[fanfic] We All Scream (Sam/Trickster, PG-13)
Title: We All Scream
Author: tiptoe39
Pairing: Sam/Trickster
Rating: PG-13 for one blink-and-you’ll-miss-it innuendo
Summary: The Trickster is whetting Sam’s appetite. I imagine this taking place some time between “Tall Tales” and “Mystery Spot,” but you can imagine it wherever you’d like.
Author’s Note: Gift!fic for pandionpandeus. Beta’d by sansdatelimite.
Sam’s first clue was in Chapter 10. Pip was in the public-house, and Joe was introducing himself to a stranger. So far everything was just as Charles Dickens had put it down and Sam had read it a thousand times before.
There was something familiar and congenial about Great Expectations, and whenever Sam passed through a local library, it was one of the books he'd slide off the shelves and flip through, just for a break from the constant drudgery of local legends and death certificates. It was the same today, only Sam was feeling a little bit hungry. There had been an ice cream cart outside the library and his mouth had watered at the plethora of flavors. But work before play, and now that he had the info he needed, he was relaxing with Pip at the Jolly Bargemen.
`I wouldn't wish to be stiff company,' said Joe. `Rum raisin.'
Sam sat up straight.
`Rum raisin,' repeated the stranger. `And will the other gentleman originate a sentiment.'
He ran his hands over his face, wiping his eyes, and blinked at the page.
`Rum raisin,' said Mr Wopsle.
`Three Rum Raisins!' cried the stranger, calling to the landlord. `Waffle cones round!'
That was definitely not classic Dickens. Sam looked up, checked the time, and looked back down at the page.
`I wouldn't wish to be stiff company,' said Joe. `Rum.'
`Rum,' repeated the stranger. `And will the other gentleman originate a sentiment.'
`Rum,' said Mr Wopsle.
`Three Rums!' cried the stranger, calling to the landlord. `Glasses round!'
Ah. That was much better. Sam laughed and ran his fingers through his hair. Clearly the heat and the lack of sleep were getting to him and he was starting to doze. He stopped by the ice cream cart on the way out, and damn, that was one satisfying cone of Rum Raisin he indulged in.
Five states over, a different case, and the same dull drudgery of research. Sam was in the stacks of the university library for six hours until he finally found the yearbook from the 1800s that detailed the story of the unfortunate student’s suicide. Armed with the names and places he needed to vanquish the dorm room ghost, he stopped downstairs and picked up another old favorite, this time Kerouac’s On the Rocky Road.
He put it down again in a hurry.
Another glance at the cover and it was normal. Maybe his brain was just laughing at him. Well, screw Kerouac, he’d pick up Bronte. Dean could laugh all he wanted and call it girly literature, but Sam liked Heathcliff, and Rochester, and just about any of the moody dark heroes that the Bronte sisters put out.
A little solace came at tea-time, in the shape of a double ration of bread--a whole, instead of a half, slice--with the delicious addition of a thin scoop of butter pecan
Sam threw the book across the room. A librarian turned to stare at him, and he ended up stammering an apology and bending over to pick it up. He thumbed nervously to the page in question.
A little solace came at tea-time, in the shape of a double ration of bread--a whole, instead of a half, slice--with the delicious addition of a thin scrape of butter: it was the hebdomadal treat to which we all looked forward from Sabbath to Sabbath.
Oh, thank God. At least Jane was having her usual terrible time at Lowood. A nice cool scoop of butter pecan ice cream was definitely not one of the rigors she was forced to endure according to the story he knew so well. No, that temptation was Sam’s and Sam’s alone. Especially considering there was a tiny ice cream shop with a frilly pink awning winking at him from across the street.
He got out of there before Wuthering Heights leapt off the shelf and started telling him about Heathbarcliff.
He avoided his favorite books for weeks on end after that, but morbid curiosity got the better of him in New Hampshire, and he read only a few lines before deciding that Les Miserables really didn’t have anything to do with the French Vanilla Revolution, and Anna Karenina (yes, more chick literature, whatever) never said anything about Stremov and Liza Merkalova being “the cookies and cream of society.” When a glance into the children’s section in a Michigan library showed him the Swiss Family Baskin-Robbinson, Sam was done.
He stomped outside, blew past a very surprised Dean, and started storming his way down the sidewalk. He didn’t stop walking until he had thrown open the door of an ice cream shop, triggering a cluster of tiny bells to ring, and shouting at the assembled throng of families, “All right, enough! What do you want?”
The whole place quieted down in a hurry. Cherries and whipped cream dived to their deaths from tilting spoons. Sam turned bright red from the heat of about a half-dozen families all focusing their sights on him at once.
“I’m... I was expecting someone,” he explained lamely to the storeful of curious stares.
“He’s here,” said a voice from the furthermost booth, and a hand protruded from behind the wooden partition and beckoned. “Holy crap, kid, but you know how to make a scene.”
Sam grumbled the whole way to the back of the store. Probably scared a couple of pigtail-wearing girls, too, but right now, he was so frustrated... and hungry... that it ceased to matter. His stomach was growling and his tongue could feel the sweet smooth glide of ice cream toward the back of his throat. As pissed as he was, his fist was already curling in advance of the inevitable punch he’d try and land to the face of the one guy who had to be behind all of this.
But one look at the Trickster’s gargantuan sundae and all sense left Sam’s head.
The proffered spoon wasn’t in the air two seconds before Sam was grabbing it and digging in. The tastes of praline and chocolate and strawberry melded on his tongue; his brain slowed down to a frozen crawl of happiness, and he leaned back against the booth wall, slumping down in the seat and making an obscene noise.
“See?” the Trickster said, taking a spoonful of marshmallow-laden goodness and licking across the top of it with a practiced tongue. “Sometimes you just gotta give in to your baser instincts.”
“Wmmm thmmm,” Sam started, and then realized his lips were numb and his mouth was still half-full. He swallowed hard, bit back a noise of bliss as he felt the cold plummeting toward his stomach, and licked his lips before trying again. “Was that your moral-of-the-story? That I should just give in, stop trying to fight myself?” He couldn’t help but turn over the spoon to lick the back of it. “Just let my inner freak out?”
The Trickster scoffed, his head tilting to the side and seeming to squeeze his lips together into a tight smile. “You think I’m that invested?” he said. “Please. I was feeling like ice cream, you were sitting there in the library being such a good little scholar... I was just inspired.”
“I don’t believe you.” Sam was doing his best not to eye the overhang of fudge that was about to make a brown spot on the table. “You’ve got something up your sleeve.”
“It’s not up my sleeve that I’ve got it,” the Trickster muttered, looking at him sidelong, but by then Sam had moved his hand beneath the falling fudge and caught it on one fingertip. He looked up with a hmm? noise as he brought his index finger to his mouth, sucking the chocolate away, and the Trickster shifted uncomfortably in his seat but said nothing.
“Look,” Sam said, “You’re not killing anyone, which is an improvement. So... whatever it is you’re trying to say, I’m open to hearing it.”
“Oh, I see. Rewarding me for good behavior. Like your company’s such a prize.” The Trickster took a huge bite of cookie dough. Sam’s mouth watered.
“You’re the one who decided to infect my reading list.” Oh God, he really wanted that chunk of chocolate brownie sitting in the middle of that scoop.
“ After the sundae is gone, boyo. Then we’ll talk.”
The Trickster lifted his spoon and brandished it like a rapier. Sam took up arms against him. One clanking clash of silver, and then no words were spoken for a good fifteen minutes.
The chocolate brownie piece melted like heaven onto his tongue. He and the Trickster went for the same scoop of whipped cream and growled at each other like dogs over a bone. The Trickster’s funny, turned-up nose got a spot of chocolate on it that Sam laughed at loudly for a good minute before it got sadly wiped away. They mopped up the souplike melted remains of the dish. Sam burped. The Trickster applauded. Sated, bottom-heavy, like two sacks of wet cement, they sank down in their chairs. Sam’s legs sprawled out into the aisle. The Trickster’s feet pressed against the small of his back.
“God,” Sam said, his voice very nearly breaking. A curl of breathy laughter found its way to his lips. “I think... I needed that.”
“It’s not always dark shadows and monster blood,” the Trickster said, nodding sagely. “That’s your lesson.”
Sam turned his head to look at him. “Really? That’s it, you want me to stop and smell the roses?”
The Trickster leaned forward. “You used to smile a lot more,” he observed. “You used to make fun of Dean, and laugh at him being a dumb fuck, and have a good time with him. Now it’s all about how tortured you are. It gets old. Enjoy the good times while you can.”
“Have you--” Sam squinted at him, feeling vaguely drunk from all the sugar and fat. “Have you been stalking me?”
“Pfft!” The Trickster gave a dismissive hand wave. “I like you, kid. I like both of you. But you seriously need to learn to have a good time.”
“I know how to have a good time.”
“Then have it. Because when it’s over, it’s all over.”
His face spoke suddenly of all the dark shadows and monster blood he was telling Sam to ignore. Sam felt his heart freeze, and it had nothing to do with the mountain of ice cream filling up his gut.
The Trickster huffed. “Come on, Sam,” he said, leaning forward. “Smile.”
“That’s all you want?” Sam squinted at him. “This whole thing was just to get me to smile?”
Instead of giving an answer, the Trickster vanished.
Another moment and he was back, this time sitting on the Formica tabletop, his knees folded over the edge. Sam jumped, and in that instant the Trickster’s hand took hold of his chin, pulling him forward. The shout of surprise was barely on Sam’s lips when the Trickster’s mouth melted it clean away.
It was a soft, impossibly tender kiss, tasting of every flavor that had tortured Sam over the past weeks. The Trickster’s tongue was warm, diving into Sam’s ice-cream-frozen mouth, thawing out the dulled nerves. Lips nibbled at his as hungrily as Sam’s had sucked up the remains of half-melted mocha and neapolitan swirl a few minutes ago. Sam made an involuntary sound and was surprised to hear the quiet desire in his own voice. He leaned forward and his eyes closed.
Nothing. He opened his eyes. The Trickster was gone.
Sam’s hand rose to his face. He was somewhere on the cusp between oversensitive and numb, and his lips and tongue were throbbing.
But he was smiling.
Author: tiptoe39
Pairing: Sam/Trickster
Rating: PG-13 for one blink-and-you’ll-miss-it innuendo
Summary: The Trickster is whetting Sam’s appetite. I imagine this taking place some time between “Tall Tales” and “Mystery Spot,” but you can imagine it wherever you’d like.
Author’s Note: Gift!fic for pandionpandeus. Beta’d by sansdatelimite.
Sam’s first clue was in Chapter 10. Pip was in the public-house, and Joe was introducing himself to a stranger. So far everything was just as Charles Dickens had put it down and Sam had read it a thousand times before.
There was something familiar and congenial about Great Expectations, and whenever Sam passed through a local library, it was one of the books he'd slide off the shelves and flip through, just for a break from the constant drudgery of local legends and death certificates. It was the same today, only Sam was feeling a little bit hungry. There had been an ice cream cart outside the library and his mouth had watered at the plethora of flavors. But work before play, and now that he had the info he needed, he was relaxing with Pip at the Jolly Bargemen.
`I wouldn't wish to be stiff company,' said Joe. `Rum raisin.'
Sam sat up straight.
`Rum raisin,' repeated the stranger. `And will the other gentleman originate a sentiment.'
He ran his hands over his face, wiping his eyes, and blinked at the page.
`Rum raisin,' said Mr Wopsle.
`Three Rum Raisins!' cried the stranger, calling to the landlord. `Waffle cones round!'
That was definitely not classic Dickens. Sam looked up, checked the time, and looked back down at the page.
`I wouldn't wish to be stiff company,' said Joe. `Rum.'
`Rum,' repeated the stranger. `And will the other gentleman originate a sentiment.'
`Rum,' said Mr Wopsle.
`Three Rums!' cried the stranger, calling to the landlord. `Glasses round!'
Ah. That was much better. Sam laughed and ran his fingers through his hair. Clearly the heat and the lack of sleep were getting to him and he was starting to doze. He stopped by the ice cream cart on the way out, and damn, that was one satisfying cone of Rum Raisin he indulged in.
Five states over, a different case, and the same dull drudgery of research. Sam was in the stacks of the university library for six hours until he finally found the yearbook from the 1800s that detailed the story of the unfortunate student’s suicide. Armed with the names and places he needed to vanquish the dorm room ghost, he stopped downstairs and picked up another old favorite, this time Kerouac’s On the Rocky Road.
He put it down again in a hurry.
Another glance at the cover and it was normal. Maybe his brain was just laughing at him. Well, screw Kerouac, he’d pick up Bronte. Dean could laugh all he wanted and call it girly literature, but Sam liked Heathcliff, and Rochester, and just about any of the moody dark heroes that the Bronte sisters put out.
A little solace came at tea-time, in the shape of a double ration of bread--a whole, instead of a half, slice--with the delicious addition of a thin scoop of butter pecan
Sam threw the book across the room. A librarian turned to stare at him, and he ended up stammering an apology and bending over to pick it up. He thumbed nervously to the page in question.
A little solace came at tea-time, in the shape of a double ration of bread--a whole, instead of a half, slice--with the delicious addition of a thin scrape of butter: it was the hebdomadal treat to which we all looked forward from Sabbath to Sabbath.
Oh, thank God. At least Jane was having her usual terrible time at Lowood. A nice cool scoop of butter pecan ice cream was definitely not one of the rigors she was forced to endure according to the story he knew so well. No, that temptation was Sam’s and Sam’s alone. Especially considering there was a tiny ice cream shop with a frilly pink awning winking at him from across the street.
He got out of there before Wuthering Heights leapt off the shelf and started telling him about Heathbarcliff.
He avoided his favorite books for weeks on end after that, but morbid curiosity got the better of him in New Hampshire, and he read only a few lines before deciding that Les Miserables really didn’t have anything to do with the French Vanilla Revolution, and Anna Karenina (yes, more chick literature, whatever) never said anything about Stremov and Liza Merkalova being “the cookies and cream of society.” When a glance into the children’s section in a Michigan library showed him the Swiss Family Baskin-Robbinson, Sam was done.
He stomped outside, blew past a very surprised Dean, and started storming his way down the sidewalk. He didn’t stop walking until he had thrown open the door of an ice cream shop, triggering a cluster of tiny bells to ring, and shouting at the assembled throng of families, “All right, enough! What do you want?”
The whole place quieted down in a hurry. Cherries and whipped cream dived to their deaths from tilting spoons. Sam turned bright red from the heat of about a half-dozen families all focusing their sights on him at once.
“I’m... I was expecting someone,” he explained lamely to the storeful of curious stares.
“He’s here,” said a voice from the furthermost booth, and a hand protruded from behind the wooden partition and beckoned. “Holy crap, kid, but you know how to make a scene.”
Sam grumbled the whole way to the back of the store. Probably scared a couple of pigtail-wearing girls, too, but right now, he was so frustrated... and hungry... that it ceased to matter. His stomach was growling and his tongue could feel the sweet smooth glide of ice cream toward the back of his throat. As pissed as he was, his fist was already curling in advance of the inevitable punch he’d try and land to the face of the one guy who had to be behind all of this.
But one look at the Trickster’s gargantuan sundae and all sense left Sam’s head.
The proffered spoon wasn’t in the air two seconds before Sam was grabbing it and digging in. The tastes of praline and chocolate and strawberry melded on his tongue; his brain slowed down to a frozen crawl of happiness, and he leaned back against the booth wall, slumping down in the seat and making an obscene noise.
“See?” the Trickster said, taking a spoonful of marshmallow-laden goodness and licking across the top of it with a practiced tongue. “Sometimes you just gotta give in to your baser instincts.”
“Wmmm thmmm,” Sam started, and then realized his lips were numb and his mouth was still half-full. He swallowed hard, bit back a noise of bliss as he felt the cold plummeting toward his stomach, and licked his lips before trying again. “Was that your moral-of-the-story? That I should just give in, stop trying to fight myself?” He couldn’t help but turn over the spoon to lick the back of it. “Just let my inner freak out?”
The Trickster scoffed, his head tilting to the side and seeming to squeeze his lips together into a tight smile. “You think I’m that invested?” he said. “Please. I was feeling like ice cream, you were sitting there in the library being such a good little scholar... I was just inspired.”
“I don’t believe you.” Sam was doing his best not to eye the overhang of fudge that was about to make a brown spot on the table. “You’ve got something up your sleeve.”
“It’s not up my sleeve that I’ve got it,” the Trickster muttered, looking at him sidelong, but by then Sam had moved his hand beneath the falling fudge and caught it on one fingertip. He looked up with a hmm? noise as he brought his index finger to his mouth, sucking the chocolate away, and the Trickster shifted uncomfortably in his seat but said nothing.
“Look,” Sam said, “You’re not killing anyone, which is an improvement. So... whatever it is you’re trying to say, I’m open to hearing it.”
“Oh, I see. Rewarding me for good behavior. Like your company’s such a prize.” The Trickster took a huge bite of cookie dough. Sam’s mouth watered.
“You’re the one who decided to infect my reading list.” Oh God, he really wanted that chunk of chocolate brownie sitting in the middle of that scoop.
“ After the sundae is gone, boyo. Then we’ll talk.”
The Trickster lifted his spoon and brandished it like a rapier. Sam took up arms against him. One clanking clash of silver, and then no words were spoken for a good fifteen minutes.
The chocolate brownie piece melted like heaven onto his tongue. He and the Trickster went for the same scoop of whipped cream and growled at each other like dogs over a bone. The Trickster’s funny, turned-up nose got a spot of chocolate on it that Sam laughed at loudly for a good minute before it got sadly wiped away. They mopped up the souplike melted remains of the dish. Sam burped. The Trickster applauded. Sated, bottom-heavy, like two sacks of wet cement, they sank down in their chairs. Sam’s legs sprawled out into the aisle. The Trickster’s feet pressed against the small of his back.
“God,” Sam said, his voice very nearly breaking. A curl of breathy laughter found its way to his lips. “I think... I needed that.”
“It’s not always dark shadows and monster blood,” the Trickster said, nodding sagely. “That’s your lesson.”
Sam turned his head to look at him. “Really? That’s it, you want me to stop and smell the roses?”
The Trickster leaned forward. “You used to smile a lot more,” he observed. “You used to make fun of Dean, and laugh at him being a dumb fuck, and have a good time with him. Now it’s all about how tortured you are. It gets old. Enjoy the good times while you can.”
“Have you--” Sam squinted at him, feeling vaguely drunk from all the sugar and fat. “Have you been stalking me?”
“Pfft!” The Trickster gave a dismissive hand wave. “I like you, kid. I like both of you. But you seriously need to learn to have a good time.”
“I know how to have a good time.”
“Then have it. Because when it’s over, it’s all over.”
His face spoke suddenly of all the dark shadows and monster blood he was telling Sam to ignore. Sam felt his heart freeze, and it had nothing to do with the mountain of ice cream filling up his gut.
The Trickster huffed. “Come on, Sam,” he said, leaning forward. “Smile.”
“That’s all you want?” Sam squinted at him. “This whole thing was just to get me to smile?”
Instead of giving an answer, the Trickster vanished.
Another moment and he was back, this time sitting on the Formica tabletop, his knees folded over the edge. Sam jumped, and in that instant the Trickster’s hand took hold of his chin, pulling him forward. The shout of surprise was barely on Sam’s lips when the Trickster’s mouth melted it clean away.
It was a soft, impossibly tender kiss, tasting of every flavor that had tortured Sam over the past weeks. The Trickster’s tongue was warm, diving into Sam’s ice-cream-frozen mouth, thawing out the dulled nerves. Lips nibbled at his as hungrily as Sam’s had sucked up the remains of half-melted mocha and neapolitan swirl a few minutes ago. Sam made an involuntary sound and was surprised to hear the quiet desire in his own voice. He leaned forward and his eyes closed.
Nothing. He opened his eyes. The Trickster was gone.
Sam’s hand rose to his face. He was somewhere on the cusp between oversensitive and numb, and his lips and tongue were throbbing.
But he was smiling.