Eight Crazy Nights five, SPN edition
for serrico: Supernatural: The cure for Dean's empty nest syndrome is giving him someone else to take care of--but even though Sam's happy Cas is back, he's a little worried about Dean falling back into old, actually-kind-of-problematic habits. Note: I’m 5 episodes behind, so this is a made-up scenario in S7.
Dean’s basic problem, underneath all the supernatural shit that exploited it, is that he’s got an enormous heart and a comparatively little head. Well, two of those, but that’s neither here nor there in these circumstances. Point being: Dean has a ton of love to give and not much judgment in deploying it. Something inside him will always be four years old, the prime directive echoing through him to take care of his family. Which is fine when it comes to diapering and feeding, not so much with imparting vital information and respecting other adults’ choices.
Which is what Sam calmly, rationally, and systematically explains when he manages to pry Dean from Castiel’s side, only to hit the wall of Dean’s denial at 80 miles an hour. First Dean doesn’t say anything, then Dean makes pissy little negative noises, and finally Dean yells, “Dammit, Sam! He’s not a fucking grown-up, he’s a fallen angel who’s only been walking around for a couple of years and he needs a friend, so don’t fucking make this about you!”
There might be a hint of a point there; Castiel is an emotional toddler (which puts him at about Dean’s level, except with different issues). And Dean is in a lot of ways responsible for Castiel’s situation, even if there were other factors contributing to Castiel’s ultimate rebellion against Heaven and subsequent occupation.
So Sam doesn’t get mad. He waits for Dean to stop panting with anger and tries again. “I’m not saying you should dump him on the street. I’m saying that maybe he can handle more than you think.” Just this morning he’d walked in on Dean giving a line of bullshit about how the Leviathans were really nothing to worry about. Sam, not being nine any more, had no problem discerning just how little Dean believed his own words, but Castiel doesn’t have the same well-honed Dean translator.
Dean spins and Sam almost braces for a punch, but they’re not doing that any more and they both realize it before the conversation turns physical. “Listen,” Dean says, and then stops. “I just-someone should feel like it’s all going to be okay. Just for a while.” He takes a ragged breath and wipes his hand over his mouth, an old tell resurrected (like the three of them). “I know I have to tell him what’s going down. But can’t we just-? He hasn’t even been out to a burger joint since he got back.”
Somehow, it’s the emotional stuntedness of Dean’s plea that works. Sam sighs. “Okay, Dean. Let’s take him out tonight.” (We’ll watch you drink, Sam doesn’t say, because he still lives in hope.) Sam’s not going to lie to keep Dean’s little circle of pretend safety intact, but he can’t fault Dean for wanting to hide Castiel away from the cruelties of the Leviathans.
He knows it would be better to stop dissembling. Lies are too easy to sustain, especially when everyone involved wants to believe them; it’s so tempting to tell yourself that you’ll change soon. But right now he feels like he’s kicking a puppy that’s holding a kitten.
“I’ll talk to him tomorrow,” Dean concedes, not meeting Sam’s eyes.
But that’s a mistake too: Dean isn’t the only one with obligations to Castiel. “We’ll talk to him,” Sam amends.
If Dean resents the intrusion into his intimacy with the ex-angel, he doesn’t say so, just shrugs his shoulders. Sam’s definitely going to participate, if only to keep the briefing from turning into a confessional focused on Dean’s guilt, which is not really the most important feature of their situation.
Some days, being Dean Winchester’s brother is not the easiest part of Sam’s life. Which, given the rest of Sam’s life, is really saying something.
“Hey, Sammy,” Dean says, and Sam looks up. “I know I’ve got my head up my ass about a lot of this. And Cas is gonna be safer if we tell him what’s going on. So, uh, thanks.” He smiles, sheepish and even relieved, and Sam remembers that part of having Dean’s back means calling him on his bull, knowing that Dean stands ready to do the same when they get to things like demons and hallucinations of Lucifer.
For some reason, a thought pops into Sam’s head: He should really reinstate prank wars.
Some days, being Dean’s brother is worth every aggravation.
End.
for avidrosette: SPN, Sam/Dean, Dean Winchester's Guide for the Perplexed
First, there is no God. If there was, He surely would have taken form during the last few craptastic years, along with every other incorporeal thing in Heaven, the Pit, and, oh yeah, that sideways place called Purgatory. Dean is willing to concede that there is some sort of weakass Godlike entity bouncing around, abandoning his creations to whatever horrors they can think up to inflict on themselves, but as many a woman on daytime TV has pointed out there’s a big difference between a sperm donor and a father.
Because there is no God, there is no set of rules handed down from on high. In the case of the supernatural, even the laws of physics are optional. Whatever people do is good or evil depending on how much it hurts other people. Dean still doesn’t feel that hot about what he does with Sam, because he’s pretty sure it means they’re both too broken to find anyone else, but he knows they’re not even going to get kicked out of Heaven for that because no one in power there gives a sweet fuck.
Second, there is nothing good to be said about Heaven.
Third, civilians will never understand. There is no such thing as good publicity. There are mysteries, and Dean and Sam are initiated into the world beneath the world, but they can only tell people in dire peril (and fangirls) and even then the chances of being understood are fifty-fifty at best. Crap knowledge is often worse than no knowledge at all-there’s a reason they had to save people from Bloody Mary, and that vampire breeding cult back when Sam had no soul, and a bunch of other idiocies that supernatural groupies brought on themselves through lax belief. So no, there is no casual dissemination of information about things that go bump in the night. Though Dean himself remains up for a good bump in the night.
Dean used to think it didn’t matter that civilians were clueless, that he couldn’t find a girl who’d stick with him through all the monster-hunting, that they’d never get a ticker-tape parade. He used to pretend he didn’t want some of that recognition, which was a big ball of not-fooling-anyone. He’s mostly given up on those idle fantasies, though it half killed him to find out that Sam had done the same.
He’s pretty sure that Sam gave up all the way the night they first went to bed together.
Fourth, the Impala is the center of the universe. Sam says that the car-the concentrated accumulation of their lives together-was what gave him the strength to beat Lucifer into the background and jump into the Pit. Dean thinks that Sam ought to have at least pretended that it was Dean’s presence that did the trick, but Sam is so smart that sometimes he doesn’t see the simplest things. Also, maybe Sam thinks that all lies are the same, which is so not true that it’s almost a lie itself. Nonetheless, Dean is happy that his baby saved the world; he’s saved her, so it’s a step towards making up for that whole ‘breaking the first seal to start the apocalypse’ thing.
Fifth, Chuck Shurley is a hack and his works should be burned. So what if he’s a prophet. See point one.
Occasionally Dean wonders where the fuck Chuck is these days. Not often, though.
Sixth, there are things Dean can’t say. But he can hint, very strongly. “I need a sandwich, a big one with a lot of meat” means: you look bad, Sammy, how’s about we stop at someplace you can get one of your foofy salads? “I need a drink” means: I don’t want to feel this any more. “Find us a hunt” means: I need you to be okay.
Seventh, bad things happen to good people because they can. Bad things happen to bad people, too. (Some days, he gets to be the bad thing that happens.) You can whine about the inescapability of evil and the sorrow that life entails, or you can soldier the fuck up. Dean can admit that he’s spent his time doing the former, but the latter is where the smart money is.
Eighth, there is nothing better than being on the road with Sammy. This is the best life. Sure, that’s sad, but Dean tries not to think about it like that. Once that rule is hammered down, everything else follows.
It’s not really that complicated.
End.
for on_verra: SPN/Pretty Little Liars crossover! Maybe Sam and Dean come to Rosewood to investigate Ally's death and/or possible supernatural nature of "A." I guess there should be some kind of reference to S/D established relationship, because it is not possible for me to not want S/D.
“That blonde girl, Hannah, totally wanted me,” Dean bragged.
“Starts with J, rhymes with mailbate?” Sam suggested, not looking away from the computer screen.
“That’s not even a word, Sammy,” Dean said. “And you know I’ve only got eyes for one girl.” That got him the bitchface, though again Sam didn’t turn his head from his research. “My car,” he added pointedly. He was actually a little hurt that Sam couldn’t trust him on this, when Dean had never given him reason-okay, not since Sam was a kid and saw Dean tomcatting around, and that was totally different, nothing like what they were today. He supposed that one of the costs of fucking your kid brother was that he remembered back when you were not the fully developed human being you are today and were in fact kind of a dick to the multiple girls you seduced and abandoned in high school.
The fact of the matter was that these girls, gorgeous as they were, looked so young that it was starting to freak Dean out. When did seventeen-year-olds start being creepy to ogle? Maybe when Dean had realized that, if he’d been a little less careful about bringing a raincoat to every party, one of those multiple girls back in high school might now be the mom of a seventeen-year-old.
Anyway, these girls here in Rosewood had bigger problems than Dean’s perving on them. There’d been no EMF in any of the places Dean had checked so far, but the whole ‘apparently all-seeing and all-knowing but incorporeal stalker determined to punish the living for their secrets’ thing spelled angry ghost. Except that Alison DeLaurentis had been cremated, and the girls had gotten all quiet and dodgy when Dean asked if there were any important objects from her life remaining. If they couldn’t find an object to burn, they were going to have to try some of Bobby’s more exotic techniques, which would draw enough attention that they’d have to burn rubber on the way out of town.
Fortunately, the local police seemed to be deeply involved in some kind of soap opera and not so much in actual policework, so Dean wasn’t too worried about their escape.
“Got something!” Sam said, right on cue.
Dean grinned to himself and went to lean over Sam’s shoulder. He knew how this would go. They’d gank the ghost, skedaddle, and then Dean would work on some way to explain to Sam, without actually using words, that underage hotties were no more threat to this thing they had than legal ones.
End.
for avidrosette: SPN x Hershel of Ostropol, what if Castiel transported Sam and Dean to the frozen shtetl (or, you know, deepest Brooklyn) to fight the Chanukah goblins that had been terrorizing the populace at this time of year for generations?
“The goblins who haunt the synagogue hate Hanukah,” the little girl explained to Sam, all seriousness. Sam was kneeling and he still had a foot on the tyke as he listened to her tale of woe with total wide-eyed sympathy; Dean could practically feel the ovaries of all the women in the room yearning towards him, regardless of the fact that Sam was a goy. “They blow out the candles and break the dreidels! They throw the latkes on the floor. It’s a curse.”
“Don’t worry,” Sam told her. “My brother and I will help.”
Outside on the sidewalk, ignoring the masses of people bustling by, Dean grabbed Sam’s jacket. “Goblins? You know we’ve never done goblins, dude. You have any idea how to get rid of goblins? And are Jewish goblins different from regular goblins?”
Sam gave him that ‘Dean, you’re a solid mass of -isms’ look he’d perfected over the years, even though it was a totally legit question given the variety of different culturally specific baddies they’d iced in their careers. “I don’t know, Dean, are you going to help me with the research?”
Dean didn’t dignify that with an answer. Sam could be a bitch in the library as easily as anywhere else.
So, while Dean went to the corner deli and had himself an awesome sandwich, with pickle and slaw and cream soda, and chatted up the locals to confirm the girl’s story, Sam had his own kind of fun in the synagogue’s collection of folklore. Of course the adults wouldn’t admit to believing in goblins, but the list of horrible things that had happened to people in the area who’d been celebrating Hanukah last year was definitely long enough to trigger Dean’s suspicions. The police were saying it was some kind of hate crime. Maybe there was a neo-Nazi with a summoning at the back of it all, but Dean was betting on the supernatural as the weapon of choice, since according to the people in the deli the police hadn’t found any accelerants or other signs of tampering at the houses that had burned down from kitchen oil fires or candles gone wild. The guy behind the meat counter said it was a cold case, and that they were setting up patrols of their own this year, but he didn’t sound confident that they’d catch anyone.
Dean was an excellent big brother and got a corned beef on rye to bring to Sam in the motel. Sam sniffed, but he ended up eating the whole thing along with the side of applesauce, licking his spoon like a little kid, and Dean was even more excellent and didn’t demand to hear what Sam had found out until he was done.
Sam sat back at last, rubbing his stomach absentmindedly. Dean gave himself another mental high-five. For all his obsessive workouts, Sammy was still a bad eater, and Dean always felt better when he saw Sam well-fed. “Okay, so we have to spend eight nights in the old synagogue, lighting the candles each night, reciting the blessings, and keeping them lit despite the goblins’ attempts to quench them. Except on the last night, we have to get the king of the goblins to light them. It’s the only way to banish them.”
“How are we gonna do that, Sam?”
Sam shrugged. “Legends say that goblins can be tricked.”
Dean frowned. “Uh, I’m not sure I’m up on goblin riddles or whatever. And I’m sure you’ve got that covered, Sammy, but-” Sam was doing a lot better, yes, but that meant Dean would trust him not to break down in a firefight. Witty rejoinders required a lot more mental effort than that.
Sam sighed, not needing Dean to finish that sentence. “The texts also suggest that goblins are afraid of physical force. They’re on record as hard to kill, but historically they didn’t have many shotguns in the shtetl.”
Modern weaponry versus ancient evil-yeah, Dean liked the sound of that. Dean could definitely hold a gun to the goblin king’s head and see how long he resisted lighting a few candles. And if he didn’t respond to threats, there were always knives. “Wait a sec. Will the blessings work if we say them?”
Sam got his ‘things Dean’s not going to want to hear’ face-yes, okay, Dean had an extensive list, which was appropriate since Sam had an impressive repertoire of annoying faces-and said, “Holy water and exorcisms worked just fine for you back in the day.” Meaning: back when you said you didn’t believe in God and had no direct evidence either way, and if Christian rituals worked for you there’s no reason Jewish ones won’t too, right? Like Sam was maybe expecting Dean to confess that he’d really believed all along and was just hiding it out of bravado. Well, fuck that noise.
“Fine, then,” Dean said shortly. “Guess it’s time for you to learn some Hebrew.”
As it happened, they both memorized the prayers, because there was every chance that Sam would get caught up in the goblin fight, and it’d be awfully stupid to lose the opportunity to banish evil goblins just because Sam got choked or knocked out or otherwise silenced as he so often did (but never when Dean just wanted him to shut up, sadly) during their fights.
And it turned out that, yes, goblins blew apart quite nicely if you sighted right. Tiny things, though, a lot like Gremlins, only creepier. Huge matted crests of hair on their heads, stiff as dried wood. Good thing Dean was such a fine shot. (Sam got a couple of them too.) They even managed to capture one in a box, as practice for making the Goblin King do their bidding. Unfortunately, all it did was bounce around, screaming Yiddish curses-Dean didn’t understand all the words, but he knew a curse when he heard one. That also put the definitive kibosh on the whole ‘trick them’ thing, since even Sam would have trouble smooth-talking without a lick of comprehension on either side. The trapped goblin didn’t seem threatened by the guns; Dean thought it didn’t even recognize them. In the end, they had to put it out of their misery like the others.
“Maybe the King is smarter?” Sam said dubiously.
On the last night, they got set up as they had on the other nights, each on one side of the menorah, candles all at the ready. The synagogue creaked and settled around them in the way of old buildings.
The Goblin King exploded out of the floor, sending chunks of tile in every direction. Turned out that ‘Goblin King’ was like ‘rat king’-it was a mass of little goblins working as one giant body, disgusting squared. There was even a goblin hanging upside down between its legs, its extra-long crest looking exactly like a swinging dick.
“How are we going to get that to light the candles?” Dean ground out as he reloaded his shotgun. The little goblins started fighting under their own power when you shot them off the main goblin, which meant that it was kind of like playing a video game with added mortal peril.
“Don’t know,” Sam panted. “Ammo?”
Dean was running low as well, but he tossed a couple of shells over to Sam. If they didn’t figure out what to do fast, Dean was going to be reduced to lighting the candles and shoving them down the King’s throats, even if that meant it wasn’t banished forever.
Wait a second.
“King has to light the candles, that’s what it says?”
Sam didn’t stop firing. “Yeah.”
“Okay, cover me.” Dean dived for the King’s feet, two seething masses of hissing minigoblins. He reached up and grabbed the dick-goblin’s shoulders, pulling it out. The King screamed with every mouth, so he figured that must’ve felt something like getting kicked in the balls.
Reversing course, and squeezing the goblin against his chest with his jacket as a barrier against most of the bites and gouges, he got himself back to the menorah. “Hope this works,” he muttered to himself as he picked up the lighter.
The dick-crest burned like kindling. The goblin’s screeching and wriggling amped up as Dean used its head to light the first candle, then the others. (The other nights, Sam had done it the ordinary way, at least according to Sam’s narration, using the candle out in front to light the rest, but Dean wasn’t taking any chances-this little bastard was going to light all the candles.) The crest was nearly burned down to the goblin’s scalp by the time Dean finished the ninth, but it didn’t manage to put itself out, and as the final candle flared to life there was an enormous boom.
Dean found himself holding a handful of slick, rotten-smelling goo, and when he turned he saw that Sam had gotten himself a faceful of the same, which was almost awesome enough to make up for his own beslimedness. The synagogue was a mess, and the residents might not think that Sam and Dean had done them any favors-but there weren’t going to be any more mysterious fires.
He went to the table or altar or whateverthefuck was in front of the menorah and found a clean patch of cloth to wipe his hands on, then went to offer the same to Sam, who was flailing around and spitting. “Hey, Sam,” he said, guiding his hands to the fabric, “talk about a Hanukah miracle. That little dude’s hair was worse than yours!”
Dean pumped his fist in self-congratulation, which meant that the now-filthy cloth smacked him in the face when Sam lobbed it at him. Whatever, totally worth it.
Happy freaking holidays, he thought, surveying the devastated synagogue, chairs flung everywhere and goo dripping from the walls.
The thing was? He meant it.
comments on DW | reply there. I have invites or you can use OpenID.
Dean’s basic problem, underneath all the supernatural shit that exploited it, is that he’s got an enormous heart and a comparatively little head. Well, two of those, but that’s neither here nor there in these circumstances. Point being: Dean has a ton of love to give and not much judgment in deploying it. Something inside him will always be four years old, the prime directive echoing through him to take care of his family. Which is fine when it comes to diapering and feeding, not so much with imparting vital information and respecting other adults’ choices.
Which is what Sam calmly, rationally, and systematically explains when he manages to pry Dean from Castiel’s side, only to hit the wall of Dean’s denial at 80 miles an hour. First Dean doesn’t say anything, then Dean makes pissy little negative noises, and finally Dean yells, “Dammit, Sam! He’s not a fucking grown-up, he’s a fallen angel who’s only been walking around for a couple of years and he needs a friend, so don’t fucking make this about you!”
There might be a hint of a point there; Castiel is an emotional toddler (which puts him at about Dean’s level, except with different issues). And Dean is in a lot of ways responsible for Castiel’s situation, even if there were other factors contributing to Castiel’s ultimate rebellion against Heaven and subsequent occupation.
So Sam doesn’t get mad. He waits for Dean to stop panting with anger and tries again. “I’m not saying you should dump him on the street. I’m saying that maybe he can handle more than you think.” Just this morning he’d walked in on Dean giving a line of bullshit about how the Leviathans were really nothing to worry about. Sam, not being nine any more, had no problem discerning just how little Dean believed his own words, but Castiel doesn’t have the same well-honed Dean translator.
Dean spins and Sam almost braces for a punch, but they’re not doing that any more and they both realize it before the conversation turns physical. “Listen,” Dean says, and then stops. “I just-someone should feel like it’s all going to be okay. Just for a while.” He takes a ragged breath and wipes his hand over his mouth, an old tell resurrected (like the three of them). “I know I have to tell him what’s going down. But can’t we just-? He hasn’t even been out to a burger joint since he got back.”
Somehow, it’s the emotional stuntedness of Dean’s plea that works. Sam sighs. “Okay, Dean. Let’s take him out tonight.” (We’ll watch you drink, Sam doesn’t say, because he still lives in hope.) Sam’s not going to lie to keep Dean’s little circle of pretend safety intact, but he can’t fault Dean for wanting to hide Castiel away from the cruelties of the Leviathans.
He knows it would be better to stop dissembling. Lies are too easy to sustain, especially when everyone involved wants to believe them; it’s so tempting to tell yourself that you’ll change soon. But right now he feels like he’s kicking a puppy that’s holding a kitten.
“I’ll talk to him tomorrow,” Dean concedes, not meeting Sam’s eyes.
But that’s a mistake too: Dean isn’t the only one with obligations to Castiel. “We’ll talk to him,” Sam amends.
If Dean resents the intrusion into his intimacy with the ex-angel, he doesn’t say so, just shrugs his shoulders. Sam’s definitely going to participate, if only to keep the briefing from turning into a confessional focused on Dean’s guilt, which is not really the most important feature of their situation.
Some days, being Dean Winchester’s brother is not the easiest part of Sam’s life. Which, given the rest of Sam’s life, is really saying something.
“Hey, Sammy,” Dean says, and Sam looks up. “I know I’ve got my head up my ass about a lot of this. And Cas is gonna be safer if we tell him what’s going on. So, uh, thanks.” He smiles, sheepish and even relieved, and Sam remembers that part of having Dean’s back means calling him on his bull, knowing that Dean stands ready to do the same when they get to things like demons and hallucinations of Lucifer.
For some reason, a thought pops into Sam’s head: He should really reinstate prank wars.
Some days, being Dean’s brother is worth every aggravation.
End.
for avidrosette: SPN, Sam/Dean, Dean Winchester's Guide for the Perplexed
First, there is no God. If there was, He surely would have taken form during the last few craptastic years, along with every other incorporeal thing in Heaven, the Pit, and, oh yeah, that sideways place called Purgatory. Dean is willing to concede that there is some sort of weakass Godlike entity bouncing around, abandoning his creations to whatever horrors they can think up to inflict on themselves, but as many a woman on daytime TV has pointed out there’s a big difference between a sperm donor and a father.
Because there is no God, there is no set of rules handed down from on high. In the case of the supernatural, even the laws of physics are optional. Whatever people do is good or evil depending on how much it hurts other people. Dean still doesn’t feel that hot about what he does with Sam, because he’s pretty sure it means they’re both too broken to find anyone else, but he knows they’re not even going to get kicked out of Heaven for that because no one in power there gives a sweet fuck.
Second, there is nothing good to be said about Heaven.
Third, civilians will never understand. There is no such thing as good publicity. There are mysteries, and Dean and Sam are initiated into the world beneath the world, but they can only tell people in dire peril (and fangirls) and even then the chances of being understood are fifty-fifty at best. Crap knowledge is often worse than no knowledge at all-there’s a reason they had to save people from Bloody Mary, and that vampire breeding cult back when Sam had no soul, and a bunch of other idiocies that supernatural groupies brought on themselves through lax belief. So no, there is no casual dissemination of information about things that go bump in the night. Though Dean himself remains up for a good bump in the night.
Dean used to think it didn’t matter that civilians were clueless, that he couldn’t find a girl who’d stick with him through all the monster-hunting, that they’d never get a ticker-tape parade. He used to pretend he didn’t want some of that recognition, which was a big ball of not-fooling-anyone. He’s mostly given up on those idle fantasies, though it half killed him to find out that Sam had done the same.
He’s pretty sure that Sam gave up all the way the night they first went to bed together.
Fourth, the Impala is the center of the universe. Sam says that the car-the concentrated accumulation of their lives together-was what gave him the strength to beat Lucifer into the background and jump into the Pit. Dean thinks that Sam ought to have at least pretended that it was Dean’s presence that did the trick, but Sam is so smart that sometimes he doesn’t see the simplest things. Also, maybe Sam thinks that all lies are the same, which is so not true that it’s almost a lie itself. Nonetheless, Dean is happy that his baby saved the world; he’s saved her, so it’s a step towards making up for that whole ‘breaking the first seal to start the apocalypse’ thing.
Fifth, Chuck Shurley is a hack and his works should be burned. So what if he’s a prophet. See point one.
Occasionally Dean wonders where the fuck Chuck is these days. Not often, though.
Sixth, there are things Dean can’t say. But he can hint, very strongly. “I need a sandwich, a big one with a lot of meat” means: you look bad, Sammy, how’s about we stop at someplace you can get one of your foofy salads? “I need a drink” means: I don’t want to feel this any more. “Find us a hunt” means: I need you to be okay.
Seventh, bad things happen to good people because they can. Bad things happen to bad people, too. (Some days, he gets to be the bad thing that happens.) You can whine about the inescapability of evil and the sorrow that life entails, or you can soldier the fuck up. Dean can admit that he’s spent his time doing the former, but the latter is where the smart money is.
Eighth, there is nothing better than being on the road with Sammy. This is the best life. Sure, that’s sad, but Dean tries not to think about it like that. Once that rule is hammered down, everything else follows.
It’s not really that complicated.
End.
for on_verra: SPN/Pretty Little Liars crossover! Maybe Sam and Dean come to Rosewood to investigate Ally's death and/or possible supernatural nature of "A." I guess there should be some kind of reference to S/D established relationship, because it is not possible for me to not want S/D.
“That blonde girl, Hannah, totally wanted me,” Dean bragged.
“Starts with J, rhymes with mailbate?” Sam suggested, not looking away from the computer screen.
“That’s not even a word, Sammy,” Dean said. “And you know I’ve only got eyes for one girl.” That got him the bitchface, though again Sam didn’t turn his head from his research. “My car,” he added pointedly. He was actually a little hurt that Sam couldn’t trust him on this, when Dean had never given him reason-okay, not since Sam was a kid and saw Dean tomcatting around, and that was totally different, nothing like what they were today. He supposed that one of the costs of fucking your kid brother was that he remembered back when you were not the fully developed human being you are today and were in fact kind of a dick to the multiple girls you seduced and abandoned in high school.
The fact of the matter was that these girls, gorgeous as they were, looked so young that it was starting to freak Dean out. When did seventeen-year-olds start being creepy to ogle? Maybe when Dean had realized that, if he’d been a little less careful about bringing a raincoat to every party, one of those multiple girls back in high school might now be the mom of a seventeen-year-old.
Anyway, these girls here in Rosewood had bigger problems than Dean’s perving on them. There’d been no EMF in any of the places Dean had checked so far, but the whole ‘apparently all-seeing and all-knowing but incorporeal stalker determined to punish the living for their secrets’ thing spelled angry ghost. Except that Alison DeLaurentis had been cremated, and the girls had gotten all quiet and dodgy when Dean asked if there were any important objects from her life remaining. If they couldn’t find an object to burn, they were going to have to try some of Bobby’s more exotic techniques, which would draw enough attention that they’d have to burn rubber on the way out of town.
Fortunately, the local police seemed to be deeply involved in some kind of soap opera and not so much in actual policework, so Dean wasn’t too worried about their escape.
“Got something!” Sam said, right on cue.
Dean grinned to himself and went to lean over Sam’s shoulder. He knew how this would go. They’d gank the ghost, skedaddle, and then Dean would work on some way to explain to Sam, without actually using words, that underage hotties were no more threat to this thing they had than legal ones.
End.
for avidrosette: SPN x Hershel of Ostropol, what if Castiel transported Sam and Dean to the frozen shtetl (or, you know, deepest Brooklyn) to fight the Chanukah goblins that had been terrorizing the populace at this time of year for generations?
“The goblins who haunt the synagogue hate Hanukah,” the little girl explained to Sam, all seriousness. Sam was kneeling and he still had a foot on the tyke as he listened to her tale of woe with total wide-eyed sympathy; Dean could practically feel the ovaries of all the women in the room yearning towards him, regardless of the fact that Sam was a goy. “They blow out the candles and break the dreidels! They throw the latkes on the floor. It’s a curse.”
“Don’t worry,” Sam told her. “My brother and I will help.”
Outside on the sidewalk, ignoring the masses of people bustling by, Dean grabbed Sam’s jacket. “Goblins? You know we’ve never done goblins, dude. You have any idea how to get rid of goblins? And are Jewish goblins different from regular goblins?”
Sam gave him that ‘Dean, you’re a solid mass of -isms’ look he’d perfected over the years, even though it was a totally legit question given the variety of different culturally specific baddies they’d iced in their careers. “I don’t know, Dean, are you going to help me with the research?”
Dean didn’t dignify that with an answer. Sam could be a bitch in the library as easily as anywhere else.
So, while Dean went to the corner deli and had himself an awesome sandwich, with pickle and slaw and cream soda, and chatted up the locals to confirm the girl’s story, Sam had his own kind of fun in the synagogue’s collection of folklore. Of course the adults wouldn’t admit to believing in goblins, but the list of horrible things that had happened to people in the area who’d been celebrating Hanukah last year was definitely long enough to trigger Dean’s suspicions. The police were saying it was some kind of hate crime. Maybe there was a neo-Nazi with a summoning at the back of it all, but Dean was betting on the supernatural as the weapon of choice, since according to the people in the deli the police hadn’t found any accelerants or other signs of tampering at the houses that had burned down from kitchen oil fires or candles gone wild. The guy behind the meat counter said it was a cold case, and that they were setting up patrols of their own this year, but he didn’t sound confident that they’d catch anyone.
Dean was an excellent big brother and got a corned beef on rye to bring to Sam in the motel. Sam sniffed, but he ended up eating the whole thing along with the side of applesauce, licking his spoon like a little kid, and Dean was even more excellent and didn’t demand to hear what Sam had found out until he was done.
Sam sat back at last, rubbing his stomach absentmindedly. Dean gave himself another mental high-five. For all his obsessive workouts, Sammy was still a bad eater, and Dean always felt better when he saw Sam well-fed. “Okay, so we have to spend eight nights in the old synagogue, lighting the candles each night, reciting the blessings, and keeping them lit despite the goblins’ attempts to quench them. Except on the last night, we have to get the king of the goblins to light them. It’s the only way to banish them.”
“How are we gonna do that, Sam?”
Sam shrugged. “Legends say that goblins can be tricked.”
Dean frowned. “Uh, I’m not sure I’m up on goblin riddles or whatever. And I’m sure you’ve got that covered, Sammy, but-” Sam was doing a lot better, yes, but that meant Dean would trust him not to break down in a firefight. Witty rejoinders required a lot more mental effort than that.
Sam sighed, not needing Dean to finish that sentence. “The texts also suggest that goblins are afraid of physical force. They’re on record as hard to kill, but historically they didn’t have many shotguns in the shtetl.”
Modern weaponry versus ancient evil-yeah, Dean liked the sound of that. Dean could definitely hold a gun to the goblin king’s head and see how long he resisted lighting a few candles. And if he didn’t respond to threats, there were always knives. “Wait a sec. Will the blessings work if we say them?”
Sam got his ‘things Dean’s not going to want to hear’ face-yes, okay, Dean had an extensive list, which was appropriate since Sam had an impressive repertoire of annoying faces-and said, “Holy water and exorcisms worked just fine for you back in the day.” Meaning: back when you said you didn’t believe in God and had no direct evidence either way, and if Christian rituals worked for you there’s no reason Jewish ones won’t too, right? Like Sam was maybe expecting Dean to confess that he’d really believed all along and was just hiding it out of bravado. Well, fuck that noise.
“Fine, then,” Dean said shortly. “Guess it’s time for you to learn some Hebrew.”
As it happened, they both memorized the prayers, because there was every chance that Sam would get caught up in the goblin fight, and it’d be awfully stupid to lose the opportunity to banish evil goblins just because Sam got choked or knocked out or otherwise silenced as he so often did (but never when Dean just wanted him to shut up, sadly) during their fights.
And it turned out that, yes, goblins blew apart quite nicely if you sighted right. Tiny things, though, a lot like Gremlins, only creepier. Huge matted crests of hair on their heads, stiff as dried wood. Good thing Dean was such a fine shot. (Sam got a couple of them too.) They even managed to capture one in a box, as practice for making the Goblin King do their bidding. Unfortunately, all it did was bounce around, screaming Yiddish curses-Dean didn’t understand all the words, but he knew a curse when he heard one. That also put the definitive kibosh on the whole ‘trick them’ thing, since even Sam would have trouble smooth-talking without a lick of comprehension on either side. The trapped goblin didn’t seem threatened by the guns; Dean thought it didn’t even recognize them. In the end, they had to put it out of their misery like the others.
“Maybe the King is smarter?” Sam said dubiously.
On the last night, they got set up as they had on the other nights, each on one side of the menorah, candles all at the ready. The synagogue creaked and settled around them in the way of old buildings.
The Goblin King exploded out of the floor, sending chunks of tile in every direction. Turned out that ‘Goblin King’ was like ‘rat king’-it was a mass of little goblins working as one giant body, disgusting squared. There was even a goblin hanging upside down between its legs, its extra-long crest looking exactly like a swinging dick.
“How are we going to get that to light the candles?” Dean ground out as he reloaded his shotgun. The little goblins started fighting under their own power when you shot them off the main goblin, which meant that it was kind of like playing a video game with added mortal peril.
“Don’t know,” Sam panted. “Ammo?”
Dean was running low as well, but he tossed a couple of shells over to Sam. If they didn’t figure out what to do fast, Dean was going to be reduced to lighting the candles and shoving them down the King’s throats, even if that meant it wasn’t banished forever.
Wait a second.
“King has to light the candles, that’s what it says?”
Sam didn’t stop firing. “Yeah.”
“Okay, cover me.” Dean dived for the King’s feet, two seething masses of hissing minigoblins. He reached up and grabbed the dick-goblin’s shoulders, pulling it out. The King screamed with every mouth, so he figured that must’ve felt something like getting kicked in the balls.
Reversing course, and squeezing the goblin against his chest with his jacket as a barrier against most of the bites and gouges, he got himself back to the menorah. “Hope this works,” he muttered to himself as he picked up the lighter.
The dick-crest burned like kindling. The goblin’s screeching and wriggling amped up as Dean used its head to light the first candle, then the others. (The other nights, Sam had done it the ordinary way, at least according to Sam’s narration, using the candle out in front to light the rest, but Dean wasn’t taking any chances-this little bastard was going to light all the candles.) The crest was nearly burned down to the goblin’s scalp by the time Dean finished the ninth, but it didn’t manage to put itself out, and as the final candle flared to life there was an enormous boom.
Dean found himself holding a handful of slick, rotten-smelling goo, and when he turned he saw that Sam had gotten himself a faceful of the same, which was almost awesome enough to make up for his own beslimedness. The synagogue was a mess, and the residents might not think that Sam and Dean had done them any favors-but there weren’t going to be any more mysterious fires.
He went to the table or altar or whateverthefuck was in front of the menorah and found a clean patch of cloth to wipe his hands on, then went to offer the same to Sam, who was flailing around and spitting. “Hey, Sam,” he said, guiding his hands to the fabric, “talk about a Hanukah miracle. That little dude’s hair was worse than yours!”
Dean pumped his fist in self-congratulation, which meant that the now-filthy cloth smacked him in the face when Sam lobbed it at him. Whatever, totally worth it.
Happy freaking holidays, he thought, surveying the devastated synagogue, chairs flung everywhere and goo dripping from the walls.
The thing was? He meant it.
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