SPN fic: Five Times Some Idiot Believed in Happy Endings
Part One: Times Like These
Genre: Gen
Characters: Dean, Sam
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 600
Part Two - Part Three
Times Like These
It’s not eavesdropping if they’re stuck in the car. There’s no ducking out gracefully to make private phone calls-not with two-hundred miles to go.
So Sam doesn’t eavesdrop. But he does, you know, overhear things when Dean thinks he’s asleep.
It happens on the blackest stretches of night road, when Sam slips into a half-doze and imagines the engine’s purr to be the weary hum of low-hanging stars. Times like these, he floats between crazy ideas (we could pay Dean’s debt in marshmallows ‘cause you just know they’re dying to roast s’mores over all that hellfire) because he’s long since run out of sane ones.
Dean’s obnoxious ring tone goes off, and Sam claws for the surface of lucid long enough to hear, “Hey, there, swamp rat.”
Oh. Just Maria. And Sam splays his limbs and floats on half a conversation, buoyed more by the tone than the sense of it.
“Emma’s okay?” Dean always asks after the little sister; it’s a safe opening line, Sam guesses. “Glad to hear that. She’s a sweet kid.” He grins, head tipped down in a mock-bashful gesture intended for an audience in another state. “A crush, huh? Well, what can I say? I’m a heartbreaker.”
Sam drifts off, and when he starts paying attention again, the rhythm has changed.
“No, that’s a bunch of Hollywood crap. But that type of freak almost always has a serious iron allergy.” Pause. “That’ll work. Couple rounds in the face are quicker.”
Sam isn’t sure why some civilian they saved in New Orleans keeps calling with questions about monsters and evil. Folks might be grateful to the Winchesters, and they might be good to them, but what woman seriously wants to keep in touch with the guys who shot her brother with rock salt?
“Going down this road,” Dean said the first time she called, “you’re not thinking of hunting, are you?”
Sam, of course, couldn’t hear the reply. But Dean said a very emphatic “Good,” so that must have been a no. She was a nice lady, after all.
Some random Sunday night they’re eastbound on I-10, and Maria calls wanting to know about black dogs. Dean is halfway through his eccentric professor routine when he pauses. Sam knows without looking that Dean’s eyes have gone half-mast and wicked when he says: “The other night, we were over in Pascagoula by that ugly-ass Chevron refinery…”
He’s going to tell the “Sammy ripped his pants” story. The rat bastard.
Sam is tempted to derail it before Dean can take too much artistic license (like he always does with the “Sammy mistook a Labradoodle for a fenriswolf” story). But then again, it’s been awhile since Dean talked about hunting with a smile on his face. They live with clock hands carving up their insides-tick fucking tock-and Sam maybe sort of forgot that Dean could sound like this. Contented. Sure of himself.
These are the bad things. Here’s how I fuck their shit up. Oh, and sometimes I let my geek sidekick help.
Like a neon afterimage blooming across the inside of his eyelids, Sam sees his brother backlit by hellish refinery burners. Dean leaps for the swamp monster with a predator’s grin and the kind of grace that hits like a hammer. Here he is killer, hard charger, badass with a flaming sword. Here he believes he’s found his truest self.
Sam knows better, but Sam’s lolling against the window with his eyes closed. So he pays bleary attention to the bedtime-story rhythm of his brother’s voice-“sometimes, sweetheart, it’s better to light a flamethrower than curse the darkness”-and he swallows hard to stop his heart crawling out through his throat.
Stars hum low, Mobile Bay breaks on the bridge supports beneath them, and Dean laughs at something Maria said. Six hours from now, they’ll turn south for Broward County. For now, these wheels are chasing sunrise.
Part Two: Embrace the Suck
Genre: Gen
Characters: Dean, Sam
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 600
Part Two - Part Three
Times Like These
It’s not eavesdropping if they’re stuck in the car. There’s no ducking out gracefully to make private phone calls-not with two-hundred miles to go.
So Sam doesn’t eavesdrop. But he does, you know, overhear things when Dean thinks he’s asleep.
It happens on the blackest stretches of night road, when Sam slips into a half-doze and imagines the engine’s purr to be the weary hum of low-hanging stars. Times like these, he floats between crazy ideas (we could pay Dean’s debt in marshmallows ‘cause you just know they’re dying to roast s’mores over all that hellfire) because he’s long since run out of sane ones.
Dean’s obnoxious ring tone goes off, and Sam claws for the surface of lucid long enough to hear, “Hey, there, swamp rat.”
Oh. Just Maria. And Sam splays his limbs and floats on half a conversation, buoyed more by the tone than the sense of it.
“Emma’s okay?” Dean always asks after the little sister; it’s a safe opening line, Sam guesses. “Glad to hear that. She’s a sweet kid.” He grins, head tipped down in a mock-bashful gesture intended for an audience in another state. “A crush, huh? Well, what can I say? I’m a heartbreaker.”
Sam drifts off, and when he starts paying attention again, the rhythm has changed.
“No, that’s a bunch of Hollywood crap. But that type of freak almost always has a serious iron allergy.” Pause. “That’ll work. Couple rounds in the face are quicker.”
Sam isn’t sure why some civilian they saved in New Orleans keeps calling with questions about monsters and evil. Folks might be grateful to the Winchesters, and they might be good to them, but what woman seriously wants to keep in touch with the guys who shot her brother with rock salt?
“Going down this road,” Dean said the first time she called, “you’re not thinking of hunting, are you?”
Sam, of course, couldn’t hear the reply. But Dean said a very emphatic “Good,” so that must have been a no. She was a nice lady, after all.
Some random Sunday night they’re eastbound on I-10, and Maria calls wanting to know about black dogs. Dean is halfway through his eccentric professor routine when he pauses. Sam knows without looking that Dean’s eyes have gone half-mast and wicked when he says: “The other night, we were over in Pascagoula by that ugly-ass Chevron refinery…”
He’s going to tell the “Sammy ripped his pants” story. The rat bastard.
Sam is tempted to derail it before Dean can take too much artistic license (like he always does with the “Sammy mistook a Labradoodle for a fenriswolf” story). But then again, it’s been awhile since Dean talked about hunting with a smile on his face. They live with clock hands carving up their insides-tick fucking tock-and Sam maybe sort of forgot that Dean could sound like this. Contented. Sure of himself.
These are the bad things. Here’s how I fuck their shit up. Oh, and sometimes I let my geek sidekick help.
Like a neon afterimage blooming across the inside of his eyelids, Sam sees his brother backlit by hellish refinery burners. Dean leaps for the swamp monster with a predator’s grin and the kind of grace that hits like a hammer. Here he is killer, hard charger, badass with a flaming sword. Here he believes he’s found his truest self.
Sam knows better, but Sam’s lolling against the window with his eyes closed. So he pays bleary attention to the bedtime-story rhythm of his brother’s voice-“sometimes, sweetheart, it’s better to light a flamethrower than curse the darkness”-and he swallows hard to stop his heart crawling out through his throat.
Stars hum low, Mobile Bay breaks on the bridge supports beneath them, and Dean laughs at something Maria said. Six hours from now, they’ll turn south for Broward County. For now, these wheels are chasing sunrise.
Part Two: Embrace the Suck