Not a Chance in Cheese
Hi Y’all.
It’s late. I should be in bed. I is not doing well with the sleepy thing this week. Get tap tappy below for found_fic_spnSTUFF.
Title: Not a Chance in Cheese
Author: pdragon76
Wordcount: 1700ish
Rating: M
Characters/Pairing: None
Disclaimer: All things Supernatural belong to Kripke, not me. (Rinse & Repeat)
Summary: Dean runs afoul of the Swiss Cheese Model.
Prompt Number: Challenge # 18
A/N: Many thanks and Dragons kisses to kayto1and ailleann23for the awesome beta work. She’s a much smoother read thanks to you both. Inspired by challenge # 18 over at found_fic_spn. You can find out more about safety systems and the Swiss Cheese Model by googling its boring ass using your google-a-trons. If you is a nerd, that is.
Dean bounced on the side rail of the helicopter and swung up into the cockpit.
“Come on, Sam, chances of it ever happening again? I mean, if you take into account the factors?” Dean tapped off the pertinent points on the fingers of his left hand as the list progressed. “Speed, trajectory, cues, fluid intake…the distance between the two points? It never shoulda happened.”
Behind him, Sam reached both hands up above his head and leaned in off the door frame.
“Still. Here we are.” He glanced back towards the deserted aircraft hangar.
Hunched inside the chopper with a balancing knee against the tan leather of the copilot seat, Dean surveyed the plethora of dials and switches with a mix of repulsion and distrust.
“Jesus. It’s a sardine can with circuitry.”
Sam squinted up at the roof until the name came to him. “Actually, it’s a Bell 206A Jetranger III.”
“My God, you are such a geek. You got the EMF?”
Sam retrieved the reader from his inside pocket and pushed it into Dean’s questing hand. There wasn’t any point arguing with him. Bent over the center console beneath the chaotic control panel, Dean could have been on the verge of hotwiring his first helicopter or merely getting his hand stuck. Sam’s money was on the latter.
“Dean, do you even know what you’re doing?”
If Dean had heard him, he wasn’t answering. Instead he pushed himself sharply back up from the chopper floor and ran his fingers along the dials on the panel, inspected the tips. He cocked an eyebrow at Sam.
“There were witnesses, Sam. They all saw it with their own eyes and they still can’t believe it happened.”
Sam gave the matter some thought, toggled his head from side to side. “I don’t know what to tell you. Everything just…lined up at the right time, Dean. What do they call it? Swiss Cheese Model?”
Dean’s face crumpled. “What?”
“Well, in any given situation, there are factors, and they’re kinda like slices of Swiss cheese. Each of those slices has holes in it. This isn’t a problem if you got multiple slices ‘cause they’ll all be in different places. So when you stack them, you can’t tell. But the Swiss Cheese Model says your disasters happen when the cheese is piled just so, with the holes all aligned. If any of the factors had been even slightly different, then the outcome could have been prevented. Or, think of it this way: It wasn’t any one thing that sank the Titanic. It was twenty different and equally as unlikely things, all happening at the same time. Lucky coincidence.”
Sometime during Sam’s explanation, Dean had taken on the glaze of a truly disinterested pupil.
“You have a Cheese Theory? Where do you pick up this crap? And it’s unlucky coincidence,” Dean reminded him. “I mean, this wasn’t just your run of the mill catastrophe.”
He climbed between the pilot and co-pilot seats, twisted and dropped onto the back bench. Then he brought his hands up, framing the front of the cockpit.
“I keep seein’ it over and over. It doesn’t make any sense, Sam. It’s like the laws of physics just…failed.”
“Whatever, man.” Sam shook his head impatiently. “What are you doing?”
Dean quit rummaging around and leaned through between the seats. He regarded Sam reproachfully.
“Whatever? When did you become such a heartless bitch?”
Sam blinked at Dean’s obvious disgust. “When you became a whiny jerk.”
Dean brought a hand up beside his scrunched face, fingers and lips snapping a mockery as he retreated into the rear of the cabin.
Sam snorted and shook his head. “Dude, what exactly are you looking for?”
Dean had resumed his frantic investigation. He shrugged.
“I dunno. Sulfur residue. Evidence of tampering.” He flicked through a stack of manuals from a pouch behind the pilot’s seat, held them up for Sam to see. “Maybe a copy of Demon’s Guide to Aviation Disasters.”
Sam laughed out loud.
“It said on the site the Bell 206A Jetranger is the safest helicopter in its class.”
Dean shook his head. “Yeah? You know what’s even safer than a Bell 206A Jetranger?” He tossed the manuals on the seat beside him, leaned back against the cabin wall and laced his fingers behind his head. “A ’67 Chevy Impala. Now, with that piece of engineering, I got no problem. These things, they fall outta the sky all the damn time.”
“Speaking of completely illogical,” Sam said, hopping up into the cockpit and dropping into the co-pilot seat, “You know you’re fifty billion times more likely to die driving your car, right?”
Dean’s eyebrows arched. “Fifty billion, huh? You get that figure from your Statistician Weekly, Pinocchio? Or you just riffin’ as you go, there?” He looked out the window towards the hangar. “Tell that to John Denver.”
Sam balked, twisted to look at him. “John Denver?”
Dean froze, frowned. “Yeah, right. Scratch that. I don’t want you talkin’ to John Denver. Now, there is a guy who can not be dead enough. Anyways, I’ve got zero chance of dying in my girl as long as I’m drivin’. Riding shotgun with you, little brother -” he pointed an accusatory finger at the side of Sam’s head, “-then yeah, my odds start droppin’ off pretty sharpish.”
“Oh, please. You drive like you’re punishing someone.”
“I am. You. And let’s just hold on a second here - in the Impala, I’m not traveling at 450 miles per hour. I mean, you’d think I was, the way you carry on. But I’m not. And I don’t have to worry about some sporked up stoner sticking gaffer tape over an airspeed sensor or straining dirty fuel through pantyhose because the only guy who gets his hand up my baby’s skirt is me.”
Sam cringed, threw his hands up. “How do you make car servicing sound dirty? You know what your problem is? You’re a massive control freak, Dean. You’re worse than Dad. You can’t stand anything you don’t have complete control over.”
Dean briefly consulted the roof of the chopper, came back with some evidence to the contrary.
“I haven’t killed you, yet,” he pointed out.
Sam chuckled, laughed louder when he added: “Oh, you think I’m bein’ funny?”
Dean looked at his watch, rubbed his jaw. Sam could feel the impatient tap of his brother’s boot through the floor. “How long we gotta wait, man? This is killin’ me here. ”
“I dunno, couple of minutes?” Sam shrugged. “You know what I don’t get about you? All we deal with, all day long, is variables. We can’t control a fraction of the shit we come across. You know, it’s all just so…unpredictable. And it should drive you nuts, but it’s the easy jobs you can’t stand.”
In the rear of the cabin, Dean came forward off the wall, dropped his hands into his lap and gave Sam a wide, slow shake of his head.
“Uh-uh, not true. I don’t hate easy jobs, they just make me nervous. There’s a difference. And the bastard jobs that turn to crap? I always got two things I can rely on.” He held up two fingers, then dropped one. “One, the shit is gonna hit the fan. Guaranteed. So I already know I’m up the creek. And two-”
The helicopter radio abruptly squealed to life and Dean almost went through the roof of the cockpit. He scrabbled for the EMF reader in his pocket and Sam slapped his thigh, cracked up laughing.
“You know, I bet you fifty bucks that this helicopter is completely demon-free.”
Dean looked doubtful. “I think I’m done with the gambling after last night, thank you.”
“Give it up, man.” Sam’s smirk was audible. “You’re not getting out of it. Half an hour in the air and you gotta say the whole line.”
“You’re really gonna make me say the dumbass line.” It was resignation more than inquiry.
“A bet’s a bet, Dean.”
Dean jabbed the air behind Sam’s head with his finger.
“I still say if you had that same shot again - and I’m talkin’ four hundred times over, Sammy - you and I both know that you could never sink that eight ball in a million years. You know that, right?”
“Hey, I sunk it, man. Fair and square. You lost.”
“You potted it by accident is what you did, jackass. That was a Dean Winchester snooker. You don’t sink an eight ball off a Dean Winchester snooker. You can’t. Like I said, the laws of physics failed, Sam. It was like a…geometrical act of Satan.”
The starboard door swung open and the baseball capped pilot thrust his gum- chewing head into the cockpit.
“Hey folks. Sorry ‘bout the hold up. I’ll run you a little long in the air, make it up to you.” He jumped up into the pilot’s seat, twisted to look first at Sam, then at Dean. “So which one of you pussies is afraid of flyin’?”
Sam couldn’t watch. He looked away out the window, fist against his arcing lips. Dean raised his hand, shook his head at the back of Sam’s seat.
“Me,” he droned. “I am a ginormous girl and I am really scared of helicopters.”
The pilot blinked at him blankly, nodded.
“Well, you know what they say - admitting you got a problem’s the first step, buddy. Good for you.”
The pilot shot Sam an amused glance and Dean rolled his eyes as the sounds of their mutual mockery filled the cockpit. He stamped down on the flutter of anxiety in his chest as he looked around for a seatbelt, wiped two sweaty palms on the thighs of his jeans. Half an hour. Piece a cake. No problem.
Oh, and that second thing I can rely on, Sam? The thing about you havin’ my back?
Retracted.