Fic: Supernaturally Eerie (Supernatural/Eerie Indiana x-over, Slash)
Title: Supernaturally Eerie
Part: 3/?
Series: Supernatural/Eerie, Indiana
Author: dancinbutterfly
Pairing: Eventual slash, but nothing drastic yet.
Rating: R, just to be safe
Warnings: Flagrant use of an early 90s television show to suit my own purposes. Others will be added as needed.
Dsiclaimer: I don't own Supernatural or Eerie,Indiana. I do, however, own boxsets of each(or I will soon). Any geographical errors are accidental. I did the best I could with google maps.
A/N: I am still not sure where the hell this series came from exactly. What you need to know, if you havent seen Eerie Indiana in the 15 years since the show went off the air is that the time it premeired in 1991, Marshall Teller was 13 and his best friend Simon Holmes was 9. All the math done is based on those dates and ages. Also, I'm taking some liberties with Sam's high school years because canon gave me next to nothing to work with as far as their childhood goes beyond Something Wicked. This is just my interpretation so that this fic can work.
Beta: Faithfully assisted by ashley.
Feedback: God, pretty please? I am sickeningly insecure about this peice so any comments are treasured.
Summary: Marshall Teller once thought that Eerie, Indiana was the center of weirdness for the entire universe. Turns out that there's a lot more out in the universe than he once thought.
Chapter 3
Marshall didn’t count it as a battle because no one *actually* got wounded or shot. Although he had a close call when John stumbled in at the crack of dawn on the brink of a bitch of a hangover and found Marshall camped out on the floor of his motel room.
However, it was most definitely a fight and there were definitely glares of death exchanged between father and son as they argued about why and why not Marshall should be allowed to hunt with them. And if looks could kill, well, everyone in the room would have died.
John had apologized for kicking Marshall in the ribs and nearly shooting him and then laid into Dean for being reckless and stupid and bringing people along for the ride. And Dean, who Marshall had met a grand total of twice and known for all of 48 hours if you really pushed it, had defended him.
John brought up the dangers of hunting and Dean pointed out how he would be safer with them than winging it by himself. John said that Marshall didn’t know what he was doing and Dean had countered that they could, and should, teach him. It was intense but Dean never once referred to his father as anything but “sir.”
Even so, it went on longer than Marshall thought it should have considering how often things were repeated until finally John fixed him with a level stare.
“How long have you been hunting kid?”
Marshall was suddenly sixteen again, thrust back in time and space to a playground in New Jersey but at least he had a slightly better answer this time. “Uh…I’ve been on the road about eight months.”
John made a small noise and studied him. “How’ve you been doing?”
He'd seen things that even life in the Midwest's Bermuda Triangle couldn't prepare him for-- most of them reflections of people, alive and dead.
The lizard guy was probably the weirdest thing so far but it wasn’t the worst. Not by a long shot. And it wasn’t anywhere near the first time he’d had a close call that almost ended up with him as a line in the obits. But…he was still here.
“I’m not dead yet.”
“Yeah thanks to me, ya moron,” Dean muttered, his arms folded over his chest.
“Hey, I was armed when I went in there. I just… wasn’t expecting the son of a bitch to have opposable thumbs. Lizards usually don’t.”
“Enough.”
John’s voice brooked no argument. Dean stood a little straighter, like soldier at attention, and Marshall fought the urge to hit the deck like an extra in a bad war movie.
“You know the risk involved. I’m not responsible for you but if you want to learn,” John made a face like there was something unpleasant on his tongue, “I don’t see how it could do anything but help keep you alive. Besides, I can use the extra hands. But what I say goes.”
Which Marshall didn’t really need to be told. John Winchester was not only the best hunter Marshall knew, which wasn’t saying too much considering how few there were, but the man was also shades of Apocalypse Now and he knew better than to argue with years of that kind of experience.
~*~*~
Baton Rogue, Louisiana - April 1997
“That was fugly man.”
Marshall knew Dean wasn’t talking about the scantily clad college girls enjoying the bright sunshine.
Sometimes, after things went particularly badly, Marshall was amazed that the sun continued to shine and that people continued to go about their daily life, which in this particular spot on the university green near the student union was mostly coeds sunbathing and frat boys playing pick up football and ultimate Frisbee.
This wasn’t what he’d thought he’d be doing with his life at thirteen but by sixteen it was the only option. But that didn’t mean he was comfortable with the things he’d seen the night before. It’d hit a little bit too close to home and he nodded in agreement.
It had been fucking ugly. Men close enough in age to be their contemporaries, brutalized, rotted out and furious at a man who’d already met justice and was sitting patiently in the state penitentiary, waiting to die.
That hadn’t stopped them from taking out their fury on the new tenants, a pair of scared law students who had been baffled by the three men who’d appeared at their doorstep toting FBI badges. At least getting college students out of their apartment wasn't too hard. It was keeping them out while they assessed the situation and evicted the spirits that was the challenge.
Marshall wondered a lot about where ghosts went after they salted and burned their remains. He wondered about a heaven that had to exist to balance out the hell that produced things that could rip a man to pieces and eat him alive or crawl inside a seven year old girl and make her kill her pets and take a stab at her older sister.
Because even if he did live to be a hundred and five, he was going to die one day. They all were and he had to wonder what happens to the people who don’t get stuck in walls and mattress frames and dirt.
A football sailed across his line of sight and jolted him back to the present as his gaze followed the ball into the hands of an undergrad in baggy shorts and a faded t-shirt with the school mascot, a snarling yellow tiger, emblazed across the chest. He nearly tripped over a blonde in a red string bikini in his effort to complete the pass. She sat up just enough to yell at her would-be assailant and Marshall couldn’t help but watch.
"That was supposed to be me." He mused to himself. But sitting less than a foot away, Dean couldn’t help but hear.
“What, a pissed off ghost or a sorority girl with a truly fantastic…”Dean grinned and eyed the blonde and her barely there triangular top. “Smile.”
Marshall smiled because Dean might be a pig when it came to his women, plural in varying shapes, sizes, and colors, but his locker room humor at least had good delivery.
“A college student. My dad went to MIT and interned at the Smithsonian. He was all about education, my mom also to a point. I got in almost everywhere.”
“Then why didn’t you go?”
It’s a simple enough question, a valid one that his father has asked him on more than one occasion when he takes the time to call home. The answer was more complicated, too complicated for his dad to understand.
“Turned out that college wasn’t right for me. Besides, no one offered what I wanted to major in. Except maybe Duke.” Marshall smiled but the joke fell a little flat. “What about you? You’re a smart guy. Relatively.”
Dean gave him a shrug and a half-hearted shove. They’d been up all night and the only reason they hadn’t passed out yet was the wave of adrenaline they were both still riding. But he answered anyway. “It was never in the cards for me. Besides, I kinda wanted to be a fireman and you don’t need much college for that.”
Marshall could see Dean as a fireman, interestingly enough. It wasn’t that far a cry from what he did now, fighting and saving people. He’d have been good at it. He still could be.
“So, why don’t you go fight forest fires with Smokey the Bear or something.”
“This is it, man.” This of course not referring to the green lawn with its picturesque setting or the credit card fraud or even that neat trick Dean could do with a pool cue. “Always knew I’d be doing this, following the old man’s footsteps.”
They’re big footsteps to follow in, big shoes to fill and Dean wanted to, desperately so. Marshall could see it all over his face when he said the words. Although it might have been less desperation and more just exhaustion.
He couldn’t tell anymore. And quite frankly, he didn’t care.
“Want to get a drink?” He asked because as nice as baking like a turtle on a sunny rock was, he was still wound pretty tightly and this was a college town where two young guys in a bar at the relatively early hour wouldn’t even warrant a raised eyebrow. Besides, normalcy of the environment would do him just as much good as the actual drink, maybe more.
“Why, Mars, you buying?”
Dean had been using the nickname ever since the whole disaster with the succubus in Georgia. It was sort of inevitable. Going through something like that had left them with two options, awkward distance or a sort of amused intimacy. Considering the fact that they spent ninety percent of their time within 20 feet of each other, going with the second option had just made more sense.
Still, it was sort of a stupid question. Marshall was the one, of the two, who still got a steady influx of petty cash every month or so. Marshall also had the better fake id and the few inches he had on Dean combined with the dark stubble he didn’t always remember to shave, like today for instance, he was just more convincing. But this time…
“No, actually. I think I can get us into the Lambda Chi house. My dad’s an alum.”
Dean grinned, a tired grin but a wide one. “Awesome.” He climbed to his feet with ease and held out his hand to Marshall in what had become a familiar gesture.
That silver ring shone in the sunlight as he took Dean’s hand and let him be helped, unnecessarily, to his feet. He kept meaning to ask Dean where that ring came from. Meant to but probably never would. For some reason, he always got distracted when Dean’s fingers pressed that warm metal into his hand.
~*~*~
Blue Earth, Minnesota - July 1997
There were worse things than getting your ass kicked by a fourteen year old but at the moment, Marshall couldn’t think of what they were. Mostly because Sam looked way too pleased with himself.
“I told you.”
Marshall just shook his head as he pulled himself to his feet. Sam had told him.
Sam had told him a lot since he’d arrived in Minnesota, readily investing himself in a friendship that had been founded on a pair of swings in New Jersey three years ago. He’d seemed relieved to have someone to talk to that he could trust, if only because his father and older brother trusted him first.
Marshall figured that was why Sam had opened up to him about almost everything from the loneliness he’d felt during the school year while his dad and brother had been traveling to what books he’d loved that he’d read for his honors English class to what he wanted to be when he grew up (a lawyer) to why he didn’t have a mom at the slightest provocation. He needed a confidant and apparently Pastor Jim, Sam’s guardian when John was hunting, hadn’t cut it and his father and Dean were sometimes part of the problem.
And while Marshall listened to and respected everything Sam had to say, sometimes keeping his own council, sometimes offering advice he just hadn’t believed it when Sam had said that he could take him. He hadn’t believed that a kid half his size could bring him down quite so effectively.
He was just glad Dean wasn’t been around to see it. John would glare disapprovingly and make a biting comment about how his crappy performance could get him killed and Simon would have a field day with the knowledge once he found out, his warm laughter ringing in Marshall’s ear over the phone, but Dean would wield the information like a weapon.
“Nice Mars. Demons the world over are shaking in fear of you.”
Just like that.
“Oh, bite me.”
It wasn’t his wittiest comeback but Sam laughed so it couldn’t have been too bad. Then again, Sam wasn’t quite fifteen yet. Fart jokes were still the cream of the humor crop when you were fourteen. But he let it slide.
“I bet he’d kick your ass too.”
Sam’s eyes got big as he looked from Marshall to Dean and back again. He was tall, not that much shorter than Dean, but skinny as a rail and suddenly looking a whole lot more nervous from under heavy bangs. “Marshall, man, that’s not funny.”
“It’s a little funny.” Dean smirked.
“He gets you pinned and you buy until we cross back over the Mississippi.” Mars challenged, itching to take Dean down a peg or two. He still owed him one for that girl in Nebraska, the one with the wide warm smile and almost familiar red curls that should have been Marshall’s but after a few really underhanded moves, had ended up out behind the bar with Dean.
Still, Dean wasn’t one to back down from a challenge. “If I win?”
“I pick up the tab.”
“For how long?”
“A month.”
“You’d do that anyway. Six.”
“Two.”
“Four.”
“I’m not doing this.” Sam protested and his voice cracked a little. Puberty was a bitch, Marshall mused at the not-so-fond memories, but Sam really wasn’t giving himself enough credit.
According to overheard conversations between John and Pastor Jim, Sam had been practicing and perfecting the very same sparring exercises Marshall was still struggling with every day since the older Winchesters left for parts unknown. And given the supreme beating Marshall had just received, he was pretty sure that Sam could at the very least hold his own against his big brother.
Then again, Dean did have intimidation on his side. And some times the psychological battles won the war.
“Four it is.” If he had to, he could hit up his parents or grandparents for cash. After a year, they still didn’t ask what it was he was doing. Finding himself seemed to be a sufficient answer for his mom. But then, she’d been something of a hippy herself when she was young.
“Guys, is this really…I mean…What do I get out of this? It’s never really been my life’s dream to be a gladiator. Those guys always die in the end.”
“The glory of victory and possibly an olive wreath.” Marshall said with a conspiratorial smile and watched as Sam’s eyes went wide. That’s it. Welcome to the game, grasshopper.
“Okay.”
Dean’s eyebrows shot up. “Okay?”
“Yeah. Okay. Ready?”
“Just like that? You know I’ll wipe the floor with you Sammy.”
Sam grinned and it looked a hell of a lot like the one Dean flashed all the time, arrogant and cocky as hell. It didn’t work as well on him but it was definitely unnerving his older brother. “No you won’t but hey, we call always go two against one, right Mars?”
Marshall smiled at Sam. He was confident now that he’d figured out the angle, sure of himself and standing up straighter in a way that made him look a lot more like his dad.
It was good for him, that kind of self-assurance. Marshall had never really had a problem with confidence as he’d tended to come out on top growing up but Simon always had problems with it. And in the two weeks he’d been in Minnesota he’d noticed that Sam sort of did too.
“Right.”
They had Dean pinned in a matter of moments, Marshall effectively holding down his legs, actively ignoring the warmth of Dean’s skin through his jeans and the strength in his limbs as he fought back and focusing on the game at hand, while Sam pulled a move that somehow managed to get Dean’s arms trapped against the floor.
“You were gonna do what now?” Marshall asked, as he and Sam tried not to laugh and failed, miserably. “Wipe the floor? Good call.”
Dean muttered something about killing them both in their sleep and Sam dug a bony knee hard into Dean’s chest. Just to prove his point.
Marshall was thankful that Pastor Jim didn’t show up until after Dean’s little cursing streak was over. For a man of the cloth, he took the sight of gratuitous violence rather well and Dean’s valiant efforts to get both Marshall and Sam into half nelsons at the same time by himself definitely played out better than the colorful blasphemy would have.
Part: 3/?
Series: Supernatural/Eerie, Indiana
Author: dancinbutterfly
Pairing: Eventual slash, but nothing drastic yet.
Rating: R, just to be safe
Warnings: Flagrant use of an early 90s television show to suit my own purposes. Others will be added as needed.
Dsiclaimer: I don't own Supernatural or Eerie,Indiana. I do, however, own boxsets of each(or I will soon). Any geographical errors are accidental. I did the best I could with google maps.
A/N: I am still not sure where the hell this series came from exactly. What you need to know, if you havent seen Eerie Indiana in the 15 years since the show went off the air is that the time it premeired in 1991, Marshall Teller was 13 and his best friend Simon Holmes was 9. All the math done is based on those dates and ages. Also, I'm taking some liberties with Sam's high school years because canon gave me next to nothing to work with as far as their childhood goes beyond Something Wicked. This is just my interpretation so that this fic can work.
Beta: Faithfully assisted by ashley.
Feedback: God, pretty please? I am sickeningly insecure about this peice so any comments are treasured.
Summary: Marshall Teller once thought that Eerie, Indiana was the center of weirdness for the entire universe. Turns out that there's a lot more out in the universe than he once thought.
Chapter 3
Marshall didn’t count it as a battle because no one *actually* got wounded or shot. Although he had a close call when John stumbled in at the crack of dawn on the brink of a bitch of a hangover and found Marshall camped out on the floor of his motel room.
However, it was most definitely a fight and there were definitely glares of death exchanged between father and son as they argued about why and why not Marshall should be allowed to hunt with them. And if looks could kill, well, everyone in the room would have died.
John had apologized for kicking Marshall in the ribs and nearly shooting him and then laid into Dean for being reckless and stupid and bringing people along for the ride. And Dean, who Marshall had met a grand total of twice and known for all of 48 hours if you really pushed it, had defended him.
John brought up the dangers of hunting and Dean pointed out how he would be safer with them than winging it by himself. John said that Marshall didn’t know what he was doing and Dean had countered that they could, and should, teach him. It was intense but Dean never once referred to his father as anything but “sir.”
Even so, it went on longer than Marshall thought it should have considering how often things were repeated until finally John fixed him with a level stare.
“How long have you been hunting kid?”
Marshall was suddenly sixteen again, thrust back in time and space to a playground in New Jersey but at least he had a slightly better answer this time. “Uh…I’ve been on the road about eight months.”
John made a small noise and studied him. “How’ve you been doing?”
He'd seen things that even life in the Midwest's Bermuda Triangle couldn't prepare him for-- most of them reflections of people, alive and dead.
The lizard guy was probably the weirdest thing so far but it wasn’t the worst. Not by a long shot. And it wasn’t anywhere near the first time he’d had a close call that almost ended up with him as a line in the obits. But…he was still here.
“I’m not dead yet.”
“Yeah thanks to me, ya moron,” Dean muttered, his arms folded over his chest.
“Hey, I was armed when I went in there. I just… wasn’t expecting the son of a bitch to have opposable thumbs. Lizards usually don’t.”
“Enough.”
John’s voice brooked no argument. Dean stood a little straighter, like soldier at attention, and Marshall fought the urge to hit the deck like an extra in a bad war movie.
“You know the risk involved. I’m not responsible for you but if you want to learn,” John made a face like there was something unpleasant on his tongue, “I don’t see how it could do anything but help keep you alive. Besides, I can use the extra hands. But what I say goes.”
Which Marshall didn’t really need to be told. John Winchester was not only the best hunter Marshall knew, which wasn’t saying too much considering how few there were, but the man was also shades of Apocalypse Now and he knew better than to argue with years of that kind of experience.
~*~*~
Baton Rogue, Louisiana - April 1997
“That was fugly man.”
Marshall knew Dean wasn’t talking about the scantily clad college girls enjoying the bright sunshine.
Sometimes, after things went particularly badly, Marshall was amazed that the sun continued to shine and that people continued to go about their daily life, which in this particular spot on the university green near the student union was mostly coeds sunbathing and frat boys playing pick up football and ultimate Frisbee.
This wasn’t what he’d thought he’d be doing with his life at thirteen but by sixteen it was the only option. But that didn’t mean he was comfortable with the things he’d seen the night before. It’d hit a little bit too close to home and he nodded in agreement.
It had been fucking ugly. Men close enough in age to be their contemporaries, brutalized, rotted out and furious at a man who’d already met justice and was sitting patiently in the state penitentiary, waiting to die.
That hadn’t stopped them from taking out their fury on the new tenants, a pair of scared law students who had been baffled by the three men who’d appeared at their doorstep toting FBI badges. At least getting college students out of their apartment wasn't too hard. It was keeping them out while they assessed the situation and evicted the spirits that was the challenge.
Marshall wondered a lot about where ghosts went after they salted and burned their remains. He wondered about a heaven that had to exist to balance out the hell that produced things that could rip a man to pieces and eat him alive or crawl inside a seven year old girl and make her kill her pets and take a stab at her older sister.
Because even if he did live to be a hundred and five, he was going to die one day. They all were and he had to wonder what happens to the people who don’t get stuck in walls and mattress frames and dirt.
A football sailed across his line of sight and jolted him back to the present as his gaze followed the ball into the hands of an undergrad in baggy shorts and a faded t-shirt with the school mascot, a snarling yellow tiger, emblazed across the chest. He nearly tripped over a blonde in a red string bikini in his effort to complete the pass. She sat up just enough to yell at her would-be assailant and Marshall couldn’t help but watch.
"That was supposed to be me." He mused to himself. But sitting less than a foot away, Dean couldn’t help but hear.
“What, a pissed off ghost or a sorority girl with a truly fantastic…”Dean grinned and eyed the blonde and her barely there triangular top. “Smile.”
Marshall smiled because Dean might be a pig when it came to his women, plural in varying shapes, sizes, and colors, but his locker room humor at least had good delivery.
“A college student. My dad went to MIT and interned at the Smithsonian. He was all about education, my mom also to a point. I got in almost everywhere.”
“Then why didn’t you go?”
It’s a simple enough question, a valid one that his father has asked him on more than one occasion when he takes the time to call home. The answer was more complicated, too complicated for his dad to understand.
“Turned out that college wasn’t right for me. Besides, no one offered what I wanted to major in. Except maybe Duke.” Marshall smiled but the joke fell a little flat. “What about you? You’re a smart guy. Relatively.”
Dean gave him a shrug and a half-hearted shove. They’d been up all night and the only reason they hadn’t passed out yet was the wave of adrenaline they were both still riding. But he answered anyway. “It was never in the cards for me. Besides, I kinda wanted to be a fireman and you don’t need much college for that.”
Marshall could see Dean as a fireman, interestingly enough. It wasn’t that far a cry from what he did now, fighting and saving people. He’d have been good at it. He still could be.
“So, why don’t you go fight forest fires with Smokey the Bear or something.”
“This is it, man.” This of course not referring to the green lawn with its picturesque setting or the credit card fraud or even that neat trick Dean could do with a pool cue. “Always knew I’d be doing this, following the old man’s footsteps.”
They’re big footsteps to follow in, big shoes to fill and Dean wanted to, desperately so. Marshall could see it all over his face when he said the words. Although it might have been less desperation and more just exhaustion.
He couldn’t tell anymore. And quite frankly, he didn’t care.
“Want to get a drink?” He asked because as nice as baking like a turtle on a sunny rock was, he was still wound pretty tightly and this was a college town where two young guys in a bar at the relatively early hour wouldn’t even warrant a raised eyebrow. Besides, normalcy of the environment would do him just as much good as the actual drink, maybe more.
“Why, Mars, you buying?”
Dean had been using the nickname ever since the whole disaster with the succubus in Georgia. It was sort of inevitable. Going through something like that had left them with two options, awkward distance or a sort of amused intimacy. Considering the fact that they spent ninety percent of their time within 20 feet of each other, going with the second option had just made more sense.
Still, it was sort of a stupid question. Marshall was the one, of the two, who still got a steady influx of petty cash every month or so. Marshall also had the better fake id and the few inches he had on Dean combined with the dark stubble he didn’t always remember to shave, like today for instance, he was just more convincing. But this time…
“No, actually. I think I can get us into the Lambda Chi house. My dad’s an alum.”
Dean grinned, a tired grin but a wide one. “Awesome.” He climbed to his feet with ease and held out his hand to Marshall in what had become a familiar gesture.
That silver ring shone in the sunlight as he took Dean’s hand and let him be helped, unnecessarily, to his feet. He kept meaning to ask Dean where that ring came from. Meant to but probably never would. For some reason, he always got distracted when Dean’s fingers pressed that warm metal into his hand.
~*~*~
Blue Earth, Minnesota - July 1997
There were worse things than getting your ass kicked by a fourteen year old but at the moment, Marshall couldn’t think of what they were. Mostly because Sam looked way too pleased with himself.
“I told you.”
Marshall just shook his head as he pulled himself to his feet. Sam had told him.
Sam had told him a lot since he’d arrived in Minnesota, readily investing himself in a friendship that had been founded on a pair of swings in New Jersey three years ago. He’d seemed relieved to have someone to talk to that he could trust, if only because his father and older brother trusted him first.
Marshall figured that was why Sam had opened up to him about almost everything from the loneliness he’d felt during the school year while his dad and brother had been traveling to what books he’d loved that he’d read for his honors English class to what he wanted to be when he grew up (a lawyer) to why he didn’t have a mom at the slightest provocation. He needed a confidant and apparently Pastor Jim, Sam’s guardian when John was hunting, hadn’t cut it and his father and Dean were sometimes part of the problem.
And while Marshall listened to and respected everything Sam had to say, sometimes keeping his own council, sometimes offering advice he just hadn’t believed it when Sam had said that he could take him. He hadn’t believed that a kid half his size could bring him down quite so effectively.
He was just glad Dean wasn’t been around to see it. John would glare disapprovingly and make a biting comment about how his crappy performance could get him killed and Simon would have a field day with the knowledge once he found out, his warm laughter ringing in Marshall’s ear over the phone, but Dean would wield the information like a weapon.
“Nice Mars. Demons the world over are shaking in fear of you.”
Just like that.
“Oh, bite me.”
It wasn’t his wittiest comeback but Sam laughed so it couldn’t have been too bad. Then again, Sam wasn’t quite fifteen yet. Fart jokes were still the cream of the humor crop when you were fourteen. But he let it slide.
“I bet he’d kick your ass too.”
Sam’s eyes got big as he looked from Marshall to Dean and back again. He was tall, not that much shorter than Dean, but skinny as a rail and suddenly looking a whole lot more nervous from under heavy bangs. “Marshall, man, that’s not funny.”
“It’s a little funny.” Dean smirked.
“He gets you pinned and you buy until we cross back over the Mississippi.” Mars challenged, itching to take Dean down a peg or two. He still owed him one for that girl in Nebraska, the one with the wide warm smile and almost familiar red curls that should have been Marshall’s but after a few really underhanded moves, had ended up out behind the bar with Dean.
Still, Dean wasn’t one to back down from a challenge. “If I win?”
“I pick up the tab.”
“For how long?”
“A month.”
“You’d do that anyway. Six.”
“Two.”
“Four.”
“I’m not doing this.” Sam protested and his voice cracked a little. Puberty was a bitch, Marshall mused at the not-so-fond memories, but Sam really wasn’t giving himself enough credit.
According to overheard conversations between John and Pastor Jim, Sam had been practicing and perfecting the very same sparring exercises Marshall was still struggling with every day since the older Winchesters left for parts unknown. And given the supreme beating Marshall had just received, he was pretty sure that Sam could at the very least hold his own against his big brother.
Then again, Dean did have intimidation on his side. And some times the psychological battles won the war.
“Four it is.” If he had to, he could hit up his parents or grandparents for cash. After a year, they still didn’t ask what it was he was doing. Finding himself seemed to be a sufficient answer for his mom. But then, she’d been something of a hippy herself when she was young.
“Guys, is this really…I mean…What do I get out of this? It’s never really been my life’s dream to be a gladiator. Those guys always die in the end.”
“The glory of victory and possibly an olive wreath.” Marshall said with a conspiratorial smile and watched as Sam’s eyes went wide. That’s it. Welcome to the game, grasshopper.
“Okay.”
Dean’s eyebrows shot up. “Okay?”
“Yeah. Okay. Ready?”
“Just like that? You know I’ll wipe the floor with you Sammy.”
Sam grinned and it looked a hell of a lot like the one Dean flashed all the time, arrogant and cocky as hell. It didn’t work as well on him but it was definitely unnerving his older brother. “No you won’t but hey, we call always go two against one, right Mars?”
Marshall smiled at Sam. He was confident now that he’d figured out the angle, sure of himself and standing up straighter in a way that made him look a lot more like his dad.
It was good for him, that kind of self-assurance. Marshall had never really had a problem with confidence as he’d tended to come out on top growing up but Simon always had problems with it. And in the two weeks he’d been in Minnesota he’d noticed that Sam sort of did too.
“Right.”
They had Dean pinned in a matter of moments, Marshall effectively holding down his legs, actively ignoring the warmth of Dean’s skin through his jeans and the strength in his limbs as he fought back and focusing on the game at hand, while Sam pulled a move that somehow managed to get Dean’s arms trapped against the floor.
“You were gonna do what now?” Marshall asked, as he and Sam tried not to laugh and failed, miserably. “Wipe the floor? Good call.”
Dean muttered something about killing them both in their sleep and Sam dug a bony knee hard into Dean’s chest. Just to prove his point.
Marshall was thankful that Pastor Jim didn’t show up until after Dean’s little cursing streak was over. For a man of the cloth, he took the sight of gratuitous violence rather well and Dean’s valiant efforts to get both Marshall and Sam into half nelsons at the same time by himself definitely played out better than the colorful blasphemy would have.