SPN: The World's Biggest Snow Globe Emporium Is Haunted
Title: The World's Biggest Snow Globe Emporium Is Haunted
Author: schmevil
Summary: It's Black Friday and the Snow Globe Emporium is haunted.
Characters: Dean, Sam, Castiel
Word Count: 2065
Notes: Written for deancastiel's Thanksgiving Challenge. ( Available here).
Dean's been flirting with the cashier for the past fifteen minutes. It's business, but she makes it more than business, what with her legs, and her other... attributes. The plastic, sun-shaped clock hanging on the wall behind the counter, smiles down on him. He's got: a) a lead with real potential; and b) her number. So he figures it's time to move on.
Sammy, meanwhile, has disappeared somewhere inside The World's Biggest Snow Globe Emporium. Dean does not understand the existence of snow globes, much less an entire Emporium devoted to them. He gives her one of his best smiles, and heads down the path of least resistance. The aisle is devoted to street scene snow globes, which is slightly less disgusting than animal snow globes, baby snow globes, or 'abstract art' snow globes.
It's another twenty minutes, and way too damn many aisles later, before he finds Sam, in the middle of a human logjam. It's only Sam's gargantuan size that tips Dean off - there are at least thirty shoppers milling around the Thanksgiving displays, but so packed together that milling is more like shuffling and trying not to do anything illegal to each other. Sam's head clears the crowd easily, what with the crowd being made up of middle aged women and weird old people.
"Sammy!"
Sam slowly revolves until he's facing Dean. It's a process - his head dips below Dean's sight line a few times, and Sam's shuffling turn sends a ripple of shuffling through the crowd.
"Dean!" he calls out, a desperate edge in his voice.
"Let's get out here."
"I would love to," he says. And there's the bitchface Dean has come to know and love, (though purely for the entertainment value). "But Cas has other plans." Sam turns around again, sending another shock wave through the herd of globe fanatics.
Angel with a snow globe fetish? Dean shrugs, (internally, not actually), and wades in, elbows first.
"Coming through. Out of the way. Unicorns." He nods at the glasses-and-Cosby-sweater-wearing geek. "Love it. It'll go with your doll collection, dude."
He looks up periodically to check his progress against the guidepost of Sam's head. Pretty good, considering - he manages to evade a swinging handbag, a handsy granny (most definitely not a gilf), and still keep on track. When he finally makes it through, with only one, very slight injury to his name (heels hurt!) he calls it a victory.
"Sammy! Cas!" Dean stumbles into the small patch of relative sanity they've managed to carve out - Castiel's weird put to good use, for once. Angel weird eclipses even collector-nerd weird, apparently. The bargain hunters shoot him looks that range from mildly uncomfortable, to fully freaked out. It's the staring, he figures.
"Dean," Castiel says, without looking away from the case of turkey and pilgrim themed globes.
"You have to do something," Sam hisses.
"What do you want me to do, drag him away? He is literally an unmovable object."
"I don't know - talk some sense into him, maybe? He's been staring at these things for half an hour." Sam heaves a truly epic sigh.
"The locals getting spooked?"
"Guy in a suit and trench coat obsessively staring at snow globes for half an hour? Without blinking? Yeah, I'd say so." Bitchface and vintage Sammy prissiness. What a day.
"Have you asked him to take his staring somewhere else, like the car?"
"Of course I've asked him."
"But did you ask nicely?" Sam scowls at him. Dean just grins.
He claps a hand on Castiel's shoulder. "Cas, you ready to go?"
"No," Castiel says flatly. He narrows his eyes and leans closer.
"So when did you develop feelings for the turkey? Is this a recent thing, or...?" Bingo. Castiel actually blinks at that, and turns to look at Dean in confusion.
"I don't understand snow globes," he says, like it's a matter of import, or something.
"You and me both, buddy."
"Why would people want miniature effigies in water? With," Cas pauses. Turns back the display and tilts his head. "Sparkles."
"Strictly speaking," Sam says. "They're not effigies."
"They're representations of important figures and... ideas," Cas says.
"Turkeys are not important anythings," Dean says, despite knowing it's a mistake to engage Nerdy McNerdton (also known as Samuel Winchester, his brother), or Nerdlington the Part-Time Probationary Nerd (previously known as Castiel, Angel of the Lord).
"Actually Dean," Sam says. "Turkeys are extremely important cultural icons."
"Turkeys are extremely important to my belly," Dean counters, patting his stomach. "I've got a good lead, and the phone number of a hot woman. Let's blow this popsicle stand."
He looks to Cas, for the inevitable, "There are no popsicles, Dean. Only snow globes with sparkles." All he gets is a quick flash of annoyance, and then Cas is back to staring intently at what looks like a tiny pilgrim lady, holding a cauldron in one hand, and a veritable bushel of herbs in the other. It's a freakishly detailed figure.
Despite himself (again), Dean leans in for a better look. Pilgrim chick has clearly defined fingers, and even joints, and damn if she isn't the meanest looking globe-thing he's ever seen. Why anyone would buy a scowling pilgrim, looking to cook up a tasty stew of herbs and more herbs - in snow globe form - is beyond him.
"What is your lead?" Castiel asks quietly. The three of them huddle around the display, while Dean relates Janey the cashier's story of the Emporium's only regular Wiccan customer, Crazy Ronald. Dean's willing to grant that not all Wiccans are crazy or evil, but the crossover between dancing-in-meadows Wiccans, and communing-with-evil witches is too big for his liking. And what with Crazy Ronald's sudden turn to the crazy (previously he'd been Cheapskate Ronald), and his new Prius, Dean figures he's worth checking out.
"No," Castiel says decisively.
"No," Dean repeats incredulously. "What do you mean no?"
Cas nods at the display case. Sam leans closer to the figure. Blinks. Frowns. A light bulb goes off somewhere in his head, because he looks simultaneously enlightened and disgusted. "You've got to be kidding me."
"I wish I was," Castiel says.
"What?" Dean asks. Sam just nods at the figure. When Dean shrugs in return, he rolls his eyes toward it, and juts his chin out for good measure. Dean sighs, and looks at the ugly thing again. Pilgrim lady is still pilgrim lady. Still holding a cauldron and a bunch of herbs. Still--
Ok, not still scowling. Now her mouth is open, her teeth bared in an ugly shriek.
"Holy shit," he breathes. Castiel nods, letting the blasphemy pass. "That is-- that is not right."
"She is the one we're looking for."
"You couldn't have told me this half an hour ago?" Sam asks, sounding almost relating-to-Dad levels of annoyed.
"I wasn't certain then."
"Ok, angry spirit in a snow globe. Case closed. Let's go eat."
"Dean," Sam says. It's incredible how much feeling he can put into a single syllable, Dean thinks.
"What? It's not like we can do anything during Black Friday." He waves a hand at the mob of bargain-hunters that surrounds them.
"Hey!" snaps a bleary-eyed old guy. "Watch where you're waving that thing." He toddles off into the crowd, bouncing off a frazzled soccer mom, and then a lady almost as old and blind as he is.
"If he's still got a license..."
"Dean, can we focus?"
"Hey, I'm focused. Pardon me for caring about road safety."
"Ok," says Sam, obviously done with all of this. "We come back after close." Castiel nods at this. "For now we... get out of here."
"And go eat!"
Castiel turns to him, and gives him this long and penetrating examination - Dean would be more weirded out by it if it weren't just part of the whole Castiel deal. If you wanted him on your team, you had to put up with his not always useful answers, and his creative solutions. And if you wanted to keep him around as a friend, well, you had to accept that his family was biblically dysfunctional, and that Castiel himself was weird: no boundaries, well meaning, alien-angel weird. Dean was pretty much used to it.
"Yes," Castiel finally says. "There is a family style restaurant one block south of here."
"GPS angel, here," Dean says proudly. Cas nods, either because he understands and agrees, or because he's trying to placate Dean, and thereby shut him up. Then he smiles his tiny Cas smile - more a slight crease to the right of his mouth, than a full blown smile, but Dean will take it. It means that Castiel is amused.
"Whatever," Sam says. "Let's just..." He scans the milling crowd of shoppers with distaste. Or rather horror, because distaste is probably understating things by about a thousand degrees. Sam's expression settles into a determined frown, and he squares his shoulders. "Get behind me."
"Sure you have the stomach for this, Sammy? Those grandmas are vicious."
"Shut up, Dean." Then Sam heaves forward into the crowd, using his height and weight to his advantage in an extended check of the entire crowd - but he somehow manages to be polite about it, not knocking anyone over, and no crazed housewives or old people turn on him. Not like they did with Dean. Whatever. Dean just hurries to follow him. Castiel brings up the rear, only vaguely concerned by the press of shoppers around him.
When they finally - finally - make it outside, Dean leans against the wall, and lets himself take a big, relaxing breath. Sam joins him - the better to let the shoppers that have flooded the streets and virtually every store in town, (the book-binding shop being the lone exception), in their hunt for cheap crap they don't really want. A man runs past, carrying more bags than he should be able to. Dean is fairly certain that he's violating the laws of physics, not to mention the laws of common sense. Another one tries to shoulder Cas out of the way, hot in pursuit of the first guy (he doesn't want to know what that's about, really), but instead of moving Cas, he bounces off of the unmoving angel, and lands in the gutter, in a hail of cheap socks, towel racks and discount sneakers.
Dean - ok, he laughs. Castiel though, actually offers the guy a hand up. He just glares at Cas like it's the angel's fault he landed in a dirty puddle with all his purchases in a pile around him. That earns him a classic Castiel head tilt and stare that will probably continue until the end of days, if Dean doesn't step in.
He grabs Castiel's arm in a loose grip. "Come on. I'm gonna have turkey. And pie." Castiel lets Dean drag him away from puddle guy, towards the restaurant. "Do they have turkey?"
"Yes. And seven kinds of pie." It's like Cas made a detailed study of their menu, in the short time between their arriving in town, and heading out together, all three of them, to shake down the locals. For all Dean knows, he did exactly that.
It's early for lunch and late for breakfast, so they get seated quickly. Dean orders the Seasonal Special, and after some needling, so do Sam and Cas. Dean spends the wait blowing straw wrappers at them. Sam retaliates by kicking him under the table - no creativity at all, this kid. Castiel sits placidly through it all, alternately people watching and thoroughly inspecting the contents of the condiment caddy.
"That's ketchup, dude."
"I know."
"Right."
The food comes, and it quickly becomes a raucous meal. Sam steals Dean's white meat. It's not like wanted it, but on principle, he flicks mashed potato in Sam's general direction. They actually - somehow - manage to convince Castiel to eat, and he takes to sampling from everyone's plates. It's a blur of passing the salt and gravy, bad jokes and shop talk, limited strictly to the case at hand. Angry spirit in a snow globe, fine, but no further.
Later, they'll break into The World's Biggest Snow Globe Emporium, and kill themselves an old, angry spirit. Dean won't wonder why Castiel has elected to tag along on this hunt, which doesn't really need his particular talents.
Later still, they'll talk about the big things: the road to hell on earth and everything they've lost along the way.
Right now though, Dean is-- happy.
END
Author: schmevil
Summary: It's Black Friday and the Snow Globe Emporium is haunted.
Characters: Dean, Sam, Castiel
Word Count: 2065
Notes: Written for deancastiel's Thanksgiving Challenge. ( Available here).
Dean's been flirting with the cashier for the past fifteen minutes. It's business, but she makes it more than business, what with her legs, and her other... attributes. The plastic, sun-shaped clock hanging on the wall behind the counter, smiles down on him. He's got: a) a lead with real potential; and b) her number. So he figures it's time to move on.
Sammy, meanwhile, has disappeared somewhere inside The World's Biggest Snow Globe Emporium. Dean does not understand the existence of snow globes, much less an entire Emporium devoted to them. He gives her one of his best smiles, and heads down the path of least resistance. The aisle is devoted to street scene snow globes, which is slightly less disgusting than animal snow globes, baby snow globes, or 'abstract art' snow globes.
It's another twenty minutes, and way too damn many aisles later, before he finds Sam, in the middle of a human logjam. It's only Sam's gargantuan size that tips Dean off - there are at least thirty shoppers milling around the Thanksgiving displays, but so packed together that milling is more like shuffling and trying not to do anything illegal to each other. Sam's head clears the crowd easily, what with the crowd being made up of middle aged women and weird old people.
"Sammy!"
Sam slowly revolves until he's facing Dean. It's a process - his head dips below Dean's sight line a few times, and Sam's shuffling turn sends a ripple of shuffling through the crowd.
"Dean!" he calls out, a desperate edge in his voice.
"Let's get out here."
"I would love to," he says. And there's the bitchface Dean has come to know and love, (though purely for the entertainment value). "But Cas has other plans." Sam turns around again, sending another shock wave through the herd of globe fanatics.
Angel with a snow globe fetish? Dean shrugs, (internally, not actually), and wades in, elbows first.
"Coming through. Out of the way. Unicorns." He nods at the glasses-and-Cosby-sweater-wearing geek. "Love it. It'll go with your doll collection, dude."
He looks up periodically to check his progress against the guidepost of Sam's head. Pretty good, considering - he manages to evade a swinging handbag, a handsy granny (most definitely not a gilf), and still keep on track. When he finally makes it through, with only one, very slight injury to his name (heels hurt!) he calls it a victory.
"Sammy! Cas!" Dean stumbles into the small patch of relative sanity they've managed to carve out - Castiel's weird put to good use, for once. Angel weird eclipses even collector-nerd weird, apparently. The bargain hunters shoot him looks that range from mildly uncomfortable, to fully freaked out. It's the staring, he figures.
"Dean," Castiel says, without looking away from the case of turkey and pilgrim themed globes.
"You have to do something," Sam hisses.
"What do you want me to do, drag him away? He is literally an unmovable object."
"I don't know - talk some sense into him, maybe? He's been staring at these things for half an hour." Sam heaves a truly epic sigh.
"The locals getting spooked?"
"Guy in a suit and trench coat obsessively staring at snow globes for half an hour? Without blinking? Yeah, I'd say so." Bitchface and vintage Sammy prissiness. What a day.
"Have you asked him to take his staring somewhere else, like the car?"
"Of course I've asked him."
"But did you ask nicely?" Sam scowls at him. Dean just grins.
He claps a hand on Castiel's shoulder. "Cas, you ready to go?"
"No," Castiel says flatly. He narrows his eyes and leans closer.
"So when did you develop feelings for the turkey? Is this a recent thing, or...?" Bingo. Castiel actually blinks at that, and turns to look at Dean in confusion.
"I don't understand snow globes," he says, like it's a matter of import, or something.
"You and me both, buddy."
"Why would people want miniature effigies in water? With," Cas pauses. Turns back the display and tilts his head. "Sparkles."
"Strictly speaking," Sam says. "They're not effigies."
"They're representations of important figures and... ideas," Cas says.
"Turkeys are not important anythings," Dean says, despite knowing it's a mistake to engage Nerdy McNerdton (also known as Samuel Winchester, his brother), or Nerdlington the Part-Time Probationary Nerd (previously known as Castiel, Angel of the Lord).
"Actually Dean," Sam says. "Turkeys are extremely important cultural icons."
"Turkeys are extremely important to my belly," Dean counters, patting his stomach. "I've got a good lead, and the phone number of a hot woman. Let's blow this popsicle stand."
He looks to Cas, for the inevitable, "There are no popsicles, Dean. Only snow globes with sparkles." All he gets is a quick flash of annoyance, and then Cas is back to staring intently at what looks like a tiny pilgrim lady, holding a cauldron in one hand, and a veritable bushel of herbs in the other. It's a freakishly detailed figure.
Despite himself (again), Dean leans in for a better look. Pilgrim chick has clearly defined fingers, and even joints, and damn if she isn't the meanest looking globe-thing he's ever seen. Why anyone would buy a scowling pilgrim, looking to cook up a tasty stew of herbs and more herbs - in snow globe form - is beyond him.
"What is your lead?" Castiel asks quietly. The three of them huddle around the display, while Dean relates Janey the cashier's story of the Emporium's only regular Wiccan customer, Crazy Ronald. Dean's willing to grant that not all Wiccans are crazy or evil, but the crossover between dancing-in-meadows Wiccans, and communing-with-evil witches is too big for his liking. And what with Crazy Ronald's sudden turn to the crazy (previously he'd been Cheapskate Ronald), and his new Prius, Dean figures he's worth checking out.
"No," Castiel says decisively.
"No," Dean repeats incredulously. "What do you mean no?"
Cas nods at the display case. Sam leans closer to the figure. Blinks. Frowns. A light bulb goes off somewhere in his head, because he looks simultaneously enlightened and disgusted. "You've got to be kidding me."
"I wish I was," Castiel says.
"What?" Dean asks. Sam just nods at the figure. When Dean shrugs in return, he rolls his eyes toward it, and juts his chin out for good measure. Dean sighs, and looks at the ugly thing again. Pilgrim lady is still pilgrim lady. Still holding a cauldron and a bunch of herbs. Still--
Ok, not still scowling. Now her mouth is open, her teeth bared in an ugly shriek.
"Holy shit," he breathes. Castiel nods, letting the blasphemy pass. "That is-- that is not right."
"She is the one we're looking for."
"You couldn't have told me this half an hour ago?" Sam asks, sounding almost relating-to-Dad levels of annoyed.
"I wasn't certain then."
"Ok, angry spirit in a snow globe. Case closed. Let's go eat."
"Dean," Sam says. It's incredible how much feeling he can put into a single syllable, Dean thinks.
"What? It's not like we can do anything during Black Friday." He waves a hand at the mob of bargain-hunters that surrounds them.
"Hey!" snaps a bleary-eyed old guy. "Watch where you're waving that thing." He toddles off into the crowd, bouncing off a frazzled soccer mom, and then a lady almost as old and blind as he is.
"If he's still got a license..."
"Dean, can we focus?"
"Hey, I'm focused. Pardon me for caring about road safety."
"Ok," says Sam, obviously done with all of this. "We come back after close." Castiel nods at this. "For now we... get out of here."
"And go eat!"
Castiel turns to him, and gives him this long and penetrating examination - Dean would be more weirded out by it if it weren't just part of the whole Castiel deal. If you wanted him on your team, you had to put up with his not always useful answers, and his creative solutions. And if you wanted to keep him around as a friend, well, you had to accept that his family was biblically dysfunctional, and that Castiel himself was weird: no boundaries, well meaning, alien-angel weird. Dean was pretty much used to it.
"Yes," Castiel finally says. "There is a family style restaurant one block south of here."
"GPS angel, here," Dean says proudly. Cas nods, either because he understands and agrees, or because he's trying to placate Dean, and thereby shut him up. Then he smiles his tiny Cas smile - more a slight crease to the right of his mouth, than a full blown smile, but Dean will take it. It means that Castiel is amused.
"Whatever," Sam says. "Let's just..." He scans the milling crowd of shoppers with distaste. Or rather horror, because distaste is probably understating things by about a thousand degrees. Sam's expression settles into a determined frown, and he squares his shoulders. "Get behind me."
"Sure you have the stomach for this, Sammy? Those grandmas are vicious."
"Shut up, Dean." Then Sam heaves forward into the crowd, using his height and weight to his advantage in an extended check of the entire crowd - but he somehow manages to be polite about it, not knocking anyone over, and no crazed housewives or old people turn on him. Not like they did with Dean. Whatever. Dean just hurries to follow him. Castiel brings up the rear, only vaguely concerned by the press of shoppers around him.
When they finally - finally - make it outside, Dean leans against the wall, and lets himself take a big, relaxing breath. Sam joins him - the better to let the shoppers that have flooded the streets and virtually every store in town, (the book-binding shop being the lone exception), in their hunt for cheap crap they don't really want. A man runs past, carrying more bags than he should be able to. Dean is fairly certain that he's violating the laws of physics, not to mention the laws of common sense. Another one tries to shoulder Cas out of the way, hot in pursuit of the first guy (he doesn't want to know what that's about, really), but instead of moving Cas, he bounces off of the unmoving angel, and lands in the gutter, in a hail of cheap socks, towel racks and discount sneakers.
Dean - ok, he laughs. Castiel though, actually offers the guy a hand up. He just glares at Cas like it's the angel's fault he landed in a dirty puddle with all his purchases in a pile around him. That earns him a classic Castiel head tilt and stare that will probably continue until the end of days, if Dean doesn't step in.
He grabs Castiel's arm in a loose grip. "Come on. I'm gonna have turkey. And pie." Castiel lets Dean drag him away from puddle guy, towards the restaurant. "Do they have turkey?"
"Yes. And seven kinds of pie." It's like Cas made a detailed study of their menu, in the short time between their arriving in town, and heading out together, all three of them, to shake down the locals. For all Dean knows, he did exactly that.
It's early for lunch and late for breakfast, so they get seated quickly. Dean orders the Seasonal Special, and after some needling, so do Sam and Cas. Dean spends the wait blowing straw wrappers at them. Sam retaliates by kicking him under the table - no creativity at all, this kid. Castiel sits placidly through it all, alternately people watching and thoroughly inspecting the contents of the condiment caddy.
"That's ketchup, dude."
"I know."
"Right."
The food comes, and it quickly becomes a raucous meal. Sam steals Dean's white meat. It's not like wanted it, but on principle, he flicks mashed potato in Sam's general direction. They actually - somehow - manage to convince Castiel to eat, and he takes to sampling from everyone's plates. It's a blur of passing the salt and gravy, bad jokes and shop talk, limited strictly to the case at hand. Angry spirit in a snow globe, fine, but no further.
Later, they'll break into The World's Biggest Snow Globe Emporium, and kill themselves an old, angry spirit. Dean won't wonder why Castiel has elected to tag along on this hunt, which doesn't really need his particular talents.
Later still, they'll talk about the big things: the road to hell on earth and everything they've lost along the way.
Right now though, Dean is-- happy.
END