heidi8
in
pear_vodka
FIC: Greased Lightening (Supernatural, PG)
Title: Greased Lightening
Author: heidi8
Genre: Gen
Characters/Pairings: Dean, Impala, Other SPN characters
Spoilers: Generally for all of series through 3.03, and a tiny bit for Neverwhere
Rating: G/PG
Word Count: Approx. 1800
Disclaimer: No copyright infringement intended; fair use only. Not created for profit. Everything recognizable is from Supernatural and owned by Eric Kripke and/or WB/CW, except for the references to Grease.
Thanks to cedarlibrarian for the fantastic and zippy beta! Any remaining errors are mine.
Back in the spring of 1998, they managed to push through three towns in the four months that the revival of Grease was playing in the first- and second-run movie theaters. In each town, at least two girls managed to convince Dean to take her to see it. By the third time, he knew exactly what moves to make during each scene, and impressed more than a few girls with a whispered condemnation of Danny when he tried to feel up Sandy.
"I'd never..." he always said, knowing full well that of course he would, without the "going steady" part. And each girl giggled, and said, "I wouldn't mind if you did."
For his part, he didn't mind the movie as much as he thought he would before that first viewing in March; the actresses were hot and the songs were mostly real rock & roll, and of course, there was the car.
It was big and fast and a mess when it started but those guys loved that car and they made it into an amazing machine.
He could relate, just a bit.
Sammy tagged along on one of his Dean's late-afternoon dates outside Branson, Missouri. Dean bought extra Twizzlers so Sammy wouldn't insist on sitting too near where Dean and Karen were situated. Later that night when Dean had returned from taking Karen home, Dad still wasn't back, but neither of them were surprised; he'd said he might be away until Tuesday or Wednesday. Sammy had fallen asleep over a novel on the sofa but he opened his eyes when Dean came in.
"I had a dream about..." Sammy's voice trailed off but Dean sat on the floor next to him and nudged him to go on. "Their car, in the end of that movie..."
"You - you were paying attention to the car?" Dean was surprised since Sammy had never been interested in either the Impala or the pickup Dad got through Bobby a few years back.
"That's why you keep going to this movie, isn't it? You want to see what the trick is."
"What trick?"
"How you can make a car fly."
Dean punched Sammy on the shoulder - not too hard, but enough to get him to sit up. "It's a movie - there's no such thing as a flying car! You've got Chitty Chitty Bang Bang on the brain. Or you're sleep-talking again. Get off the damned sofa and go to bed," he said as he pulled Sammy off the sofa and nudged him towards their room.
But Sammy looked more alert, and kept talking. "There's got to be some combination of magic and science to do it. I was thinking about it all afternoon and I think Dad's dealt with some charms to make things fly, so-"
"No way. It's not that I don't trust you to figure out magic from a book..."
Sammy rolled his eyes. "Dean, I've been reading spells since I was what, ten? If I could find one, you could deal with the trajectory and speed and physics, couldn't you?"
"'m not interested in flying, anyway. Why would we need to go anywhere we can't drive to?"
"Someday, some girl will ask you to take her to Hawaii, and I don't think you'll want to swim it," Sam joked. "Can't hurt anything to try it, can I?"
He could, technically. Sammy could definitely screw up the Impala if he touched the engine - he wasn't even allowed to change the oil anymore, not since he left a rag inside before shutting the hood. But if Bobby supervised, Sammy would at least know that they'd tried everything they could.
Dean couldn't believe he was actually considering this, and not just saying yes in hopes that Sammy would forget all this when he woke in the morning. "I don't see it happening, kid, but yes - if you can get some book off Bobby-"
"Of course!" Sammy exclaimed. "Bobby would know - he'll have something, I'm sure of it."
"Hell, I'm not trusting anything else. Next time we're at Bobby's you can give it a try."
Which they did. Dean had thought Sammy'd forgotten all about this dream - he never mentioned it again, although he was more prone to flipping through Dean and Dad's car magazines that summer and fall.
It wasn't until December when they rolled up to Bobby's junkyard three days after Christmas and didn't leave for a week that Sammy threw himself full-force into the project. He spent most of that week buried under ripped-out magazine articles, ancient Model-T manuals, a physics textbook that looked like it predated rocket science, if not the Wright Brothers, and a codex that Bobby said might just be a copy of one of DaVinci's "lost" notebooks. He even sat in one of the garages with the Impala for hours, reading Latin to it as if the car would react or respond.
Dean knew she wouldn't; she only communicated with him and not in words he could translate to anyone, not even Sammy.
Bobby declared at least a dozen times that it wouldn't work. "If anyone could make a car fly, don't you think I'd be doing it on all those junkers out there?"
Sammy tried to argue that it wouldn't work on something that wasn't in tip-top condition to start with, but both Bobby and John clearly thought that his project was doomed to failure. Dean, on the other hand, was willing enough to help Sammy out and keep him busy and out of Dad's hair while he worked on some box-building project with Bobby.
"We'll need a slope up to test it," Sammy said, handing Dean a stack of blank paper, a freshly sharpened pencil and a ruler. "If you draw some angles, we can compare it to the codex and see if there's one that has power and potential."
"That's not canon, Sammy!" Dean teased. "In Grease the car took off right from a high school football field, and they're not known for having ramps."
Sammy sighed., "It's the principle of the thing, Dean. We need acceleration and the correct angle and I know you know how to do this."
Dean did, actually. He hadn't actually passed Physics - they'd gone through four schools during his junior year - but one of the schools had a unit in engineering, and he'd kept that book with him when they moved, and reading it cover to cover while recuperating from a badly sprained ankle while they were thirty miles from a library and trying to save money on gas.
He took up the pencil and started drawing, and that evening, Sammy added his Dean's sketches to the folder of papers he'd been amassing.
When they had to leave - Dad wanted to chase after some horned thing that was scaring the locals in West Virginia - two days after New Year's, Dean could feel how disappointed Sammy was that the Impala was still on the ground, 24/7.
"I didn't think it would work," he said reassuringly, but all Sammy did was cross his arms and glower as they drove off behind Dad, snowdrifts taller than the car on both sides of the road.
"It was supposed to be finished for your birthday," Sammy said.
"You can get me a new Walkman, dude. I don't need a flying car. Really, we've been fine on the ground for fifteen years, we'll do fine for fifty more."
"No, it's always better to have another option. I copied down a lot of what Bobby had and I'm going to keep working on it."
"No, you won't, and it's okay," Dean replied. "You're starting a new school this week, and I know you. You'll want to spend all the time you have on book reports and research papers and shit like that, so don't worry about this. I'm not sure I want to fly anywhere anyway."
"How would you know? You've never been on a plane," Sammy said, turning his head back to the papers spread out on his lap and the dashboard.
I just know, Dean thought.
As the weeks and months passed, Dean's prediction came true; Sammy spent less time on the Impala project and more on school -things, and Dean started going on brief "research projects" (which were really low-key hunts although but he didn't want to worry Sammy by telling him that) which meant that Sammy couldn't even babble at the Impala anymore. By the summer of 1999, Dean thought Sammy had put the whole thing behind him, and the only time he gave it any thought at all was when they were stuck in insane traffic, like when they were on their way into the Bronx to deal with the Poe-themed murderer.
After their first run-in with Henriksen, though, Dean had a hunch that Sam was trying to recreate his notes experiment from long ago as a just-in-case, and wondered if that wasn't why Sam didn't push too hard about getting rid of the Impala. He knew how distinctive it was, of course he did, and he'd probably be willing to hide it at Bobby's if Sam really insisted, but he never did.
When he Dean climbed in the car after running out of Bela's apartment, he took the rabbit's foot out of his jacket pocket and held it up to the rear-view mirror for a moment. Yes, it would be tacky to hang it up, Dean thought has he looped the string around the mirror, and what if that technically meant he wasn't possessing it any more? Not a worthy risk to take. He had to get back to Sammy, and he had to be quick.
Dean slid it into his jeans pocket, keeping it as close to himself as possible, then pulled the car out from the parking lot - he wasn't messing around with parallel parking in this city again - and turned it onto the ramp that led to the Whitestone Bridge.
There were no cars in front of him, so he floored the gas in hopes of making as good time as he possibly could. And in a way, it wasn't too surprising when the Impala's wheels didn't cling to the road as the ramp flattened into highway, but instead kept tilting up, up, up into the air.
He didn't freeze, he didn't panic and he didn't freak out. He just pushed on the pedal a little harder, turned the steering wheel to point the car west, and as he flew overhead, he never ever knew that as soon as he'd walked out of her apartment, Bela had called the FBI, and Henriksen himself was sitting in a roadblock on the I-80.
Author: heidi8
Genre: Gen
Characters/Pairings: Dean, Impala, Other SPN characters
Spoilers: Generally for all of series through 3.03, and a tiny bit for Neverwhere
Rating: G/PG
Word Count: Approx. 1800
Disclaimer: No copyright infringement intended; fair use only. Not created for profit. Everything recognizable is from Supernatural and owned by Eric Kripke and/or WB/CW, except for the references to Grease.
Thanks to cedarlibrarian for the fantastic and zippy beta! Any remaining errors are mine.
Back in the spring of 1998, they managed to push through three towns in the four months that the revival of Grease was playing in the first- and second-run movie theaters. In each town, at least two girls managed to convince Dean to take her to see it. By the third time, he knew exactly what moves to make during each scene, and impressed more than a few girls with a whispered condemnation of Danny when he tried to feel up Sandy.
"I'd never..." he always said, knowing full well that of course he would, without the "going steady" part. And each girl giggled, and said, "I wouldn't mind if you did."
For his part, he didn't mind the movie as much as he thought he would before that first viewing in March; the actresses were hot and the songs were mostly real rock & roll, and of course, there was the car.
It was big and fast and a mess when it started but those guys loved that car and they made it into an amazing machine.
He could relate, just a bit.
Sammy tagged along on one of his Dean's late-afternoon dates outside Branson, Missouri. Dean bought extra Twizzlers so Sammy wouldn't insist on sitting too near where Dean and Karen were situated. Later that night when Dean had returned from taking Karen home, Dad still wasn't back, but neither of them were surprised; he'd said he might be away until Tuesday or Wednesday. Sammy had fallen asleep over a novel on the sofa but he opened his eyes when Dean came in.
"I had a dream about..." Sammy's voice trailed off but Dean sat on the floor next to him and nudged him to go on. "Their car, in the end of that movie..."
"You - you were paying attention to the car?" Dean was surprised since Sammy had never been interested in either the Impala or the pickup Dad got through Bobby a few years back.
"That's why you keep going to this movie, isn't it? You want to see what the trick is."
"What trick?"
"How you can make a car fly."
Dean punched Sammy on the shoulder - not too hard, but enough to get him to sit up. "It's a movie - there's no such thing as a flying car! You've got Chitty Chitty Bang Bang on the brain. Or you're sleep-talking again. Get off the damned sofa and go to bed," he said as he pulled Sammy off the sofa and nudged him towards their room.
But Sammy looked more alert, and kept talking. "There's got to be some combination of magic and science to do it. I was thinking about it all afternoon and I think Dad's dealt with some charms to make things fly, so-"
"No way. It's not that I don't trust you to figure out magic from a book..."
Sammy rolled his eyes. "Dean, I've been reading spells since I was what, ten? If I could find one, you could deal with the trajectory and speed and physics, couldn't you?"
"'m not interested in flying, anyway. Why would we need to go anywhere we can't drive to?"
"Someday, some girl will ask you to take her to Hawaii, and I don't think you'll want to swim it," Sam joked. "Can't hurt anything to try it, can I?"
He could, technically. Sammy could definitely screw up the Impala if he touched the engine - he wasn't even allowed to change the oil anymore, not since he left a rag inside before shutting the hood. But if Bobby supervised, Sammy would at least know that they'd tried everything they could.
Dean couldn't believe he was actually considering this, and not just saying yes in hopes that Sammy would forget all this when he woke in the morning. "I don't see it happening, kid, but yes - if you can get some book off Bobby-"
"Of course!" Sammy exclaimed. "Bobby would know - he'll have something, I'm sure of it."
"Hell, I'm not trusting anything else. Next time we're at Bobby's you can give it a try."
Which they did. Dean had thought Sammy'd forgotten all about this dream - he never mentioned it again, although he was more prone to flipping through Dean and Dad's car magazines that summer and fall.
It wasn't until December when they rolled up to Bobby's junkyard three days after Christmas and didn't leave for a week that Sammy threw himself full-force into the project. He spent most of that week buried under ripped-out magazine articles, ancient Model-T manuals, a physics textbook that looked like it predated rocket science, if not the Wright Brothers, and a codex that Bobby said might just be a copy of one of DaVinci's "lost" notebooks. He even sat in one of the garages with the Impala for hours, reading Latin to it as if the car would react or respond.
Dean knew she wouldn't; she only communicated with him and not in words he could translate to anyone, not even Sammy.
Bobby declared at least a dozen times that it wouldn't work. "If anyone could make a car fly, don't you think I'd be doing it on all those junkers out there?"
Sammy tried to argue that it wouldn't work on something that wasn't in tip-top condition to start with, but both Bobby and John clearly thought that his project was doomed to failure. Dean, on the other hand, was willing enough to help Sammy out and keep him busy and out of Dad's hair while he worked on some box-building project with Bobby.
"We'll need a slope up to test it," Sammy said, handing Dean a stack of blank paper, a freshly sharpened pencil and a ruler. "If you draw some angles, we can compare it to the codex and see if there's one that has power and potential."
"That's not canon, Sammy!" Dean teased. "In Grease the car took off right from a high school football field, and they're not known for having ramps."
Sammy sighed., "It's the principle of the thing, Dean. We need acceleration and the correct angle and I know you know how to do this."
Dean did, actually. He hadn't actually passed Physics - they'd gone through four schools during his junior year - but one of the schools had a unit in engineering, and he'd kept that book with him when they moved, and reading it cover to cover while recuperating from a badly sprained ankle while they were thirty miles from a library and trying to save money on gas.
He took up the pencil and started drawing, and that evening, Sammy added his Dean's sketches to the folder of papers he'd been amassing.
When they had to leave - Dad wanted to chase after some horned thing that was scaring the locals in West Virginia - two days after New Year's, Dean could feel how disappointed Sammy was that the Impala was still on the ground, 24/7.
"I didn't think it would work," he said reassuringly, but all Sammy did was cross his arms and glower as they drove off behind Dad, snowdrifts taller than the car on both sides of the road.
"It was supposed to be finished for your birthday," Sammy said.
"You can get me a new Walkman, dude. I don't need a flying car. Really, we've been fine on the ground for fifteen years, we'll do fine for fifty more."
"No, it's always better to have another option. I copied down a lot of what Bobby had and I'm going to keep working on it."
"No, you won't, and it's okay," Dean replied. "You're starting a new school this week, and I know you. You'll want to spend all the time you have on book reports and research papers and shit like that, so don't worry about this. I'm not sure I want to fly anywhere anyway."
"How would you know? You've never been on a plane," Sammy said, turning his head back to the papers spread out on his lap and the dashboard.
I just know, Dean thought.
As the weeks and months passed, Dean's prediction came true; Sammy spent less time on the Impala project and more on school -things, and Dean started going on brief "research projects" (which were really low-key hunts although but he didn't want to worry Sammy by telling him that) which meant that Sammy couldn't even babble at the Impala anymore. By the summer of 1999, Dean thought Sammy had put the whole thing behind him, and the only time he gave it any thought at all was when they were stuck in insane traffic, like when they were on their way into the Bronx to deal with the Poe-themed murderer.
After their first run-in with Henriksen, though, Dean had a hunch that Sam was trying to recreate his notes experiment from long ago as a just-in-case, and wondered if that wasn't why Sam didn't push too hard about getting rid of the Impala. He knew how distinctive it was, of course he did, and he'd probably be willing to hide it at Bobby's if Sam really insisted, but he never did.
When he Dean climbed in the car after running out of Bela's apartment, he took the rabbit's foot out of his jacket pocket and held it up to the rear-view mirror for a moment. Yes, it would be tacky to hang it up, Dean thought has he looped the string around the mirror, and what if that technically meant he wasn't possessing it any more? Not a worthy risk to take. He had to get back to Sammy, and he had to be quick.
Dean slid it into his jeans pocket, keeping it as close to himself as possible, then pulled the car out from the parking lot - he wasn't messing around with parallel parking in this city again - and turned it onto the ramp that led to the Whitestone Bridge.
There were no cars in front of him, so he floored the gas in hopes of making as good time as he possibly could. And in a way, it wasn't too surprising when the Impala's wheels didn't cling to the road as the ramp flattened into highway, but instead kept tilting up, up, up into the air.
He didn't freeze, he didn't panic and he didn't freak out. He just pushed on the pedal a little harder, turned the steering wheel to point the car west, and as he flew overhead, he never ever knew that as soon as he'd walked out of her apartment, Bela had called the FBI, and Henriksen himself was sitting in a roadblock on the I-80.