Everyone Hail to the Pumpkin Car
Fic Title: Everyone Hail to the Pumpkin Car
Author: smalltrolven
Pairing: Sam/Dean (established relationship)
Rating: PG
Characters: Sam Winchester, Dean Winchester
Word Count: 3,200
Summary: The Winchester boys could rattle off a list of words to describe their life on the road hunting down demons and monsters. Tiring, dirty, rewarding, painful, but in all those years, embarrassing and pumpkin-scented had never made the list at the same time . . . until now.
Author Disclaimer: I own nothing but these little ol’ words. Title slightly changed from a line in “This Is Halloween” from Nightmare Before Christmas
Author’s Note: Big Thanks for the great ideas go to my beta stella_lost. Written for spn_bigpretzel Halloween Reverse-Mini Bang for the awesome and inspiring and hilarious picture prompt by tattooeddevil.
Read it over on AO3
“Dude. What. The. Hell?”
“I don’t know.”
“No, seriously, Sam. What the hell?”
“Dean, I don’t think we’re in the Impala anymore.”
“No shit Sherlock.”
“I mean, it looks the same up here in the front, but dude, there’s an entire motor home back there behind the back seat.”
“Yeah and the front hood is gone, and from what I can see its freaking orange now.”
“Uh, did you notice the logo on the steering wheel Dean?”
“Mercedes-Benz? C’mon! You don’t mess with a man’s wheels!”
“So, that woman last night at the bar, guess she was a witch, and what you pissed her off? That’s how these things usually go.”
“First of all, it sucks that you assume that, and second, why it isn’t ever you?”
“You’re really asking me that?”
“No, really, why not Sam? It’s not like I’m mean to anyone, I just don’t get it. Why me?”
“I’m not answering that, if you don’t know by now, there’s no point. But could this be a good thing Dean? I mean, we won’t have to spend money on hotel rooms anymore. It looks pretty cushy back there to me.”
“Sam. This is not the time to be looking on the bright side; you need to help me figure out how to get my damn car back!”
“Alright, calm down; remember you’re the one driving this thing. Do we still have that book of counter-spells that Bobby lent us last time?”
“Yeah, I think so; it’s probably in the bottom of the book crate in the backseat. Just hurry up dude, this is embarrassing driving a freaking motor home.”
“Pull over up near those trees, and we can get out and try the spell. I don’t want to do it while we’re driving or when we’re in the car, just in case.”
“In case what?”
“In case I mess it up, you don’t want to have this vehicle turn into just a plain ol’ pumpkin or something while we’re in it driving at highway speeds do you?”
Dean pulls over off the highway on a small dirt road and coasts into a screening thicket of trees. They climb down out of the high doors and meet at the front of the vehicle. Before Sam has even closed his door he hears Dean’s outraged screech,”Sam it already is a pumpkin!”
Sam can’t meet his eyes, because he’s trying too hard not to laugh, and just tries a placating “Well it could have been worse.”
“How Sam? How could this possibly be worse?” Dean demands, waving his arms in ludicrous pinwheels.
Sam can’t help it now, he’s laughing not just at the thought that occurred to him, but at his big brother pin wheeling his arms in his messed-up tuxedo in front of their Pumpkin mobile, “Well, she could have turned it into the Oscar Meyer Weiner mobile or something.”
“Har-dee-fuck-in-har, you’re hilarious.” Dean can’t help a small smile at that one, because yeah, that’s funny, and besides how long has it been since he’s seen Sam laugh like that anyways?
Sam sees his brother smiling at his delight, and slaps his shoulder, “You love it. Now shut up, I’m going to try this spell.”
Dean points an accusing finger towards Sam, serious look on his face, “It better work Sam, or else.”
“Or else what Dean?” Sam can’t help rolling his eyes at that lame threat.
“I’ll make you walk everywhere, or take the bus.” Dean tries to look like he really means it, but fails because he’s kind of laughing at the idea.
“Like you’d ever.”
“Just try me.”
“Whatever, just pipe down and let me try this.”
Sam chants a few phrases that he reads out of the old spell book. He repeats them three times as the instructions require, but nothing happens. Except a distinct smell of roasting pumpkin, maybe pumpkin pie, and then a jack-o-lantern face appears as if carved by invisible ghostly hands on the front of the pumpkin mobile. A big toothy grin below the grill, a sharp nose right above the flashy silver Mercedes-Benz emblem, and two wide surprised eyes above the windshield. The features glow as if there’s a candle flickering to illuminate the new openings from behind.
“It smell like pumpkin pie to you Sam?” Dean asks, sniffing in the air like he’s a bloodhound or something.
“Uh,yeah.” Sam answers.
“Is my car grinning at us now?” Dean looks almost panicked on top of being pissed.
Sam gulps,”Yeah. Guess that one didn’t work.”
Dean whacks Sam on the shoulder, hard, “Ya think? C’mon, genius, what else can we do?”
“Let me just try this one, maybe it’s different enough than the other.” Sam reads out the next spell in the book. The jack-o-lantern features disappear one by one, and the cooking pumpkin smell dissipates, but their car is stubbornly still an enormous orange, pumpkin shaped Mercedes-Benz motor home.
“Sorry Dean, this isn’t working. I think we need to drive to Bobby’s, he has more spell books to work with, I’m sure we can find something. Or maybe it will just wear off. Some of these spells have a time limit, where you’re supposed to learn whatever lesson they think you should learn right?”
“Yeah, alright. But I’m too tired to drive any more right now, especially this monster, I am not learning any fucking lessons, and I just want to get out of this monkey suit.”
Sam shakes his head at all the drama and steps around behind and opens the large back door “C’mon in, looks like all our stuff is in here, there’s plenty of room.”
Dean grumbles his way around the vehicle and peers in the doorway. Sam’s right, there is a lot of room in there, like magically or something; there’s way more interior space than there ought to be. But it’s all part of a spell, so that makes some sense. He steps in and finds that there is one almost queen sized bed that they can share for the night. It has a soft-looking orange comforter and orange pillowcases which yeah, orange is a little strange, but they look clean. It could be worse.
“Well this won’t be so bad I suppose.”
“Dude, look, this drawer has all the weapons from the trunk.” Sam’s pulled out a large drawer underneath the seating bench. Sure enough all the weapons are neatly arranged in order in an orange foam casing.
Dean laughs, “Huh, more organized than we usually are.”
“Yeah, there’s another drawer here that has the stuff from my duffle, and I bet this one has yours.”
“It’s kinda like those tents in Harry Potter.”
Sam decides not to tease his brother for making a Harry Potter reference, because he always gets touchy about that kind of stuff, “Want some dinner? There’s some supplies in this little kitchen. I’ll make us something.”
“Sure, that’d be nice. I’m gonna change.”
Dean grabs some sleep pants and t-shirt out of his drawer. How strange is that, having my own drawer? He thinks to himself and heads into what he’s expecting to be a closet-sized bathroom, like you usually see in a motor home. But just like the rest of this thing, it’s surprisingly spacious, lots of elbow room, and even a tempting shower. He strips off the tuxedo, balling it up and throwing it into the corner. They’re both coated in the remnants of the former Mrs. Walter P. Bothingham, who was actually a shifter that was killing off the members of her high-society children’s charity women’s auxiliary. Sam and Dean had spent a weekend in their tuxes being waiters at several of the events for the club trying to figure out who was the shifter.
It had gotten messy of course, shifters are always so gross, and he just hoped their tuxes weren’t ruined. They’d had them all these years, ever since that night with Bela and the ghost ship. Whenever they wore them, he’d remember how Sam had looked at him when he’d come down the stairs in that crappy house they’d been squatting in. How for once, Sam hadn’t been able to hide everything, and Dean had finally had confirmation that he wasn’t alone in having completely inappropriate thoughts about his brother. All these years later and he could still remember that night as if it had just happened yesterday. Everything had changed in the course of one evening, and these tuxes knew the whole story. He shook himself bodily out of his reverie, back to the business of taking a shower in this bathroom that shouldn’t be possible. There seemed to be plenty of hot water, and the soap and shampoo were of course a nice pumpkin spice scent. Way to carry the theme through he thought.
When he gets out to the kitchen, he sees that Sam has heated up some soup and toasted a few pieces of bread and it smells pretty good. Sam looks really good too, still in his tux, sipping at a beer, smiling up at him from the small table as if this were the most normal night of their lives.
“How’s the shower?” Sam asks.
“Uh, good, lots of water pressure. This looks pretty good.” Dean sits down across from Sam noticing that even the dishes are orange.
“Yeah, it’s cream of pumpkin and carrot soup with this spiced pumpkin bread. I’ll warn you that the beer is pumpkin ale, but it’s tasty.”
“I never knew there were so many pumpkin related products. I think they’re all in this rattletrap.”
“It’s not so rattletrap, everything is new and works. When you finish eating can you see if the TV works? I’m going to go try out the shower.” Sam gets up and heads for the bathroom, leaving Dean alone with the pumpkin feast laid out in front of him.
“If it only shows programs with pumpkins, we are not watching it dude.” Dean yells over his shoulder.
“Okay, whatever, I’ll be right back.”
Dean leans back in the cushy bench seats at the built in orange Formica table, the bright orange soup smells too good not to at least try, even if he doesn’t usually eat vegetable based dinners. The bread is great dipped in the soup, and washing it down with the pumpkin ale is pretty perfect, he has to admit. Dean tidies up and searches out the location of the TV that Sam had mentioned.
It’s at the foot of the bed, and there are several DVD’s in the built-in orange melamine cabinet next to it. Unfortunately he had been right in guessing that they’d all be pumpkin related, and no he really did not want to re-watch “It’s The Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown” for the millionth time (Sam had been really addicted to it when he was a kid and worn out their VCR tape). He also was not interested in seeing Pumpkin Head or Halloween, both of which were great kitschy horror movies, but he’d seen them enough. Dean switched on the TV to see if they could get any of the movie channels, but nothing showed except orange wavy static. He switches it off and lies back on the soft bed and promptly falls asleep, tired out from the fight with the shifter and the days spent dressed up in a tux, pretending to be a waiter.
Sam is pleased to see Dean so comfortably passed out on the bed and smiles to himself as he rolls Dean over and back under the soft bedding. Dean mumbles something unintelligible that sounds like thanksSammy but he is really out. Sam pets through Dean’s hair, knowing he can probably get away with it for once. Dean arches into his hand unconsciously seeking more of the tickling pleasure of Sam’s hands in his hair. Sam continues stroking Dean’s head, moving down to his ears and neck, seeing Dean’s responsive shiver and stopping, not wanting to wake him up. Mostly because he doesn’t want to hear even more bitching about the car situation from Dean, and he just wants to crash too. But also because his brother actually looks happy and relaxed for once, and that hasn’t happened in a really long time.
It’s been months since they’ve had to share a bed, and Sam is going to enjoy it as much as possible before he drops off to sleep himself. Too bad for Dean that he’ll miss out since he is so deeply asleep, but he always complains about having to cuddle in one bed anyways. Sam knows Dean loves it as much or maybe more than he does, but Dean can’t ever let himself admit it.
Sam slides under the orange sheets and comforter and inches his way over to plaster himself along Dean’s side, slowly putting an arm over his stomach, pulling him in close to his body, nestling his head near the side of Dean’s head. He begins whispering into Dean’s ear all the things he never gets to say out loud, things they have an unspoken agreement to not bring up when they’re both awake, sober and conscious. Mushy things like love, and only you and together forever that are always always on his mind, but never allowed to be on his tongue. Sam whispers quietly until he falls asleep himself, wrapped up together with Dean so tightly that they might as well have been in the back seat of the Impala.
Dean wakes up first the next morning, because he feels like he’s roasting in an oven, completely wrapped up with Sam, on the backseat of the Impala. Ah what a relief! Beyond being relieved that his car has gotten back to herself, Dean notices the faint scent of the pumpkin spice shampoo and that’s because his face is shoved into Sam’s hair. He breathes out hotly, knowing that Sam loves the feeling of hot breath on his scalp and moves around so that his lips are near Sam’s. He softly kisses across them, sweeping his tongue gently back and forth. Sam opens his mouth with a groan and Dean takes that opportunity to turn it into a real kiss. After a few minutes Sam pulls away, breathless, “Like it when you wake me up like this Dean.”
“Mmmhmmm, what else do you like?” Dean whispers into his ear, making Sam shiver in a most delicious way.
Sam smiles and answers, “I’d think you’d know the answer to that question by now.”
Dean laughs quietly at Sam’s answer, “Just askin’, making sure I’m keeping you satisfied.”
“No problem there Dean. Not ever.” Sam says, biting his way down the side of Dean’s neck.
“Awww you say the sweetest things. Man, I was looking forward to waking up with you in that cushy bed and we’re all crammed in here. Kinda reminds me of our first time, ya know with the tuxes?”
“Yeah I remember having to get them dry-cleaned the next day.”
Dean hits Sam in the shoulder, “You better remember more than that!”
“Of course I do, I was just kidding you. Hey at least we got some new bedding out of the deal.” Sam points at the orange blankets, sheets and pillows they’re surrounded by in the backseat.
“I gotta go check the trunk. Make sure everything’s still in there.” Dean kisses Sam once more and extricates himself from their tangle, pulling his sleep pants back up. He stalks all the way around the Impala checking that everything is turned back to normal, but starts laughing as soon as he opens the trunk of the Impala.
Sam gets out and stretches, then joins him to see what’s so funny. The back of the trunk is a solid orange foam with all the weapons in their own spaces, just like they’d been in the drawer in the motor home. Their duffels are back there too, but now they are orange, one with stripes and one with polka dots.
Curious, Sam pulls open the striped one and sees his stuff neatly folded and rolled up inside, “My stuff’s in this one.”
“Oh man, I got the polka-dots. You are switching with me, I can’t do polka-dots, no way.”
“Too bad for you dude, you get what you get and you don’t throw a fit.”
“Oh I’m throwing a fit, big-brother rule says I get to pick first and I want the one with stripes.”
“God, you are such a child, whatever Dean, at least our clothes aren’t turned orange as well.”
“Yeah, I don’t want to see what one of your shirts would look like if it was orange.”
“Hey, I like my shirts.” Sam says, affronted that Dean never stops bugging him about his fashion choices.
“I know you do.”
“Can we go find some breakfast now?” Sam asks.
“Don’t have to, look what’s on the front seat.” Dean slams the trunk of the Impala closed.
Sam peeks in the window and sees two pumpkin spice lattes and what looks like pumpkin raisin muffins on an orange tray in the middle of the seat.
“That the little goodbye gift of the spell or something?” Sam asks, looking at Dean over the roof of the Impala.
“Guess so.”
“Well looks pretty tasty to me. You know as spells go, this one really wasn’t so bad Dean.”
“What do you mean? My car was a pumpkin motor home Sam! How was that not bad?” Dean gestures widely with his arms, looking like he’s ready to come around and punch Sam.
Sam ticks off everything on one hand, “We got showers, a hot meal, and a comfortable bed for the night, for free, and everything’s turned back this morning. Well almost everything.”
“Humph, whatever dude, c’mon we gotta go me some actual coffee, you know I can’t drink this sweet shit.” Dean slams the door after himself, getting settled in the front seat.
Sam gets in on the passenger side and holds up one of the lattes to Dean, “Oh just give it a try, it’s like Halloween in your mouth.”
“Why the hell would I want that?”
“So when I do this it tastes even better.” Sam leans over the front seat and takes Dean’s mouth in a deep, passionate kiss.
Groaning into the heat of his brother’s mouth, he can taste the familiar flavor of Sam underneath all the cinnamon and spice, and yeah he’s right, this is an awesome combination. Dean pulls back reluctantly from their embrace, and gestures for Sam to give him his coffee, “Alright, let me try that thing.”
Sam grins at him and hands it over. Glad that a kiss is all it took to convince Dean, because he’s insufferable when he has to drive without coffee first.
“You better not get crumbs all over in here.” Dean orders as he finishes off the latte.
“Give me a break, Mr. Powdered Donuts.” Sam protests, but unfolds one of the orange paper napkins to eat his muffin off of as neatly as he can.
Dean patches out suddenly in answer, tires spinning in the gravel, pulls out onto the highway, and cranks up the radio, hoping that “The Monster Mash” is actually playing on the radio station they’ve got tuned in and not a permanent leftover from the spell.
~FIN~