Fic - BANG, ZOOM! [SPN, Gen]
Title: BANG, ZOOM!
Rating: PG-13
Warnings (if applicable): Bodily functions exist? Discussion of potential non-con anal and mpreg as something that no one wants to happen. Threats against prominent astronomers. Crack.
Notes/Summary:
The following is my fic for the spnspiration April Fool's exchange. My sincerest apologies to theymp for being late with this, but thank you so, SO much to the mods for letting me have that much-needed extension! Also, many thanks to aishuu and incandescens for serving as sounding boards throughout this process.
The prompt I got from theymp was "Sam & Dean's Day Off." I noodled around with how I was supposed to subvert the prompt per the rules of the exchange and wondered "well, how far off?"
The answer, as it turns out, is about 239,000 miles, give or take.
1. The Impala Has Landed
Dean fiddled with the Impala's radio dial, but this only made things worse.
"What was that, Cas? We lost you there for a moment."
And before that last burst of static ... well, he couldn't have heard Castiel right. Could he? It didn't seem real even though everything they could see in every direction screamed that it was real. Sam had gone still when they heard what Dean thought they'd heard, but it was the kind of still that would explode if jostled. His breathing was sharp and shallow and Dean didn't think it was all terror about the freaky-ass situation they'd been landed in. Some terror, yes, but not entirely.
Dean got it. He really did.
"...not sure what caused... seems to be harmless." Castiel's voice sputtered through the radio, punctuated with pops of static and squeals of feedback. Dean reached for the tuner again, but Sam slapped his hand away. Dean glared and slapped back, but didn't touch the dial.
"...can't retrieve you, but the spell... return loop... twenty-four hours. It... have been constr... three passengers safe... that long..." Castiel continued.
"Wait. 'Return loop'? Does that mean the spell will bring us back?" Sam demanded.
Dean lifted his hand slightly, announcing but not apologizing for the interruption. "Short answers only, Cas. You keep breaking up, but I'm guessing you can hear us just fine, right?"
"Yes."
Both of them breathed a deep sigh of relief at the answer. Then each glared at the other for not remembering what they had just said about the oxygen just two freaking minutes ago.
"So, that twenty-four hour return loop. That means we'll be brought back in twenty four hours, right?" Dean heard the kind of desperation in Sam's voice that he was coming to associate primarily with any conversation having anything to do with the Mark. Speaking of which...
"Yes."
Dean rubbed his arm, then shook his head at Sam's inquiring look.
"And you said something about safety. Does that mean we don't have to worry about suffocating? Or, um, freezing?"
"Yes."
Dean rolled his eyes, but kept rubbing at the Mark, testing it with a poke and a pinch or two. "Is that 'yes, we don't have to worry,' or 'no, you'll be brought back home, but as a frozen corpse'?"
Even through the crackle-pop, they heard a distinct sigh before Castiel's "yes."
"Well, that's good, right?" Dean said, starting to pick up on some of Sam's nervous excitement. "Do we have to be back in the place for the spell to work?"
"No." Castiel's confidence in his answer came through loud and clear even though the static was getting worse.
"Do we have to stay in the car?" Dean asked over whatever it was Sam was going to ask next but Sam didn't seem to mind too much. They both held their breath, waiting through the next burst of static for Castiel to repeat his answer.
"No."
Dean punched the air. "Awesome," he whispered.
"And you have no idea who did this? Or why?" Sam asked.
There was no response. Only static. They waited, but Castiel didn't break in. Whatever spell or angel mojo Castiel had used to track them down and talk to them had worn off.
Dean waited for another minute before reaching out and gently turning the radio dial to "off." He then gave Baby a soothing pat on the dashboard. Castiel had said something about three passengers, and only he and Sam were in the car. So. All three of them were in this together.
"So," said Sam. He had gone back to staring out at the landscape.
"Uh-huh." Dean couldn't exactly blame him. Everything around them was gray and dusty and rocky and a little too harshly lit by a blazing white sun in a darker-than-dark sky, but something compelled him to try to take in every last detail. And no wonder.
"We're on the moon," Sam said, voice tight with an effort to keep it controlled.
Soon, very soon, the control broke and turned into hysterical giggles that soon rolled into deep, joyful laughter. Sam held his wallet up and let it go, grinning like an idiot as it slowly sank through the air and onto his lap.
Dean shook with his own laughter, each laugh punctuated with a loving beat on Baby's steering wheel. It was easy to imagine the excitement thrumming through her steel frame. "We are on. The. Moon." He looked out at the landscape again, at the too-close horizon and the utter stillness that was unlike anything on earth. "Wow."
"That's one word for it." The smile on Sam's face made him look about ten years younger, and something in Dean's chest made a not-unpleasant little flippity-flop. "So, now what?"
"Well, that's one's easy." Dean turned the key in the ignition and the engine roared with joy. "Let's turn Baby into a Lunar Rover."
2. Neil DeGrasse Tyson Must Die
They raced across a flat lunar plain towards a strange, low horizon. The Impala's dust plume rose five stories into the air and hung there undisturbed by wind, marking their passage as Dean took the car to speeds Sam had never seen her reach before. The low gravity and the lack of air resistance made for the kind of ride they could never have back on Earth.
In honor of the occasion, Dean had chosen some appropriate music to blast from the speakers and out the open windows.
Sam liked to imagine it filling the entire lunar landscape even though he knew the sound waves would only propagate as far as the little bubble of air that kept them and the Impala's engine alive.
Dean was bellowing along with the music, but when he got to where he was cheerfully belting out the lunatic is in my head... the lunatic is in my head... You raise the blade, you make the change... Sam decided that mayyyybe it was a good time to talk instead of sing.
"Did you ever think you'd get a chance to play Dark Side of the Moon on the dark side of the moon?" Sam shouted over the music.
Dean didn't bother trying to out-loud the music. He just raised an eyebrow and pointed out the driver-side window at white-hot ball of flaming gas currently resting about thirty degrees above the horizon. The glare was enough that they had both put on their sunglasses a while back. Sam suspected that the spell that kept them supplied with oxygen had also done something to bring the light to a level they could deal with.
Sam turned the music down to a volume that wouldn't require him to wreck his vocal cords to make a point. "The dark side of the moon gets sunlight just like the near side - that's how we get phases." He couldn't have sounded more like a fourth-grade science teacher if he tried, but there was nothing to do for that except double down and forge onwards. "Right now, we're somewhere on the dark - the far - side of the moon."
Probably on one of the far side's mares if the relative evenness of the giant plain was anything to go by. Lucky, given that he thought he remembered that the far side was much more cratered than the near side. Sam could just see the bright peaks of mountain ranges or crater rims far, far ahead, and he wished he had a better idea of where they were other than 'somewhere on the far side of the moon.'
"And how the hell do you know that?" Dean asked. Sam picked up on the little flare of irritation at being caught out at something he felt like he should know, and wondered how to proceed. Provoking Dean's temper was not something he wanted to risk these days, especially in close quarters. "Did you memorize some moon atlas when I wasn't looking? That's awfully geeky, even for you, Sam."
Sam relaxed when he thought he heard guarded interest more than anger in the response. It would only take a little push to convince Dean's geekier side to come out to play.
"Well, we can't see the earth anywhere in the sky, so we've got to be on the far side. If we were on the near side, we'd see the earth somewhere out there," he said sweeping his arm as best he could in the confines of the car.
Dean shook his head. "No, that doesn't make sense. We should see it passing over head, like what - once every ninety minutes or something?" The sunglasses made it hard for Sam to tell if he was kidding or not.
"You're thinking of the International Space Station, Dean." Sam thought for a moment, then added: "Which you can't see from the moon, in case you were wondering."
"Huh." Dean thought it over for a moment, then grinned. "Well I bet the guys on the ISS would give their left nut to trade places with us. This is way, way cooler than doing a cover of 'Space Oddity' in space. There's only been like, what, a dozen people on who've made it up here?"
"And none on the dark side," Sam pointed out, feeling a delicious smugness at the thought. No, they couldn't exactly prove where they had been, but most of the shit they dealt with on a regular basis fell outside the bounds of provable.
"So why can't we see the Earth, Sammy?" It was impossible to miss the plaintiveness, no matter how hard Dean was no doubt trying to hide it.
Sam shrugged. "It's something to do with the way gravity locks the earth and moon together." He wasn't sure he could accurately describe the mechanisms of tidal lock any more accurately than that, so he didn't try. "Anyhow, the same side of the moon always faces the Earth, so the other side - this side - always faces away."
"Always?"
"Mmm-hmm."
Dean thought about that for a moment, and when he said, "that doesn't seem fair," Sam thought he heard a lot of things that were not about the moon wrapped up in there.
"Who knows - maybe if we keep driving, we'll get to see the earth before we get zapped back home."
Dean brightened at that idea. "Hey - and maybe if we play our cards right, we can find out who did this and see if they'll send us to visit the other eight planets. Now that would rock. Not that this isn't the opportunity of a lifetime on its own. Don't think I'm ungrateful or anything."
"Seven other planets," Sam said, then wished he hadn't.
"No... " Dean counted them off as best he could with one hand still on the wheel. "Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus," (and here, Dean's grin proved once again that large parts of his psychological makeup were permanently stuck at twelve-years-old) "Neptune, and - "
"Pluto isn't a planet," Sam said, and why couldn't he just shut up? It was so not worth it to be right if being right meant that you were murdered by your Mark-afflicted brother on the dark side of the moon and the odds were literally astronomical that anyone would ever find your body.
It was also kind of a dickish thing to do, plain and simple.
"Uh, you might want to check your facts Sam, because that's not what I learned back in eighth grade science. 'My Very Easy Method Just Shows Us Nine Planets,' remember?"
"It was, um.... decommissioned?"
Dean slammed on the brakes, and the Impala skidded a good eighth of a mile before finally coming to a stop.
"That," he said, "is bullshit. You do not just decommission a planet. Especially not one named after Mickey's dog. And it fucks up the entire plot of 'Sailor Moon.'"
There were so many things Sam was forcing himself not to say just then. So, so many.
"They decided it didn't meet the criteria of a planet, so... it's not a planet any more."
Dean shook his head. "This is one of those things that happened when I was in Purgatory, wasn't it?" He thought for a moment. "Well, it doesn't matter. Pluto is still a planet. Right here," he said, laying a hand over his heart. "Where it counts."
They set off again once Dean had switched out Floyd for some Ozzy.
"Tell you what, Sam. Once we get back, let's track down the assholes who said Pluto wasn't good enough to be a planet and knock some sense into them, okay?"
Sam sighed and wondered how many astronomers he would have to protect from the Mark's wrath.
"Whatever you say, Dean."
3. For SCIENCE!!!
In theory, they could have survived for a day without food or water, but in practice, the spell had zapped them from the parking lot of the Thriftway right after they had done their grocery shopping. So, they had enough to eat and drink and they had also picked up some non-food sundries, which meant that they had a half-dozen brats wrapped in foil and heating through on Baby's engine block.
Dean remembered that Dad had gone absolutely batshit ballistic the first time Dean had tried using the Impala as a makeshift oven (and in retrospect, slice-n-bake cookies were probably not a good idea) but over the years, she'd done everything from warming up some leftovers to cooking an entire roast complete with potatoes. Dean knew it was all in his head, but he got the feeling that Baby liked providing for them in ways beyond shelter and transport, just as he sometimes got the feeling that Baby resented her cushy new digs in the Bunker.
Judging from the smell wafting through the vents and the open windows, the brats were nearly done. That, and the fact that Sam's stomach just rumbled audibly suggested it was time to stop for lunch.
Still, Dean didn't want to slow down. Why would he, now that Baby had what felt like triple the horsepower and had no wind resistance to slow her down or make her shimmy?
But, the giant coffee Dean had slammed down just before their impromptu lunar mission was becoming more insistent on demanding an exit, and he was able to overcome his resistance without too much struggle.
"This is good a place as any," Dean announced as he carefully brought Baby to a halt. The low gravity and lack of air resistance made it surprisingly hard to judge stopping distance. He wanted to get a feel for it before they got themselves into a situation where they had to brake. "Ready for lunch?"
Sam had already pulled himself halfway into the back to rummage through the grocery bags. Lower gravity meant he could move his freaky large frame around in ways that would not be possible (or would be a lot more painful) back on earth. "Bar-B-Que chips and orange juice okay? We don't have any ketchup, though."
"Hey, it's a picnic on the freaking moon. Am I going to complain? Oh, HELL no." Of course, he thought wistfully, it would have been nice if they'd thought to pick up some Tang. Then they'd be like REAL astronauts.
Dean got out and bounce-stepped around to the trunk. This low gravity thing was fun. If asked, he would say that the sound he made when one over-enthusiastic bounce nearly took him higher than the Impala's roof was most certainly not a giggle. Or a shriek, for that matter. He paused before opening the trunk to get out a blanket and eyed a rock sitting about fifteen yards away.
Hmm. The gravity is what, one third of earth's? I wonder...
He had to pee anyway, so why not?
He unzipped, took Little Dean in hand, and aimed. All in the name of scientific curiosity, of course.
Three things happened.
One, the piss-stream barely fell towards the ground at all. That was kinda cool.
Two, while the trajectory meant he should have hit the rock, he didn't. This was because:
Three, when the piss crossed whatever barrier was keeping them safe and oxygenated, it started boiling away and was gone before it could even think of hitting the ground.
Huh. So the not-so-dark side of the moon wasn't as cold as he had thought. Who woulda guessed?
He grinned and set himself back to rights.
"Hey! Sam!" he yelled as he zipped up. "C'mere! You gotta try this!!!"
4. The Truth Is WAY Out There
They drove the Impala until they reached a small line of craters that protruded into the mare. Sam had spotted them about twenty minutes ago, and Dean had happily changed their course to take them to the craters instead of wherever it was they were headed.
"This good enough for you, Sam?"
Sam nodded, not trusting himself to speak. Driving across a lunar plain was special enough, but something about exploring a crater on the moon added about seventeen layers of WOW! onto it.
After all the shit he and Dean had been through, it was hard not to see this experience as some sort of reward. He held onto that thought for a moment, and was thankful that the spell had grabbed both of them.
He didn't pray much any more, not knowing what he knew now, but he paused for a moment to send up a prayer that both he and Dean would remember this, after.
The craters were small enough that they wouldn't need the climbing gear that was stashed the Impala's trunk. With the low gravity on their side, Sam also hoped they wouldn't need any of the first-aid gear that was also stashed in the trunk. Maybe that safety element Castiel had tried to tell them about would protect them, but it wasn't something he wanted to put to the test.
It took them longer than Sam thought to reach the rim of the crater. They were lighter, yes, but gravity had not had a chance to compress rock and dust down to more solid rock, and there had never been any wind to blow away the layer of dust that had settled millions of years ago. For every ravine they could leap across (Dean's Superman impression was a thing for the ages), there was long section of slope where it felt more like they were digging than climbing. At one point, Sam got a nose-full of moon dust, and the resulting sneeze created a cloud that blocked their vision for a good ten minutes.
By the time they reached the top, Sam was really wishing they had brought one of their bottles of soda along with them.
The view, however, knocked any thoughts of thirst clear from his mind.
Due to the angle of the sun, the slope beneath them was shrouded in darkness, but the one on the opposite side of the crater floor looked like filigreed silver in the angled sunlight. With no atmosphere to diffract and diffuse it, the light was painfully pure and painfully bright.
For the first time, Sam thought he got why moonlight was supposed to be so powerful in so many ways.
But then he was distracted by Dean's fingers digging into his arm, hard enough that there would be bruises.
"Sam," he hissed. "Sam - look down there! Look!"
At first, Sam wasn't sure what Dean was pointing at, but then it was obvious. There was a structure down there in the crater.
A structure with straight lines and right angles, like the corner of a ruined foundation.
"Holy shit..."
They had to get down there and see what that was and what else might be down there. Sam forced himself to breathe evenly. This was the sort of thing he had daydreamed about back when he was young and there were more marvels in the world than monsters.
He turned to Dean to say 'let's go!' but Dean was shaking his head and backing away from the edge of the slope. Sam grabbed his lapel before he could tumble back down the outside of the crate.
"Dean, c'mon. What's wrong?"
"What's wrong!?" Dean's voice was octaves higher than Sam had ever heard it. "Dude, something built that thing! Something not us! Not human!"
Obviously, yes. That was the whole point. But Dean's reaction made little sense."Hold on - you've killed dragons, wendigos, rugarus, werewolves, shapeshifters, rawheads. You even microwaved a freaking fairy, so why - "
"Stop. Just stop. We are not adding aliens to that list, Sam. We are NOT."
Sam flung out his arms, which lifted him a good inch off the ground. "But... but... why not? If you think about it aliens are far less implausible than the idea of a vampire or a ghost." Not to mention demons or angels, but he didn't want to pick at old wounds. "Why are you freaking out so badly about aliens? That thing is a ruin, Dean. Whatever made it is long gone by now."
Dean gave him a look over the rim of his sunglasses. "Look. Even shit like Twilight and Weekly World News have some roots in real lore, okay? We've watched enough shitty TV in enough shitty motel rooms to know the kind of stuff that aliens do. First thing, it's the anal probing. Next think you know, one of us is knocked up with... with some sort of alien assbaby! I don't care if they're long gone or not. I'm not risking it!"
"Ass... what? Dude, do you even LISTEN to the words that come out of your mouth?"
Dean grumbled, but let himself be cajoled into checking things out. In fact, he was the first one to start bouncing down towards the crater floor. He was also the one who looked truly disappointed when the 'foundation' turned out to be nothing more than an illusion created by rock and sharp lunar shadows.
After they finished their exploration, they climbed up, out, and back down to the Impala.
With the sun angled it as it was, and coming from the direction they were, they were not able to see how, right next to the car's left rear wheel, a small creature hid in a shadow as black as it was. It waited until they left to let out a long, shuddering sigh of relief. It had been so worried that the boys would go to the other crater adjacent to the one they'd just exited.
They really would have gotten an eyeful then.
5. One Hundred Eighty-One Things to Do on the Moon
1. Fill up all of the spare space on your cellphone with pictures.
2. Delete most of the pictures because they just look like gray rocks and sand and shit.
2a. Keep the selfie with your brother standing next to you and with that line of craters in the background.
[. . .]
15. Pick up rocks to take home, even though a certain someone with no sense of wonder or joy points out that they just look like rocks. You'll know.
16. Join your brother in picking up moon rocks because it might be interesting to see what happened if you threw one at a werewolf.
16a. Decide you'll keep one on your nightstand. You'll know it's not just a rock.
[. . .]
20. Get in a fight with your brother over something stupid.
21. Stalk off in a huff.
22. Ruin the whole huff because stalking off in one-third gravity makes stalking more into a flailing bounce and you both can't stop laughing your asses off.
23. Forget why you were fighting.
[. . .]
33. Take a nap out under the lunar sky.
34. Dig the sunscreen out of the trunk because you just found out the hard way that the spell that's keeping you alive didn't get the UV protection calibrated properly.
35. Nap some more.
[. . .]
47. Be very, very thankful that you stopped to fill up the gas tank before some strange spell zapped you to the moon.
48. Donuts. Low gravity donuts. As many as possible.
[. . .]
66. Put the bag of marshmallows you bought down on the ground. Run away so that it's outside your protective bubble and is suddenly exposed to vaccuum.
67. Try the same thing with a two-liter bottle of Mountain Dew.
68. Inform your younger brother that no matter how cool it looks, you are not going to explodinate the beer.
69. Okay. Maybe one beer...
[. . .]
91. Graffiti. As much as possible.
92. Think of ways you can fuck with scientists' heads for years to come.
92a. More graffiti. LOTS more graffiti.
[. . .]
124. Argue about rationing food because Cas might have been wrong about the one day thing, and what if it was twenty-eight days before they got zapped back because that's how long it takes the moon to orbit the earth and oh god we're going to die here aren't we.
125. Tell your baby brother to calm the fuck down already.
126. Eat the last of the Funyuns.
[. . .]
157. Nap some more, because there is nothing you can or have to do and the two of you can just relax for a while without worrying about anything.
158. Worry about your little brother, anyways.
159. Worry about your big brother, anyways.
[. . .]
174. Think about it for a moment and leave your tape of Dark Side of the Moon on the floor of a crater you're exploring. It just seems right, somehow.
[. . .]
181. Don't talk about anything important.
6. Par for the Course
About eighteen hours into their lunar vacation. Dean had an idea. It was the best idea.
They were going to go on a quest. A very specific and truly amazing quest. Dean was surprised he hadn't thought of it earlier.
Of all the Apollo missions, three stuck hard in his mind even though he hadn't been alive to see any of them for himself.
The big one, of course, was Apollo 11. There was no topping being the first person to walk on something that wasn't the earth. That was a one-time, one-of-a-kind sort of thing.
Then there was Apollo 13, thanks to the movie. Dean spared a moment to feel sorry for Jim Lovell. The poor bastard never did get to walk on the moon, did he? He'd missed out on something really and truly amazing.
Dean's secret favorite, however, was Apollo 14, and that was because Alan Shepard was an awesome dude, no two ways about it. So awesome that he had snuck a six-iron and two golf balls aboard on the mission and then had played golf on the freaking moon.
Alan Shepard was Dean's kind of guy.
Anyhow, the point was, there were two golf balls out there somewhere. One of them would make an awesome souvenir of their unexpected little day trip. Dean stopped the car so he could give his full attention to explaining his truly awesome idea and watching the look of amazement on Sam's face as the sheer brilliance of the idea overwhelmed him.
"Are you kidding me? Dean, there is no way! What are the odds?" Sam said like the spoilsport he was instead of being properly in awe of such a fan-fucking-tastic idea.
"Well, what are the odds that we'd be zapped to the moon after a grocery run?" Dean snapped. "Anyhow, I was just saying it would be neat if we found one of them." It would be, no matter what Sam-the-spoilsport said about it.
Sam slouched down in the seat, mouth set into a prissy little line. "And I'm just saying that I don't think it's possible. Apollo 14 set down somewhere on the near side of the moon. That's probably thousands of miles from here."
"Yeah, but with the gravity like this, those things could have gone for thousands of miles! Hell, they could have gone into orbit, right?"
The idea pleased him. Two tiny white balls, orbiting the moon for forty-plus years and continuing to orbit long after he and everyone else was long, long gone and the PGA tour wasn't even a memory anymore.
"Try five hundred yards, tops."
"Killjoy."
The worst part about it was, Sam was probably right. And besides, they were talking about two tiny golf balls on a moon covered in golf ball-sized rocks. No matter how far Shepard had hit the things (and Dean had no doubt it was very, very far indeed), finding one of them would take them much longer than the six hours they had left.
He settled back into quiet, and was pleased by the furtive, guilty glances Sam gave him as he was no doubt figuring out how to apologize for being a douche.
He started up the Impala's engine again. Her wheels dug a bit into the dust and gravel before she finally gained traction and zoomed off towards the low horizon. The gravel that sprayed from her rear wheels traveled a long, long way, not settling back to the ground until Sam and Dean were long out of sight.
In amongst that gravel, a little white pellet (familiar to millions of Americans) was sent flying by the power of Baby's engine. It sailed through the airless sky until it landed neatly a quarter of a mile away, making a perfect hole-in-one in a tiny crater.
7. Horizon
"We've got just a little less than four hours left, by the dashboard clock, and little more than a quarter tank of gas. Whaddya want to do next? Want another turn at the wheel?"
Sam thought about it. He still felt like a heel about the whole golf ball thing, but he hadn't wanted to spend his remaining time on the moon on a snipe hunt. Dean hadn't seemed too put out by it, though, which was a relief.
In fact, even though there had been a few squabbles and freak-outs, Dean hadn't seen too put out by much of anything. In fact, he had been more annoyingly childish than anything, but it as much as it drove Sam up the proverbial tree, it was also something he hadn't been aware he had been missing.
In fact, ever since they got to the moon, Dean somehow seemed lighter, and it wasn't just about the lower gravity.
"Dunno. I just wish that we had some sort of map to tell us where on the moon we were or what was nearby." They could see that there was a mountain range of some kind up ahead, blocking their path and raising the horizon to something more like what they were used to seeing. It was amazing that they'd had so much clear driving as they had. Maybe there had been some thought behind the relocation spell - and they were going to have to track down who sent them, weren't they? He looked around for some idea of what they might do, then pointed to their right. "If you head that way, I think there's a gap between the mountains."
Dean grunted and adjusted their course by a few degrees. "We should maybe stop for breakfast or lunch or what-the-hell-ever sometime soon," he said. "Then maybe we can go climb one of those mountains and see how far we can see, y'know? Oh, I know! We can have a mountaintop picnic." He grinned. "On the moon."
Sam grinned in return. The past few hours had been flirting with dullness but every time Sam started feeling a little bit bored, he remembered where they were and boredom ran for the hills. And then maybe he or Dean would suggest they stop the car and then play in the low gravity for a while.
There was nothing quite like making a long jump that covered twenty yards.
"I like the sound of that," Sam said. "I think the meat in the cooler still might - Dean! Dean!" He grabbed at the dashboard and at his brother's shoulder. "Up ahead! Look!"
"What? What is it?" Dean went on the alert and Sam pitched forwards as Dean hit the brake.
"No! Don't slow down! Speed up! Head towards the gap! See? There - where the horizon is lower!"
Dean hesitated for a moment, then gradually sped the Impala back up again. "What's go your panties all - oh." His lips parted and his eyebrows lifted, and Sam really wished he could see the look in his eyes. "Holy fuck."
"Yeah," Sam rasped.
Dean floored the accelerator and the Impala leapt forwards. Sam thought that maybe for a moment, her wheels had left the ground.
Far ahead of them, rising above the low, low horizon, was a bright curve of marbled blue. As they drove towards it - as fast as the Impala would carry them - it crept incrementally higher into the pure black sky. Eventually, they could see a sliver of twilight between soft blue and harsh white as their journey brought the crescent earth over the horizon.
Sam wasn't sure how long they drove, neither in miles nor in time, but Dean kept driving and they both kept watching as the earth rose. It looked much larger than a crescent moon would have from the earth but somehow...
"It's so damn small," Dean said.
Small and breakable, Sam thought. He'd nearly broken it, once. If he raised his hand, he could block the whole thing from view just like that.
He lowered his hand, and the earth sprang into view again. Just like that.
Of course, he'd saved it, too. So had Dean. So had the Impala, in her own way. With the clouds marbling the blue and only a thin crescent showing, it was impossible to tell what part of the earth they were looking at. Even if they could tell, Lawrence would have been smaller than a pinprick from this perspective. So would Stull. So would so many other places that had seemed so large at the time.
"We're nearly out of gas," Dean said at last. "We need to have enough to get home when we..." He paused, swallowed. "When we get home."
"Right." Words still didn't feel right.
Dean slowed them to a stop and killed the engine. By unspoken agreement they both got out of the car and moved around to the front to lean against the hood, side by side and shoulders just barely touching. For a while, the silence was only broken by the pings and thumps of the Impala's engine cooling.
"You think this is why we were brought here, Sam? So we could see this?"
"Maybe." If so, Sam wasn't sure if it was meant to make everything they had done seem insignificant or to show them just how significant it was, and how much hung in the balance.
"God, it's beautiful," Dean said, honestly reverent for the first time Sam could remember. "I mean, I've seen the photos and stuff, but this..."
"I know."
They watched in silence a while longer, much as they had watched the stars back on earth, sitting just like this. The Earth hung still in the sky, but as they watched, the patterns of blue and white on the thin crescent shifted and changed.
Sam felt more than heard Dean take in and release a deep breath. "There's part of me that doesn't want to go back," he said.
"How so?"
At first he thought Dean's shrug would be his only answer, but eventually Dean started talking again. "It's just us up here. No Crowley, no angels, no monsters, no nothing. All we'd need is gas and food and water. I'm sure that with all the people up there, there's gotta be someone who can fix all the messes we keep getting thrown into." He shook his head and laughed bitterly. "Every now and then I would think 'I wish we could just get away from all this shit.'"
"I'd say this counts as an overachievement, then."
Dean laughed, this time without bitterness. "Yeah, you could say that." Then he was quiet again, clearly debating what to say next - or if he should say anything at all.
"Also, there's this," he finally said.
Dean extended his arm, and even though flannel and canvas covered it down to the wrist, Sam knew all too well what was under that fabric.
"The Mark?" Sam asked.
"It's been quiet ever since we got here," Dean said. "It feels just like any other of the dozen scars I've got. But when we go back home, it's all gonna start up again, isn't it? All of it."
Sam swallowed, hard. It would. All of it, just as Dean had said. For one crazy moment he hoped that Castiel was wrong, and the spell would leave them stranded there.
But they had moon rocks. And photos. And memories. And they would probably be shaking moon dust out of their hair and clothes for days, and Dean would be bitching about getting it out of all of the Impala's nooks and crevices.
"But," Dean finally said, "it's kinda nice to see just what it is we've busted our asses to save over and over again."
It was. It really was.
And maybe that would be enough to keep them going during the times when other things - including each other - weren't quite enough.
"You know Charlie is going to vomit with envy when we show her our photos, don't you?"
Dean grinned. "I can't wait. Oh, man... her face!" He paused and thought for a moment. "You think we should give her a moon rock?"
"I think she'd kill us if we didn't."
They watched the earth for a little while longer.
"You think we'll ever find out who sent us here?" Sam asked.
Dean shrugged. "Dunno. But I'm not sure it matters if we find out. That - " he said, pointing at the fragile blue crescent, "that's what matters."
"I couldn't have said it better myself."
They were still watching when the spell took hold and they faded from the lunar plain, leaving a set of tire tracks and footprints behind.
Epilogue
The tracks were still there a century later, confusing the hell out of a group of scientists who were exploring the far western edges of the Oceanus Procellarum.
Of course, being properly curious scientists, they followed the tracks as best they could back to their source. Along the way, they found some bits of sugary substance that had repeatedly melted and re-frozen, along with some shards of glass and plastic. They also found an antique cassette tape which Dr. Hirakawa (who was something of a classical music fanatic) excitedly identified as being a famous composition from the mid-to-late twentieth century.
But the most impressive discovery of all was the graffiti. Most of it was nonsense, but two parts of it were very much not nonsense.
Dean Winchester
And, of course, as was to be expected:
Sam Winchester
"You think it was really them?" Doctor Mehta breathed, not daring to hope.
"You've heard the stories," said the one member of their group who was not a scientist. For some reason the mission funders had wanted to send a writer along with them. "Stranger things have happened to them. So yes, I believe it was them."
Doctor Gomez looked like he wanted to protest (because he always protested everything), but he, too, was caught up in gratitude and wonder.
"Perhaps you're right, Mr. Shurley. Perhaps you're right."
[Notes behind spoiler cut]
Title: The title is from one of Ralph Kramden's empty threats from The Honeymooners. "BANG, ZOOM! Straight to the moon!"
Chapter 2. Neil DeGrasse Tyson actually got hate mail from children as one of the more public faces involved in Pluto's demotion.
Chapter 3. Daylight temperatures on the moon can be well over 100 degrees Celsius. Plus, vacuum.
Chapter 5. NASA actually has a master list of 181 potential objectives for any upcoming lunar missions. The list can be found here.
Chapter 6. The "little white pellet that's familiar to millions of Americans" is a quote from the telecast where Alan Shepard hit the two golf balls referenced in this chapter.
Rating: PG-13
Warnings (if applicable): Bodily functions exist? Discussion of potential non-con anal and mpreg as something that no one wants to happen. Threats against prominent astronomers. Crack.
Notes/Summary:
The following is my fic for the spnspiration April Fool's exchange. My sincerest apologies to theymp for being late with this, but thank you so, SO much to the mods for letting me have that much-needed extension! Also, many thanks to aishuu and incandescens for serving as sounding boards throughout this process.
The prompt I got from theymp was "Sam & Dean's Day Off." I noodled around with how I was supposed to subvert the prompt per the rules of the exchange and wondered "well, how far off?"
The answer, as it turns out, is about 239,000 miles, give or take.
1. The Impala Has Landed
Dean fiddled with the Impala's radio dial, but this only made things worse.
"What was that, Cas? We lost you there for a moment."
And before that last burst of static ... well, he couldn't have heard Castiel right. Could he? It didn't seem real even though everything they could see in every direction screamed that it was real. Sam had gone still when they heard what Dean thought they'd heard, but it was the kind of still that would explode if jostled. His breathing was sharp and shallow and Dean didn't think it was all terror about the freaky-ass situation they'd been landed in. Some terror, yes, but not entirely.
Dean got it. He really did.
"...not sure what caused... seems to be harmless." Castiel's voice sputtered through the radio, punctuated with pops of static and squeals of feedback. Dean reached for the tuner again, but Sam slapped his hand away. Dean glared and slapped back, but didn't touch the dial.
"...can't retrieve you, but the spell... return loop... twenty-four hours. It... have been constr... three passengers safe... that long..." Castiel continued.
"Wait. 'Return loop'? Does that mean the spell will bring us back?" Sam demanded.
Dean lifted his hand slightly, announcing but not apologizing for the interruption. "Short answers only, Cas. You keep breaking up, but I'm guessing you can hear us just fine, right?"
"Yes."
Both of them breathed a deep sigh of relief at the answer. Then each glared at the other for not remembering what they had just said about the oxygen just two freaking minutes ago.
"So, that twenty-four hour return loop. That means we'll be brought back in twenty four hours, right?" Dean heard the kind of desperation in Sam's voice that he was coming to associate primarily with any conversation having anything to do with the Mark. Speaking of which...
"Yes."
Dean rubbed his arm, then shook his head at Sam's inquiring look.
"And you said something about safety. Does that mean we don't have to worry about suffocating? Or, um, freezing?"
"Yes."
Dean rolled his eyes, but kept rubbing at the Mark, testing it with a poke and a pinch or two. "Is that 'yes, we don't have to worry,' or 'no, you'll be brought back home, but as a frozen corpse'?"
Even through the crackle-pop, they heard a distinct sigh before Castiel's "yes."
"Well, that's good, right?" Dean said, starting to pick up on some of Sam's nervous excitement. "Do we have to be back in the place for the spell to work?"
"No." Castiel's confidence in his answer came through loud and clear even though the static was getting worse.
"Do we have to stay in the car?" Dean asked over whatever it was Sam was going to ask next but Sam didn't seem to mind too much. They both held their breath, waiting through the next burst of static for Castiel to repeat his answer.
"No."
Dean punched the air. "Awesome," he whispered.
"And you have no idea who did this? Or why?" Sam asked.
There was no response. Only static. They waited, but Castiel didn't break in. Whatever spell or angel mojo Castiel had used to track them down and talk to them had worn off.
Dean waited for another minute before reaching out and gently turning the radio dial to "off." He then gave Baby a soothing pat on the dashboard. Castiel had said something about three passengers, and only he and Sam were in the car. So. All three of them were in this together.
"So," said Sam. He had gone back to staring out at the landscape.
"Uh-huh." Dean couldn't exactly blame him. Everything around them was gray and dusty and rocky and a little too harshly lit by a blazing white sun in a darker-than-dark sky, but something compelled him to try to take in every last detail. And no wonder.
"We're on the moon," Sam said, voice tight with an effort to keep it controlled.
Soon, very soon, the control broke and turned into hysterical giggles that soon rolled into deep, joyful laughter. Sam held his wallet up and let it go, grinning like an idiot as it slowly sank through the air and onto his lap.
Dean shook with his own laughter, each laugh punctuated with a loving beat on Baby's steering wheel. It was easy to imagine the excitement thrumming through her steel frame. "We are on. The. Moon." He looked out at the landscape again, at the too-close horizon and the utter stillness that was unlike anything on earth. "Wow."
"That's one word for it." The smile on Sam's face made him look about ten years younger, and something in Dean's chest made a not-unpleasant little flippity-flop. "So, now what?"
"Well, that's one's easy." Dean turned the key in the ignition and the engine roared with joy. "Let's turn Baby into a Lunar Rover."
2. Neil DeGrasse Tyson Must Die
They raced across a flat lunar plain towards a strange, low horizon. The Impala's dust plume rose five stories into the air and hung there undisturbed by wind, marking their passage as Dean took the car to speeds Sam had never seen her reach before. The low gravity and the lack of air resistance made for the kind of ride they could never have back on Earth.
In honor of the occasion, Dean had chosen some appropriate music to blast from the speakers and out the open windows.
Sam liked to imagine it filling the entire lunar landscape even though he knew the sound waves would only propagate as far as the little bubble of air that kept them and the Impala's engine alive.
Dean was bellowing along with the music, but when he got to where he was cheerfully belting out the lunatic is in my head... the lunatic is in my head... You raise the blade, you make the change... Sam decided that mayyyybe it was a good time to talk instead of sing.
"Did you ever think you'd get a chance to play Dark Side of the Moon on the dark side of the moon?" Sam shouted over the music.
Dean didn't bother trying to out-loud the music. He just raised an eyebrow and pointed out the driver-side window at white-hot ball of flaming gas currently resting about thirty degrees above the horizon. The glare was enough that they had both put on their sunglasses a while back. Sam suspected that the spell that kept them supplied with oxygen had also done something to bring the light to a level they could deal with.
Sam turned the music down to a volume that wouldn't require him to wreck his vocal cords to make a point. "The dark side of the moon gets sunlight just like the near side - that's how we get phases." He couldn't have sounded more like a fourth-grade science teacher if he tried, but there was nothing to do for that except double down and forge onwards. "Right now, we're somewhere on the dark - the far - side of the moon."
Probably on one of the far side's mares if the relative evenness of the giant plain was anything to go by. Lucky, given that he thought he remembered that the far side was much more cratered than the near side. Sam could just see the bright peaks of mountain ranges or crater rims far, far ahead, and he wished he had a better idea of where they were other than 'somewhere on the far side of the moon.'
"And how the hell do you know that?" Dean asked. Sam picked up on the little flare of irritation at being caught out at something he felt like he should know, and wondered how to proceed. Provoking Dean's temper was not something he wanted to risk these days, especially in close quarters. "Did you memorize some moon atlas when I wasn't looking? That's awfully geeky, even for you, Sam."
Sam relaxed when he thought he heard guarded interest more than anger in the response. It would only take a little push to convince Dean's geekier side to come out to play.
"Well, we can't see the earth anywhere in the sky, so we've got to be on the far side. If we were on the near side, we'd see the earth somewhere out there," he said sweeping his arm as best he could in the confines of the car.
Dean shook his head. "No, that doesn't make sense. We should see it passing over head, like what - once every ninety minutes or something?" The sunglasses made it hard for Sam to tell if he was kidding or not.
"You're thinking of the International Space Station, Dean." Sam thought for a moment, then added: "Which you can't see from the moon, in case you were wondering."
"Huh." Dean thought it over for a moment, then grinned. "Well I bet the guys on the ISS would give their left nut to trade places with us. This is way, way cooler than doing a cover of 'Space Oddity' in space. There's only been like, what, a dozen people on who've made it up here?"
"And none on the dark side," Sam pointed out, feeling a delicious smugness at the thought. No, they couldn't exactly prove where they had been, but most of the shit they dealt with on a regular basis fell outside the bounds of provable.
"So why can't we see the Earth, Sammy?" It was impossible to miss the plaintiveness, no matter how hard Dean was no doubt trying to hide it.
Sam shrugged. "It's something to do with the way gravity locks the earth and moon together." He wasn't sure he could accurately describe the mechanisms of tidal lock any more accurately than that, so he didn't try. "Anyhow, the same side of the moon always faces the Earth, so the other side - this side - always faces away."
"Always?"
"Mmm-hmm."
Dean thought about that for a moment, and when he said, "that doesn't seem fair," Sam thought he heard a lot of things that were not about the moon wrapped up in there.
"Who knows - maybe if we keep driving, we'll get to see the earth before we get zapped back home."
Dean brightened at that idea. "Hey - and maybe if we play our cards right, we can find out who did this and see if they'll send us to visit the other eight planets. Now that would rock. Not that this isn't the opportunity of a lifetime on its own. Don't think I'm ungrateful or anything."
"Seven other planets," Sam said, then wished he hadn't.
"No... " Dean counted them off as best he could with one hand still on the wheel. "Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus," (and here, Dean's grin proved once again that large parts of his psychological makeup were permanently stuck at twelve-years-old) "Neptune, and - "
"Pluto isn't a planet," Sam said, and why couldn't he just shut up? It was so not worth it to be right if being right meant that you were murdered by your Mark-afflicted brother on the dark side of the moon and the odds were literally astronomical that anyone would ever find your body.
It was also kind of a dickish thing to do, plain and simple.
"Uh, you might want to check your facts Sam, because that's not what I learned back in eighth grade science. 'My Very Easy Method Just Shows Us Nine Planets,' remember?"
"It was, um.... decommissioned?"
Dean slammed on the brakes, and the Impala skidded a good eighth of a mile before finally coming to a stop.
"That," he said, "is bullshit. You do not just decommission a planet. Especially not one named after Mickey's dog. And it fucks up the entire plot of 'Sailor Moon.'"
There were so many things Sam was forcing himself not to say just then. So, so many.
"They decided it didn't meet the criteria of a planet, so... it's not a planet any more."
Dean shook his head. "This is one of those things that happened when I was in Purgatory, wasn't it?" He thought for a moment. "Well, it doesn't matter. Pluto is still a planet. Right here," he said, laying a hand over his heart. "Where it counts."
They set off again once Dean had switched out Floyd for some Ozzy.
"Tell you what, Sam. Once we get back, let's track down the assholes who said Pluto wasn't good enough to be a planet and knock some sense into them, okay?"
Sam sighed and wondered how many astronomers he would have to protect from the Mark's wrath.
"Whatever you say, Dean."
3. For SCIENCE!!!
In theory, they could have survived for a day without food or water, but in practice, the spell had zapped them from the parking lot of the Thriftway right after they had done their grocery shopping. So, they had enough to eat and drink and they had also picked up some non-food sundries, which meant that they had a half-dozen brats wrapped in foil and heating through on Baby's engine block.
Dean remembered that Dad had gone absolutely batshit ballistic the first time Dean had tried using the Impala as a makeshift oven (and in retrospect, slice-n-bake cookies were probably not a good idea) but over the years, she'd done everything from warming up some leftovers to cooking an entire roast complete with potatoes. Dean knew it was all in his head, but he got the feeling that Baby liked providing for them in ways beyond shelter and transport, just as he sometimes got the feeling that Baby resented her cushy new digs in the Bunker.
Judging from the smell wafting through the vents and the open windows, the brats were nearly done. That, and the fact that Sam's stomach just rumbled audibly suggested it was time to stop for lunch.
Still, Dean didn't want to slow down. Why would he, now that Baby had what felt like triple the horsepower and had no wind resistance to slow her down or make her shimmy?
But, the giant coffee Dean had slammed down just before their impromptu lunar mission was becoming more insistent on demanding an exit, and he was able to overcome his resistance without too much struggle.
"This is good a place as any," Dean announced as he carefully brought Baby to a halt. The low gravity and lack of air resistance made it surprisingly hard to judge stopping distance. He wanted to get a feel for it before they got themselves into a situation where they had to brake. "Ready for lunch?"
Sam had already pulled himself halfway into the back to rummage through the grocery bags. Lower gravity meant he could move his freaky large frame around in ways that would not be possible (or would be a lot more painful) back on earth. "Bar-B-Que chips and orange juice okay? We don't have any ketchup, though."
"Hey, it's a picnic on the freaking moon. Am I going to complain? Oh, HELL no." Of course, he thought wistfully, it would have been nice if they'd thought to pick up some Tang. Then they'd be like REAL astronauts.
Dean got out and bounce-stepped around to the trunk. This low gravity thing was fun. If asked, he would say that the sound he made when one over-enthusiastic bounce nearly took him higher than the Impala's roof was most certainly not a giggle. Or a shriek, for that matter. He paused before opening the trunk to get out a blanket and eyed a rock sitting about fifteen yards away.
Hmm. The gravity is what, one third of earth's? I wonder...
He had to pee anyway, so why not?
He unzipped, took Little Dean in hand, and aimed. All in the name of scientific curiosity, of course.
Three things happened.
One, the piss-stream barely fell towards the ground at all. That was kinda cool.
Two, while the trajectory meant he should have hit the rock, he didn't. This was because:
Three, when the piss crossed whatever barrier was keeping them safe and oxygenated, it started boiling away and was gone before it could even think of hitting the ground.
Huh. So the not-so-dark side of the moon wasn't as cold as he had thought. Who woulda guessed?
He grinned and set himself back to rights.
"Hey! Sam!" he yelled as he zipped up. "C'mere! You gotta try this!!!"
4. The Truth Is WAY Out There
They drove the Impala until they reached a small line of craters that protruded into the mare. Sam had spotted them about twenty minutes ago, and Dean had happily changed their course to take them to the craters instead of wherever it was they were headed.
"This good enough for you, Sam?"
Sam nodded, not trusting himself to speak. Driving across a lunar plain was special enough, but something about exploring a crater on the moon added about seventeen layers of WOW! onto it.
After all the shit he and Dean had been through, it was hard not to see this experience as some sort of reward. He held onto that thought for a moment, and was thankful that the spell had grabbed both of them.
He didn't pray much any more, not knowing what he knew now, but he paused for a moment to send up a prayer that both he and Dean would remember this, after.
The craters were small enough that they wouldn't need the climbing gear that was stashed the Impala's trunk. With the low gravity on their side, Sam also hoped they wouldn't need any of the first-aid gear that was also stashed in the trunk. Maybe that safety element Castiel had tried to tell them about would protect them, but it wasn't something he wanted to put to the test.
It took them longer than Sam thought to reach the rim of the crater. They were lighter, yes, but gravity had not had a chance to compress rock and dust down to more solid rock, and there had never been any wind to blow away the layer of dust that had settled millions of years ago. For every ravine they could leap across (Dean's Superman impression was a thing for the ages), there was long section of slope where it felt more like they were digging than climbing. At one point, Sam got a nose-full of moon dust, and the resulting sneeze created a cloud that blocked their vision for a good ten minutes.
By the time they reached the top, Sam was really wishing they had brought one of their bottles of soda along with them.
The view, however, knocked any thoughts of thirst clear from his mind.
Due to the angle of the sun, the slope beneath them was shrouded in darkness, but the one on the opposite side of the crater floor looked like filigreed silver in the angled sunlight. With no atmosphere to diffract and diffuse it, the light was painfully pure and painfully bright.
For the first time, Sam thought he got why moonlight was supposed to be so powerful in so many ways.
But then he was distracted by Dean's fingers digging into his arm, hard enough that there would be bruises.
"Sam," he hissed. "Sam - look down there! Look!"
At first, Sam wasn't sure what Dean was pointing at, but then it was obvious. There was a structure down there in the crater.
A structure with straight lines and right angles, like the corner of a ruined foundation.
"Holy shit..."
They had to get down there and see what that was and what else might be down there. Sam forced himself to breathe evenly. This was the sort of thing he had daydreamed about back when he was young and there were more marvels in the world than monsters.
He turned to Dean to say 'let's go!' but Dean was shaking his head and backing away from the edge of the slope. Sam grabbed his lapel before he could tumble back down the outside of the crate.
"Dean, c'mon. What's wrong?"
"What's wrong!?" Dean's voice was octaves higher than Sam had ever heard it. "Dude, something built that thing! Something not us! Not human!"
Obviously, yes. That was the whole point. But Dean's reaction made little sense."Hold on - you've killed dragons, wendigos, rugarus, werewolves, shapeshifters, rawheads. You even microwaved a freaking fairy, so why - "
"Stop. Just stop. We are not adding aliens to that list, Sam. We are NOT."
Sam flung out his arms, which lifted him a good inch off the ground. "But... but... why not? If you think about it aliens are far less implausible than the idea of a vampire or a ghost." Not to mention demons or angels, but he didn't want to pick at old wounds. "Why are you freaking out so badly about aliens? That thing is a ruin, Dean. Whatever made it is long gone by now."
Dean gave him a look over the rim of his sunglasses. "Look. Even shit like Twilight and Weekly World News have some roots in real lore, okay? We've watched enough shitty TV in enough shitty motel rooms to know the kind of stuff that aliens do. First thing, it's the anal probing. Next think you know, one of us is knocked up with... with some sort of alien assbaby! I don't care if they're long gone or not. I'm not risking it!"
"Ass... what? Dude, do you even LISTEN to the words that come out of your mouth?"
Dean grumbled, but let himself be cajoled into checking things out. In fact, he was the first one to start bouncing down towards the crater floor. He was also the one who looked truly disappointed when the 'foundation' turned out to be nothing more than an illusion created by rock and sharp lunar shadows.
After they finished their exploration, they climbed up, out, and back down to the Impala.
With the sun angled it as it was, and coming from the direction they were, they were not able to see how, right next to the car's left rear wheel, a small creature hid in a shadow as black as it was. It waited until they left to let out a long, shuddering sigh of relief. It had been so worried that the boys would go to the other crater adjacent to the one they'd just exited.
They really would have gotten an eyeful then.
5. One Hundred Eighty-One Things to Do on the Moon
1. Fill up all of the spare space on your cellphone with pictures.
2. Delete most of the pictures because they just look like gray rocks and sand and shit.
2a. Keep the selfie with your brother standing next to you and with that line of craters in the background.
[. . .]
15. Pick up rocks to take home, even though a certain someone with no sense of wonder or joy points out that they just look like rocks. You'll know.
16. Join your brother in picking up moon rocks because it might be interesting to see what happened if you threw one at a werewolf.
16a. Decide you'll keep one on your nightstand. You'll know it's not just a rock.
[. . .]
20. Get in a fight with your brother over something stupid.
21. Stalk off in a huff.
22. Ruin the whole huff because stalking off in one-third gravity makes stalking more into a flailing bounce and you both can't stop laughing your asses off.
23. Forget why you were fighting.
[. . .]
33. Take a nap out under the lunar sky.
34. Dig the sunscreen out of the trunk because you just found out the hard way that the spell that's keeping you alive didn't get the UV protection calibrated properly.
35. Nap some more.
[. . .]
47. Be very, very thankful that you stopped to fill up the gas tank before some strange spell zapped you to the moon.
48. Donuts. Low gravity donuts. As many as possible.
[. . .]
66. Put the bag of marshmallows you bought down on the ground. Run away so that it's outside your protective bubble and is suddenly exposed to vaccuum.
67. Try the same thing with a two-liter bottle of Mountain Dew.
68. Inform your younger brother that no matter how cool it looks, you are not going to explodinate the beer.
69. Okay. Maybe one beer...
[. . .]
91. Graffiti. As much as possible.
92. Think of ways you can fuck with scientists' heads for years to come.
92a. More graffiti. LOTS more graffiti.
[. . .]
124. Argue about rationing food because Cas might have been wrong about the one day thing, and what if it was twenty-eight days before they got zapped back because that's how long it takes the moon to orbit the earth and oh god we're going to die here aren't we.
125. Tell your baby brother to calm the fuck down already.
126. Eat the last of the Funyuns.
[. . .]
157. Nap some more, because there is nothing you can or have to do and the two of you can just relax for a while without worrying about anything.
158. Worry about your little brother, anyways.
159. Worry about your big brother, anyways.
[. . .]
174. Think about it for a moment and leave your tape of Dark Side of the Moon on the floor of a crater you're exploring. It just seems right, somehow.
[. . .]
181. Don't talk about anything important.
6. Par for the Course
About eighteen hours into their lunar vacation. Dean had an idea. It was the best idea.
They were going to go on a quest. A very specific and truly amazing quest. Dean was surprised he hadn't thought of it earlier.
Of all the Apollo missions, three stuck hard in his mind even though he hadn't been alive to see any of them for himself.
The big one, of course, was Apollo 11. There was no topping being the first person to walk on something that wasn't the earth. That was a one-time, one-of-a-kind sort of thing.
Then there was Apollo 13, thanks to the movie. Dean spared a moment to feel sorry for Jim Lovell. The poor bastard never did get to walk on the moon, did he? He'd missed out on something really and truly amazing.
Dean's secret favorite, however, was Apollo 14, and that was because Alan Shepard was an awesome dude, no two ways about it. So awesome that he had snuck a six-iron and two golf balls aboard on the mission and then had played golf on the freaking moon.
Alan Shepard was Dean's kind of guy.
Anyhow, the point was, there were two golf balls out there somewhere. One of them would make an awesome souvenir of their unexpected little day trip. Dean stopped the car so he could give his full attention to explaining his truly awesome idea and watching the look of amazement on Sam's face as the sheer brilliance of the idea overwhelmed him.
"Are you kidding me? Dean, there is no way! What are the odds?" Sam said like the spoilsport he was instead of being properly in awe of such a fan-fucking-tastic idea.
"Well, what are the odds that we'd be zapped to the moon after a grocery run?" Dean snapped. "Anyhow, I was just saying it would be neat if we found one of them." It would be, no matter what Sam-the-spoilsport said about it.
Sam slouched down in the seat, mouth set into a prissy little line. "And I'm just saying that I don't think it's possible. Apollo 14 set down somewhere on the near side of the moon. That's probably thousands of miles from here."
"Yeah, but with the gravity like this, those things could have gone for thousands of miles! Hell, they could have gone into orbit, right?"
The idea pleased him. Two tiny white balls, orbiting the moon for forty-plus years and continuing to orbit long after he and everyone else was long, long gone and the PGA tour wasn't even a memory anymore.
"Try five hundred yards, tops."
"Killjoy."
The worst part about it was, Sam was probably right. And besides, they were talking about two tiny golf balls on a moon covered in golf ball-sized rocks. No matter how far Shepard had hit the things (and Dean had no doubt it was very, very far indeed), finding one of them would take them much longer than the six hours they had left.
He settled back into quiet, and was pleased by the furtive, guilty glances Sam gave him as he was no doubt figuring out how to apologize for being a douche.
He started up the Impala's engine again. Her wheels dug a bit into the dust and gravel before she finally gained traction and zoomed off towards the low horizon. The gravel that sprayed from her rear wheels traveled a long, long way, not settling back to the ground until Sam and Dean were long out of sight.
In amongst that gravel, a little white pellet (familiar to millions of Americans) was sent flying by the power of Baby's engine. It sailed through the airless sky until it landed neatly a quarter of a mile away, making a perfect hole-in-one in a tiny crater.
7. Horizon
"We've got just a little less than four hours left, by the dashboard clock, and little more than a quarter tank of gas. Whaddya want to do next? Want another turn at the wheel?"
Sam thought about it. He still felt like a heel about the whole golf ball thing, but he hadn't wanted to spend his remaining time on the moon on a snipe hunt. Dean hadn't seemed too put out by it, though, which was a relief.
In fact, even though there had been a few squabbles and freak-outs, Dean hadn't seen too put out by much of anything. In fact, he had been more annoyingly childish than anything, but it as much as it drove Sam up the proverbial tree, it was also something he hadn't been aware he had been missing.
In fact, ever since they got to the moon, Dean somehow seemed lighter, and it wasn't just about the lower gravity.
"Dunno. I just wish that we had some sort of map to tell us where on the moon we were or what was nearby." They could see that there was a mountain range of some kind up ahead, blocking their path and raising the horizon to something more like what they were used to seeing. It was amazing that they'd had so much clear driving as they had. Maybe there had been some thought behind the relocation spell - and they were going to have to track down who sent them, weren't they? He looked around for some idea of what they might do, then pointed to their right. "If you head that way, I think there's a gap between the mountains."
Dean grunted and adjusted their course by a few degrees. "We should maybe stop for breakfast or lunch or what-the-hell-ever sometime soon," he said. "Then maybe we can go climb one of those mountains and see how far we can see, y'know? Oh, I know! We can have a mountaintop picnic." He grinned. "On the moon."
Sam grinned in return. The past few hours had been flirting with dullness but every time Sam started feeling a little bit bored, he remembered where they were and boredom ran for the hills. And then maybe he or Dean would suggest they stop the car and then play in the low gravity for a while.
There was nothing quite like making a long jump that covered twenty yards.
"I like the sound of that," Sam said. "I think the meat in the cooler still might - Dean! Dean!" He grabbed at the dashboard and at his brother's shoulder. "Up ahead! Look!"
"What? What is it?" Dean went on the alert and Sam pitched forwards as Dean hit the brake.
"No! Don't slow down! Speed up! Head towards the gap! See? There - where the horizon is lower!"
Dean hesitated for a moment, then gradually sped the Impala back up again. "What's go your panties all - oh." His lips parted and his eyebrows lifted, and Sam really wished he could see the look in his eyes. "Holy fuck."
"Yeah," Sam rasped.
Dean floored the accelerator and the Impala leapt forwards. Sam thought that maybe for a moment, her wheels had left the ground.
Far ahead of them, rising above the low, low horizon, was a bright curve of marbled blue. As they drove towards it - as fast as the Impala would carry them - it crept incrementally higher into the pure black sky. Eventually, they could see a sliver of twilight between soft blue and harsh white as their journey brought the crescent earth over the horizon.
Sam wasn't sure how long they drove, neither in miles nor in time, but Dean kept driving and they both kept watching as the earth rose. It looked much larger than a crescent moon would have from the earth but somehow...
"It's so damn small," Dean said.
Small and breakable, Sam thought. He'd nearly broken it, once. If he raised his hand, he could block the whole thing from view just like that.
He lowered his hand, and the earth sprang into view again. Just like that.
Of course, he'd saved it, too. So had Dean. So had the Impala, in her own way. With the clouds marbling the blue and only a thin crescent showing, it was impossible to tell what part of the earth they were looking at. Even if they could tell, Lawrence would have been smaller than a pinprick from this perspective. So would Stull. So would so many other places that had seemed so large at the time.
"We're nearly out of gas," Dean said at last. "We need to have enough to get home when we..." He paused, swallowed. "When we get home."
"Right." Words still didn't feel right.
Dean slowed them to a stop and killed the engine. By unspoken agreement they both got out of the car and moved around to the front to lean against the hood, side by side and shoulders just barely touching. For a while, the silence was only broken by the pings and thumps of the Impala's engine cooling.
"You think this is why we were brought here, Sam? So we could see this?"
"Maybe." If so, Sam wasn't sure if it was meant to make everything they had done seem insignificant or to show them just how significant it was, and how much hung in the balance.
"God, it's beautiful," Dean said, honestly reverent for the first time Sam could remember. "I mean, I've seen the photos and stuff, but this..."
"I know."
They watched in silence a while longer, much as they had watched the stars back on earth, sitting just like this. The Earth hung still in the sky, but as they watched, the patterns of blue and white on the thin crescent shifted and changed.
Sam felt more than heard Dean take in and release a deep breath. "There's part of me that doesn't want to go back," he said.
"How so?"
At first he thought Dean's shrug would be his only answer, but eventually Dean started talking again. "It's just us up here. No Crowley, no angels, no monsters, no nothing. All we'd need is gas and food and water. I'm sure that with all the people up there, there's gotta be someone who can fix all the messes we keep getting thrown into." He shook his head and laughed bitterly. "Every now and then I would think 'I wish we could just get away from all this shit.'"
"I'd say this counts as an overachievement, then."
Dean laughed, this time without bitterness. "Yeah, you could say that." Then he was quiet again, clearly debating what to say next - or if he should say anything at all.
"Also, there's this," he finally said.
Dean extended his arm, and even though flannel and canvas covered it down to the wrist, Sam knew all too well what was under that fabric.
"The Mark?" Sam asked.
"It's been quiet ever since we got here," Dean said. "It feels just like any other of the dozen scars I've got. But when we go back home, it's all gonna start up again, isn't it? All of it."
Sam swallowed, hard. It would. All of it, just as Dean had said. For one crazy moment he hoped that Castiel was wrong, and the spell would leave them stranded there.
But they had moon rocks. And photos. And memories. And they would probably be shaking moon dust out of their hair and clothes for days, and Dean would be bitching about getting it out of all of the Impala's nooks and crevices.
"But," Dean finally said, "it's kinda nice to see just what it is we've busted our asses to save over and over again."
It was. It really was.
And maybe that would be enough to keep them going during the times when other things - including each other - weren't quite enough.
"You know Charlie is going to vomit with envy when we show her our photos, don't you?"
Dean grinned. "I can't wait. Oh, man... her face!" He paused and thought for a moment. "You think we should give her a moon rock?"
"I think she'd kill us if we didn't."
They watched the earth for a little while longer.
"You think we'll ever find out who sent us here?" Sam asked.
Dean shrugged. "Dunno. But I'm not sure it matters if we find out. That - " he said, pointing at the fragile blue crescent, "that's what matters."
"I couldn't have said it better myself."
They were still watching when the spell took hold and they faded from the lunar plain, leaving a set of tire tracks and footprints behind.
Epilogue
The tracks were still there a century later, confusing the hell out of a group of scientists who were exploring the far western edges of the Oceanus Procellarum.
Of course, being properly curious scientists, they followed the tracks as best they could back to their source. Along the way, they found some bits of sugary substance that had repeatedly melted and re-frozen, along with some shards of glass and plastic. They also found an antique cassette tape which Dr. Hirakawa (who was something of a classical music fanatic) excitedly identified as being a famous composition from the mid-to-late twentieth century.
But the most impressive discovery of all was the graffiti. Most of it was nonsense, but two parts of it were very much not nonsense.
Dean Winchester
And, of course, as was to be expected:
Sam Winchester
"You think it was really them?" Doctor Mehta breathed, not daring to hope.
"You've heard the stories," said the one member of their group who was not a scientist. For some reason the mission funders had wanted to send a writer along with them. "Stranger things have happened to them. So yes, I believe it was them."
Doctor Gomez looked like he wanted to protest (because he always protested everything), but he, too, was caught up in gratitude and wonder.
"Perhaps you're right, Mr. Shurley. Perhaps you're right."
[Notes behind spoiler cut]
Title: The title is from one of Ralph Kramden's empty threats from The Honeymooners. "BANG, ZOOM! Straight to the moon!"
Chapter 2. Neil DeGrasse Tyson actually got hate mail from children as one of the more public faces involved in Pluto's demotion.
Chapter 3. Daylight temperatures on the moon can be well over 100 degrees Celsius. Plus, vacuum.
Chapter 5. NASA actually has a master list of 181 potential objectives for any upcoming lunar missions. The list can be found here.
Chapter 6. The "little white pellet that's familiar to millions of Americans" is a quote from the telecast where Alan Shepard hit the two golf balls referenced in this chapter.