SPN/DA Fic: Ripple Effect Five 4/5
Title: Ripple Effect One - Two - Three - Four - Five 1/5 - Five 2/5 - Five 3/5 - Five 4/5 - Five 5/5 - Six - Seven - Eight - Nine 1/5 - Nine 2/5 - Nine 3/5 - Nine 4/5 - Nine 5/5 - Ten - Eleven - Twelve - ?
sequel to: With a Bang and The Aftershocks and Not a Whimper
Author: Mink
Rating: SPN/DA Crossover - PG - Gen - AU in the year 2020 (wee!chesters?)
Spoilers: General (for all aired episodes)
Disclaimers: SPN & DA characters are owned by their various creators.
Summary: Alec POV. A cursed music box turns everyone (except Alec) into a little kid. The Hijinks are still Ensuing.
Alec liked the combination of car maintenance and divine spiritual guidance.
Not that he could accomplish either with great efficiency at the same time, but the long black cassock never showed any oil stains and its voluminous drape was good for wiping off tools.
“Are you sure ma’am?” Alec held the phone with one hand while he examined a carburetor with the other. “’Cause we sure do miss having little Bobby around. All the non-stop screeching and messin’ his pants? I’m telling you its like an angel has left the building.”
The cheerful mother of seven on the other end of the line dismissed such nonsense, and assured him that another delightful child in her happy home was fine with her. She was just so grateful she was able to help when she could, considering the questionable lifestyle of the missing mother.
“Well, we sure want to thank you for helping out,” Alec said. “In the mean time, your car doesn’t look so bad. Just needs a few new parts and it’ll be back on the road in no time.”
It was her turn to start thanking him non-stop and asking if he was sure he didn’t mind the hassle. Yanking on the loose fuel pump, Alec figured that resuscitating the ancient mini-van was the least he could do for a woman willing to deal with Bobby’s loaded diapers. She went onto explain how’d she’d wrecked the thing at an intersection two towns over and she was just so sick and tired of the dangers of today’s unsafe roads.
“Well, you know what the philosopher Confucius said about driving?” he tried a joke he’d heard Dean make at the garage. “A man who drives like hell is bound to get there.”
He heard an uncertain pause before her polite laugh crackled over the telephone line.
“Yeah, anyway, I can have this all done in a few days,” he said. “I’ll even wash all that crayon off the backseats. Unless uh, you wanted it there? Oh… oh, okay, yeah, I can wash the magic marker off the windows too. And the doors. A-And the inside of the trunk? You got it!”
Alec wasn’t sure what she said before she hung up, but it sounded close enough to another big thank you. Looking at the engine one more time, he decided to take the transmission apart piece by piece and clean it until it shined. That air filter could go too, and so could every crusty spark plug coated in a few decades of grease--
“Alec!”
“I’m out front, Sam!”
“Alec, I gotta show you something!”
“In a second.”
Tossing an oil rag aside, he sat down on the porch stairs next to a large cardboard box. The thing was stuffed with hundreds and hundreds (949 to be exact) of completed applications. In about an hour he had to sit with Father Chavez and have a pow-wow with a not-so-kindly Federal Accountant who would decide if all their efforts were a waste of time or not.
Flipping through all the carefully filed last names, Alec wondered how long it would take to simply steal the funds that Sam was going through all the trouble to respectfully ask for.
“Alec, you have to see this!”
It wasn’t as if the little town was asking for heated pools and brand new cars either. The small amounts allocated to each individualized family looked like more of a stipend for a winter worth of heat. Or groceries. Maybe a couple doctor’s bills.
“ALEC!”
He dropped the box on the steps and hurried in the direction of the backyard.
Sam was breathless with excitement. In fact, the happy and contented look on his face was so distracting that Alec almost didn’t notice the music box sitting in his hands.
“W-What are you doing? Put that down! You’ll turn into a fetus!”
“It works! It goes both ways!”
“How do you know?”
Sam looked guilty all of a sudden, the sunny gaze turning sullen as he started jamming the toe of his sneaker into the dirt.
“Where’s Dean?” Alec needed to know. “Where’d he go?”
“He’s over there,” Sam said. “In that tree.”
Alec turned just in time to see a hammer fall from about twenty feet and re-smash the telephone that was laid out in the fallen leaves below like a modern art mosaic. The cereal hadn’t suffered the same fate however. Tony the Tiger was up in the branches with Dean for emergency sustenance.
And his uncle looked fine. Really high up above the ground, but otherwise intact. Sam looked fine too. But how his father had figured out that this thing worked in reverse was still a mystery--
“Mrrr-ack-mmr-mroooo.”
Alec had never heard a more decrepit and horrible sound come out of a living thing. He carefully picked up the mottled gray heap of fur collapsed at his feet. The animal was nothing but skin and bones, teeth missing and the once bright eyes cloudy with cataracts. “What- what is this?”
Sam’s smile came back in full force. “I played the music and the cat got old!”
“This isn’t old, Sam,” Alec corrected him. “This is what science calls almost dead.”
“But now we can do it!” Sam clapped. “And we can be like we used to be!”
“No,” Alec shook his head. “No way.” The cat started purring like an asthmatic when Alec scratched the tattered ears.
“Why not?”
“I got one reason right here!” Alec wanted to shake the cat in Sam’s face for emphasis but he didn't want to break the damn thing. “Does this look RIGHT to you?”
“Cats age a lot faster than people,” Sam explained. “And it wouldn’t get away from the box when the egg timer went off and--”
Alec grabbed the music box and pushed Sam towards the porch. “Get Dean and your ass in the house and don’t answer the door when the Father gets here.”
“W-What are you going to do?”
“I’m gonna fix my cat.” Alec clutched the animal closer. “And then you.”
Alec placed the box in the middle of the back yard and considered his options.
There was nothing written anywhere on it but there was a tiny crank to turn on the music. He had listened to Sam’s explanation of accidentally mummifying their pet and he got the gist of the mechanism inside. This thing worked in two directions and that was good news, but the thing was also created specifically to fuck up someone’s day.
Alec was trying to keep that important detail in mind.
“Let’s try this backwards, huh?”
Using a flipped over laundry basket to contain the cat and the box, Alec let the crank go and blurred backwards out of range. The music clinked and pinged the wrong way down a century old Russian tune and gradually ground down to silence again. When Alec peeked back around the side of the house, he braced himself for just about anything.
“Here boy!” Alec whistled. “Are you dead?”
There were paws and a nose poking through the plastic net of the basket. The cat looked the opposite of dead. In fact, the kitten appeared suspiciously a lot like when Alec had first rescued it from the storm drain all those weeks ago. The little guy could fit perfectly into the palm of his hand again with its radar dish ears back to their ludicrous proportions.
“Would ya look at that?” Alec’s shoulders hitched in a laugh. “It worked.”
Alec’s felt his heart skip a beat as the music box started to chime again all by itself. The day went dark as clouds began to blot out the late afternoon sun, the light flickering and dimming as rain began to fall. The music picked up as the gears slipped into motion, the crank turning one complete and full rotation before abruptly ending mid-note again.
After it was over Alec realized he hadn’t been able to move.
The kitten in his lap was less than a day old now, delicate pink paws, eyes closed and unable to lift itself off its white soft belly.
“Kitty!” Alec felt unreasonable amounts of glee. “It’s kitty for me!”
He clamped oddly small hands over his mouth.
It was a bizarre relief to see Sam suddenly appear on the porch even if he was wearing a Power Ranger sweatshirt and hefting a hammer. Alec realized he was now tangled in a sea of black cloth, the cassock that hung and draped down to his ankles now burying him under its stifling weight. He simultaneously experienced panic and terror when he realized he couldn’t stay upright long enough to walk. When he opened his mouth he also discovered the frustration of not being able to articulate any of this new information to his ten-year-old father.
But Alec could say one thing just fine.
“Sam!” Alec held out his arms up in a effort to convey something. Exactly what he wasn‘t sure, but it was pure agony when his dad didn’t seem like he was going to pick him up. “SAM!”
“What’d you do, Alec?” Sam asked. “What happened?”
“I fixed the kitty,” Alec said miserably. “See?”
Alec wanted to explain how the music went backwards and forwards but all he could think about was how he’d messed up. He wasn’t supposed to be like this and now Sam was going to be angry. He didn’t want Sam angry. He wanted Sam to be happy. Alec was just trying to make things right. Alec was just trying--
“Alec, hey, don’t do that!”
The house was shaking and the window glass was rattling in the panes. Alec rubbed at his burning eyes and started to really cry because he knew he could do a lot more than make it all shake. But he didn’t know how to stop it. Dean came cautiously out the back door, looking up at the clattering house in bewildered awe.
“Sam do it!” Alec groped for the box. “Sam do it!”
Father Chavez’s rental car pulled up on the opposite side of the house, tires grinding in the gravel and a friendly greeting honk on the horn to announce his arrival.
Alec watched his father and uncle’s eyes go perfectly round.
And then he wet himself.
sequel to: With a Bang and The Aftershocks and Not a Whimper
Author: Mink
Rating: SPN/DA Crossover - PG - Gen - AU in the year 2020 (wee!chesters?)
Spoilers: General (for all aired episodes)
Disclaimers: SPN & DA characters are owned by their various creators.
Summary: Alec POV. A cursed music box turns everyone (except Alec) into a little kid. The Hijinks are still Ensuing.
Alec liked the combination of car maintenance and divine spiritual guidance.
Not that he could accomplish either with great efficiency at the same time, but the long black cassock never showed any oil stains and its voluminous drape was good for wiping off tools.
“Are you sure ma’am?” Alec held the phone with one hand while he examined a carburetor with the other. “’Cause we sure do miss having little Bobby around. All the non-stop screeching and messin’ his pants? I’m telling you its like an angel has left the building.”
The cheerful mother of seven on the other end of the line dismissed such nonsense, and assured him that another delightful child in her happy home was fine with her. She was just so grateful she was able to help when she could, considering the questionable lifestyle of the missing mother.
“Well, we sure want to thank you for helping out,” Alec said. “In the mean time, your car doesn’t look so bad. Just needs a few new parts and it’ll be back on the road in no time.”
It was her turn to start thanking him non-stop and asking if he was sure he didn’t mind the hassle. Yanking on the loose fuel pump, Alec figured that resuscitating the ancient mini-van was the least he could do for a woman willing to deal with Bobby’s loaded diapers. She went onto explain how’d she’d wrecked the thing at an intersection two towns over and she was just so sick and tired of the dangers of today’s unsafe roads.
“Well, you know what the philosopher Confucius said about driving?” he tried a joke he’d heard Dean make at the garage. “A man who drives like hell is bound to get there.”
He heard an uncertain pause before her polite laugh crackled over the telephone line.
“Yeah, anyway, I can have this all done in a few days,” he said. “I’ll even wash all that crayon off the backseats. Unless uh, you wanted it there? Oh… oh, okay, yeah, I can wash the magic marker off the windows too. And the doors. A-And the inside of the trunk? You got it!”
Alec wasn’t sure what she said before she hung up, but it sounded close enough to another big thank you. Looking at the engine one more time, he decided to take the transmission apart piece by piece and clean it until it shined. That air filter could go too, and so could every crusty spark plug coated in a few decades of grease--
“Alec!”
“I’m out front, Sam!”
“Alec, I gotta show you something!”
“In a second.”
Tossing an oil rag aside, he sat down on the porch stairs next to a large cardboard box. The thing was stuffed with hundreds and hundreds (949 to be exact) of completed applications. In about an hour he had to sit with Father Chavez and have a pow-wow with a not-so-kindly Federal Accountant who would decide if all their efforts were a waste of time or not.
Flipping through all the carefully filed last names, Alec wondered how long it would take to simply steal the funds that Sam was going through all the trouble to respectfully ask for.
“Alec, you have to see this!”
It wasn’t as if the little town was asking for heated pools and brand new cars either. The small amounts allocated to each individualized family looked like more of a stipend for a winter worth of heat. Or groceries. Maybe a couple doctor’s bills.
“ALEC!”
He dropped the box on the steps and hurried in the direction of the backyard.
Sam was breathless with excitement. In fact, the happy and contented look on his face was so distracting that Alec almost didn’t notice the music box sitting in his hands.
“W-What are you doing? Put that down! You’ll turn into a fetus!”
“It works! It goes both ways!”
“How do you know?”
Sam looked guilty all of a sudden, the sunny gaze turning sullen as he started jamming the toe of his sneaker into the dirt.
“Where’s Dean?” Alec needed to know. “Where’d he go?”
“He’s over there,” Sam said. “In that tree.”
Alec turned just in time to see a hammer fall from about twenty feet and re-smash the telephone that was laid out in the fallen leaves below like a modern art mosaic. The cereal hadn’t suffered the same fate however. Tony the Tiger was up in the branches with Dean for emergency sustenance.
And his uncle looked fine. Really high up above the ground, but otherwise intact. Sam looked fine too. But how his father had figured out that this thing worked in reverse was still a mystery--
“Mrrr-ack-mmr-mroooo.”
Alec had never heard a more decrepit and horrible sound come out of a living thing. He carefully picked up the mottled gray heap of fur collapsed at his feet. The animal was nothing but skin and bones, teeth missing and the once bright eyes cloudy with cataracts. “What- what is this?”
Sam’s smile came back in full force. “I played the music and the cat got old!”
“This isn’t old, Sam,” Alec corrected him. “This is what science calls almost dead.”
“But now we can do it!” Sam clapped. “And we can be like we used to be!”
“No,” Alec shook his head. “No way.” The cat started purring like an asthmatic when Alec scratched the tattered ears.
“Why not?”
“I got one reason right here!” Alec wanted to shake the cat in Sam’s face for emphasis but he didn't want to break the damn thing. “Does this look RIGHT to you?”
“Cats age a lot faster than people,” Sam explained. “And it wouldn’t get away from the box when the egg timer went off and--”
Alec grabbed the music box and pushed Sam towards the porch. “Get Dean and your ass in the house and don’t answer the door when the Father gets here.”
“W-What are you going to do?”
“I’m gonna fix my cat.” Alec clutched the animal closer. “And then you.”
Alec placed the box in the middle of the back yard and considered his options.
There was nothing written anywhere on it but there was a tiny crank to turn on the music. He had listened to Sam’s explanation of accidentally mummifying their pet and he got the gist of the mechanism inside. This thing worked in two directions and that was good news, but the thing was also created specifically to fuck up someone’s day.
Alec was trying to keep that important detail in mind.
“Let’s try this backwards, huh?”
Using a flipped over laundry basket to contain the cat and the box, Alec let the crank go and blurred backwards out of range. The music clinked and pinged the wrong way down a century old Russian tune and gradually ground down to silence again. When Alec peeked back around the side of the house, he braced himself for just about anything.
“Here boy!” Alec whistled. “Are you dead?”
There were paws and a nose poking through the plastic net of the basket. The cat looked the opposite of dead. In fact, the kitten appeared suspiciously a lot like when Alec had first rescued it from the storm drain all those weeks ago. The little guy could fit perfectly into the palm of his hand again with its radar dish ears back to their ludicrous proportions.
“Would ya look at that?” Alec’s shoulders hitched in a laugh. “It worked.”
Alec’s felt his heart skip a beat as the music box started to chime again all by itself. The day went dark as clouds began to blot out the late afternoon sun, the light flickering and dimming as rain began to fall. The music picked up as the gears slipped into motion, the crank turning one complete and full rotation before abruptly ending mid-note again.
After it was over Alec realized he hadn’t been able to move.
The kitten in his lap was less than a day old now, delicate pink paws, eyes closed and unable to lift itself off its white soft belly.
“Kitty!” Alec felt unreasonable amounts of glee. “It’s kitty for me!”
He clamped oddly small hands over his mouth.
It was a bizarre relief to see Sam suddenly appear on the porch even if he was wearing a Power Ranger sweatshirt and hefting a hammer. Alec realized he was now tangled in a sea of black cloth, the cassock that hung and draped down to his ankles now burying him under its stifling weight. He simultaneously experienced panic and terror when he realized he couldn’t stay upright long enough to walk. When he opened his mouth he also discovered the frustration of not being able to articulate any of this new information to his ten-year-old father.
But Alec could say one thing just fine.
“Sam!” Alec held out his arms up in a effort to convey something. Exactly what he wasn‘t sure, but it was pure agony when his dad didn’t seem like he was going to pick him up. “SAM!”
“What’d you do, Alec?” Sam asked. “What happened?”
“I fixed the kitty,” Alec said miserably. “See?”
Alec wanted to explain how the music went backwards and forwards but all he could think about was how he’d messed up. He wasn’t supposed to be like this and now Sam was going to be angry. He didn’t want Sam angry. He wanted Sam to be happy. Alec was just trying to make things right. Alec was just trying--
“Alec, hey, don’t do that!”
The house was shaking and the window glass was rattling in the panes. Alec rubbed at his burning eyes and started to really cry because he knew he could do a lot more than make it all shake. But he didn’t know how to stop it. Dean came cautiously out the back door, looking up at the clattering house in bewildered awe.
“Sam do it!” Alec groped for the box. “Sam do it!”
Father Chavez’s rental car pulled up on the opposite side of the house, tires grinding in the gravel and a friendly greeting honk on the horn to announce his arrival.
Alec watched his father and uncle’s eyes go perfectly round.
And then he wet himself.