Putting the Fün Back in Dysfünctional (4/6)
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Putting the Fün Back in Dysfünctional
Author: greenthumb421
Artist: annartism
Summary: Laughing used to come easy to the Winchester boys.Sometimes Sam thinks they'll never really laugh again. Sam n' Dean, worn down by Bobby's death, Sam's hallucinations of Lucifer, lack of sleep, and the (temporary) loss of the Impala, decide to take a week or two off from hunting, rest up, and try to have some fun, see if they can remember how to laugh. The old Reilly 'House of Death' case in Pittsburgh, PA, seems like a nice, non-urgent case to chew over while they kick back and catch up on sleep. Unfortunately, the hyena demons infesting the house have other ideas.
Characters: Dean, Sam, Sheriff Jody Mills and OMC's.
Pairings: Gen. No, really! Okay, some if-you-squint slashiness, but no worse than canon.
Disclaimer: No profit, no glory, just borrowing the boys from Kripke and the CW.
Rating: PG-13 for language, violence
Word Count: approx 33,000
Warnings: Spoilers through 7.12 Time After Time. Language. (Seriously, gratuitous overuse of the F-bomb.) Misuse of the Pittsburghese dialect, the Ethiopian Christian Church, italics (and parentheses), Trojan condoms, and stuffed cats (but not together, ewwww). And epically long run-on sentences.
.pdf version, created by annartism (thanks, hon!)
The freakin' awesome artworks by annartism can all be seen here, including some tinted versions not seen with the story. Be sure to look for all the hilarious 'Lord of the Rings' references in the scene she created of Sam sitting on his bed!
Song lyrics taken from Bruno Mars' Grenade.
Many thanks go to my primary beta namichan89 for reading and cheerleading and idea bouncing and for making me laugh. The world would be a better place with more sweet souls like you.
Thanks also to my backup beta vyperdd for her emergency handholding and critical feedback. Also, thank you to paleogymnast, one of the mods of the immensely helpful omgspnbigbang, for taking the time to answer my questions and lend a helping hand. Finally, thank you to slightlysatanic, the other mod of omgspnbigbang, and to wendy and thehighwaywoman, mods of spn_j2_big_bang. Our fandom rocks because of people like you ladies!
Putting the Fün Back in Dysfünctional
Master Post Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6
Yeah, Sam Winchester loves his brother. Which is a very lucky thing, 'cause seriously, some days? Sam has to make a conscious effort not to murder the irritating little shit.
Just in case he ever meets God face to face, Sam's been compiling a list in the back of his journal of all the 'Not Cool' stuff he intends to lodge an official complaint about. (If Sam's journal doesn't make it to the meeting, Sam will damn well insist he be granted an extension and/or be reincarnated so he can go fetch it, on the basis that he had a brief prepared, but left it with his corporeal body. The old 'dog ate my homework' excuse might not be a strong defense, but dammit, Sam wants his day in court.) The 'Not Cool' list is currently seventeen pages long, and, yeah, it mentions truly horrific things like world hunger, and the siege of Stalingrad, and prostate cancer, and that Jersey Shore show, but honestly, the first twelve pages? Mostly Dean's antics.
Because Dean is just so… Dean.
Dean's not a man who tolerates boredom easily. He's a creature of action, never happy unless he's in motion. (“Stop drumming on the books, you jerk, you'll get us kicked out of the library.” “Can't help it, Sammy. Creature of action.” “You're an overcaffeinated spaz with the attention span of a pygmy elephant.” “No, you're - Wait, what? Dude, that doesn't even make sense. If you're going to insult me, the least you could do is not mix your metaphors, which, which, is that a Skittle? Cause don't even think about bribing me to be quiet with, with, uh, yeah, gimme the red ones.” “Heh. Spaz.”)
Firing a shotgun or throwing a silver-edged knife at a fugly, running the table in a friendly (yeah, right) pool game, tossing back a beer or seven, wrestling the clothes off a panting waitress/barmaid/overnight baker in the backseat of the Impala/back room of a bar/display case full of pastries. (“Seriously, Dean?” “She smelled like cherry pie, man.” “Oh.” “Yeah, it's my kryptonite.”) Whether it be work or play, Dean tends to dive in with enthusiasm.
Sam knows that it's the down time between work and play that makes Dean crazy. If Sam's being honest, he'll admit that he's never been that much better at handling boredom himself.
You can only watch so many hours of cable television repeats (“Yeah, I'd do Ginger. But not MaryAnn. Too wholesome. Every man has his moral line in the sand, you know.” “It's a deserted island and you're a serial dater, Dean. You'd be humping Gilligan's leg within a week.” “Dude, that's so messed up... Can I call dibs on the Professor?”) in a dingy motel room with only your brother for company before you both start to go a little nuts ( “I'll trade you Ginger for Seven-of-Nine.” “I said no, dude. Look, Sam, you've already got Ginger, Lara Croft, Xena Warrior Princess, and Daphne from Scooby Doo. If you want to break up my River Tam / Buffy/ Seven-of-Nine Happy Meal combo, you're gonna have to seriously sweeten the pot.”) and maybe eventually you both get a bit carried away (“But I want Seven.” “Fine, bitch, make me a decent offer. And don't say Dora the Explorer again, you know that fucking creeps me out.” “Dude.” “What?” “Two words. Betty. Rubble.” “You make an excellent counter-argument, young Samuel. May you and Seven enjoy many years of robo-sex together. Mazel tov.”) and there are only so many time-killing games that you can play during long roadtrips (“I spy with my little eye --” “Dude, I will punch you in the spleen if you finish that sentence.”), even the ones that you yourself invented decades ago and that have stood the test of time (“Paprika.” “Hmmm... Multiple sclerosis?” “Hah! Anderson Cooper, jerk!” “Damn, double points on that.”), even those might eventually start to feel a bit mind-numbing.
Which makes it a very lucky thing (for Dean) that God invented little brothers, because when Dean Winchester is bored, his favorite hobby is to annoy the living shit out of Sam.
To be accurate, annoying his brother is Dean's second favorite hobby. Dean's favorite way to amuse himself when he's bored? C'mon, have you met the guy? (Dean once said, after he'd used up every last damn drop of hot water amusing himself one morning in the motel shower, “It's a damn good thing that whole you'll-grow-hair-on-your-palms thing is just an old wives' tale.” “Yep,” Sam agreed without looking up from his laptop. “People would think you're carrying around cheerleader pompoms, Dean.” “Pfft, like you've never,” Dean smirked, hitching up the towel around his waist. Sam shrugged, held up a fist in solidarity and sighed, “Go Team Rapunzel.” They fist-bumped. “Heh. Good one, Sam.” “Don't mention it, Dean. Ever.”)
So. Dean's second favorite way to amuse himself, say, on a long drive, with no friendly motel in sight, and both hands firmly on the wheel - at ten and four o'clock, 'cause ten and two is for safety-conscious pussies, amen - is to fuck with his brother's head. He seems to find it so satisfying, watching Sam grind his teeth, slowly building up a head of steam until eventually Sam snaps, and there is yelling, and maybe punching, and for bonus points maybe even a weapon is drawn. Good times. Yeah, the Winchesters have their own version of Kodak moments, okay?
Essentially, for the Winchesters, boredom plus long hours in the car equals yet another exciting chapter of the twenty-seven volume work-in-progress entitled How Will Dean Piss Off Sam Today?
Sam fucking knows this.
Sam went to Stanford, he's no dummy.
Sam still falls for it. Every. Fucking. Time.
Really, we need to take up knitting, Sam sometimes thinks, and sighs.
“It's gonna rust and fall off,” Dean says abrubtly.
Sam blinks at him. “Huh?”
They're on the road, just a two hour ride to a neighboring county to check out some historical society's records. They've done the preliminary Reilly family research. They'll grab some takeout, and head back to the motel for the night.
Sam had been half-dozing in the passenger seat, knees propped on the dashboard, brain in screen-saver mode. Not out of it enough to worry about drooling down his chin or someone-who-shall-remain-nameless-but-is-still-a-fucking-fucktard jamming a spoon in his mouth, but yeah, definitely offline, thinking deep thoughts like I like peaches, and (hellhounds eyes teeth ripping my eyes snarling help me tearing) gotta remember to read old lady Reilly's diary tonight, and (skin ripping begging stop bone shining white, love to hear you scream Sam) and yeah, gotta love the internet, where else can you learn to say 'bite me' in Icelandic...
He's surprised to find that his eyes are wet with unshed tears, and that he's digging his thumb into the scar on his palm.
Huh.
“Rust, Sam.” Dean flicks him a disappointed glare. “You sorry little bitch.”
Sam's brain struggles to reboot. “You what now?” He scrubs at his eyes with his fists and scoots up from his boneless sprawl to dart suspicious glances at the sun-baked countryside passing by and the empty strip of road ahead. “Are we having an argument? Did I miss an argument?”
“You.” A tiny shake of his head to go with the pout of mild distaste. “Pfft.”
So yeah, apparently Sam has slept through an argument. He gets a nice fizz of pride from the idea that he appears to be winning too, since Dean seems to be past the actual, you know, talking part, and is heading into the don't-talk-to-me-anymore-you're-still-wrong-you-bitch part, which means several minutes of tense silence and irritated tapping on the steering wheel, followed by cranking the music up to ear-bleeding levels -
“Your dick, man,” Dean complains, gesturing disdainfully in the direction of Sam's groin.
Sam instantly grabs at himself, thinking Oh crap, popped a boner while I was out? But no, nothing is happening down there, and nothing is unzipped or on fire or anything, thank you very much, so he lets go, takes a breath and says, “What the fuck? I was sleeping, Dean!”
“It's gonna rust, man, I'm tellin' you. It's use it or lose it, dude.”
Sam's jaw unhinges and hangs a bit off kilter as he stares at his brother. Okay, so this wasn't the tail end of an argument; this was some new form of verbal torture. “You're, but if I, what?”
“It's just a damn shame, is all I'm sayin.”
“What the fuck are you babbling about, Dean?”
“Years of neglect, Sammy. It's not good. Rust builds up in a man's pipes, could do lasting damage.”
He leans towards Sam, cuts him a quick Let me educate you, kid nod, and lowers his voice 'cause, you know, someone might overhear and he wouldn't want to embarrass the poor kid. Asshat. All while keeping his eyes mostly on the road, 'cause he's talented like that. Safety-conscious asshat. “You ever see the inside of an old, corroded water line, Sam? All crusted up with brown gunk? I've seen where water pressure rips 'em open like a zipper, split right up the side. Ugh.” He shivers dramatically, and Sam's hands nervously creep back to cup his crotch as he gapes at Dean.
“I mean, say someday you do actually touch a female? Maybe even a human female. No, no, it could happen,” he says staunchly, one hand gently batting away Sam's death glare of fury. “I've got faith in you, bro. Maybe a chick with a choking fetish comes along, yeah? And really kinky taste in sideburns. You maybe start to get a little friendly, compare your bra sizes or whatever it is you chicks do, you're getting' along great, maybe a kiss or two, and before you know it, pressurestartstobuildupinyourpipesandBANG!”
Dean doesn't seem to notice the full-body flinch that rattles the passenger side of the car. “No more lil Sam.” He wags his head in sympathetic misery, eyes firmly glued to the road.
For an instant, Sam's twelve years old again, sitting on the wooden bleachers of a darkened school gym as a flickering filmstrip, projected onto the gym wall despite the basketball hoop in the center of the frame, shows him and fifty other freaked out boys that, yes, “V.D. Is For Everybody” . Bizarrely cheerful (but diseased) housewives (oh, gross) and butchers (ewww, seriously?) and librarians (oh, that's just wrong) go about their (disease-riddled) ordinary lives while a jaunty tune plays and the burly gym teacher paces in front of the free throw line, nodding sadly and adjusting himself.
Sam shakes it off. “So you're telling me that my dick is gonna fucking explode if I, what, don't use it?”
“Use it more,” Dean corrects him. “In the way God and Mother Nature and the adult film industry intended, yes.”
“Seriously? Seriously, Dean?” Sam grabs at his hair, his knees, the door handle, anything, trying to keep a hold on his sanity. “You're gonna sit there and have a conversation about my dick?”
“I'm just sayin', you need to get laid, Sam.” It's always 'kill the messenger', his beleaguered shrug says. “For instance, Marcie back there at the historical society? Had her eyes glued to your ass. And you didn't even get her number. ”
Silence for a solid ten seconds while Sam digests this new bit of insanity.
“Marcie. That's what this is about? Marcie who's sixty-seven. That Marcie.”
“A flexible sixty-seven. Man, did you see how she worked that cane? Bet she was a pole dancer back in the day,” he says wistfully. “Now, I know it might take some persuasion, but with some patience - and maybe a handle of Jack and an I.V. line - I'll bet you could turn our Marcie into your perfect woman. You know. A slutty version of Greta Van Susteren.”
Sam blinks. Shakes his head. “This is what you woke me up for? This is your idea of fun?”
“No, it's yours.” But Dean's mouth is trying its damnedest not to grin.
The most infuriating part is that Sam can feel a deranged giggle - yes, an actual goddamn giggle, goddammit - twitching in his throat. “Dean, you are walking, talking proof that they should bring back frontal lobotomies.” He folds his arms, slides his ass down in his seat, and jams his face against the window.
“I'm sorry, does this mean your spank bank discriminates against the chronologically challenged? Because it would really help if I knew what you want --”
“You wanna know what I want?” Sam cranks down the window, sticks his head out into the windstream and bellows up at the sky, “A mute button, you assholes! Get it right next time!” and cranks it back up again, muttering, “Wake me up when you're done obsessing about my junk. Fucking freak.”
Dean smiles sweetly at the road ahead, tapping idly on the steering wheel.
Sam snorfles back a laugh when he realizes it's Morse code for “bite me”.
It's later that day, when Sam is typing up his notes from the historical society's records, doggedly shooting down Dean's skeevy comments about 'geriatric lovin' and 'AARP benefits, heh', when it belatedly occurs to him that Dean would never wake him up just to rag on him about his stagnant sex life. Sleep has become such a precious and rare commodity in their lives that Dean simply doesn't wake him up anymore.
Unless Sam's having a nightmare, or sliding into some 3-D surround-sound memory of Hell.
Huh.
Seems he owes Dean a 'thank you' after all.
When he phones in their dinner order an hour later, he looks at the menu's selection of vegetarian pizzas, sighs to himself, and instead orders the 'Barnyard Panic' pizza - ham, bacon, pepperoni, sausage, hamburger, grilled chicken - with extra cheese to cement it all together in their colons.
“No mutton?” Dean jokes around a mouthful of cardiac arrythmia masquerading as dinner.
“Nah, they were out, so I went with the horsemeat instead,” Sam says, and blinks innocently when Dean stops chewing to eye him suspiciously. Then Dean shrugs, “Giddyup, Seabiscuit,” and reaches for another slice, eyes crinkling with glee.
After toeing off his boots, Sam gets up from the tiny kitchenette table to snag them each a fresh beer from the fridge, comes back with a bottle in each hand and hesitates, looking at his brother. Jeans-clad legs propped up on the extra chair they've both been using as a footstool, one lonely toe poking out of a hole in his threadbare sock; head tipped back to dangle an ooze of melted cheese onto his tongue before chomping into the crust and chewing with gusto, all the while never once looking away from the baseball game playing on the ancient television. Greasy fingers that can kill as easily as stitch a wound. Rebel hair and childish freckles. 'Fuck me' lips and 'go fuck yourself' attitude.
Dean is just so Dean.
It stuns Sam sometimes, how lucky he is to have him.
I wouldn't have survived these last few years without him. Wouldn't have wanted to.
Dean notices him standing there like a dork, nods with his mouth crammed full, and makes the universally recognized impatient grabby hand motion for 'gimme my beer, bitch'.
Sam chuffs, embarassed by the strong wave of affection he feels. “Such a jerk,” he mutters automatically, and resumes his seat. This time he doesn't bother trying to evict Dean's feet off the extra chair, just props his own crossed ankles on top of Dean's with a great I might never move again sigh. Dean flicks him a must you take up every inch of space in the room look, but doesn't complain or try to free himself.
Sam holds out his beer bottle, and Dean parks his mouthful of food in one bulging cheek long enough to mutter, “Cheers,” and clink their bottles together.
Sam might have to start another list to present to the Almighty, along with the 'Not Cool' list. This one would be titled ''Much Appreciated!', and there would only be one entry, and it sure as shit wouldn't be 'rainbows' or 'kittens with blue eyes'.
“Doing okay there, Sam?” Dean asks, wiping his mouth on his sleeve.
“Couldn't be better, man,” Sam says quietly, and watches the game with his brother.
Sometimes having a brother who drives you up the wall isn't so bad.
“There were no recorded violent deaths of any kind prior to the first victim, Ethan Reilly,” Sam says, adjusting his grip on the bat. The baseball whizzes behind him, making him jump forward to avoid being clipped in the ass, and hits the “No Smoking” sign on the chain link fencing of the batting cage before rolling to a stop next to an empty beer bottle and a discarded candy wrapper. No cigarette butts, though. This neighborhood park is very protective of its clean air, apparently. “Ball. C'mon, Shrinkydink, I'm up here. You need a box to stand on? Maybe a booster seat?”
"Thank you, I think I can manage,” Dean says pleasantly, grabbing another ball from the bucket at his side. They have nearly the entire practice facility to themselves, with just a few family groups occupying the cages over at the far end. The nearby baseball diamond, a grassy field that needs the lines repainted after some weeks of rain inspired lush growth, is hosting a peewee game of T-ball. The kids seem to be having fun despite their lack of skill, or maybe because of it. Several appear to be catching insects in the outfield, and one industrious soul is stuffing his ballcap down the front of his pants for unknown reasons.
“Yeah, prove it.” For a man who can nail a fugly with a knife at twenty yards, and is annoyingly good when playing darts, Dean is proving to be a surprisingly poor pitcher. Sam is going to be covered in bruises if Dean's aim doesn't improve damn fast. Sam adjusts his rented batter's helmet, and takes a couple of practice swings at the air with his rented bat, grimly reminding himself that the cash he'd laid out for the equipment and cage rental was non-refundable. What had seemed like a fun idea when he'd talked Dean into it is now rapidly deteriorating into a test of his ability to withstand pain. Those baseballs don't know who they're fucking with. “No rumors of anyone in or connected to the family dabbling in black magic, and yet there's that damn Petrified Burrito.”
Dean winds up, calls out, “High and inside, Winchester cannonball coming atcha." The ball rockets into the ground five feet in front of Sam, bounces up and nearly catches Sam in the crotch. “Heh. I hope you weren't planning on having any kids."
“Man, you suck at this,” Sam complains, rubbing his thigh. “Why do I remember you being an awesome pitcher?”
“I'm still awesome,” Dean says, reaching into the bucket. “I just have to retrain my muscle memory, that's all. Adjust my aim. Last time we played this was before you got big enough to trample Japanese villages, you know.”
“Oh, so it's my fault that you suck. Riiiiiight... I just can't see any motive for a curse. There are no records of anyone benefitting from the deaths, financially or - sonuvabitch!” Sam dances away from the batter's plate, rubbing at his hipbone and swearing.
It's the third time Dean's hit him in that same spot. There's going to be one hell of a bruise. Sam hisses out a sigh, grits his teeth, and strides back to take his place at the plate, refusing to limp. Real men don't limp in baseball. He is above the pain. He is a man of iron. He is Lou fucking Gehrig. He wonders if Gehrig ever had to practice with a pitcher whose notion of the strike zone covered a five-state area. “Financially or otherwise. No rival businesses profited from the death of Ethan Reilly; the family business simply passed on to his son Daniel without a hitch. And no, the son was not a wild type who decided to off his dad using some supernatural means. By all accounts, Daniel was a boring type who went to church on Sundays and work on weekdays and not much else in between.”
“Don't forget the jazz clubs on Saturday nights,” Dean says, picking another ball out of the bucket.
Sam lowers his bat. “Jazz clubs?”
Dean nods. “Mama's diary said something about him going to listen to jazz bands in the Hill District on Saturday nights. Mama was not pleased. Too much mixing with 'the coloreds',” Dean smirks.
“Huh. Guess I missed that.” After a moment of embarrassment over this lapse, Sam resumes his batting stance, leaning forward intently as he frowns in concentration. “Maybe it didn't start with Ethan. Maybe it started with his son Daniel.”
The next pitch is actually playable, and Sam's startled into a wild swing that ricochets the ball off the side wall of the cage with a metallic clang.
“Hey, that woulda been a home run,” he points out proudly.
“Yeah, if home was three feet behind you. That was a foul.”
“How come we only follow the rules when I hit one? How come none of your wild pitches count?”
“That would be because there's no whining in baseball, Sam. Batter up,” he advises, idly tossing the ball from hand to hand.
Instead, Sam steps away from the plate, uses his bat as a leaning post.
“I think we're onto something here,” Sam says. “This all started back in the thirties, right? Back then, the 'jazz scene' wasn't just a fun night out listening to music. It was all tangled up with civil disobedience, the first baby steps of the civil rights movement --”
“Speakeasies and illegal booze,” Dean chimes in.
“Gangster wars, the Untouchables --”
“Been there, done that, got the bumper sticker,” Dean says modestly.
“So any white man going to a jazz club back then was not your ordinary nine to five office drone. That Daniel must have been sowing some serious wild oats.”
Dean picks up three balls, begins to juggle them. If Sam won't amuse him, he'll amuse himself. “So Daniel pissed someone off? Someone who conveniently knows black magic? With fiction writing skills like that, it's no surprise you're working for the Weekly World News.”
“Well, the Hill District is a traditionally African-American neighborhood, right? That means strong ties to the Deep South, and possibly to Southern voodoo magic.”
Dean opens his mouth to ask how the fuck Sam made that leap of logic, but Sam is already in full frontal lecture mode. Nothing short of sewing his mouth shut will stop him now.
“See, there was this huge northward exodus of African-Americans to industrial cities like Pittsburgh in the early 1900's, what historians call the Great Migration, right? Behind them were segregation and K.K.K. lynchings and no future, ahead of them were jobs and relative safety,” he explains.
Dean nods like he already knew that. Do continue, young Samuel. Don't let me interrupt your braingasm. He sends the balls spinning higher, earning a few awed cheers from some young boys practicing with their father three cages down. Dean sends them a wink and a grin.
“Now, in a lot of cases, they still weren't allowed to integrate, so they became like a city within a city. They built their own churches, schools, banks, barbershops, grocers, had their own lawyers, doctors, the works. That's what happened in Harlem in New York City, and a lot of other northern cities, including the Hill District in Pittsburgh. And naturally, they brought their traditions with them too, which in some cases could mean voodoo connections ... possibly even ties to traditional African magic as well? Yeah... Yeah, I think we've finally got some new leads to look into.”
“You've got some ideas, not leads,” Dean corrects, catching the balls and dropping all but one of them back into the bucket. “I still think it's a pretty weak case. Too many 'maybe's', not enough facts. Like, what could a twenty-year-old kid do that would be so bad that a curse would be laid on his entire family line for generations to come?”
“True... You know, what really gets me is that the last two vics were within the last decade. Before them, there was always a stretch of at least twenty years, sometimes thirty, between the suicides.” With almost every death followed by a witness report of the sound of someone or something laughing. It was infuriating. “Something altered the pattern.”
Dean's gaze sharpens. “Something like a kid cutting open a burrito to see if it's a pirate map? Jon said that happened when he and his cousin were kids. Couldn't have been more than ten, fifteen years ago, right?”
“So...Maybe the Petrified Burrito isn't the source of the bad mojo. Maybe instead it's been keeping the bad mojo in check all these years. Maybe it's a good luck charm.”
“With seven corpses on its scorecard, I'd call that a piss-poor lucky charm. Hey, we gonna play ball or not?”
Sam picks up a stray ball, a faraway look on his face. “I want to find out what that thing is, Dean, what it does.”
“You're not cutting it open, Sam, we agreed --”
“No, I know, it's too risky,” Sam shakes his head. He tugs off his helmet to run his fingers through his sweat-damp hair. “I want to work this case, Dean.”
“We're not on lockdown, you know,” Dean points out, amused. “It's just a vacation. We can do whatever we want. ”
“Right. Right.” He looks at the baseball in his hand. “How about we never do this again?” Sam asks wistfully, rubbing his sore hip.
“You're the one that wanted to work on his swing, Sammy,” Dean says serenely. “I'm just along for the ride."
He watches Sam walk toward him, idly swinging his bat at clumps of dirt on the ground as he goes. Dean eyes the last four balls in the bucket, shrugs, grabs them up, and says, “You wanna research the hell out of this case? Fine by me. I know you won't rest until you've dotted all the 'I's,” and in rapid succession he throws the balls, each time hitting the 'I' in 'No Smoking' with deadly accuracy.
Sam looks at Dean's wide-eyed innocent Golly, how did I do that? expression, then at the fresh dents in the sign, then turns back to Dean, “How --" , just in time to see him doing his bowlegged sprint across the T-ball field toward the car, plaid overshirt flapping behind him, dodging preschoolers and parents with a wild cackle of glee. In that split-second, Sam realizes that he just spent thirty bucks for the privelage of having his brother pelt him with baseballs for an hour. Because Sam is an idiot. And his brother is a --
“Sonuvabitch.” Sam throws down the bat, shouting nonsensically, "I know where you live, moron," and fires his baseball at his fleeing brother. He lets out a victory whoop when the ball catches Dean in the left buttock, sending him tumbling into the grass with all the grace of a wounded wildebeest.
.
.
.
.
The pieces all fall into place after that.
Kinda.
Sam, seated on his Middle Earth bedspread in full nerd uniform - dirty t-shirt and ragged sweat pants - and armed with the nerd's arsenal - sticky notes and highlighters, cold pizza and warm Mountain Dew and grape suckers - attacks the internet that afternoon, each assault gaining him ground in his undeclared war on the curse of - cue sound effects - the House of Death. He examines the Petrified Burrito amulet, and googles Africa AND magic AND laugh and combs through the results, cross-referencing items on his favorite supernatural lore websites, then after some grumbling (“freakin' singing hyena videos...”) under his breath, finally throws down his pen and announces briskly, “Dean, I hate to tell you this, but I believe we're dealing with the vengeful spirit of a Lion King fan. We're gonna have to salt and burn Walt Disney's grave."
“I'll go gas up the car.”
"And possibly the Pirates of the Carribbean ride in Florida -- ”
“Serves 'em right for mocking a noble profession,” Dean shrugs.
“-- and possibly the entire state of Florida.”
“Yeah, I'm thinking you're maybe wandering off track there, huh, Sam?”
“Right. Back to the track. I'm on it, man,” Sam says, tapping one bare foot and bouncing on his bed a bit. He's flying on a sugar high with a chaser of magic marker fumes.
Less than a minute later, he's saying,“Hey, Dean, did you know that piracy is one of the world's oldest professions?”
“Oh yeah? Huh. But not the oldest. 'Cause that would be --”
“Prostitute.”
“-- politician. What? No, I was going to say --”
“Motherhood? Good guess, but that's number two, following prostitution. By about nine months.” Sam snickers like a ten-year-old, delighted with his own wit.
“Why wouldn't politicians come before prostitutes?” Dean says, and Sam squints at him, “Well, they would, if they left the money on the nightstand first,” and then they both snicker like ten-year-olds until Dean snaps his fingers, points at the computer and growls.
“Roger that, cap'n. I'm all over this shit. Watch and learn.” Sam laces his fingers together, cracks all of his knuckles at once, then takes a really big gulp of Mountain Dew, plugs in a fresh grape sucker, and dives back in.
Two hours later, he calls Dean over to look at the results. He's not quite so bouncy by now. “I think I figured it out.”
Dean puts aside the empty shotgun shells and the bag of rock salt, and drags a chair over next to his brother's bed.
“I think that this --” Sam gingerly touches the Petrified Burrito, which still is stubbornly doing a wonderful impression of a, well, a petrified burrito. “This might be the only thing that's kept the Reilly family alive all these years. It's a kitab, an Ethiopian charm made specifically to counteract a particular kind of curse, something called a buda, basically the same as the 'evil eye'. Someone throws the buda curse your way, your luck goes sour, your crops and livestock die, and if it's strong enough, you die. Unless you have one of these amulets. Someone recognized what was happening to the Reilly family and tried to help them by giving them this kitab. I'm guessing that it protected the family as long as it was kept in the house, but any time it was removed --” He rummages under some papers, comes up with the small diary. “See, right here, Enid's diary mentions having painters in to remodel her son Daniel's office. They must have kept his desk and a chair or two, covered with dustsheets, because that's what Daniel used to barricade his office door just a few days later, when he blew his brains out. Then twenty-two years later, one week before Joseph Reilly killed himself,” Sam is paging through the huge household ledger that Jon had given them, “there was a freak windstorm that damaged a shitload of homes in the Reilly's neighborhood, blew out all their windows, even took off a few roofs. Local tradesmen made a small fortune doing the repairs. What do you do when you've got a mansion full of valuables exposed to the weather and all the local repairmen are busy with your neighbors?”
He doesn't wait for Dean to come up with an answer, which is good, since neither of them has ever owned a home or valuables, and it might take him a while to figure it out. He points to a line in the ledger.
Dean says, “That's a rental fee for a storehouse. You put your valuables in storage - and the protection amulet goes with it, leaving the house unprotected."
“Yup. Twenty-eight years after that, there's a fire in the Reilly kitchen. It's put out pretty quickly, but it does cause extensive smoke damage throughout the house, and repairs are necessary. Once again, there's a warehouse fee, the house's contents - including the kitab amulet - go into storage, and once again, a male Reilly dies within a week's time. It's been nothing less than coincidental bad luck each time. That's why it was so hard to see the pattern.” Sam shuts the laptop with a decisive snap. “I also think that the kitab amulet is definitely losing its mojo. When those kids cut it open, it weakened it enough that the curse is able to occasionally overwhelm it, which would explain the latest two suicides in the last decade.”
He lets Dean absorb all that for a moment, then says modestly, “You may now feel free to express your awe and wonder at my greatness.”
“Well done, Cumberbatch.” Dean smacks him good-naturedly him on the shoulder. “So it's basically a witch's curse on the house? That shouldn't be so hard to break, right?” Maybe for once things will go our way.
“I wish.”
Then again.
Sam makes himself comfortable, leaning back against the Party Tree, and stretching out his freakishly long legs to cross his ankles atop the debris of papers, candy wrappers and pizza crusts. “The Reilly victims didn't just die of bad luck, Dean, like random illnesses or freak accidents. Something drove them to suicide. Violent suicide. I think we're dealing with a combination of witchcraft and demonic spirits. See, Ethiopian Christians believe that buda curses are cast by certain people called tabibs - usually lower class, usually involved in metalcrafting - who get their mojo by harnessing demonic powers to curse their enemies. And, get this - some say the tabibs can even transform into hyenas to torment their victims. Which would finally explain the laughter the witnesses heard.”
“What, a witch slash werehyena? Please say it's not a witch slash werehyena. All the other hunters will laugh at us.”
“Nah, I think it's more likely that the tabibs just control demons who take the shape of hyenas in shadow form. Also not fun. Remember Meg and the daeva?“
Dean wrinkles his nose. “Yeah, good times...”
Sam doesn't really need to explain to him how the Reillys died. Even if the shadow demon wasn't powerful enough to directly do physical harm, the average Joe would freak the fuck out if he was suddenly confronted night after night with a shadow creature in his own home. It explained Henry Reilly's barricaded office door. The final decision to blow his own brains out wasn't a great leap from there. And the sound of laughter following the gunshot... hyenas? Crap.
“So who's this tabib dude, and how do we shut down his buda?”
“That's the problem. Normally, I'd say we find the tabib, do an exorcism to rob him of his power and end the buda curse. But this all started nearly a hundred years ago, so the tabib who controlled the curse is long dead.”
“Then who's flying the plane?”
“No one.”
“Fuck. So what do we do?”
“For short term protection? Repair the amulet. Which we can't do. Long term? We get rid of the demon,” Sam shrugs.
Next: Chapter 5
Master Post
Putting the Fün Back in Dysfünctional
Author: greenthumb421
Artist: annartism
Summary: Laughing used to come easy to the Winchester boys.Sometimes Sam thinks they'll never really laugh again. Sam n' Dean, worn down by Bobby's death, Sam's hallucinations of Lucifer, lack of sleep, and the (temporary) loss of the Impala, decide to take a week or two off from hunting, rest up, and try to have some fun, see if they can remember how to laugh. The old Reilly 'House of Death' case in Pittsburgh, PA, seems like a nice, non-urgent case to chew over while they kick back and catch up on sleep. Unfortunately, the hyena demons infesting the house have other ideas.
Characters: Dean, Sam, Sheriff Jody Mills and OMC's.
Pairings: Gen. No, really! Okay, some if-you-squint slashiness, but no worse than canon.
Disclaimer: No profit, no glory, just borrowing the boys from Kripke and the CW.
Rating: PG-13 for language, violence
Word Count: approx 33,000
Warnings: Spoilers through 7.12 Time After Time. Language. (Seriously, gratuitous overuse of the F-bomb.) Misuse of the Pittsburghese dialect, the Ethiopian Christian Church, italics (and parentheses), Trojan condoms, and stuffed cats (but not together, ewwww). And epically long run-on sentences.
.pdf version, created by annartism (thanks, hon!)
The freakin' awesome artworks by annartism can all be seen here, including some tinted versions not seen with the story. Be sure to look for all the hilarious 'Lord of the Rings' references in the scene she created of Sam sitting on his bed!
Song lyrics taken from Bruno Mars' Grenade.
Many thanks go to my primary beta namichan89 for reading and cheerleading and idea bouncing and for making me laugh. The world would be a better place with more sweet souls like you.
Thanks also to my backup beta vyperdd for her emergency handholding and critical feedback. Also, thank you to paleogymnast, one of the mods of the immensely helpful omgspnbigbang, for taking the time to answer my questions and lend a helping hand. Finally, thank you to slightlysatanic, the other mod of omgspnbigbang, and to wendy and thehighwaywoman, mods of spn_j2_big_bang. Our fandom rocks because of people like you ladies!
Putting the Fün Back in Dysfünctional
Master Post Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6
Yeah, Sam Winchester loves his brother. Which is a very lucky thing, 'cause seriously, some days? Sam has to make a conscious effort not to murder the irritating little shit.
Just in case he ever meets God face to face, Sam's been compiling a list in the back of his journal of all the 'Not Cool' stuff he intends to lodge an official complaint about. (If Sam's journal doesn't make it to the meeting, Sam will damn well insist he be granted an extension and/or be reincarnated so he can go fetch it, on the basis that he had a brief prepared, but left it with his corporeal body. The old 'dog ate my homework' excuse might not be a strong defense, but dammit, Sam wants his day in court.) The 'Not Cool' list is currently seventeen pages long, and, yeah, it mentions truly horrific things like world hunger, and the siege of Stalingrad, and prostate cancer, and that Jersey Shore show, but honestly, the first twelve pages? Mostly Dean's antics.
Because Dean is just so… Dean.
Dean's not a man who tolerates boredom easily. He's a creature of action, never happy unless he's in motion. (“Stop drumming on the books, you jerk, you'll get us kicked out of the library.” “Can't help it, Sammy. Creature of action.” “You're an overcaffeinated spaz with the attention span of a pygmy elephant.” “No, you're - Wait, what? Dude, that doesn't even make sense. If you're going to insult me, the least you could do is not mix your metaphors, which, which, is that a Skittle? Cause don't even think about bribing me to be quiet with, with, uh, yeah, gimme the red ones.” “Heh. Spaz.”)
Firing a shotgun or throwing a silver-edged knife at a fugly, running the table in a friendly (yeah, right) pool game, tossing back a beer or seven, wrestling the clothes off a panting waitress/barmaid/overnight baker in the backseat of the Impala/back room of a bar/display case full of pastries. (“Seriously, Dean?” “She smelled like cherry pie, man.” “Oh.” “Yeah, it's my kryptonite.”) Whether it be work or play, Dean tends to dive in with enthusiasm.
Sam knows that it's the down time between work and play that makes Dean crazy. If Sam's being honest, he'll admit that he's never been that much better at handling boredom himself.
You can only watch so many hours of cable television repeats (“Yeah, I'd do Ginger. But not MaryAnn. Too wholesome. Every man has his moral line in the sand, you know.” “It's a deserted island and you're a serial dater, Dean. You'd be humping Gilligan's leg within a week.” “Dude, that's so messed up... Can I call dibs on the Professor?”) in a dingy motel room with only your brother for company before you both start to go a little nuts ( “I'll trade you Ginger for Seven-of-Nine.” “I said no, dude. Look, Sam, you've already got Ginger, Lara Croft, Xena Warrior Princess, and Daphne from Scooby Doo. If you want to break up my River Tam / Buffy/ Seven-of-Nine Happy Meal combo, you're gonna have to seriously sweeten the pot.”) and maybe eventually you both get a bit carried away (“But I want Seven.” “Fine, bitch, make me a decent offer. And don't say Dora the Explorer again, you know that fucking creeps me out.” “Dude.” “What?” “Two words. Betty. Rubble.” “You make an excellent counter-argument, young Samuel. May you and Seven enjoy many years of robo-sex together. Mazel tov.”) and there are only so many time-killing games that you can play during long roadtrips (“I spy with my little eye --” “Dude, I will punch you in the spleen if you finish that sentence.”), even the ones that you yourself invented decades ago and that have stood the test of time (“Paprika.” “Hmmm... Multiple sclerosis?” “Hah! Anderson Cooper, jerk!” “Damn, double points on that.”), even those might eventually start to feel a bit mind-numbing.
Which makes it a very lucky thing (for Dean) that God invented little brothers, because when Dean Winchester is bored, his favorite hobby is to annoy the living shit out of Sam.
To be accurate, annoying his brother is Dean's second favorite hobby. Dean's favorite way to amuse himself when he's bored? C'mon, have you met the guy? (Dean once said, after he'd used up every last damn drop of hot water amusing himself one morning in the motel shower, “It's a damn good thing that whole you'll-grow-hair-on-your-palms thing is just an old wives' tale.” “Yep,” Sam agreed without looking up from his laptop. “People would think you're carrying around cheerleader pompoms, Dean.” “Pfft, like you've never,” Dean smirked, hitching up the towel around his waist. Sam shrugged, held up a fist in solidarity and sighed, “Go Team Rapunzel.” They fist-bumped. “Heh. Good one, Sam.” “Don't mention it, Dean. Ever.”)
So. Dean's second favorite way to amuse himself, say, on a long drive, with no friendly motel in sight, and both hands firmly on the wheel - at ten and four o'clock, 'cause ten and two is for safety-conscious pussies, amen - is to fuck with his brother's head. He seems to find it so satisfying, watching Sam grind his teeth, slowly building up a head of steam until eventually Sam snaps, and there is yelling, and maybe punching, and for bonus points maybe even a weapon is drawn. Good times. Yeah, the Winchesters have their own version of Kodak moments, okay?
Essentially, for the Winchesters, boredom plus long hours in the car equals yet another exciting chapter of the twenty-seven volume work-in-progress entitled How Will Dean Piss Off Sam Today?
Sam fucking knows this.
Sam went to Stanford, he's no dummy.
Sam still falls for it. Every. Fucking. Time.
Really, we need to take up knitting, Sam sometimes thinks, and sighs.
“It's gonna rust and fall off,” Dean says abrubtly.
Sam blinks at him. “Huh?”
They're on the road, just a two hour ride to a neighboring county to check out some historical society's records. They've done the preliminary Reilly family research. They'll grab some takeout, and head back to the motel for the night.
Sam had been half-dozing in the passenger seat, knees propped on the dashboard, brain in screen-saver mode. Not out of it enough to worry about drooling down his chin or someone-who-shall-remain-nameless-but-is-still-a-fucking-fucktard jamming a spoon in his mouth, but yeah, definitely offline, thinking deep thoughts like I like peaches, and (hellhounds eyes teeth ripping my eyes snarling help me tearing) gotta remember to read old lady Reilly's diary tonight, and (skin ripping begging stop bone shining white, love to hear you scream Sam) and yeah, gotta love the internet, where else can you learn to say 'bite me' in Icelandic...
He's surprised to find that his eyes are wet with unshed tears, and that he's digging his thumb into the scar on his palm.
Huh.
“Rust, Sam.” Dean flicks him a disappointed glare. “You sorry little bitch.”
Sam's brain struggles to reboot. “You what now?” He scrubs at his eyes with his fists and scoots up from his boneless sprawl to dart suspicious glances at the sun-baked countryside passing by and the empty strip of road ahead. “Are we having an argument? Did I miss an argument?”
“You.” A tiny shake of his head to go with the pout of mild distaste. “Pfft.”
So yeah, apparently Sam has slept through an argument. He gets a nice fizz of pride from the idea that he appears to be winning too, since Dean seems to be past the actual, you know, talking part, and is heading into the don't-talk-to-me-anymore-you're-still-wrong-you-bitch part, which means several minutes of tense silence and irritated tapping on the steering wheel, followed by cranking the music up to ear-bleeding levels -
“Your dick, man,” Dean complains, gesturing disdainfully in the direction of Sam's groin.
Sam instantly grabs at himself, thinking Oh crap, popped a boner while I was out? But no, nothing is happening down there, and nothing is unzipped or on fire or anything, thank you very much, so he lets go, takes a breath and says, “What the fuck? I was sleeping, Dean!”
“It's gonna rust, man, I'm tellin' you. It's use it or lose it, dude.”
Sam's jaw unhinges and hangs a bit off kilter as he stares at his brother. Okay, so this wasn't the tail end of an argument; this was some new form of verbal torture. “You're, but if I, what?”
“It's just a damn shame, is all I'm sayin.”
“What the fuck are you babbling about, Dean?”
“Years of neglect, Sammy. It's not good. Rust builds up in a man's pipes, could do lasting damage.”
He leans towards Sam, cuts him a quick Let me educate you, kid nod, and lowers his voice 'cause, you know, someone might overhear and he wouldn't want to embarrass the poor kid. Asshat. All while keeping his eyes mostly on the road, 'cause he's talented like that. Safety-conscious asshat. “You ever see the inside of an old, corroded water line, Sam? All crusted up with brown gunk? I've seen where water pressure rips 'em open like a zipper, split right up the side. Ugh.” He shivers dramatically, and Sam's hands nervously creep back to cup his crotch as he gapes at Dean.
“I mean, say someday you do actually touch a female? Maybe even a human female. No, no, it could happen,” he says staunchly, one hand gently batting away Sam's death glare of fury. “I've got faith in you, bro. Maybe a chick with a choking fetish comes along, yeah? And really kinky taste in sideburns. You maybe start to get a little friendly, compare your bra sizes or whatever it is you chicks do, you're getting' along great, maybe a kiss or two, and before you know it, pressurestartstobuildupinyourpipesandBANG!”
Dean doesn't seem to notice the full-body flinch that rattles the passenger side of the car. “No more lil Sam.” He wags his head in sympathetic misery, eyes firmly glued to the road.
For an instant, Sam's twelve years old again, sitting on the wooden bleachers of a darkened school gym as a flickering filmstrip, projected onto the gym wall despite the basketball hoop in the center of the frame, shows him and fifty other freaked out boys that, yes, “V.D. Is For Everybody” . Bizarrely cheerful (but diseased) housewives (oh, gross) and butchers (ewww, seriously?) and librarians (oh, that's just wrong) go about their (disease-riddled) ordinary lives while a jaunty tune plays and the burly gym teacher paces in front of the free throw line, nodding sadly and adjusting himself.
Sam shakes it off. “So you're telling me that my dick is gonna fucking explode if I, what, don't use it?”
“Use it more,” Dean corrects him. “In the way God and Mother Nature and the adult film industry intended, yes.”
“Seriously? Seriously, Dean?” Sam grabs at his hair, his knees, the door handle, anything, trying to keep a hold on his sanity. “You're gonna sit there and have a conversation about my dick?”
“I'm just sayin', you need to get laid, Sam.” It's always 'kill the messenger', his beleaguered shrug says. “For instance, Marcie back there at the historical society? Had her eyes glued to your ass. And you didn't even get her number. ”
Silence for a solid ten seconds while Sam digests this new bit of insanity.
“Marcie. That's what this is about? Marcie who's sixty-seven. That Marcie.”
“A flexible sixty-seven. Man, did you see how she worked that cane? Bet she was a pole dancer back in the day,” he says wistfully. “Now, I know it might take some persuasion, but with some patience - and maybe a handle of Jack and an I.V. line - I'll bet you could turn our Marcie into your perfect woman. You know. A slutty version of Greta Van Susteren.”
Sam blinks. Shakes his head. “This is what you woke me up for? This is your idea of fun?”
“No, it's yours.” But Dean's mouth is trying its damnedest not to grin.
The most infuriating part is that Sam can feel a deranged giggle - yes, an actual goddamn giggle, goddammit - twitching in his throat. “Dean, you are walking, talking proof that they should bring back frontal lobotomies.” He folds his arms, slides his ass down in his seat, and jams his face against the window.
“I'm sorry, does this mean your spank bank discriminates against the chronologically challenged? Because it would really help if I knew what you want --”
“You wanna know what I want?” Sam cranks down the window, sticks his head out into the windstream and bellows up at the sky, “A mute button, you assholes! Get it right next time!” and cranks it back up again, muttering, “Wake me up when you're done obsessing about my junk. Fucking freak.”
Dean smiles sweetly at the road ahead, tapping idly on the steering wheel.
Sam snorfles back a laugh when he realizes it's Morse code for “bite me”.
It's later that day, when Sam is typing up his notes from the historical society's records, doggedly shooting down Dean's skeevy comments about 'geriatric lovin' and 'AARP benefits, heh', when it belatedly occurs to him that Dean would never wake him up just to rag on him about his stagnant sex life. Sleep has become such a precious and rare commodity in their lives that Dean simply doesn't wake him up anymore.
Unless Sam's having a nightmare, or sliding into some 3-D surround-sound memory of Hell.
Huh.
Seems he owes Dean a 'thank you' after all.
When he phones in their dinner order an hour later, he looks at the menu's selection of vegetarian pizzas, sighs to himself, and instead orders the 'Barnyard Panic' pizza - ham, bacon, pepperoni, sausage, hamburger, grilled chicken - with extra cheese to cement it all together in their colons.
“No mutton?” Dean jokes around a mouthful of cardiac arrythmia masquerading as dinner.
“Nah, they were out, so I went with the horsemeat instead,” Sam says, and blinks innocently when Dean stops chewing to eye him suspiciously. Then Dean shrugs, “Giddyup, Seabiscuit,” and reaches for another slice, eyes crinkling with glee.
After toeing off his boots, Sam gets up from the tiny kitchenette table to snag them each a fresh beer from the fridge, comes back with a bottle in each hand and hesitates, looking at his brother. Jeans-clad legs propped up on the extra chair they've both been using as a footstool, one lonely toe poking out of a hole in his threadbare sock; head tipped back to dangle an ooze of melted cheese onto his tongue before chomping into the crust and chewing with gusto, all the while never once looking away from the baseball game playing on the ancient television. Greasy fingers that can kill as easily as stitch a wound. Rebel hair and childish freckles. 'Fuck me' lips and 'go fuck yourself' attitude.
Dean is just so Dean.
It stuns Sam sometimes, how lucky he is to have him.
I wouldn't have survived these last few years without him. Wouldn't have wanted to.
Dean notices him standing there like a dork, nods with his mouth crammed full, and makes the universally recognized impatient grabby hand motion for 'gimme my beer, bitch'.
Sam chuffs, embarassed by the strong wave of affection he feels. “Such a jerk,” he mutters automatically, and resumes his seat. This time he doesn't bother trying to evict Dean's feet off the extra chair, just props his own crossed ankles on top of Dean's with a great I might never move again sigh. Dean flicks him a must you take up every inch of space in the room look, but doesn't complain or try to free himself.
Sam holds out his beer bottle, and Dean parks his mouthful of food in one bulging cheek long enough to mutter, “Cheers,” and clink their bottles together.
Sam might have to start another list to present to the Almighty, along with the 'Not Cool' list. This one would be titled ''Much Appreciated!', and there would only be one entry, and it sure as shit wouldn't be 'rainbows' or 'kittens with blue eyes'.
“Doing okay there, Sam?” Dean asks, wiping his mouth on his sleeve.
“Couldn't be better, man,” Sam says quietly, and watches the game with his brother.
Sometimes having a brother who drives you up the wall isn't so bad.
“There were no recorded violent deaths of any kind prior to the first victim, Ethan Reilly,” Sam says, adjusting his grip on the bat. The baseball whizzes behind him, making him jump forward to avoid being clipped in the ass, and hits the “No Smoking” sign on the chain link fencing of the batting cage before rolling to a stop next to an empty beer bottle and a discarded candy wrapper. No cigarette butts, though. This neighborhood park is very protective of its clean air, apparently. “Ball. C'mon, Shrinkydink, I'm up here. You need a box to stand on? Maybe a booster seat?”
"Thank you, I think I can manage,” Dean says pleasantly, grabbing another ball from the bucket at his side. They have nearly the entire practice facility to themselves, with just a few family groups occupying the cages over at the far end. The nearby baseball diamond, a grassy field that needs the lines repainted after some weeks of rain inspired lush growth, is hosting a peewee game of T-ball. The kids seem to be having fun despite their lack of skill, or maybe because of it. Several appear to be catching insects in the outfield, and one industrious soul is stuffing his ballcap down the front of his pants for unknown reasons.
“Yeah, prove it.” For a man who can nail a fugly with a knife at twenty yards, and is annoyingly good when playing darts, Dean is proving to be a surprisingly poor pitcher. Sam is going to be covered in bruises if Dean's aim doesn't improve damn fast. Sam adjusts his rented batter's helmet, and takes a couple of practice swings at the air with his rented bat, grimly reminding himself that the cash he'd laid out for the equipment and cage rental was non-refundable. What had seemed like a fun idea when he'd talked Dean into it is now rapidly deteriorating into a test of his ability to withstand pain. Those baseballs don't know who they're fucking with. “No rumors of anyone in or connected to the family dabbling in black magic, and yet there's that damn Petrified Burrito.”
Dean winds up, calls out, “High and inside, Winchester cannonball coming atcha." The ball rockets into the ground five feet in front of Sam, bounces up and nearly catches Sam in the crotch. “Heh. I hope you weren't planning on having any kids."
“Man, you suck at this,” Sam complains, rubbing his thigh. “Why do I remember you being an awesome pitcher?”
“I'm still awesome,” Dean says, reaching into the bucket. “I just have to retrain my muscle memory, that's all. Adjust my aim. Last time we played this was before you got big enough to trample Japanese villages, you know.”
“Oh, so it's my fault that you suck. Riiiiiight... I just can't see any motive for a curse. There are no records of anyone benefitting from the deaths, financially or - sonuvabitch!” Sam dances away from the batter's plate, rubbing at his hipbone and swearing.
It's the third time Dean's hit him in that same spot. There's going to be one hell of a bruise. Sam hisses out a sigh, grits his teeth, and strides back to take his place at the plate, refusing to limp. Real men don't limp in baseball. He is above the pain. He is a man of iron. He is Lou fucking Gehrig. He wonders if Gehrig ever had to practice with a pitcher whose notion of the strike zone covered a five-state area. “Financially or otherwise. No rival businesses profited from the death of Ethan Reilly; the family business simply passed on to his son Daniel without a hitch. And no, the son was not a wild type who decided to off his dad using some supernatural means. By all accounts, Daniel was a boring type who went to church on Sundays and work on weekdays and not much else in between.”
“Don't forget the jazz clubs on Saturday nights,” Dean says, picking another ball out of the bucket.
Sam lowers his bat. “Jazz clubs?”
Dean nods. “Mama's diary said something about him going to listen to jazz bands in the Hill District on Saturday nights. Mama was not pleased. Too much mixing with 'the coloreds',” Dean smirks.
“Huh. Guess I missed that.” After a moment of embarrassment over this lapse, Sam resumes his batting stance, leaning forward intently as he frowns in concentration. “Maybe it didn't start with Ethan. Maybe it started with his son Daniel.”
The next pitch is actually playable, and Sam's startled into a wild swing that ricochets the ball off the side wall of the cage with a metallic clang.
“Hey, that woulda been a home run,” he points out proudly.
“Yeah, if home was three feet behind you. That was a foul.”
“How come we only follow the rules when I hit one? How come none of your wild pitches count?”
“That would be because there's no whining in baseball, Sam. Batter up,” he advises, idly tossing the ball from hand to hand.
Instead, Sam steps away from the plate, uses his bat as a leaning post.
“I think we're onto something here,” Sam says. “This all started back in the thirties, right? Back then, the 'jazz scene' wasn't just a fun night out listening to music. It was all tangled up with civil disobedience, the first baby steps of the civil rights movement --”
“Speakeasies and illegal booze,” Dean chimes in.
“Gangster wars, the Untouchables --”
“Been there, done that, got the bumper sticker,” Dean says modestly.
“So any white man going to a jazz club back then was not your ordinary nine to five office drone. That Daniel must have been sowing some serious wild oats.”
Dean picks up three balls, begins to juggle them. If Sam won't amuse him, he'll amuse himself. “So Daniel pissed someone off? Someone who conveniently knows black magic? With fiction writing skills like that, it's no surprise you're working for the Weekly World News.”
“Well, the Hill District is a traditionally African-American neighborhood, right? That means strong ties to the Deep South, and possibly to Southern voodoo magic.”
Dean opens his mouth to ask how the fuck Sam made that leap of logic, but Sam is already in full frontal lecture mode. Nothing short of sewing his mouth shut will stop him now.
“See, there was this huge northward exodus of African-Americans to industrial cities like Pittsburgh in the early 1900's, what historians call the Great Migration, right? Behind them were segregation and K.K.K. lynchings and no future, ahead of them were jobs and relative safety,” he explains.
Dean nods like he already knew that. Do continue, young Samuel. Don't let me interrupt your braingasm. He sends the balls spinning higher, earning a few awed cheers from some young boys practicing with their father three cages down. Dean sends them a wink and a grin.
“Now, in a lot of cases, they still weren't allowed to integrate, so they became like a city within a city. They built their own churches, schools, banks, barbershops, grocers, had their own lawyers, doctors, the works. That's what happened in Harlem in New York City, and a lot of other northern cities, including the Hill District in Pittsburgh. And naturally, they brought their traditions with them too, which in some cases could mean voodoo connections ... possibly even ties to traditional African magic as well? Yeah... Yeah, I think we've finally got some new leads to look into.”
“You've got some ideas, not leads,” Dean corrects, catching the balls and dropping all but one of them back into the bucket. “I still think it's a pretty weak case. Too many 'maybe's', not enough facts. Like, what could a twenty-year-old kid do that would be so bad that a curse would be laid on his entire family line for generations to come?”
“True... You know, what really gets me is that the last two vics were within the last decade. Before them, there was always a stretch of at least twenty years, sometimes thirty, between the suicides.” With almost every death followed by a witness report of the sound of someone or something laughing. It was infuriating. “Something altered the pattern.”
Dean's gaze sharpens. “Something like a kid cutting open a burrito to see if it's a pirate map? Jon said that happened when he and his cousin were kids. Couldn't have been more than ten, fifteen years ago, right?”
“So...Maybe the Petrified Burrito isn't the source of the bad mojo. Maybe instead it's been keeping the bad mojo in check all these years. Maybe it's a good luck charm.”
“With seven corpses on its scorecard, I'd call that a piss-poor lucky charm. Hey, we gonna play ball or not?”
Sam picks up a stray ball, a faraway look on his face. “I want to find out what that thing is, Dean, what it does.”
“You're not cutting it open, Sam, we agreed --”
“No, I know, it's too risky,” Sam shakes his head. He tugs off his helmet to run his fingers through his sweat-damp hair. “I want to work this case, Dean.”
“We're not on lockdown, you know,” Dean points out, amused. “It's just a vacation. We can do whatever we want. ”
“Right. Right.” He looks at the baseball in his hand. “How about we never do this again?” Sam asks wistfully, rubbing his sore hip.
“You're the one that wanted to work on his swing, Sammy,” Dean says serenely. “I'm just along for the ride."
He watches Sam walk toward him, idly swinging his bat at clumps of dirt on the ground as he goes. Dean eyes the last four balls in the bucket, shrugs, grabs them up, and says, “You wanna research the hell out of this case? Fine by me. I know you won't rest until you've dotted all the 'I's,” and in rapid succession he throws the balls, each time hitting the 'I' in 'No Smoking' with deadly accuracy.
Sam looks at Dean's wide-eyed innocent Golly, how did I do that? expression, then at the fresh dents in the sign, then turns back to Dean, “How --" , just in time to see him doing his bowlegged sprint across the T-ball field toward the car, plaid overshirt flapping behind him, dodging preschoolers and parents with a wild cackle of glee. In that split-second, Sam realizes that he just spent thirty bucks for the privelage of having his brother pelt him with baseballs for an hour. Because Sam is an idiot. And his brother is a --
“Sonuvabitch.” Sam throws down the bat, shouting nonsensically, "I know where you live, moron," and fires his baseball at his fleeing brother. He lets out a victory whoop when the ball catches Dean in the left buttock, sending him tumbling into the grass with all the grace of a wounded wildebeest.
.
.
.
.
The pieces all fall into place after that.
Kinda.
Sam, seated on his Middle Earth bedspread in full nerd uniform - dirty t-shirt and ragged sweat pants - and armed with the nerd's arsenal - sticky notes and highlighters, cold pizza and warm Mountain Dew and grape suckers - attacks the internet that afternoon, each assault gaining him ground in his undeclared war on the curse of - cue sound effects - the House of Death. He examines the Petrified Burrito amulet, and googles Africa AND magic AND laugh and combs through the results, cross-referencing items on his favorite supernatural lore websites, then after some grumbling (“freakin' singing hyena videos...”) under his breath, finally throws down his pen and announces briskly, “Dean, I hate to tell you this, but I believe we're dealing with the vengeful spirit of a Lion King fan. We're gonna have to salt and burn Walt Disney's grave."
“I'll go gas up the car.”
"And possibly the Pirates of the Carribbean ride in Florida -- ”
“Serves 'em right for mocking a noble profession,” Dean shrugs.
“-- and possibly the entire state of Florida.”
“Yeah, I'm thinking you're maybe wandering off track there, huh, Sam?”
“Right. Back to the track. I'm on it, man,” Sam says, tapping one bare foot and bouncing on his bed a bit. He's flying on a sugar high with a chaser of magic marker fumes.
Less than a minute later, he's saying,“Hey, Dean, did you know that piracy is one of the world's oldest professions?”
“Oh yeah? Huh. But not the oldest. 'Cause that would be --”
“Prostitute.”
“-- politician. What? No, I was going to say --”
“Motherhood? Good guess, but that's number two, following prostitution. By about nine months.” Sam snickers like a ten-year-old, delighted with his own wit.
“Why wouldn't politicians come before prostitutes?” Dean says, and Sam squints at him, “Well, they would, if they left the money on the nightstand first,” and then they both snicker like ten-year-olds until Dean snaps his fingers, points at the computer and growls.
“Roger that, cap'n. I'm all over this shit. Watch and learn.” Sam laces his fingers together, cracks all of his knuckles at once, then takes a really big gulp of Mountain Dew, plugs in a fresh grape sucker, and dives back in.
Two hours later, he calls Dean over to look at the results. He's not quite so bouncy by now. “I think I figured it out.”
Dean puts aside the empty shotgun shells and the bag of rock salt, and drags a chair over next to his brother's bed.
“I think that this --” Sam gingerly touches the Petrified Burrito, which still is stubbornly doing a wonderful impression of a, well, a petrified burrito. “This might be the only thing that's kept the Reilly family alive all these years. It's a kitab, an Ethiopian charm made specifically to counteract a particular kind of curse, something called a buda, basically the same as the 'evil eye'. Someone throws the buda curse your way, your luck goes sour, your crops and livestock die, and if it's strong enough, you die. Unless you have one of these amulets. Someone recognized what was happening to the Reilly family and tried to help them by giving them this kitab. I'm guessing that it protected the family as long as it was kept in the house, but any time it was removed --” He rummages under some papers, comes up with the small diary. “See, right here, Enid's diary mentions having painters in to remodel her son Daniel's office. They must have kept his desk and a chair or two, covered with dustsheets, because that's what Daniel used to barricade his office door just a few days later, when he blew his brains out. Then twenty-two years later, one week before Joseph Reilly killed himself,” Sam is paging through the huge household ledger that Jon had given them, “there was a freak windstorm that damaged a shitload of homes in the Reilly's neighborhood, blew out all their windows, even took off a few roofs. Local tradesmen made a small fortune doing the repairs. What do you do when you've got a mansion full of valuables exposed to the weather and all the local repairmen are busy with your neighbors?”
He doesn't wait for Dean to come up with an answer, which is good, since neither of them has ever owned a home or valuables, and it might take him a while to figure it out. He points to a line in the ledger.
Dean says, “That's a rental fee for a storehouse. You put your valuables in storage - and the protection amulet goes with it, leaving the house unprotected."
“Yup. Twenty-eight years after that, there's a fire in the Reilly kitchen. It's put out pretty quickly, but it does cause extensive smoke damage throughout the house, and repairs are necessary. Once again, there's a warehouse fee, the house's contents - including the kitab amulet - go into storage, and once again, a male Reilly dies within a week's time. It's been nothing less than coincidental bad luck each time. That's why it was so hard to see the pattern.” Sam shuts the laptop with a decisive snap. “I also think that the kitab amulet is definitely losing its mojo. When those kids cut it open, it weakened it enough that the curse is able to occasionally overwhelm it, which would explain the latest two suicides in the last decade.”
He lets Dean absorb all that for a moment, then says modestly, “You may now feel free to express your awe and wonder at my greatness.”
“Well done, Cumberbatch.” Dean smacks him good-naturedly him on the shoulder. “So it's basically a witch's curse on the house? That shouldn't be so hard to break, right?” Maybe for once things will go our way.
“I wish.”
Then again.
Sam makes himself comfortable, leaning back against the Party Tree, and stretching out his freakishly long legs to cross his ankles atop the debris of papers, candy wrappers and pizza crusts. “The Reilly victims didn't just die of bad luck, Dean, like random illnesses or freak accidents. Something drove them to suicide. Violent suicide. I think we're dealing with a combination of witchcraft and demonic spirits. See, Ethiopian Christians believe that buda curses are cast by certain people called tabibs - usually lower class, usually involved in metalcrafting - who get their mojo by harnessing demonic powers to curse their enemies. And, get this - some say the tabibs can even transform into hyenas to torment their victims. Which would finally explain the laughter the witnesses heard.”
“What, a witch slash werehyena? Please say it's not a witch slash werehyena. All the other hunters will laugh at us.”
“Nah, I think it's more likely that the tabibs just control demons who take the shape of hyenas in shadow form. Also not fun. Remember Meg and the daeva?“
Dean wrinkles his nose. “Yeah, good times...”
Sam doesn't really need to explain to him how the Reillys died. Even if the shadow demon wasn't powerful enough to directly do physical harm, the average Joe would freak the fuck out if he was suddenly confronted night after night with a shadow creature in his own home. It explained Henry Reilly's barricaded office door. The final decision to blow his own brains out wasn't a great leap from there. And the sound of laughter following the gunshot... hyenas? Crap.
“So who's this tabib dude, and how do we shut down his buda?”
“That's the problem. Normally, I'd say we find the tabib, do an exorcism to rob him of his power and end the buda curse. But this all started nearly a hundred years ago, so the tabib who controlled the curse is long dead.”
“Then who's flying the plane?”
“No one.”
“Fuck. So what do we do?”
“For short term protection? Repair the amulet. Which we can't do. Long term? We get rid of the demon,” Sam shrugs.
Next: Chapter 5
Master Post