SPN Fic: Earth Day
From SNL: It’s Earth Day! SUCK ON THAT NEPTUNE!
That being said, I apologize in advance for this fic but I couldn’t help myself…
-Mink
Title: Earth Day
Author: Mink
Rating: PG - Gen - Humor
Spoilers: None
Disclaimers: SPN & characters are owned by their various creators.
Summary: Dean vs. Rodentia.
Dean's eyes snapped open.
It was just like freaking clockwork. Three nights in a row something pulled him right out of the deepest part of his night. Something moving covertly and quietly. Something prowling their dark. Half way out of his sleep his hands found the shot gun and the smooth metal of the flashlight. Both were armed and pointed directly where his brain had last registered the disturbance. By the time his thoughts caught up with his body, he found himself staring hard at the corner of the motel room, circled perfectly in the stark beam of his police issue light.
The olive green shag carpet and the orange shaded standing lamp were the only thing to be seen.
He heard Sam rolling over in the bed across the room.
"What the--“
He swung his light across his body and right into Sam's sleep blurred face. His brother weakly held up a hand to block the blinding barrage to his unprepared senses.
Dean blinked several times, listening tensely for what had woken him.
"Did you hear that?" He asked not really knowing what he may or may not have heard. And frankly if he hadn't heard anything there was no way he was going to admit that now that he had a cocked shotgun pointed at a floor lamp.
chuchuuuusneeerch
Dean swung the light back into the corner and eased a finger over the trigger.
"That! Did you hear that!?"
Sam groaned and moved around to settle back into the tangle of his blankets. “It’s… It’s just the wind…”
sniiiiiiichuuchuuu
Dean’s eyes narrowed.
“It’s not the fuckin’ wind.”
Kicking back his blanket, he moved to examine the suspect corner more closely. He started flipping on all the lights, completely ignoring Sam’s muffled protests from under the covers. The bed lamps. The night tables. The small kitchen overhead fluorescents. The bathroom mirrors. For three damn nights something had been keeping him awake. Knocking over things. Scratching along the floor boards. Pulling and yanking on the hair trigger that his consciousness had on his dream state. He’d freakin’ had it.
“Dean. Please.” Sam urged from under his pile. “Bed.”
Tapping the barrel of his shotgun thoughtfully against his forehead, Dean sat down slowly on the one ripped vinyl chair that sat by the tiny kitchenette table. With the fine brighter focus of his flashlight he scanned the floor where it met the wall, up the cabinet seams and along the empty counter tops. Using the barrel tip he nudged one of the cabinets open. Nothing inside but some copper plumbing and some mold festering on the drywall. He moved one cabinet over and did the same.
What he found made him pause and draw back in dull disgust.
“God damn it.”
“Wha?” Sam was more than half way gone.
Dean sighed.
“We got a problem.”
“Why can’t we you know,” Sam yawned and pulled his T-shirt over his head. “Just peacefully coexist with it? You know, side by side.”
Dean didn’t bother looking up from his work to reward his brother’s sentiments with any thing that resembled acknowledgment.
He had had trouble dismantling the countertops. The place was old and had half the installation bolted up into the walls. Disconnecting the gas line from the stove was a little tricky but he figured Sammy would keel over like one of those mine shaft warning canaries if it got really bad. The plumbing was even worse, ancient copper that some brain trust had built around with the cheapest material they could find. All in all, it made pulling apart the wood frame even more of a-
“I mean, it was here first right?” Sam reasoned as he threaded his belt into the loops of his jeans. “Before we ever got here anyway.”
Dean cursed under his breath when the wrench slipped off the bolt he was pulling on, grazing across his knuckles and jamming into his finger.
“I’m just sayin’.” Sam muttered to himself when all he received was more silence.
Dean stood up and brushed off his hands. The majority of the carpeting had been ripped up and rolled to the side of the room. His bed and the frame lay up against the wall behind his brother’s intact sleeping space. The kitchen was now nothing more than a free standing sink sitting on its pipe and a stack of crumbling particle board.
“Let’s see the bastard hide now.” He smiled to himself.
“It’s a mouse.” Sam muttered. “It’s kinda what they do.”
“We’ll see.” Dean said softly. “We’ll see.”
Five nights of broken sleep were really starting to get to him.
Rereading the same three gossip rags and staring at fuzzy infomercials were doing strange things to his thought process. Squeezing his eyes shut, all he could think about was greaseless grills, soloflex machines and if Katy Holmes was really being kept against her will in a basement. Fighting his exhaustion, he gulped down some water from a glass at his side and shook his head vigorously. There would have been hot coffee if he hadn’t taken apart the stove. He was getting too old for this shit.
Dean looked resentfully at his peacefully slumbering brother.
Sam’s ability to sleep soundly knowing there was some unauthorized rodent on the premises didn’t do anything to lighten the situation. For days and nights the thing had been roaming unchecked and unhindered. It had probably taken its time slithering through all of their things. The very clothes they wore on their bodies. The towels they used on their faces. The papers that they touched with their very hands. Dean glanced up at the dark bathroom and imagined the thing getting up where they kept their toothbrushes. He shuddered, a horrible cold violent shiver running down his spine.
Glancing down wearily at his watch, he saw it was now approaching the hour that he had been jolted awake night after night. Dean had been up waiting with the shotgun for a while until he realized all it would be good for would be clubbing the thing to death. The thought of smeared rat all over his gun was fucking wrong so he put the firearm aside. He had ignored Sam’s looks when he dug out a metal fork from under all their gear. Holding back a yawn, he sat up straighter in his seat with the potentially lethal utensil.
There was no way he was messing up one of his good knives on some diseased virus carrying... cheese mongering... flea infested... black plague spreading... His eyelids drooped and he startled himself by almost slipping out of the stiff chair. Quickly lifting his fork at the ready, he blinked himself back into alertness.
He held his breath.
The little encroaching vermin had finally arrived to the party.
It was sitting its little self right next to the gutted sink. A small crack in the plaster most likely its port of entry. Two front paws moved carefree over its little pointed pink nose. It stopped and looked up at him. Looked at him, Dean knew, with scorn in its little black eyes. Dean slowly shifted his gaze to the almost empty drinking glass that sat next to him on the table.
He made his move.
Dashing the water out behind him, he lunged forward hard onto the exposed plywood floor. Hoping briefly that he’d avoid the ironic fate of being impaled on his own fork, he brought the glass down over his target.
“HA!”
Laying full out on the floor, his triumph was blissful and sweet. The small germ ridden paws scrambling uselessly on the slick clear sides. The white spray of whiskers twitching in agitation. Its thin disgusting tail flicking back and forth.
The beast was trapped.
Dean’s body crashing down onto the flimsy uneven floor and sending the metal kitchen chair into the wall had somehow woken up his brother.
"Is it over?" Sam asked from under his pillow.
"Oh, it's over." Dean emphasized the over-ness of it all by pointing at the small animal he'd caught and sending an imaginary tiny bullet through its tiny little head.
“What are you gonna do now?” Sam rolled to a sit and scrubbed at his face.
Dean’s smile faded as he looked back down at the small creature trapped under the glass.
Sam held up his boot. “One good whack oughta do it…”
Dean frowned and rested his chin on the back of his hand, looking the critter eye to beady eye.
“You could always just fill the sink up,” Sam yawned. “You know, drown it.”
Now that the hard part was done it figured that it was now that his brother decided it was time to be helpful with the tips on the rodenticide. It sounded like he’d really put some thought into it too.
“You could put it in a jar?” Sam suggested. “Suffocate it.”
Dean reconsidered the small creature that his dad would have just smashed with the butt of a rifle. Flung into a fire. Flushed down a toilet. Beheaded with a box cutter. Dean had always privately just kinda wondered why they didn’t just toss their furry asses back into the woods were they had come from. It just seemed more sporting.
Dean gave Sam a look back over his shoulder.
“What happened to livin’ side by side? I thought you were on it’s team?”
“I’m not on any-just do whatever you want with it. Make a rug. Mount it on the wall." Sam flopped back into his blankets. "You won.”
The thought of likening his victory to a win brought some of Dean’s smile back.
“I did win.” He mumbled to himself.
Looking around, Dean snagged a magazine that was laying around on the floor. Carefully sliding it under the glass, he lifted his catch and brought it over to Sam’s bed.
“Here.” Dean offered him the pestilence under glass. “You’re so creative, you do it.”
Sam stared up at him and the incarcerated mouse. The reality of offing the thing now becoming less of a great idea now that it was under his jurisdiction.
“No bright ideas now huh?”
Dean felt a certain amount of shame at his own apparent inability to end the mouse’s life and thought it would be only fair to make Sam feel like a pussy too.
“Ya know,” Sam suddenly smiled up at him. “It is Earth Day.”
“Sure. Fine?” Dean quickly nodded. ”Whatever gets you there Sammy.”
Sam sighed and took the glass.
Dean pulled the bare mattress free from the wall and lay it out on the floor. Forgoing the sheets he desperately grabbed his wad of blankets and collapsed down onto it gratefully. There would be no more scratching. No more chewing. Not even a suggestion of a squeak. Closing his eyes, he listened to his brother exit the room with the source of his insomnia and breathed a sigh of relief.
He was in all honesty just glad that someone was taking the dude by the tail and showing it the parking lot. Because he was pretty sure death by shotgun was a pretty dismal way to go for a piece of fur only that big. The idea of the small stain it would have left behind made him smile a little as he spiraled down into his much needed sleep.
And so what? Maybe the earth appreciated a mouse doing its job.
If She had any opinion either way on what Dean was trying hard to get accomplished in certain bits and pieces of Her hemispheres, maybe some of that mercy slack would come back his way one day.
It was all about karma really.
At least it was when Dean was too tired to think of anything else.
That being said, I apologize in advance for this fic but I couldn’t help myself…
-Mink
Title: Earth Day
Author: Mink
Rating: PG - Gen - Humor
Spoilers: None
Disclaimers: SPN & characters are owned by their various creators.
Summary: Dean vs. Rodentia.
Dean's eyes snapped open.
It was just like freaking clockwork. Three nights in a row something pulled him right out of the deepest part of his night. Something moving covertly and quietly. Something prowling their dark. Half way out of his sleep his hands found the shot gun and the smooth metal of the flashlight. Both were armed and pointed directly where his brain had last registered the disturbance. By the time his thoughts caught up with his body, he found himself staring hard at the corner of the motel room, circled perfectly in the stark beam of his police issue light.
The olive green shag carpet and the orange shaded standing lamp were the only thing to be seen.
He heard Sam rolling over in the bed across the room.
"What the--“
He swung his light across his body and right into Sam's sleep blurred face. His brother weakly held up a hand to block the blinding barrage to his unprepared senses.
Dean blinked several times, listening tensely for what had woken him.
"Did you hear that?" He asked not really knowing what he may or may not have heard. And frankly if he hadn't heard anything there was no way he was going to admit that now that he had a cocked shotgun pointed at a floor lamp.
chuchuuuusneeerch
Dean swung the light back into the corner and eased a finger over the trigger.
"That! Did you hear that!?"
Sam groaned and moved around to settle back into the tangle of his blankets. “It’s… It’s just the wind…”
sniiiiiiichuuchuuu
Dean’s eyes narrowed.
“It’s not the fuckin’ wind.”
Kicking back his blanket, he moved to examine the suspect corner more closely. He started flipping on all the lights, completely ignoring Sam’s muffled protests from under the covers. The bed lamps. The night tables. The small kitchen overhead fluorescents. The bathroom mirrors. For three damn nights something had been keeping him awake. Knocking over things. Scratching along the floor boards. Pulling and yanking on the hair trigger that his consciousness had on his dream state. He’d freakin’ had it.
“Dean. Please.” Sam urged from under his pile. “Bed.”
Tapping the barrel of his shotgun thoughtfully against his forehead, Dean sat down slowly on the one ripped vinyl chair that sat by the tiny kitchenette table. With the fine brighter focus of his flashlight he scanned the floor where it met the wall, up the cabinet seams and along the empty counter tops. Using the barrel tip he nudged one of the cabinets open. Nothing inside but some copper plumbing and some mold festering on the drywall. He moved one cabinet over and did the same.
What he found made him pause and draw back in dull disgust.
“God damn it.”
“Wha?” Sam was more than half way gone.
Dean sighed.
“We got a problem.”
“Why can’t we you know,” Sam yawned and pulled his T-shirt over his head. “Just peacefully coexist with it? You know, side by side.”
Dean didn’t bother looking up from his work to reward his brother’s sentiments with any thing that resembled acknowledgment.
He had had trouble dismantling the countertops. The place was old and had half the installation bolted up into the walls. Disconnecting the gas line from the stove was a little tricky but he figured Sammy would keel over like one of those mine shaft warning canaries if it got really bad. The plumbing was even worse, ancient copper that some brain trust had built around with the cheapest material they could find. All in all, it made pulling apart the wood frame even more of a-
“I mean, it was here first right?” Sam reasoned as he threaded his belt into the loops of his jeans. “Before we ever got here anyway.”
Dean cursed under his breath when the wrench slipped off the bolt he was pulling on, grazing across his knuckles and jamming into his finger.
“I’m just sayin’.” Sam muttered to himself when all he received was more silence.
Dean stood up and brushed off his hands. The majority of the carpeting had been ripped up and rolled to the side of the room. His bed and the frame lay up against the wall behind his brother’s intact sleeping space. The kitchen was now nothing more than a free standing sink sitting on its pipe and a stack of crumbling particle board.
“Let’s see the bastard hide now.” He smiled to himself.
“It’s a mouse.” Sam muttered. “It’s kinda what they do.”
“We’ll see.” Dean said softly. “We’ll see.”
Five nights of broken sleep were really starting to get to him.
Rereading the same three gossip rags and staring at fuzzy infomercials were doing strange things to his thought process. Squeezing his eyes shut, all he could think about was greaseless grills, soloflex machines and if Katy Holmes was really being kept against her will in a basement. Fighting his exhaustion, he gulped down some water from a glass at his side and shook his head vigorously. There would have been hot coffee if he hadn’t taken apart the stove. He was getting too old for this shit.
Dean looked resentfully at his peacefully slumbering brother.
Sam’s ability to sleep soundly knowing there was some unauthorized rodent on the premises didn’t do anything to lighten the situation. For days and nights the thing had been roaming unchecked and unhindered. It had probably taken its time slithering through all of their things. The very clothes they wore on their bodies. The towels they used on their faces. The papers that they touched with their very hands. Dean glanced up at the dark bathroom and imagined the thing getting up where they kept their toothbrushes. He shuddered, a horrible cold violent shiver running down his spine.
Glancing down wearily at his watch, he saw it was now approaching the hour that he had been jolted awake night after night. Dean had been up waiting with the shotgun for a while until he realized all it would be good for would be clubbing the thing to death. The thought of smeared rat all over his gun was fucking wrong so he put the firearm aside. He had ignored Sam’s looks when he dug out a metal fork from under all their gear. Holding back a yawn, he sat up straighter in his seat with the potentially lethal utensil.
There was no way he was messing up one of his good knives on some diseased virus carrying... cheese mongering... flea infested... black plague spreading... His eyelids drooped and he startled himself by almost slipping out of the stiff chair. Quickly lifting his fork at the ready, he blinked himself back into alertness.
He held his breath.
The little encroaching vermin had finally arrived to the party.
It was sitting its little self right next to the gutted sink. A small crack in the plaster most likely its port of entry. Two front paws moved carefree over its little pointed pink nose. It stopped and looked up at him. Looked at him, Dean knew, with scorn in its little black eyes. Dean slowly shifted his gaze to the almost empty drinking glass that sat next to him on the table.
He made his move.
Dashing the water out behind him, he lunged forward hard onto the exposed plywood floor. Hoping briefly that he’d avoid the ironic fate of being impaled on his own fork, he brought the glass down over his target.
“HA!”
Laying full out on the floor, his triumph was blissful and sweet. The small germ ridden paws scrambling uselessly on the slick clear sides. The white spray of whiskers twitching in agitation. Its thin disgusting tail flicking back and forth.
The beast was trapped.
Dean’s body crashing down onto the flimsy uneven floor and sending the metal kitchen chair into the wall had somehow woken up his brother.
"Is it over?" Sam asked from under his pillow.
"Oh, it's over." Dean emphasized the over-ness of it all by pointing at the small animal he'd caught and sending an imaginary tiny bullet through its tiny little head.
“What are you gonna do now?” Sam rolled to a sit and scrubbed at his face.
Dean’s smile faded as he looked back down at the small creature trapped under the glass.
Sam held up his boot. “One good whack oughta do it…”
Dean frowned and rested his chin on the back of his hand, looking the critter eye to beady eye.
“You could always just fill the sink up,” Sam yawned. “You know, drown it.”
Now that the hard part was done it figured that it was now that his brother decided it was time to be helpful with the tips on the rodenticide. It sounded like he’d really put some thought into it too.
“You could put it in a jar?” Sam suggested. “Suffocate it.”
Dean reconsidered the small creature that his dad would have just smashed with the butt of a rifle. Flung into a fire. Flushed down a toilet. Beheaded with a box cutter. Dean had always privately just kinda wondered why they didn’t just toss their furry asses back into the woods were they had come from. It just seemed more sporting.
Dean gave Sam a look back over his shoulder.
“What happened to livin’ side by side? I thought you were on it’s team?”
“I’m not on any-just do whatever you want with it. Make a rug. Mount it on the wall." Sam flopped back into his blankets. "You won.”
The thought of likening his victory to a win brought some of Dean’s smile back.
“I did win.” He mumbled to himself.
Looking around, Dean snagged a magazine that was laying around on the floor. Carefully sliding it under the glass, he lifted his catch and brought it over to Sam’s bed.
“Here.” Dean offered him the pestilence under glass. “You’re so creative, you do it.”
Sam stared up at him and the incarcerated mouse. The reality of offing the thing now becoming less of a great idea now that it was under his jurisdiction.
“No bright ideas now huh?”
Dean felt a certain amount of shame at his own apparent inability to end the mouse’s life and thought it would be only fair to make Sam feel like a pussy too.
“Ya know,” Sam suddenly smiled up at him. “It is Earth Day.”
“Sure. Fine?” Dean quickly nodded. ”Whatever gets you there Sammy.”
Sam sighed and took the glass.
Dean pulled the bare mattress free from the wall and lay it out on the floor. Forgoing the sheets he desperately grabbed his wad of blankets and collapsed down onto it gratefully. There would be no more scratching. No more chewing. Not even a suggestion of a squeak. Closing his eyes, he listened to his brother exit the room with the source of his insomnia and breathed a sigh of relief.
He was in all honesty just glad that someone was taking the dude by the tail and showing it the parking lot. Because he was pretty sure death by shotgun was a pretty dismal way to go for a piece of fur only that big. The idea of the small stain it would have left behind made him smile a little as he spiraled down into his much needed sleep.
And so what? Maybe the earth appreciated a mouse doing its job.
If She had any opinion either way on what Dean was trying hard to get accomplished in certain bits and pieces of Her hemispheres, maybe some of that mercy slack would come back his way one day.
It was all about karma really.
At least it was when Dean was too tired to think of anything else.