware that he was mimicking his father’s tone, his father’s body language to a T. Cop #2 raised his eyebrows and muttered something about casting the first stone.
“I think it’s time that you boys moved on,” said Cop #1.
“In a minute.” Sam didn’t take his eyes off of the clerk. “My brother may sin a little more than most, especially the gluttony and lust ones. And wrath. And probably pride. But that’s not the point. The point is...he’s loyal, he’s brave and he takes care of me. So watch your mouth, lady, when you talk about him. He’s a good person and in all honesty, you ought to be throwing him a fucking parade.”
Dean turned and blinked at Sam. “Let’s show this lady the tail lights, then.”
Sam took his disoriented brother by his good arm and guided him out to the car. The Impala was still and quiet. Sam was in the driver’s seat and it just seemed so very, very wrong. Dean shifted a little, trying to focus his eyes and failing miserably. He settled for gazing in Sam’s general direction.
“What you said back there…You really think so?”
“Yeah,” Sam looked at him. “I really do.” Dean smiled and Sam could see that little kid again. So he called his Dad and said they would be there soon and yes, Dean was fine, but he really needed a cup of coffee. Dad asked for one, too. Sam headed towards the nearest Starbucks, which was guaranteed to have caffeine of some kind.
“God,” Sam muttered, thinking of the hard line Mormons and the huge expanses of rock-cluttered desert and the sound of his brother screaming in the backseat of the Impala. “I can’t wait to get the hell out of Utah.”
“I dunno,” Dean muttered. He was wearing a young, dopey smile. “The Beehive State isn’t so bad.”
Fin!
Dear montisello ,
HAPPY FREAKING BIRTHDAY! I'm sorry that I can't e-mail you a G&T. The bar downstairs makes something called a Mango Collins, a delightful concoction that combines my favorite fruit and my favorite liquor. And if I could send it to you, I would. But since I can't, I wrote you this little ficlet. It's about an incident that I mentioned in passing in another fic that you commented on. It is mostly a shameless Winchester fangirl manifesto and I think it would be best if paired with birthday cake or a large margarita. Enjoy.
-July
*hugs montisello*