Four Ficlets for Supernatural, one Doctor Who/Discworld (PG-13, Gen)
A couple weeks back I was feeling writer's blocked (it happens), and so I opened a bottle of wine and asked a bunch of f-listies for five prompts, all of which would get comment!fic filled that night. These are those fics, all cleaned up a bit, but because I'm feeling too lazy to deal with headers, just take my word for it that all of these are rated PG-13, are gen, I don't own any of the characters involved, there are spoilers up through the current season of Supernatural, that the prompts can act as summaries, and that none of this is beta'd. It was, however, fun.
Title: Null Return
Prompt: jaimeykay : "Sam doesn't want his soul back, but that's okay. His soul doesn't want him back either."
"You want me to what?"
Dean frowned at the image of his brother visible in the pool of water and ink on the silver tray in front of him. For some reason Sam's soul imagined itself with bangs, like he had back when Dean first picked him up from Stanford. The Sam in the image looked young and innocent -- ever so very innocent compared to the Sam that looked at Dean from the other side of the table. "I want you to get back in your body. No offense, but having you out of it - it's kind of freaking me out." The Sam in the room snorted, his too-long hair fluttering with his breath.
Sam's soul shook his head. "What makes you think this is a good idea, Dean? It's not like I can get out of here without dealing with some serious power. The kind of power that comes from serious people who have serious issues and seriously want to destroy our world."
"But you're in Hell," said Dean, squeezing his eyes shut. The background behind Sam's soul shimmered more than the ink and water could account for - shimmered with flames and heat and pain.
"Yeah, I'm in the Cage - have been for almost a hundred and eighty years," said Sam's soul with a sad smile on his face. "I've sort of gotten used to it. Lucifer and Michael spend all of their time bitching each other out, and me and Adam pass the time by fucking with them. It's been good. The only one this place is really torture for is Lucifer - Michael explained how it's engineered to me once, but I didn't really understand." Sam laughed, just once, before sobering. "There's a punch-line coming, Dean, but I'm not allowed to talk about it. Long story short is: don't worry about me. Live your own life for awhile, man. You've earned it."
Dean scoffed. "Oh, I'm not worried about you." He eyed his brother's body. "I just - he'd be a lot better off with you around."
And then Dean was treated to a stereo assault of, "Are you sure about that?" from both of his brother's mouths. "I'm doing just fine, thanks," said the one with longer hair.
"The one you've got up there? He's the sum of all my experiences," said the Sam-with-bangs. "And, if I remember right, you're responsible for most of those. I trust you to keep him on track."
"Gee, thanks," huffed Sam's body.
"Fuck man: it's none of my concern what you do with that body now," replied Sam's soul. "Hey, Dean - you can introduce him to that waitress in Tampa. You know the one."
Dean scrubbed his face with the back of his hand. "You can't be serious."
"Oh, but I am." Sam's soul had developed an evilly serious expression. "I've got a role to play down here and apparently my body's got another one to play up there. But it's going to be okay, Dean: don't be scared. You raised me right once: I trust you to do it again. Oh, and me?"
"Yeah," said Sam's body, crossing his arms.
"Trust Dean to be your conscience, but don't believe anything he says when it comes to music."
Title: People Are Like Knives (Everything's In Context)
Prompt: kalliel - "Something Jo left out of her Yahoo! Personal: Jo Harvelle knows knives even better than she knows beer."
After Duluth, Jo decides she's had enough of small towns - and enough of Winchesters - to last her a good long while. So she heads to New York City, because Hunters and Winchesters all have an aversion to big cities and there isn't a bigger city she can get to where she speaks the language. She doesn't have a lot of cash but she has enough to rent a closet-sized studio apartment in Park Slope with enough left over to buy herself a monthly Metro-card so she can travel the subways freely. On her days off Jo picks a random bus route and just sits and watches the different areas of the city pass by. She couldn't be further from Nebraska if she was on Mars.
Of course, it's impossible to live in New York for any period of time without a job and Jo never picked up a musical instrument so busking in the Fourteenth Street subway station on the Eighth Avenue line is out of the question. She finds herself a job not far from there, though: a Belgian brasserie - she can hear Dean making the joke every time, even though she's not thinking about him - a decent place with two Michelin stars. She can make more in tips in one night than she made during some months back at the Roadhouse. No more Bud and Miller: here it's all Stella and Hooegaarten and Kwak and those twenty-eight dollar bottles of Chimay White, uncorked and poured into special glasses like they're finely aged wines - and dammit, they taste better than any of the corner store vintages the boys back home used to try and woo her with.
No, Jo's quite happy to learn all of the special tricks and traditions that come with working for a curmudgeon of an Belgian ex-pat who takes his beers and his etiquette seriously. Beer gets a coaster, wine gets a napkin, and one night Stella McCartney - one of their regulars, and damned if Jo's going to be the one who tells the vegan designer that the frites she loves so much have been fried in beef tallow - decides she likes Jo so much that she wraps an Hermes scarf that could have paid off Jo's student loans around Jo's neck, pronouncing Jo the "sweetest little bartender ever to grace the Meat Packing district." This is a whole new world, and Jo kind of likes her place in it. Fuck Dean Winchester and every other guy who's treated her as an after-thought: Steven Soderbergh thinks Jo could have a career in Hollywood.
So there.
It's been a fantastic four months before there's an outbreak of norovirus in Manhattan - the sous-chef invited all of the other line chefs to Dorsia' for his thirty-third birthday and apparently someone on the line there doesn't believe in washing his hands. "What the hell am I supposed to do?" asks Michael, the assistant manager on duty for the weekend. "Half my staff is spewing filth from both ends!"
Jo wipes a Tripel-Karmeliat glass dry. "What else is new?" Michael huffs a sigh out and slams his head against the authentically Belgian bar. "The front of house is still covered, right?"
"Oh, yeah - I've got wait staff coming out my wazoo," says Michael.
"Thought that was just Umberto," says Jo with a wink.
Michael scowls at her. "Not this weekend, sweetie, but thanks for rubbing salt in the wound." Salt - here it's for seasoning, but Jo ran a test run once: with all the canisters of sea salt on the tables, it'll only take her forty-five seconds to salt every door and window in the joint. "It's line chefs I'm out of. And if we have to shut down for Saturday dinner both Beth and Peter are going to take it out of my ass."
Jo sighs. "I know my way around a knife, if things are that desperate."
Michael perks right up. "Really?"
So Jo winds up running the line that weekend. The tips aren't as good as they are at the bar, but then Beth sits her down and offers her the position permanently and it comes a salary: one hundred and fifteen grand a year. Who the hell thought that it was possible to earn that much for something she hardly even had to think about? Jo is free to enjoy New York even more than she had before. That and Michael starts taking her to the Mars Bar in the East Village after hours, betting on her and hustling the weekend warriors at darts: Jo's one hell of a cricket player. She splits the profits with Michael, who has green eyes and a killer smile and means every word when he wraps his arms around her and declares, "Jo Harvelle, you're the best thing to happen to me in ages."
And it's so close, so very close to what she wants to hear. To the voice she wants to hear those words from, his face almost-but-not-quite the right one, and of course, Michael's as queer as the day is long. So Jo hugs back, banks all of her money, and ponders her future as a New Yorker.
She knows it won't last much longer.
Title: The Multi-farious Parking Hazards in Texas
Prompt: sistabro - "In which I fail yet again at coming up with prompts, cause all I got is this: bird shit."
True fact: birds migrate south for the winter.
Dean knows this but never before has he known this quite the way he does right now. "What the fuck..."
Sam juggles their coffees in the tray. "Shit, man."
"You've got that damn straight," says Dean, staring at his car where he'd parked it on the street: in Texas it's always a good idea to park in the shade, especially when you have a black car. Last time they were in Brownsville, Dean had spent thirty bucks on adhesive to glue the rearview mirror back onto the windshield three times. He had learned his lesson; but apparently Texas has more than one lesson for Dean Winchester to learn. Parking in the shade means parking under trees, where the birds are perched and--
"Looks like something out of a Hitchcock film," provides Sam, ever helpful. Dean shoots him a look and Sam has the decency to look a little bit embarrassed. "Here, I've got a couple of napkins," Sam offers. Dean is tempted to glare at him again but decides against it and instead accepts the proffered napkins. He wraps them around his hand and opens the passenger door first, then goes around to open his own.
"Shit, man," he sighs as he settles down behind the wheel.
Sam snorts a laugh before he can stop himself and offers Dean the coffee. "Only took ten minutes too," he says. Sam gestures. "Just go, get back on Sixth. We'll go up Mo-Pac. I think I saw a car wash up there."
"You're paying for it."
Sam scowls. "You're the one who wanted coffee!"
"And you're the one who demanded this pansy-ass Seattle crap."
Sam crosses his arms as Dean lets the engine turn over. "Fine, whatever. Let's just get out of here, okay?"
Dean smiles as he takes a sip of the damn tasty coffee that Sam insisted they grab. Sure the car wash will cost a few bucks, but it will probably be worth it for this bit of Fair-Trade deliciousness that he'll never admit he really does love to his brother. "Anyway, how far to this Hell house you keep talking about?"
Title: Heavenly Turmoil
Prompt: twirlycurls - "Turns out, Castiel is totally lying about the war in Heaven."
Angels are not supposed to have their own wills. Angels exist to execute the will of God. They are messengers; they are tools; they live to serve.
Castiel has seen the other side of the wall.
For a year Dean Winchester has let Castiel rest.
It has been glorious.
For a year Castiel has done very little. The world runs itself: his Father saw to it that the world could manage that much. Heaven is nothing but a muddle of happy memories: Castiel can ignore that. Hell is in a complete and utter tizzy because it lacks any sort of leadership beyond Crowley, who's busy assuring all of the demons that meddling in Earth's affairs will bring them nothing but trouble.
Castiel likes this.
Castiel likes Skee-Ball.
He spends his time at amusement parks. For once humans have chosen to name things in an apt fashion. If you spin the disc in the center of the tea-cups it spins you round and round. You can find these devices at any run-down park on the planet. Castiel spent a month at Cedar Park that he will not be telling any other angel or the Winchesters about.
There's a reason he wasn't answering the soul-less Sam's prayers. Who wanted to answer prayers when you could ride the Tower of Terror again? And why hadn't Dean ever told him about Knott's Berry Farm?
So when Dean finally does start calling, Castiel tells a tiny un-truth. It's almost the truth. Heaven is in turmoil.
And if the turmoil is because Castiel's ridden Kingda Ka at Six Flag's Great Adventure a couple times too many, then what harm does that do? Castiel makes sure that he doesn't have any cotton candy clinging to his lips when he goes to talk to them. This is what Dean deserves, for never telling him about Dippin' Dots before.
Title: Ginger
Prompt: idhren24 - "The Doctor uses the chameleon arch to change into something other than human."
Donna laughed. "You're six inches tall!"
Skinny Wullie laughed right back. "And wot's wrong with that, bigjob?! 'Least I'm not ginger!"
Daft Wullie coughed. "Ah, you may wan' tae check on tha' one, Skinny Wullie."
Skinny Wullie blinked. "Wot?"
Donna searched through her purse before finally coming up with a small compact. "Check here, little man."
Skinny Wullie stared at himself in the mirror. "Weel, would ye lookae tha'? Who'd've thunk!"
Title: Null Return
Prompt: jaimeykay : "Sam doesn't want his soul back, but that's okay. His soul doesn't want him back either."
"You want me to what?"
Dean frowned at the image of his brother visible in the pool of water and ink on the silver tray in front of him. For some reason Sam's soul imagined itself with bangs, like he had back when Dean first picked him up from Stanford. The Sam in the image looked young and innocent -- ever so very innocent compared to the Sam that looked at Dean from the other side of the table. "I want you to get back in your body. No offense, but having you out of it - it's kind of freaking me out." The Sam in the room snorted, his too-long hair fluttering with his breath.
Sam's soul shook his head. "What makes you think this is a good idea, Dean? It's not like I can get out of here without dealing with some serious power. The kind of power that comes from serious people who have serious issues and seriously want to destroy our world."
"But you're in Hell," said Dean, squeezing his eyes shut. The background behind Sam's soul shimmered more than the ink and water could account for - shimmered with flames and heat and pain.
"Yeah, I'm in the Cage - have been for almost a hundred and eighty years," said Sam's soul with a sad smile on his face. "I've sort of gotten used to it. Lucifer and Michael spend all of their time bitching each other out, and me and Adam pass the time by fucking with them. It's been good. The only one this place is really torture for is Lucifer - Michael explained how it's engineered to me once, but I didn't really understand." Sam laughed, just once, before sobering. "There's a punch-line coming, Dean, but I'm not allowed to talk about it. Long story short is: don't worry about me. Live your own life for awhile, man. You've earned it."
Dean scoffed. "Oh, I'm not worried about you." He eyed his brother's body. "I just - he'd be a lot better off with you around."
And then Dean was treated to a stereo assault of, "Are you sure about that?" from both of his brother's mouths. "I'm doing just fine, thanks," said the one with longer hair.
"The one you've got up there? He's the sum of all my experiences," said the Sam-with-bangs. "And, if I remember right, you're responsible for most of those. I trust you to keep him on track."
"Gee, thanks," huffed Sam's body.
"Fuck man: it's none of my concern what you do with that body now," replied Sam's soul. "Hey, Dean - you can introduce him to that waitress in Tampa. You know the one."
Dean scrubbed his face with the back of his hand. "You can't be serious."
"Oh, but I am." Sam's soul had developed an evilly serious expression. "I've got a role to play down here and apparently my body's got another one to play up there. But it's going to be okay, Dean: don't be scared. You raised me right once: I trust you to do it again. Oh, and me?"
"Yeah," said Sam's body, crossing his arms.
"Trust Dean to be your conscience, but don't believe anything he says when it comes to music."
Title: People Are Like Knives (Everything's In Context)
Prompt: kalliel - "Something Jo left out of her Yahoo! Personal: Jo Harvelle knows knives even better than she knows beer."
After Duluth, Jo decides she's had enough of small towns - and enough of Winchesters - to last her a good long while. So she heads to New York City, because Hunters and Winchesters all have an aversion to big cities and there isn't a bigger city she can get to where she speaks the language. She doesn't have a lot of cash but she has enough to rent a closet-sized studio apartment in Park Slope with enough left over to buy herself a monthly Metro-card so she can travel the subways freely. On her days off Jo picks a random bus route and just sits and watches the different areas of the city pass by. She couldn't be further from Nebraska if she was on Mars.
Of course, it's impossible to live in New York for any period of time without a job and Jo never picked up a musical instrument so busking in the Fourteenth Street subway station on the Eighth Avenue line is out of the question. She finds herself a job not far from there, though: a Belgian brasserie - she can hear Dean making the joke every time, even though she's not thinking about him - a decent place with two Michelin stars. She can make more in tips in one night than she made during some months back at the Roadhouse. No more Bud and Miller: here it's all Stella and Hooegaarten and Kwak and those twenty-eight dollar bottles of Chimay White, uncorked and poured into special glasses like they're finely aged wines - and dammit, they taste better than any of the corner store vintages the boys back home used to try and woo her with.
No, Jo's quite happy to learn all of the special tricks and traditions that come with working for a curmudgeon of an Belgian ex-pat who takes his beers and his etiquette seriously. Beer gets a coaster, wine gets a napkin, and one night Stella McCartney - one of their regulars, and damned if Jo's going to be the one who tells the vegan designer that the frites she loves so much have been fried in beef tallow - decides she likes Jo so much that she wraps an Hermes scarf that could have paid off Jo's student loans around Jo's neck, pronouncing Jo the "sweetest little bartender ever to grace the Meat Packing district." This is a whole new world, and Jo kind of likes her place in it. Fuck Dean Winchester and every other guy who's treated her as an after-thought: Steven Soderbergh thinks Jo could have a career in Hollywood.
So there.
It's been a fantastic four months before there's an outbreak of norovirus in Manhattan - the sous-chef invited all of the other line chefs to Dorsia' for his thirty-third birthday and apparently someone on the line there doesn't believe in washing his hands. "What the hell am I supposed to do?" asks Michael, the assistant manager on duty for the weekend. "Half my staff is spewing filth from both ends!"
Jo wipes a Tripel-Karmeliat glass dry. "What else is new?" Michael huffs a sigh out and slams his head against the authentically Belgian bar. "The front of house is still covered, right?"
"Oh, yeah - I've got wait staff coming out my wazoo," says Michael.
"Thought that was just Umberto," says Jo with a wink.
Michael scowls at her. "Not this weekend, sweetie, but thanks for rubbing salt in the wound." Salt - here it's for seasoning, but Jo ran a test run once: with all the canisters of sea salt on the tables, it'll only take her forty-five seconds to salt every door and window in the joint. "It's line chefs I'm out of. And if we have to shut down for Saturday dinner both Beth and Peter are going to take it out of my ass."
Jo sighs. "I know my way around a knife, if things are that desperate."
Michael perks right up. "Really?"
So Jo winds up running the line that weekend. The tips aren't as good as they are at the bar, but then Beth sits her down and offers her the position permanently and it comes a salary: one hundred and fifteen grand a year. Who the hell thought that it was possible to earn that much for something she hardly even had to think about? Jo is free to enjoy New York even more than she had before. That and Michael starts taking her to the Mars Bar in the East Village after hours, betting on her and hustling the weekend warriors at darts: Jo's one hell of a cricket player. She splits the profits with Michael, who has green eyes and a killer smile and means every word when he wraps his arms around her and declares, "Jo Harvelle, you're the best thing to happen to me in ages."
And it's so close, so very close to what she wants to hear. To the voice she wants to hear those words from, his face almost-but-not-quite the right one, and of course, Michael's as queer as the day is long. So Jo hugs back, banks all of her money, and ponders her future as a New Yorker.
She knows it won't last much longer.
Title: The Multi-farious Parking Hazards in Texas
Prompt: sistabro - "In which I fail yet again at coming up with prompts, cause all I got is this: bird shit."
True fact: birds migrate south for the winter.
Dean knows this but never before has he known this quite the way he does right now. "What the fuck..."
Sam juggles their coffees in the tray. "Shit, man."
"You've got that damn straight," says Dean, staring at his car where he'd parked it on the street: in Texas it's always a good idea to park in the shade, especially when you have a black car. Last time they were in Brownsville, Dean had spent thirty bucks on adhesive to glue the rearview mirror back onto the windshield three times. He had learned his lesson; but apparently Texas has more than one lesson for Dean Winchester to learn. Parking in the shade means parking under trees, where the birds are perched and--
"Looks like something out of a Hitchcock film," provides Sam, ever helpful. Dean shoots him a look and Sam has the decency to look a little bit embarrassed. "Here, I've got a couple of napkins," Sam offers. Dean is tempted to glare at him again but decides against it and instead accepts the proffered napkins. He wraps them around his hand and opens the passenger door first, then goes around to open his own.
"Shit, man," he sighs as he settles down behind the wheel.
Sam snorts a laugh before he can stop himself and offers Dean the coffee. "Only took ten minutes too," he says. Sam gestures. "Just go, get back on Sixth. We'll go up Mo-Pac. I think I saw a car wash up there."
"You're paying for it."
Sam scowls. "You're the one who wanted coffee!"
"And you're the one who demanded this pansy-ass Seattle crap."
Sam crosses his arms as Dean lets the engine turn over. "Fine, whatever. Let's just get out of here, okay?"
Dean smiles as he takes a sip of the damn tasty coffee that Sam insisted they grab. Sure the car wash will cost a few bucks, but it will probably be worth it for this bit of Fair-Trade deliciousness that he'll never admit he really does love to his brother. "Anyway, how far to this Hell house you keep talking about?"
Title: Heavenly Turmoil
Prompt: twirlycurls - "Turns out, Castiel is totally lying about the war in Heaven."
Angels are not supposed to have their own wills. Angels exist to execute the will of God. They are messengers; they are tools; they live to serve.
Castiel has seen the other side of the wall.
For a year Dean Winchester has let Castiel rest.
It has been glorious.
For a year Castiel has done very little. The world runs itself: his Father saw to it that the world could manage that much. Heaven is nothing but a muddle of happy memories: Castiel can ignore that. Hell is in a complete and utter tizzy because it lacks any sort of leadership beyond Crowley, who's busy assuring all of the demons that meddling in Earth's affairs will bring them nothing but trouble.
Castiel likes this.
Castiel likes Skee-Ball.
He spends his time at amusement parks. For once humans have chosen to name things in an apt fashion. If you spin the disc in the center of the tea-cups it spins you round and round. You can find these devices at any run-down park on the planet. Castiel spent a month at Cedar Park that he will not be telling any other angel or the Winchesters about.
There's a reason he wasn't answering the soul-less Sam's prayers. Who wanted to answer prayers when you could ride the Tower of Terror again? And why hadn't Dean ever told him about Knott's Berry Farm?
So when Dean finally does start calling, Castiel tells a tiny un-truth. It's almost the truth. Heaven is in turmoil.
And if the turmoil is because Castiel's ridden Kingda Ka at Six Flag's Great Adventure a couple times too many, then what harm does that do? Castiel makes sure that he doesn't have any cotton candy clinging to his lips when he goes to talk to them. This is what Dean deserves, for never telling him about Dippin' Dots before.
Title: Ginger
Prompt: idhren24 - "The Doctor uses the chameleon arch to change into something other than human."
Donna laughed. "You're six inches tall!"
Skinny Wullie laughed right back. "And wot's wrong with that, bigjob?! 'Least I'm not ginger!"
Daft Wullie coughed. "Ah, you may wan' tae check on tha' one, Skinny Wullie."
Skinny Wullie blinked. "Wot?"
Donna searched through her purse before finally coming up with a small compact. "Check here, little man."
Skinny Wullie stared at himself in the mirror. "Weel, would ye lookae tha'? Who'd've thunk!"