Fanfiction: Of Unconventional Dealbreaking (Supernatural)
Happy birthday, wanttobeatree! The plan was just that I'd write a tiny drabblish thing and leave it in a comment to you with birthday wishes, but it became a little longer than I was expecting. Whoops. I hope you enjoy it, anyway.
(Also whoops-worthy: it's fairly obvious that I forgot entirely about the what-happens-if-you-try-to-get-out-of-the-deal clause. I suppose this is slightly AU, then. Erm.)
Title: Of Unconventional Dealbreaking
Fandom: Supernatural
Rating: R for language.
Word Count: 2,200ish
Summary: Dean, much to his annoyance, gets turned into a unicorn.
Warnings: Spoilers for 'All Hell Breaks Loose Part Two'.
Disclaimer: These characters do not belong to me.
(EDIT: saaski_moql has, to my infinite joy, recorded a podfic! It's MP3 format, 9.5 MB, a little over ten minutes long, hosted on megaupload. You can talk to her about it over here. (And cybel has turned the file into a podbook, M4B format, 5 MB, which you can find here.))
Okay, here are the facts.
Demonic contracts have an expiry date. You manage to hold off the hellhounds for six months after your debt comes due, you’re free. Not that anyone ever lasts more than a month when the debt collectors start knocking, but the dates are there.
Hellhounds track by scent. Not the scent of the body - switching with someone else won’t help you - but the scent of the soul. There’s only one creature that can mask it well enough to fool the hounds of Hell.
Tricksters aren’t generally that into helping humans when they’re asked, but if the ‘help’ is entertaining enough they might be persuaded to make an exception.
By this point, Sam’s willing to try anything.
-
Honestly, Dean thinks he’d rather have gone to Hell.
I can’t even drive! he yells. Telepathically. Because apparently unicorns are fucking telepathic.
“Come on,” Sam says, with a big stupid grin like this is the best thing ever. “You’re alive. And you’ve got magical healing powers. And you’ll be able to change back in half a year.”
Dean charges at his brother with the full intention of goring him through, but the sun dazzles him - it’s a cloudy day, but somehow there’s a break in the clouds that keeps moving around just to make sure he’s always in the middle of a freaking sunbeam - and he misses. Flowers bloom where his hooves touch the asphalt.
Dean hates the world and everything in it.
-
Dean’s very clear about two things: they’re not attaching a horse trailer to the Impala, because it’s seriously undignified, and they’re not driving anything that’s not the Impala, because there’s no way he’s cheating on her when she’s not smashed up and out of action. That’s not going to make things easy for Sam, because he’s refusing to let Dean out of his sight and so he can’t drive the car while Dean makes his own way to their destination, but the man got him turned into a freaking unicorn, so Dean’s not feeling especially amicable towards him at the moment.
And then Sam looks him up and down and says, “I guess I’m going to have to ride you, then.”
Fucking no. Dean would rather attach twenty trailers to the Impala, and he tells Sam so. Because okay, horse trailers aren’t dignified, but they’re a hell of a lot more dignified than having Sam on his back. Besides, Dean’s pretty sure his fragile unicorn spine is going to snap if there’s any riding going on.
Trailer, Dean says. Seriously, if those are my options, hook it up to my girl. It’ll hurt, but not as much as having you on my back will, you freakish giant.
“I’m not sure she’ll be able to pull it, Dean,” Sam says.
Fuck you, she can do anything, Dean says, but in his hour of need his Impala fails him. No matter how much he encouragingly nuzzles her, she can’t drag a unicorn across America.
He doesn’t blame her. He blames Sam. Sam is clearly trying to tear him and his beloved car apart with his stupid unicorn plans.
I fucking hate you, Sam, he says, bending his knees so his brother can mount him.
-
It turns out that unicorns can run pretty fast, and Dean can cover incredibly long distances without getting tired when he’s in this body. As far as he can tell, that’s the only good thing about this entire situation. He’s still leaving a trail of woodland flowers everywhere he goes - they fade away after about five minutes, but it’s still not good news if anyone decides to track them - and the sun’s apparently moved permanently into his eyes, and the rainbow sparkles he sheds every time he moves his tail or his ears or pretty much any part of his body are really getting on his nerves. He takes comfort in the thought that Sam’s probably had his dick chafed completely off by now.
They’ve left the Impala with Bobby, who is Dean’s new favourite person for actually managing to hold back his laughter at his predicament, and now they’re on their way to investigate a series of disappearances in a small town about a billion miles away. There are plenty of closer jobs, but the town they’re headed for is surrounded by forest, and Dean really, really wishes they could be picking their destinations based on anything but how easy it is to hide a unicorn there.
The stupid magical sunbeam finally goes away when the sun falls below the horizon, but Dean gives off a soft, silvery glow in the dark, so there’s not much to celebrate. He’s never forgiving Sam for this.
-
“Hey,” Sam says, after another couple of hours. “Can we stop soon? Get some sleep or something?”
No, Dean says, running faster.
Sam makes indignant noises for a moment, and then, after a brief hesitation, he wraps his arms around Dean’s neck and rests his face against his mane. Dean checks his pace, largely out of surprise, and then he continues more slowly and as smoothly as he can - and unicorns can move very smoothly when they want to - because, hey, if Sam’s decided to go to sleep on his back he doesn’t want him to fall off.
And then he remembers that he hates Sam and speeds up again.
“You’re the worst unicorn ever,” Sam murmurs sleepily into Dean’s ear, tightening his grip.
-
Dean does stop eventually, because unicorns need sleep too. He’s still not entirely clear on how to lie down now that he’s a quadruped - don’t horses sleep standing up? are unicorns the same? - but eventually he manages to bend his legs under himself in a way that’s more or less comfortable. Sam falls asleep leaning against his flank. Dean’s still glowing, and if anything else is crossing this part of the countryside tonight they’re going to be really freaking obvious, but right now they’re both too tired to care.
-
Dean discovers a new problem with being a unicorn the next day. They’re nearing the town when suddenly some sort of switch flicks on in his brain and he wheels around and the next thing he knows he’s straining to get to a young girl picking flowers in the wood and Sam’s restraining him.
“Dean,” Sam’s muttering in his ear, dragging him out of sight, “what the hell, Dean, you’re a unicorn, you can’t just go letting people see you...”
Dean stares at him. But I want to go to her, he says. He doesn’t know why, but he has the overpowering need to be near that little girl.
“Dean, what - ” Sam begins, and then his eyes widen. “Oh, no.”
What? Dean demands. Man, it’s bad enough that Sam had to turn him into a unicorn, now he won’t let him indulge his random urges to say hi to kids?
“Unicorns,” Sam says. “Dean, they’re attracted to virgins.”
Okay, that’s just sick. Why the hell are unicorns supposed to be some kind of symbol of purity or whatever?
Great, Dean says, after a moment. I’ll just need to keep you nearby, and your rays of virginity will drown out everyone else’s.
Sam glares. “I don’t know why I’m even surprised; it’s not like you don’t go blindly chasing after virgins anyway.”
-
You can go ahead and start looking into this thing, Dean says, when night starts to fall. I’ll wait out here.
“No,” Sam says. He’s sitting on a tree stump, and he hasn’t taken his eyes off Dean for two hours. “Not tonight.”
Dean’s been kind of hoping Sam might have forgotten, but he knows that was never going to happen. This is the night his time runs out, and if they’re wrong about the hellhounds - it’s not like anyone’s actually tried this before - he doesn’t want his brother to see him get torn apart.
“Can’t you turn the glow off or something?” Sam asks, gesturing uneasily. “You’re kind of... visible.”
Hey, it’s your fault I’m a fucking unicorn, Dean mutters, because it’s true, but he starts testing his unicorn muscles just in case one of them is the Turn Stupid Silvery Glow Off muscle. When he tries to wrinkle his forehead, a rainbow suddenly leaps from his horn and streaks off across the darkening sky.
He doesn’t know how it’s possible, but being a unicorn just got even stupider.
“Um,” Sam says, wide-eyed, as the rainbow begins to fade away. “Right. We probably shouldn’t do that.”
In the end, Dean lies down and Sam sprawls on top of him, trying to shield at least some of the glow, and they wait for midnight together. Sam keeps checking his phone, but Dean doesn’t ask what the time is. He’s not sure he wants to know.
Eventually, though, he can’t stand the suspense. What time is it?
“Twenty past midnight,” Sam says, sounding more relieved than Dean has ever heard him.
Dean suddenly hates his brother a little less.
-
They stay awake for another couple of hours, just in case the hellhounds got stuck in traffic or something, but eventually they fall asleep. The next morning, Sam, grinning like a crazy person, announces that he’s going to go into the town and start asking questions. Dean’s going to be stuck in the forest, because a sparkly unicorn cantering through the streets is probably going to draw a little too much attention.
If Dean needs him, Sam explains, he just has to shoot a rainbow across the sky, like a gay Bat-Signal. Dean immediately resolves that he’s never going to need Sam’s help again.
-
It gets boring pretty quickly when all you can do is wait in the forest and be a unicorn. Dean walks around until he’s spelled out ‘SAM’S A MORON’ in flowers, but after that he’s got no idea what to do.
Maybe, he thinks, he should go and find some virgins. He doesn’t have to let them see him; he just wants to be near them. That’s okay, right?
His virgin sense is pointing a little further into the wood, so he heads in that direction. There are a couple of teenage girls sitting in a small clearing, chatting happily. Dean would like to be able to think they’ve just been having hot lesbian sex, but his incredible virgin-detecting abilities are kind of ruining that. He really hates being a unicorn.
Dean stays for a while, hiding behind the trees, feeling warm and content. He manages to resist the urge to go over and lay his head in one of the girls’ laps, because that would be really creepy and he’s not supposed to get seen, but just being close to them makes him happy. He probably seriously ruined some unicorns’ days when he met the Davis twins.
And then something intrudes on his virgin-induced bliss, something suddenly feels wrong, and he automatically sets his ears back against his skull. He’s angry, he’s furious and he doesn’t know why, and then he catches sight of something lurking between the trees on the other side of the clearing, something like a lion, something like -
It’s a manticore, he realises. It’s a fucking manticore, and it’s going to eat his virgins.
Manticores move fast, and if he goes for the charge he’s not sure he’ll be able to reach it before it shoots its spines at him. He doesn’t know whether he can actually do anything to stop it - it’s not like he can hold a gun - but he’s got to try something before it kills the girls, and so he leaps into the clearing and lowers his head and fires a rainbow.
The manticore seems a little stunned; it looks more like a what the hell, someone’s attacking me with a rainbow? kind of stunned than the rainbow actually doing any damage, but it’s enough. Dean gallops across the clearing and gores it through. The manticore twists and howls and burns like a demon that’s been splashed with holy water, and Dean doesn’t pull his horn out until it’s collapsed.
He paws it with a hoof to make sure it’s dead, then turns and trots back towards the girls, pleased with himself - maybe he can get a pat on the nose or something, that’d be awesome - but the blonde grabs the brunette’s arm and they run away through the trees. Dean’s offended for a moment before he remembers that his horn is covered in manticore blood.
-
“I think it’s probably something corporeal,” Sam says, showing up a little after nightfall. “I talked to a guy who told me he’d been seeing strange footprints in the woods. He said they were like a lion’s, so we could be dealing with a sphinx or - ”
It’s a manticore, Dean interrupts. I’ve killed it.
There is a pause.
“Oh,” Sam says. “You couldn’t have called me back?”
Can unicorns sense evil? I kind of knew it was there before I saw it. That could be a good thing.
Sam grins. “So being a unicorn’s not so bad, right?”
Screw you, Dean says. Let’s get back to Bobby’s.
“Okay,” Sam says. “Let’s find some moonlight first. I want to try something.”
-
As if the situation weren’t stupid enough already, it turns out that Dean actually can ride on moonbeams.
Fucking unicorns.
(Also whoops-worthy: it's fairly obvious that I forgot entirely about the what-happens-if-you-try-to-get-out-of-the-deal clause. I suppose this is slightly AU, then. Erm.)
Title: Of Unconventional Dealbreaking
Fandom: Supernatural
Rating: R for language.
Word Count: 2,200ish
Summary: Dean, much to his annoyance, gets turned into a unicorn.
Warnings: Spoilers for 'All Hell Breaks Loose Part Two'.
Disclaimer: These characters do not belong to me.
(EDIT: saaski_moql has, to my infinite joy, recorded a podfic! It's MP3 format, 9.5 MB, a little over ten minutes long, hosted on megaupload. You can talk to her about it over here. (And cybel has turned the file into a podbook, M4B format, 5 MB, which you can find here.))
Okay, here are the facts.
Demonic contracts have an expiry date. You manage to hold off the hellhounds for six months after your debt comes due, you’re free. Not that anyone ever lasts more than a month when the debt collectors start knocking, but the dates are there.
Hellhounds track by scent. Not the scent of the body - switching with someone else won’t help you - but the scent of the soul. There’s only one creature that can mask it well enough to fool the hounds of Hell.
Tricksters aren’t generally that into helping humans when they’re asked, but if the ‘help’ is entertaining enough they might be persuaded to make an exception.
By this point, Sam’s willing to try anything.
-
Honestly, Dean thinks he’d rather have gone to Hell.
I can’t even drive! he yells. Telepathically. Because apparently unicorns are fucking telepathic.
“Come on,” Sam says, with a big stupid grin like this is the best thing ever. “You’re alive. And you’ve got magical healing powers. And you’ll be able to change back in half a year.”
Dean charges at his brother with the full intention of goring him through, but the sun dazzles him - it’s a cloudy day, but somehow there’s a break in the clouds that keeps moving around just to make sure he’s always in the middle of a freaking sunbeam - and he misses. Flowers bloom where his hooves touch the asphalt.
Dean hates the world and everything in it.
-
Dean’s very clear about two things: they’re not attaching a horse trailer to the Impala, because it’s seriously undignified, and they’re not driving anything that’s not the Impala, because there’s no way he’s cheating on her when she’s not smashed up and out of action. That’s not going to make things easy for Sam, because he’s refusing to let Dean out of his sight and so he can’t drive the car while Dean makes his own way to their destination, but the man got him turned into a freaking unicorn, so Dean’s not feeling especially amicable towards him at the moment.
And then Sam looks him up and down and says, “I guess I’m going to have to ride you, then.”
Fucking no. Dean would rather attach twenty trailers to the Impala, and he tells Sam so. Because okay, horse trailers aren’t dignified, but they’re a hell of a lot more dignified than having Sam on his back. Besides, Dean’s pretty sure his fragile unicorn spine is going to snap if there’s any riding going on.
Trailer, Dean says. Seriously, if those are my options, hook it up to my girl. It’ll hurt, but not as much as having you on my back will, you freakish giant.
“I’m not sure she’ll be able to pull it, Dean,” Sam says.
Fuck you, she can do anything, Dean says, but in his hour of need his Impala fails him. No matter how much he encouragingly nuzzles her, she can’t drag a unicorn across America.
He doesn’t blame her. He blames Sam. Sam is clearly trying to tear him and his beloved car apart with his stupid unicorn plans.
I fucking hate you, Sam, he says, bending his knees so his brother can mount him.
-
It turns out that unicorns can run pretty fast, and Dean can cover incredibly long distances without getting tired when he’s in this body. As far as he can tell, that’s the only good thing about this entire situation. He’s still leaving a trail of woodland flowers everywhere he goes - they fade away after about five minutes, but it’s still not good news if anyone decides to track them - and the sun’s apparently moved permanently into his eyes, and the rainbow sparkles he sheds every time he moves his tail or his ears or pretty much any part of his body are really getting on his nerves. He takes comfort in the thought that Sam’s probably had his dick chafed completely off by now.
They’ve left the Impala with Bobby, who is Dean’s new favourite person for actually managing to hold back his laughter at his predicament, and now they’re on their way to investigate a series of disappearances in a small town about a billion miles away. There are plenty of closer jobs, but the town they’re headed for is surrounded by forest, and Dean really, really wishes they could be picking their destinations based on anything but how easy it is to hide a unicorn there.
The stupid magical sunbeam finally goes away when the sun falls below the horizon, but Dean gives off a soft, silvery glow in the dark, so there’s not much to celebrate. He’s never forgiving Sam for this.
-
“Hey,” Sam says, after another couple of hours. “Can we stop soon? Get some sleep or something?”
No, Dean says, running faster.
Sam makes indignant noises for a moment, and then, after a brief hesitation, he wraps his arms around Dean’s neck and rests his face against his mane. Dean checks his pace, largely out of surprise, and then he continues more slowly and as smoothly as he can - and unicorns can move very smoothly when they want to - because, hey, if Sam’s decided to go to sleep on his back he doesn’t want him to fall off.
And then he remembers that he hates Sam and speeds up again.
“You’re the worst unicorn ever,” Sam murmurs sleepily into Dean’s ear, tightening his grip.
-
Dean does stop eventually, because unicorns need sleep too. He’s still not entirely clear on how to lie down now that he’s a quadruped - don’t horses sleep standing up? are unicorns the same? - but eventually he manages to bend his legs under himself in a way that’s more or less comfortable. Sam falls asleep leaning against his flank. Dean’s still glowing, and if anything else is crossing this part of the countryside tonight they’re going to be really freaking obvious, but right now they’re both too tired to care.
-
Dean discovers a new problem with being a unicorn the next day. They’re nearing the town when suddenly some sort of switch flicks on in his brain and he wheels around and the next thing he knows he’s straining to get to a young girl picking flowers in the wood and Sam’s restraining him.
“Dean,” Sam’s muttering in his ear, dragging him out of sight, “what the hell, Dean, you’re a unicorn, you can’t just go letting people see you...”
Dean stares at him. But I want to go to her, he says. He doesn’t know why, but he has the overpowering need to be near that little girl.
“Dean, what - ” Sam begins, and then his eyes widen. “Oh, no.”
What? Dean demands. Man, it’s bad enough that Sam had to turn him into a unicorn, now he won’t let him indulge his random urges to say hi to kids?
“Unicorns,” Sam says. “Dean, they’re attracted to virgins.”
Okay, that’s just sick. Why the hell are unicorns supposed to be some kind of symbol of purity or whatever?
Great, Dean says, after a moment. I’ll just need to keep you nearby, and your rays of virginity will drown out everyone else’s.
Sam glares. “I don’t know why I’m even surprised; it’s not like you don’t go blindly chasing after virgins anyway.”
-
You can go ahead and start looking into this thing, Dean says, when night starts to fall. I’ll wait out here.
“No,” Sam says. He’s sitting on a tree stump, and he hasn’t taken his eyes off Dean for two hours. “Not tonight.”
Dean’s been kind of hoping Sam might have forgotten, but he knows that was never going to happen. This is the night his time runs out, and if they’re wrong about the hellhounds - it’s not like anyone’s actually tried this before - he doesn’t want his brother to see him get torn apart.
“Can’t you turn the glow off or something?” Sam asks, gesturing uneasily. “You’re kind of... visible.”
Hey, it’s your fault I’m a fucking unicorn, Dean mutters, because it’s true, but he starts testing his unicorn muscles just in case one of them is the Turn Stupid Silvery Glow Off muscle. When he tries to wrinkle his forehead, a rainbow suddenly leaps from his horn and streaks off across the darkening sky.
He doesn’t know how it’s possible, but being a unicorn just got even stupider.
“Um,” Sam says, wide-eyed, as the rainbow begins to fade away. “Right. We probably shouldn’t do that.”
In the end, Dean lies down and Sam sprawls on top of him, trying to shield at least some of the glow, and they wait for midnight together. Sam keeps checking his phone, but Dean doesn’t ask what the time is. He’s not sure he wants to know.
Eventually, though, he can’t stand the suspense. What time is it?
“Twenty past midnight,” Sam says, sounding more relieved than Dean has ever heard him.
Dean suddenly hates his brother a little less.
-
They stay awake for another couple of hours, just in case the hellhounds got stuck in traffic or something, but eventually they fall asleep. The next morning, Sam, grinning like a crazy person, announces that he’s going to go into the town and start asking questions. Dean’s going to be stuck in the forest, because a sparkly unicorn cantering through the streets is probably going to draw a little too much attention.
If Dean needs him, Sam explains, he just has to shoot a rainbow across the sky, like a gay Bat-Signal. Dean immediately resolves that he’s never going to need Sam’s help again.
-
It gets boring pretty quickly when all you can do is wait in the forest and be a unicorn. Dean walks around until he’s spelled out ‘SAM’S A MORON’ in flowers, but after that he’s got no idea what to do.
Maybe, he thinks, he should go and find some virgins. He doesn’t have to let them see him; he just wants to be near them. That’s okay, right?
His virgin sense is pointing a little further into the wood, so he heads in that direction. There are a couple of teenage girls sitting in a small clearing, chatting happily. Dean would like to be able to think they’ve just been having hot lesbian sex, but his incredible virgin-detecting abilities are kind of ruining that. He really hates being a unicorn.
Dean stays for a while, hiding behind the trees, feeling warm and content. He manages to resist the urge to go over and lay his head in one of the girls’ laps, because that would be really creepy and he’s not supposed to get seen, but just being close to them makes him happy. He probably seriously ruined some unicorns’ days when he met the Davis twins.
And then something intrudes on his virgin-induced bliss, something suddenly feels wrong, and he automatically sets his ears back against his skull. He’s angry, he’s furious and he doesn’t know why, and then he catches sight of something lurking between the trees on the other side of the clearing, something like a lion, something like -
It’s a manticore, he realises. It’s a fucking manticore, and it’s going to eat his virgins.
Manticores move fast, and if he goes for the charge he’s not sure he’ll be able to reach it before it shoots its spines at him. He doesn’t know whether he can actually do anything to stop it - it’s not like he can hold a gun - but he’s got to try something before it kills the girls, and so he leaps into the clearing and lowers his head and fires a rainbow.
The manticore seems a little stunned; it looks more like a what the hell, someone’s attacking me with a rainbow? kind of stunned than the rainbow actually doing any damage, but it’s enough. Dean gallops across the clearing and gores it through. The manticore twists and howls and burns like a demon that’s been splashed with holy water, and Dean doesn’t pull his horn out until it’s collapsed.
He paws it with a hoof to make sure it’s dead, then turns and trots back towards the girls, pleased with himself - maybe he can get a pat on the nose or something, that’d be awesome - but the blonde grabs the brunette’s arm and they run away through the trees. Dean’s offended for a moment before he remembers that his horn is covered in manticore blood.
-
“I think it’s probably something corporeal,” Sam says, showing up a little after nightfall. “I talked to a guy who told me he’d been seeing strange footprints in the woods. He said they were like a lion’s, so we could be dealing with a sphinx or - ”
It’s a manticore, Dean interrupts. I’ve killed it.
There is a pause.
“Oh,” Sam says. “You couldn’t have called me back?”
Can unicorns sense evil? I kind of knew it was there before I saw it. That could be a good thing.
Sam grins. “So being a unicorn’s not so bad, right?”
Screw you, Dean says. Let’s get back to Bobby’s.
“Okay,” Sam says. “Let’s find some moonlight first. I want to try something.”
-
As if the situation weren’t stupid enough already, it turns out that Dean actually can ride on moonbeams.
Fucking unicorns.