SPN Fic: Pretty in Pink (Sam/Dean, Adult)
Title: Pretty in Pink
Pairing: Sam/Dean
Rating: Adult
Summary: The Impala gets possessed by the spirit of a thirteen-year-old girl.
Disclaimer: Not mine, never happened.
Notes: For causeways, who came up with the idea and enabled when the rabid plot jackalope bit me. Hopefully this looks something like you imagined. :D Inspired by this picture.
ETA: Podfic by fishpatrol here!
There are some things you just don’t mess with. Dean and Sam have crossed a lot of lines during various prank wars over the years, but there’s always been an understanding between them that there are some things that are just off-limits. Baldness and superglue and insults in permanent marker on someone’s forehead are all fair in Winchester war, and even the usual no-hits-below-the-belt rule goes out the window, making itching powder in sensitive places totally acceptable. But even in an all-bets-off no-rules anything-goes epic prank battle, it’s still understood that there are some things you just don’t fuck with, no matter the potential for revenge.
And chief among those things, as Sam well knows, is the Impala.
Okay, so Sam has never really understood Dean’s affection for the car (he calls it an unhealthy obsession with an inanimate object, in fact), but Dean’s taken pains to make it absolutely translucently clear that if Sam purposely damages his baby in any way, equal damage will be taken out of his hide, and although Sam will mutter about mental illness and delusional love affairs with hunks of metal, he seems to get it. He might make fun of the car or complain about the lack of legroom or drive her in front of the occasional speeding semi driven by a possessed trucker, but he doesn’t mean it and he’s always sorry afterwards.
Which is why it takes Dean so long to comprehend exactly what’s happened. It’s the ass crack of dawn and he’s barely awake, shuffling out to the car in the semidarkness so they can get on the road before the local law enforcement hears about a grave desecration two towns back, and Dean pauses for a yawn of epic proportions in front of the car before fishing out his keys.
Except it’s not his car. Dean shrugs and starts walking again, figuring he forgot where he parked it. They got in late last night, both of them sweaty and dirty and too tired from wasting the spirit to get more than a few miles out of town, and Dean hadn’t exactly been paying a lot of attention to the parking lot in the dark.
But after a circuit around the small lot, Dean starts to realize there’s a problem, because none of the other cars parked there are his. Which means his car is gone, which is not just a problem, it’s a really fucking big one.
Dean goes through every curse word he knows and throws in a few in Latin for good measure before deciding just what he’s going to do to the fucker who messed with his car. Torture sounds good, maybe with a side of ass-kicking, although if the car is harmed in any way, Dean’s going to skip straight to the killing dead part.
He heads back to the room to tell Sam, but halfway there something catches his eye. It’s the car that he thought was his. He can see now why he made that mistake - it’s an old Chevy, Impala even, but some goddamned idiot has given it a paint job that should be illegal. It’s criminal to do something like that to a classic car, and Dean shakes his head as he goes by. But then his undercaffeinated brain catches up with his eyes, and he does a double take at the license plate. Because it’s familiar. As in, he’s seen it before. On a car. On his car.
This time, Dean yells every swear word he’s ever heard and makes a few up on the spot. Then he trashes all his careful plans for revenge and settles for immediate ass-kicking, because there’s only one explanation as to how this tragedy on wheels came to be sitting where Dean’s baby should be, and he doesn’t have the time or patience for things requiring any kind of finesse.
Sam’s toweling his hair dry when Dean busts into the room, but his head jerks up and his eyes go wide when Dean says, “I am going to kick your ass from here to the end of civilization, and then I’m going to sell you to cannibals!”
It’s not exactly the best threat Dean’s ever come up with, but it’s all his brainpower not currently focused on rage can produce, so he goes with it. Sam doesn’t seem to think it’s lacking in intimidation, anyway, if the way he’s backing away from Dean and putting any available furniture between them is any indication.
Dean follows him, jumping over beds and kicking chairs out of the way, yelling, “I’m going to let them chop you up and boil you in a stew! I’m going to help them bake you into a giant Sam soufflé!”
“What the hell - “ Sam dives under a table. “Dean, what the fuck is wrong with you?”
“You are, you car-wrecking bastard!” Dean swipes at Sam, who gets a foot into his chest and keeps him at bay with one long leg.
“I didn’t do anything to your - shit, ow,” Sam hisses as Dean twists his foot. He pushes Dean away and makes a break for the bathroom, sliding under the other sides of the table, but before he can get to his feet Dean dodges the table and tackles him. They roll on the floor for a second, Dean using every dirty trick he knows to get the upper hand, but Sam blocks them all, using his greater weight and reach to get Dean pinned on his stomach, hands behind his back.
“Look, I don’t know what the hell is going on,” Sam pants above him, “But the attacking part of the morning is definitely over.” He leans over, using one of his freakishly long arms to reach Dean’s duffle, and pulls out a length of rope. Dean twists and jerks and does his best to unseat him, but Sam just pushes down harder and knots the rope tightly around Dean’s wrists. When he’s sure Dean’s arms are immobilized, Sam gets off him, and Dean hears the motel room door open.
His arms are useless, but Sam apparently wasn’t worried about his legs, so Dean rolls over and pushes up onto his feet, following Sam out the door.
Sam’s only a few yards away, staring at the Impala. “Holy shit,” he breathes. “Dean, your car - it’s…”
“My car is fucking pink!” Dean shouts. “Pink, Sam, with girly designs painted on it! I don’t know how the fuck you did it, but you’d better undo it in the next thirty seconds, or the attacking is going to start again!”
Sam looks up from where he’s running a hand along the hood. “What? Dean, I didn’t do this.”
“The hell you didn’t. Who else could have?”
“I don’t know,” Sam says. “But I would never - I’d let you kick my ass if I did that.”
“Sounds like a plan,” Dean says. It’s going to be a bitch to run and kick at the same time, with his hands out of commission, but he’s goddamn well going to try when it’s his car’s honor at stake.
But then a door opens behind them and a groggy couple steps out of their room, and when Dean looks around he sees that a good three-quarters of the motel’s occupants are doing the same, drawn out of bed by the shouting. Apparently he and Sam managed to find the one motel in the entire U.S. where people are actually concerned by domestic disputes at odd hours of the morning. Great.
No one says anything, though, and some people actually avert their eyes. That’s when Dean realizes several things: first, his hands are tied behind his back. Second, Sam wasn’t totally dressed from his shower when Dean jumped him, and he’s barefoot and shirtless. He’s also sporting a split lip from their tussle. Third, they’re both standing in front of a giant, extremely pink car.
Judging by the blush spreading across Sam’s cheeks and down his exposed chest, he’s figured it out too. “Uh, sorry,” he says to the crowd, grabbing Dean’s arm and propelling him back to their room.
When the door is closed behind them, Dean jerks away.
Sam sighs. “Dean, I swear I had nothing to do with this.”
“Right. The car probably just decided to embrace her inner thirteen-year-old girl and gave herself a makeover,” Dean says sarcastically.
“I’m pretty sure inanimate objects don’t have an inner child,” Sam says. “You do know the car isn’t actually a person, right?”
Dean just glares.
“Look, I don’t know what happened,” Sam says hastily. “But if you’d stop trying to kill me, then maybe I can figure out how to fix it.”
Dean doesn’t believe him for a second, but he grudgingly agrees not to resort to physical violence anymore, so Sam unties him.
There’s a lot of revenge to be gotten that doesn’t involve physical violence, however, so as soon as Sam leaves the room (to investigate the Impala in detail, he says) Dean goes after the one thing he knows Sam considers off-limits.
Ten minutes later, he’s sitting on the bed trying to smother a proud smirk. Sam may do most of their Googling and hacking, but just because Dean hates modern cars and music doesn’t mean he’s as clueless about the technology as Sam thinks.
When Sam comes back a minute later, he goes straight for the laptop.
“Find out anything?” Dean asks.
“No, not really,” Sam says absently, starting up the computer. “Nothing that would explain - hey. What the - Dean.”
Dean raises his eyebrows innocently. “What?”
“My computer is suddenly password-protected,” Sam says.
“Huh,” Dean says. “I wonder how that could have happened.”
“This isn’t funny, Dean,” Sam grits. “Tell me the password.”
“No, I think you’re going to have to do a little guessing,” Dean says. “Like, until my car is no longer pink.”
“I didn’t do anything to your stupid car!” Sam says, exasperation and frustration mingling in his voice.
“Then I didn’t do anything to your laptop,” Dean replies serenely. “I’d start with something like ‘samsucks’, though.”
* * *
Sam refuses to talk to him for the rest of the morning, but that’s fine with Dean. He watches bad TV for a few hours and reads the newspaper, but he can’t really concentrate, and when Sam stomps off to do research at the library, he ends up staring morosely out the window at the pink monstrosity. He refuses to call it his car, even though underneath the paint it’s still his baby. It just doesn’t feel right calling something that ugly by a title that’s usually said with fondness.
With Sam gone it’s finally safe to leave the room, and Dean decides to walk to a nearby fast food joint to get lunch. On his way back he stops at the thing again, circling it to take in all the damage. It doesn’t seem possible, but up close the car is actually worse than Dean thought. It’s definitely a professional paint job, and Dean has no idea how Sam managed that overnight, but that’s also going to be pretty much the only way to reverse it. Worse still, the damage extends to the interior. Dean can’t figure out how Sam swapped the normal black leather seats for cherry red, or how he screwed the radio so it only plays synthetic teen pop, and he’s at a complete loss to explain how (or why) Sam glued rhinestones to the steering wheel and hung a sparkly feather boa from the rearview mirror and spread glitter over every available surface. And is that a fucking My Little Pony jabbing him in the ass? Jesus, his brother is sick. And also possibly a thirteen-year-old girl in disguise.
Dean gets out of the car and shudders, glitter flying everywhere. He thinks about cleaning some of the weapons to settle his nerves, but when he opens the trunk and finds fuzzy purple hairbands adorning the shotguns and a bow on a machete, he slams it closed and gets away as fast as he can.
* * *
Sam comes back a few hours later empty-handed, and goes back to hacking the laptop. Dean makes it a point to wander by every half hour and swipe the lists of passwords Sam’s already tried. Some of them are good attempts - ‘zeppelinrules’ and ‘jameshetfield’ and the like - some are desperate - just because ‘funkytown’ is a code word doesn’t make it a password - and some are just downright funny - Sam has written down endless variations of ‘samsucks,’ and some of them insults Dean hasn’t ever even considered using. He’s kind of impressed.
Hunger seems to conquer Sam’s pissy mood, though, and when Dean wakes up from a nap he suggests they go out to dinner. He perks up even more as they walk through town looking for a restaurant, and he’s positively gleeful as they’re eating. Dean puts it down to the giant salad Sam eats, and laments for the millionth time having a freak brother with an unnatural fondness for vegetables. Avocados are all fine and good in guacamole, but that’s with salty, fattening chips to go with them. In slices on lettuce they just look disgustingly healthy, but Sam eats them like they’re candy.
Sam’s not the only weird thing at dinner, though, because Dean catches random people checking him out all night. Admiring glances aren’t exactly new to him, and neither are disapproving ones, but the whole place staring is…unusual. Their waitress looks at him like he’s grown a second head, and a passing old guy gives him a disapproving glare. When the occupants of the table next to them start whispering and giggling, Dean decides the whole town is either nuts or starving for attractive males.
It’s not until he gets back to the motel room and goes into the bathroom that he realizes the problem isn’t the town, it’s him. More specifically, the fact that he’s wearing lipstick.
“Sam!”
Sam is snickering already, waving a tube Dean recognizes as his chapstick. He reaches into his pocket and pulls out what he thought was his chapstick, but what is clearly one of those tinted lip balms for women, which he’s been unknowingly applying all day.
“Swapped it when you took a shower,” Sam says gleefully. “You look as girly as the car.”
Dean manfully smothers the urge to tie him up and stuff him in the trunk of said car, settling instead for a punch to the arm. “Yeah, well, you were the one sitting with a lipstick-wearing guy,” he points out. “And the entire motel already thinks we’re BDSM boyfriends, so good job there.”
Sam just shrugs. “It’s kind of true.”
Dean opens his mouth to protest, because that’s totally ridiculous. Okay, so they both get tied up a lot, but that’s a hazard of the job. And Dean has punched Sam and Sam shot him twice, the bastard, but that’s not sexual. Well, except for when they’re sparring and it devolves into wrestling and then fucking. Okay, so maybe it is kind of true.
* * *
Dean’s not just going to take the lipstick thing lying down, though, so the next morning he drags Sam out for coffee and picks the line with the sternest-looking cashier. When she gives them the total, Dean raises his eyebrows at Sam, who sighs and digs out his wallet. When he opens it, however, a cascade of rainbow-colored condoms pours out onto the counter. Sam hastily gathers them up, face turning as red as one of the bright wrappers, but when he reaches into the money fold, a lacy thong comes out with the cash. Sam stutters and blushes harder, shoving it into his jacket pocket.
The cashier is staring at Sam like he’s a walking STD, and she takes the bill with only the tips of her fingers, careful not to touch his hand.
Dean goes in for the kill. “Dude, I thought you said you were at your cousin’s house last night.”
Then he pretends to catch on, eyes widening. “Whoa. Keeping it in the family, huh?” To the cashier he says, “Can’t blame him, his cousin’s really hot.”
She looks like she’s itching to smack both their hands with a ruler. Or call the police, it’s kind of hard to tell.
Sam grabs both the coffees and the back of Dean’s jacket and pushes him toward the door. When they get outside, Sam pauses only to dump the coffees in the nearest trash can before he’s hauling Dean down the street again.
“What the - that was my coffee, Sam!” Dean protests, trying to pull away.
“Tough luck,” Sam says shortly. “You can get more later. But right now, you and I are going to settle this thing, once and for all.”
That sounds vaguely ominous, and the way Sam is dragging him down the sidewalk (at top Sam-speed, which is like jogging for anyone not fifteen feet tall) isn’t really encouraging either.
“Paper-rock-scissors?” Dean says hopefully.
Sam just gives him a dark look and tightens his grip on Dean’s jacket.
“I’ve got a deck of cards in the trunk of the car,” Dean suggests. “Crazy Eights? Go Fish? War?”
“If you don’t shut up, I’m going to put you in the trunk of the car,” Sam growls, unlocking the door one-handed and shoving Dean inside their room.
“Hey, hey,” Dean says nervously, hands up in front of him. “Come on, Sam, it was just a prank. A joke.”
Sam’s glare could melt steel. “I didn’t think it was very funny.”
“Well, it’s not your fault you were born without a sense of humor,” Dean says, “Although it is unfortunate that you also seem to have missed out on good looks and intelligence.” Sam’s glare darkens, and Dean takes a step back. “But hey, you got a double helping of height, that’s awesome.”
“Dean,” Sam says slowly. “Stop. Talking.”
But Dean can’t help it. He’s really good at manly stoicism and silence when it comes to emotional moments, but when his life is being threatened it’s like all his internal filters go AWOL and his mouth runs itself off. Which is sometimes helpful, if he’s up against someone stupid and easily provoked, but Sam is neither of those things, so when Dean says, “Or what?” he doesn’t hesitate, just shoves.
Dean’s backward fall is stopped by a bed, thank god, but Sam is on top of him before he can move, pinning his arms above his head and sitting astride his thighs.
“Dean,” he growls. “I did not do anything to your car.” Before Dean can protest, he goes on, “And I’m sick of all your stupid pranks.”
Dean shifts a little, surreptitiously checking Sam’s hold on him. “I thought I made that clear - the pranks stop when you fix my car.”
Sam doesn’t move an inch, hands like iron locked around Dean’s wrists. “Or I’ll just make you stop.”
Dean licks his lips. “And how are you going to do that?”
Sam leans down until his nose is centimeters from Dean’s, weight on his elbows, then drags his hips across Dean’s, and from there it’s pretty clear what his plan is, because apparently being really pissed at Dean puts Sam in the mood. Dean thinks about resisting for a millisecond, but it’s not even serious consideration. It’s been two days of fighting, after all, which translates to two days without sex, and at this point Dean doesn’t even care if Sam’s trying to prove a point. Hell, Sam can use sex to prove the existence of extraterrestrials if he wants, so long as he keeps rubbing against Dean like that.
Dean arches up into him, letting Sam read his assent in the way he lets his legs fall apart. Sam settles between them, huffing a breath against Dean’s neck in reply, then nips along his jaw, sharp little bites that are a mix of pain and pleasure and have Dean breathing fast in no time. When Sam catches the skin over his Adam’s apple between his teeth, Dean ducks his chin a little, angling for a kiss, but Sam just smirks and avoids his mouth, sliding his teeth not-so-gently over the pulse beating rapidly in Dean’s neck.
Okay, then. Sam in charge, copy that.
Sam keeps teasing him for a minute, leaning in and then changing direction, sliding away to nip at the corner of Dean’s mouth or tug at an earlobe, but finally he shifts, letting go of Dean’s wrists with one hand and working his jeans open with the other. Only when he’s got Dean’s cock in his hand, stroking roughly, does he let Dean kiss him, and even then Sam’s in control, mouth hard and punishing against Dean’s.
When he pulls away Dean leans up after him, but Sam just laughs and sits up, pulling Dean with him. He’s all hands, yanking Dean up onto his feet and turning him around, and before Dean can even figure out what’s happening, Sam’s got him pushed up against the wall, manhandled into place, and Sam’s slamming his hands flat against the plaster alongside his head. Dean obeys the unspoken command without thought, not moving an inch, and it really shouldn’t be turning him on that his baby brother can shove him around like this, but his hips are already pushing back against Sam, where it’s pretty clear that Sam gets off on the manhandling stuff too.
Speaking of which, Sam seems intent on the getting off, and only spares a second to yank down both their jeans and shorts, not making a move toward their shirts or jackets, before asking breathlessly, “Where’s the - “
“Duffel,” Dean pants.
Sam disappears for a second, then he’s back with slick fingers and Dean is hissing, “Jesus,” into the wall and wondering if he should hide those handcuffs he keeps in the trunk in case Sam gets any more ideas. Or maybe leave them out in plain sight and give him ideas.
He loses his entire train of thought a second later, though, and with Sam hitting that spot on every slide, it’s not likely he’s going to find coherence anytime soon. Normally Sam’s the one who wants to do things slow, likes it face-to-face with lots of foreplay, but this morning he’s going at it like they’ve got ten minutes left to live, barely pausing between sliding his fingers out and sliding his cock in, only a breath for adjustment before he’s moving, fast and hard, teeth sinking into Dean’s neck.
Dean starts to slide his hand down the wall to help himself along, but Sam plants his over it. “No,” he growls. “Not until you believe that I didn’t fuck with your car.”
Dean moans with frustration, and Sam replies with a thrust that pushes him up onto his toes. “Believe me yet?”
“Sam,” Dean pants, face mushed into the extremely ugly wallpaper, “I appreciate your dick, but it doesn’t have magical mind-changing powers.”
“Gonna make you appreciate it,” Sam promises, and then he’s back to an aggressive rhythm of deep thrusts, and there’s no more talking.
It feels like an eternity and no time at all goes by, and then Sam’s breathing hitches against the back of his neck, and Dean pulls his hand free to wrap around himself. It only takes a few jerks before he’s coming in a blinding flash, Sam’s hand clutching at his hip hard enough to bruise, hips stuttering as orgasm overtakes him.
They stay up against the wall for a while, just breathing, then Sam pulls back and throws away the condom before flopping down on the bed.
Dean surveys the damage to the wall and his shirts, then shrugs, hitching up his jeans, and joins Sam. He stretches a little, then sighs in satisfaction. “I should get you mad at me more often.”
Sam groans. “Please don’t.”
“You’re the one who messed with my car,” Dean points out. “And everybody knows that misbehavior is a classic form of attention-seeking.” He grins and elbows Sam. “You were totally asking for it.”
Sam looks murderous, even loose-limbed and fucked out, and Dean laughs and rolls off the bed, ducking the half-hearted swipe. He strips his shirts off and heads for the bathroom to clean himself up.
He’s only in there five minutes tops before Sam’s hammering on the door, and Dean looks up from examining a bite-mark on his neck to see Sam, half-dressed, clutching a section of the newspaper he got while they were out for coffee.
“I figured it out!” he says, waving the paper wildly. “I know what happened to your car!”
“So do I,” Dean says. “Some asshole painted it pink. Are you finally confessing?”
“No,” Sam says exasperatedly. “I mean, I figured out why the car is pink.” He points to an headline on the page, which reads “Police Dumbfounded over Cemetery Damage - Two Graves Desecrated, No Discernable Motive.”
“That’s annoying alliteration,” Dean says. Then, “Wait. Two graves?”
“‘The grave of Gregory Van Winkle, who died two years ago in an industrial accident, was completely excavated, according to police, and the deceased’s remains were destroyed,’” Sam reads aloud. “‘The vandals also left tire tracks across the grave of Hilarie Kramer, who was killed last year in a car accident.’” Sam lowers the paper. “And was also thirteen years old when she died.”
When Dean doesn’t reply, he says, “Don’t you get it? We must have driven over her grave without noticing, and pissed off her spirit!”
“And she what, decided to possess our car?” Dean asks skeptically. “She couldn’t come up with a better plan for revenge?”
Sam shrugs. “Well, we have those anti-possession charms…maybe the car was the only thing she could get hold of.”
Dean fixes him with a sharp stare. “Unless this whole thing is an elaborate plan to throw suspicion off yourself.”
If looks could maim, Dean has a feeling he’d be pretty bloody at this point, so he says hastily, “But there’s one way to know, right?”
Sam bitches the whole way out to the car, more of his usual crap about Dean’s obsession with the car and some shit about Dean not trusting him, so when EMF meter goes crazy the second it gets within five feet of the car, Dean has to admit it wasn’t Sam and throw in an apology as well.
“You owe me so much, man,” Sam says. “Like, laundry for a year and the recommended daily servings of fruits and vegetables and foot massages whenever I want them, much.”
At Dean’s look, he says, “What?”
Dean shakes his head. “Foot massages? You have no imagination, Sam. Also, you’re a woman.”
“Whatever,” Sam says. “What are we going to do about the car?”
“That’s easy,” Dean says. “Burn the girl’s bones. Shouldn’t take more than an hour.”
“That would be easy,” Sam says, looking at the article again. “But not possible, because she was cremated.”
“What the fuck? Why does she have a grave, then?”
“Her ashes are buried there.”
Dean curses. “How the hell can we waste a spirit with no remains?”
“She was obviously hanging around the cemetery before we got there,” Sam points out. “Maybe we can get her to back to haunting her headstone. Make her want to leave somehow.”
It’s as good an idea as any. “Well, what do thirteen-year-old girls hate?” He looks at Sam. “You were a pretty girly thirteen-year-old. Any insight?”
“Do I need to remind you how much you appreciate my dick?” Sam asks.
Dean raises his eyebrows suggestively.
“Dean! Not now!”
“Okay, okay,” Dean says. “So, we have no idea what thirteen-year-old girls hate. Maybe we could find something she likes more than the car, to lure her spirit out.”
“And hopefully convince her to stay in the cemetery and stay quiet,” Sam agrees. He’s silent for a moment, surveying the car, then snaps his fingers. “I’ve got a plan.”
“Excellent,” Dean says.
* * *
Except not, because Dean’s pretty sure that Sam made this plan up just to get back at Dean for the condom-and-thong prank. It’s about the most humiliating thing he’s ever had to do, and that’s saying something, considering that in order to do it he had to drive that monstrosity masquerading as his car. It would be hard to find something Dean hates more than driving a car that looks like the twisted lovechild of Valentine’s Day and the entire fleet of Carebears, but Sam, devious bastard that he is, succeeded.
The store is ridiculously small and crammed wall-to-wall with what looks like every pastel, fuzzy, and sparkly object ever made, along with a dozen teenaged girls. Dean’s clearly not the usual type of clientele, and he feels too big, too tall, and way too male as he tries to navigate around bins and shelves and stands, brushing up against feather boas and snagging his leather jacket on earrings. Fucking Claire’s, and fucking Sam, making him come in this place and actually buy things.
Dean has no idea what a thirteen-year-old girl might like, so he just grabs the first few things he finds and pays as fast as possible. Sam’s smirking as Dean comes out of the mall with an armful of girly crap, but Sam’s also leaning against a car that even Barbie wouldn’t be caught dead in, so Dean figures they’re even.
He climbs into the Barbiemobile again, dumping the supplies into Sam’s lap, and takes the back roads to the graveyard they disturbed two days ago. They’d normally wait until dark to do something like this, especially when the police are clearly aware of the incident, but since there’s no actual illegal activity on the schedule, daylight seems more appropriate.
They drive the car straight through the gates of the cemetery and park as close to Hilarie’s headstone as possible, though they’re careful to avoid so much as bending a blade of grass on any other graves as they get out. Normally Dean might feel bad about a kid this young dying, but after what Hilarie’s done to his car (and what Sam’s done to him in retaliation for Dean’s pranks) Dean isn’t exactly in a sympathetic mood. Especially not when he sees the “sleeping angel” inscription on the headstone, because that is just too supremely ironic.
Sam hands him the Claire’s bag, and Dean kneels down to stick a tiara, fuzzy pen, some freaky oversized doll, headband in the soft ground around grave. He drapes a sparkly scarf and the feather boa over the headstone itself, then tops it all off with a canister of glitter. They wait for a minute, silent except for a faint breeze, but nothing seems to be happening. The car is still pink and hideous, Sam still thinks this is funny, and Dean is really running out of patience.
He gets up from the grave, yanks open the passenger door to the car, and gets to the point. “Okay, Hilarie, I’m sure you’ve been having the time of your life - or death, or spirithood, or whatever - but the fun’s over now.”
As if to mock him, the radio starts up, playing some stupid teen pop crap, and the headlights flick on.
“Very funny,” Dean says, gritting his teeth. “Look, you’ve had your fun. You possessed my car and completely girlified it and nearly gave me a heart attack, so congratulations. But I’d really like my car back to the way it was now, if you wouldn’t mind.”
The radio only gets louder, high voices like the screech of nails on a chalkboard. Dean grits his teeth. “Okay, fuck nice. This is my car, bitch, and quite frankly, your idea of décor? Sucks. If I wanted to drive the most pansy-assed car in the world, I would have bought myself a pink Cadillac and named it Maryanne. But I didn’t, because I like this car the way it was. So you’d better take all your girly shit and your pink paint and all your fucking glitter and get the fuck out of my fucking car before I - before I call your parents!”
It’s a completely lame threat, but apparently Hilarie hasn’t been dead long enough for the thought of disappointing her parents to lose potency. The radio warbles and dies, and the headlights dim down to nothing. A wind comes up, and with a whoosh what seems like a giant pink cloud gathers around the car, then rushes toward Hilarie’s gravestone.
Dean just stares for a second, taking in his no-longer-pink car and the feather boa gently ruffling in the breeze.
“I think you just made the spirit of a little girl cry,” Sam observes.
But Dean doesn’t care, because his baby is back. Back in black. And not even Sam muttering about mental illness when he throws himself across the hood in thanksgiving can ruin that.
When Dean’s done welcoming his car back and making sure she wasn’t harmed by her makeover, he turns to Sam and says, “I love Coldplay.”
Sam looks alarmed. “What? Dean, are you okay?”
“It’s the password to your computer,” Dean says. “‘ilovecoldplay.’”
Sam stares for a minute, then shakes his head. “You are seriously unhinged.”
“Told you you’d never guess,” Dean says gleefully. “So. Truce?”
“Yeah,” Sam says. “Can we please get out of here now?”
“Aw, what’s the matter?” Dean asks. “You didn’t enjoy your stay?”
“This entire county thinks I’m some kind of horny pervert who likes to ‘keep it in the family,’” Sam says.
“And is into bondage and men in lipstick,” Dean adds helpfully.
“Yeah, thanks a lot,” Sam says.
“What? It’s kind of true. I saw the way you kept checking out my mouth when I had that lipstick on, dude.”
“Dean, get in the car.”
“And you’re the one who tied me up. And you’re the one who was keeping it in the family when you jumped me in the motel.”
“Get. In. The. Car.”
“Or what?” Dean wiggles his eyebrows suggestively.
Sam looks like he might paint the Impala pink for real, which is not something Dean even wants to joke about, so he gets in and starts up his extremely manly car, puts in some extremely manly cock rock, and guns it out of there.
Pairing: Sam/Dean
Rating: Adult
Summary: The Impala gets possessed by the spirit of a thirteen-year-old girl.
Disclaimer: Not mine, never happened.
Notes: For causeways, who came up with the idea and enabled when the rabid plot jackalope bit me. Hopefully this looks something like you imagined. :D Inspired by this picture.
ETA: Podfic by fishpatrol here!
There are some things you just don’t mess with. Dean and Sam have crossed a lot of lines during various prank wars over the years, but there’s always been an understanding between them that there are some things that are just off-limits. Baldness and superglue and insults in permanent marker on someone’s forehead are all fair in Winchester war, and even the usual no-hits-below-the-belt rule goes out the window, making itching powder in sensitive places totally acceptable. But even in an all-bets-off no-rules anything-goes epic prank battle, it’s still understood that there are some things you just don’t fuck with, no matter the potential for revenge.
And chief among those things, as Sam well knows, is the Impala.
Okay, so Sam has never really understood Dean’s affection for the car (he calls it an unhealthy obsession with an inanimate object, in fact), but Dean’s taken pains to make it absolutely translucently clear that if Sam purposely damages his baby in any way, equal damage will be taken out of his hide, and although Sam will mutter about mental illness and delusional love affairs with hunks of metal, he seems to get it. He might make fun of the car or complain about the lack of legroom or drive her in front of the occasional speeding semi driven by a possessed trucker, but he doesn’t mean it and he’s always sorry afterwards.
Which is why it takes Dean so long to comprehend exactly what’s happened. It’s the ass crack of dawn and he’s barely awake, shuffling out to the car in the semidarkness so they can get on the road before the local law enforcement hears about a grave desecration two towns back, and Dean pauses for a yawn of epic proportions in front of the car before fishing out his keys.
Except it’s not his car. Dean shrugs and starts walking again, figuring he forgot where he parked it. They got in late last night, both of them sweaty and dirty and too tired from wasting the spirit to get more than a few miles out of town, and Dean hadn’t exactly been paying a lot of attention to the parking lot in the dark.
But after a circuit around the small lot, Dean starts to realize there’s a problem, because none of the other cars parked there are his. Which means his car is gone, which is not just a problem, it’s a really fucking big one.
Dean goes through every curse word he knows and throws in a few in Latin for good measure before deciding just what he’s going to do to the fucker who messed with his car. Torture sounds good, maybe with a side of ass-kicking, although if the car is harmed in any way, Dean’s going to skip straight to the killing dead part.
He heads back to the room to tell Sam, but halfway there something catches his eye. It’s the car that he thought was his. He can see now why he made that mistake - it’s an old Chevy, Impala even, but some goddamned idiot has given it a paint job that should be illegal. It’s criminal to do something like that to a classic car, and Dean shakes his head as he goes by. But then his undercaffeinated brain catches up with his eyes, and he does a double take at the license plate. Because it’s familiar. As in, he’s seen it before. On a car. On his car.
This time, Dean yells every swear word he’s ever heard and makes a few up on the spot. Then he trashes all his careful plans for revenge and settles for immediate ass-kicking, because there’s only one explanation as to how this tragedy on wheels came to be sitting where Dean’s baby should be, and he doesn’t have the time or patience for things requiring any kind of finesse.
Sam’s toweling his hair dry when Dean busts into the room, but his head jerks up and his eyes go wide when Dean says, “I am going to kick your ass from here to the end of civilization, and then I’m going to sell you to cannibals!”
It’s not exactly the best threat Dean’s ever come up with, but it’s all his brainpower not currently focused on rage can produce, so he goes with it. Sam doesn’t seem to think it’s lacking in intimidation, anyway, if the way he’s backing away from Dean and putting any available furniture between them is any indication.
Dean follows him, jumping over beds and kicking chairs out of the way, yelling, “I’m going to let them chop you up and boil you in a stew! I’m going to help them bake you into a giant Sam soufflé!”
“What the hell - “ Sam dives under a table. “Dean, what the fuck is wrong with you?”
“You are, you car-wrecking bastard!” Dean swipes at Sam, who gets a foot into his chest and keeps him at bay with one long leg.
“I didn’t do anything to your - shit, ow,” Sam hisses as Dean twists his foot. He pushes Dean away and makes a break for the bathroom, sliding under the other sides of the table, but before he can get to his feet Dean dodges the table and tackles him. They roll on the floor for a second, Dean using every dirty trick he knows to get the upper hand, but Sam blocks them all, using his greater weight and reach to get Dean pinned on his stomach, hands behind his back.
“Look, I don’t know what the hell is going on,” Sam pants above him, “But the attacking part of the morning is definitely over.” He leans over, using one of his freakishly long arms to reach Dean’s duffle, and pulls out a length of rope. Dean twists and jerks and does his best to unseat him, but Sam just pushes down harder and knots the rope tightly around Dean’s wrists. When he’s sure Dean’s arms are immobilized, Sam gets off him, and Dean hears the motel room door open.
His arms are useless, but Sam apparently wasn’t worried about his legs, so Dean rolls over and pushes up onto his feet, following Sam out the door.
Sam’s only a few yards away, staring at the Impala. “Holy shit,” he breathes. “Dean, your car - it’s…”
“My car is fucking pink!” Dean shouts. “Pink, Sam, with girly designs painted on it! I don’t know how the fuck you did it, but you’d better undo it in the next thirty seconds, or the attacking is going to start again!”
Sam looks up from where he’s running a hand along the hood. “What? Dean, I didn’t do this.”
“The hell you didn’t. Who else could have?”
“I don’t know,” Sam says. “But I would never - I’d let you kick my ass if I did that.”
“Sounds like a plan,” Dean says. It’s going to be a bitch to run and kick at the same time, with his hands out of commission, but he’s goddamn well going to try when it’s his car’s honor at stake.
But then a door opens behind them and a groggy couple steps out of their room, and when Dean looks around he sees that a good three-quarters of the motel’s occupants are doing the same, drawn out of bed by the shouting. Apparently he and Sam managed to find the one motel in the entire U.S. where people are actually concerned by domestic disputes at odd hours of the morning. Great.
No one says anything, though, and some people actually avert their eyes. That’s when Dean realizes several things: first, his hands are tied behind his back. Second, Sam wasn’t totally dressed from his shower when Dean jumped him, and he’s barefoot and shirtless. He’s also sporting a split lip from their tussle. Third, they’re both standing in front of a giant, extremely pink car.
Judging by the blush spreading across Sam’s cheeks and down his exposed chest, he’s figured it out too. “Uh, sorry,” he says to the crowd, grabbing Dean’s arm and propelling him back to their room.
When the door is closed behind them, Dean jerks away.
Sam sighs. “Dean, I swear I had nothing to do with this.”
“Right. The car probably just decided to embrace her inner thirteen-year-old girl and gave herself a makeover,” Dean says sarcastically.
“I’m pretty sure inanimate objects don’t have an inner child,” Sam says. “You do know the car isn’t actually a person, right?”
Dean just glares.
“Look, I don’t know what happened,” Sam says hastily. “But if you’d stop trying to kill me, then maybe I can figure out how to fix it.”
Dean doesn’t believe him for a second, but he grudgingly agrees not to resort to physical violence anymore, so Sam unties him.
There’s a lot of revenge to be gotten that doesn’t involve physical violence, however, so as soon as Sam leaves the room (to investigate the Impala in detail, he says) Dean goes after the one thing he knows Sam considers off-limits.
Ten minutes later, he’s sitting on the bed trying to smother a proud smirk. Sam may do most of their Googling and hacking, but just because Dean hates modern cars and music doesn’t mean he’s as clueless about the technology as Sam thinks.
When Sam comes back a minute later, he goes straight for the laptop.
“Find out anything?” Dean asks.
“No, not really,” Sam says absently, starting up the computer. “Nothing that would explain - hey. What the - Dean.”
Dean raises his eyebrows innocently. “What?”
“My computer is suddenly password-protected,” Sam says.
“Huh,” Dean says. “I wonder how that could have happened.”
“This isn’t funny, Dean,” Sam grits. “Tell me the password.”
“No, I think you’re going to have to do a little guessing,” Dean says. “Like, until my car is no longer pink.”
“I didn’t do anything to your stupid car!” Sam says, exasperation and frustration mingling in his voice.
“Then I didn’t do anything to your laptop,” Dean replies serenely. “I’d start with something like ‘samsucks’, though.”
* * *
Sam refuses to talk to him for the rest of the morning, but that’s fine with Dean. He watches bad TV for a few hours and reads the newspaper, but he can’t really concentrate, and when Sam stomps off to do research at the library, he ends up staring morosely out the window at the pink monstrosity. He refuses to call it his car, even though underneath the paint it’s still his baby. It just doesn’t feel right calling something that ugly by a title that’s usually said with fondness.
With Sam gone it’s finally safe to leave the room, and Dean decides to walk to a nearby fast food joint to get lunch. On his way back he stops at the thing again, circling it to take in all the damage. It doesn’t seem possible, but up close the car is actually worse than Dean thought. It’s definitely a professional paint job, and Dean has no idea how Sam managed that overnight, but that’s also going to be pretty much the only way to reverse it. Worse still, the damage extends to the interior. Dean can’t figure out how Sam swapped the normal black leather seats for cherry red, or how he screwed the radio so it only plays synthetic teen pop, and he’s at a complete loss to explain how (or why) Sam glued rhinestones to the steering wheel and hung a sparkly feather boa from the rearview mirror and spread glitter over every available surface. And is that a fucking My Little Pony jabbing him in the ass? Jesus, his brother is sick. And also possibly a thirteen-year-old girl in disguise.
Dean gets out of the car and shudders, glitter flying everywhere. He thinks about cleaning some of the weapons to settle his nerves, but when he opens the trunk and finds fuzzy purple hairbands adorning the shotguns and a bow on a machete, he slams it closed and gets away as fast as he can.
* * *
Sam comes back a few hours later empty-handed, and goes back to hacking the laptop. Dean makes it a point to wander by every half hour and swipe the lists of passwords Sam’s already tried. Some of them are good attempts - ‘zeppelinrules’ and ‘jameshetfield’ and the like - some are desperate - just because ‘funkytown’ is a code word doesn’t make it a password - and some are just downright funny - Sam has written down endless variations of ‘samsucks,’ and some of them insults Dean hasn’t ever even considered using. He’s kind of impressed.
Hunger seems to conquer Sam’s pissy mood, though, and when Dean wakes up from a nap he suggests they go out to dinner. He perks up even more as they walk through town looking for a restaurant, and he’s positively gleeful as they’re eating. Dean puts it down to the giant salad Sam eats, and laments for the millionth time having a freak brother with an unnatural fondness for vegetables. Avocados are all fine and good in guacamole, but that’s with salty, fattening chips to go with them. In slices on lettuce they just look disgustingly healthy, but Sam eats them like they’re candy.
Sam’s not the only weird thing at dinner, though, because Dean catches random people checking him out all night. Admiring glances aren’t exactly new to him, and neither are disapproving ones, but the whole place staring is…unusual. Their waitress looks at him like he’s grown a second head, and a passing old guy gives him a disapproving glare. When the occupants of the table next to them start whispering and giggling, Dean decides the whole town is either nuts or starving for attractive males.
It’s not until he gets back to the motel room and goes into the bathroom that he realizes the problem isn’t the town, it’s him. More specifically, the fact that he’s wearing lipstick.
“Sam!”
Sam is snickering already, waving a tube Dean recognizes as his chapstick. He reaches into his pocket and pulls out what he thought was his chapstick, but what is clearly one of those tinted lip balms for women, which he’s been unknowingly applying all day.
“Swapped it when you took a shower,” Sam says gleefully. “You look as girly as the car.”
Dean manfully smothers the urge to tie him up and stuff him in the trunk of said car, settling instead for a punch to the arm. “Yeah, well, you were the one sitting with a lipstick-wearing guy,” he points out. “And the entire motel already thinks we’re BDSM boyfriends, so good job there.”
Sam just shrugs. “It’s kind of true.”
Dean opens his mouth to protest, because that’s totally ridiculous. Okay, so they both get tied up a lot, but that’s a hazard of the job. And Dean has punched Sam and Sam shot him twice, the bastard, but that’s not sexual. Well, except for when they’re sparring and it devolves into wrestling and then fucking. Okay, so maybe it is kind of true.
* * *
Dean’s not just going to take the lipstick thing lying down, though, so the next morning he drags Sam out for coffee and picks the line with the sternest-looking cashier. When she gives them the total, Dean raises his eyebrows at Sam, who sighs and digs out his wallet. When he opens it, however, a cascade of rainbow-colored condoms pours out onto the counter. Sam hastily gathers them up, face turning as red as one of the bright wrappers, but when he reaches into the money fold, a lacy thong comes out with the cash. Sam stutters and blushes harder, shoving it into his jacket pocket.
The cashier is staring at Sam like he’s a walking STD, and she takes the bill with only the tips of her fingers, careful not to touch his hand.
Dean goes in for the kill. “Dude, I thought you said you were at your cousin’s house last night.”
Then he pretends to catch on, eyes widening. “Whoa. Keeping it in the family, huh?” To the cashier he says, “Can’t blame him, his cousin’s really hot.”
She looks like she’s itching to smack both their hands with a ruler. Or call the police, it’s kind of hard to tell.
Sam grabs both the coffees and the back of Dean’s jacket and pushes him toward the door. When they get outside, Sam pauses only to dump the coffees in the nearest trash can before he’s hauling Dean down the street again.
“What the - that was my coffee, Sam!” Dean protests, trying to pull away.
“Tough luck,” Sam says shortly. “You can get more later. But right now, you and I are going to settle this thing, once and for all.”
That sounds vaguely ominous, and the way Sam is dragging him down the sidewalk (at top Sam-speed, which is like jogging for anyone not fifteen feet tall) isn’t really encouraging either.
“Paper-rock-scissors?” Dean says hopefully.
Sam just gives him a dark look and tightens his grip on Dean’s jacket.
“I’ve got a deck of cards in the trunk of the car,” Dean suggests. “Crazy Eights? Go Fish? War?”
“If you don’t shut up, I’m going to put you in the trunk of the car,” Sam growls, unlocking the door one-handed and shoving Dean inside their room.
“Hey, hey,” Dean says nervously, hands up in front of him. “Come on, Sam, it was just a prank. A joke.”
Sam’s glare could melt steel. “I didn’t think it was very funny.”
“Well, it’s not your fault you were born without a sense of humor,” Dean says, “Although it is unfortunate that you also seem to have missed out on good looks and intelligence.” Sam’s glare darkens, and Dean takes a step back. “But hey, you got a double helping of height, that’s awesome.”
“Dean,” Sam says slowly. “Stop. Talking.”
But Dean can’t help it. He’s really good at manly stoicism and silence when it comes to emotional moments, but when his life is being threatened it’s like all his internal filters go AWOL and his mouth runs itself off. Which is sometimes helpful, if he’s up against someone stupid and easily provoked, but Sam is neither of those things, so when Dean says, “Or what?” he doesn’t hesitate, just shoves.
Dean’s backward fall is stopped by a bed, thank god, but Sam is on top of him before he can move, pinning his arms above his head and sitting astride his thighs.
“Dean,” he growls. “I did not do anything to your car.” Before Dean can protest, he goes on, “And I’m sick of all your stupid pranks.”
Dean shifts a little, surreptitiously checking Sam’s hold on him. “I thought I made that clear - the pranks stop when you fix my car.”
Sam doesn’t move an inch, hands like iron locked around Dean’s wrists. “Or I’ll just make you stop.”
Dean licks his lips. “And how are you going to do that?”
Sam leans down until his nose is centimeters from Dean’s, weight on his elbows, then drags his hips across Dean’s, and from there it’s pretty clear what his plan is, because apparently being really pissed at Dean puts Sam in the mood. Dean thinks about resisting for a millisecond, but it’s not even serious consideration. It’s been two days of fighting, after all, which translates to two days without sex, and at this point Dean doesn’t even care if Sam’s trying to prove a point. Hell, Sam can use sex to prove the existence of extraterrestrials if he wants, so long as he keeps rubbing against Dean like that.
Dean arches up into him, letting Sam read his assent in the way he lets his legs fall apart. Sam settles between them, huffing a breath against Dean’s neck in reply, then nips along his jaw, sharp little bites that are a mix of pain and pleasure and have Dean breathing fast in no time. When Sam catches the skin over his Adam’s apple between his teeth, Dean ducks his chin a little, angling for a kiss, but Sam just smirks and avoids his mouth, sliding his teeth not-so-gently over the pulse beating rapidly in Dean’s neck.
Okay, then. Sam in charge, copy that.
Sam keeps teasing him for a minute, leaning in and then changing direction, sliding away to nip at the corner of Dean’s mouth or tug at an earlobe, but finally he shifts, letting go of Dean’s wrists with one hand and working his jeans open with the other. Only when he’s got Dean’s cock in his hand, stroking roughly, does he let Dean kiss him, and even then Sam’s in control, mouth hard and punishing against Dean’s.
When he pulls away Dean leans up after him, but Sam just laughs and sits up, pulling Dean with him. He’s all hands, yanking Dean up onto his feet and turning him around, and before Dean can even figure out what’s happening, Sam’s got him pushed up against the wall, manhandled into place, and Sam’s slamming his hands flat against the plaster alongside his head. Dean obeys the unspoken command without thought, not moving an inch, and it really shouldn’t be turning him on that his baby brother can shove him around like this, but his hips are already pushing back against Sam, where it’s pretty clear that Sam gets off on the manhandling stuff too.
Speaking of which, Sam seems intent on the getting off, and only spares a second to yank down both their jeans and shorts, not making a move toward their shirts or jackets, before asking breathlessly, “Where’s the - “
“Duffel,” Dean pants.
Sam disappears for a second, then he’s back with slick fingers and Dean is hissing, “Jesus,” into the wall and wondering if he should hide those handcuffs he keeps in the trunk in case Sam gets any more ideas. Or maybe leave them out in plain sight and give him ideas.
He loses his entire train of thought a second later, though, and with Sam hitting that spot on every slide, it’s not likely he’s going to find coherence anytime soon. Normally Sam’s the one who wants to do things slow, likes it face-to-face with lots of foreplay, but this morning he’s going at it like they’ve got ten minutes left to live, barely pausing between sliding his fingers out and sliding his cock in, only a breath for adjustment before he’s moving, fast and hard, teeth sinking into Dean’s neck.
Dean starts to slide his hand down the wall to help himself along, but Sam plants his over it. “No,” he growls. “Not until you believe that I didn’t fuck with your car.”
Dean moans with frustration, and Sam replies with a thrust that pushes him up onto his toes. “Believe me yet?”
“Sam,” Dean pants, face mushed into the extremely ugly wallpaper, “I appreciate your dick, but it doesn’t have magical mind-changing powers.”
“Gonna make you appreciate it,” Sam promises, and then he’s back to an aggressive rhythm of deep thrusts, and there’s no more talking.
It feels like an eternity and no time at all goes by, and then Sam’s breathing hitches against the back of his neck, and Dean pulls his hand free to wrap around himself. It only takes a few jerks before he’s coming in a blinding flash, Sam’s hand clutching at his hip hard enough to bruise, hips stuttering as orgasm overtakes him.
They stay up against the wall for a while, just breathing, then Sam pulls back and throws away the condom before flopping down on the bed.
Dean surveys the damage to the wall and his shirts, then shrugs, hitching up his jeans, and joins Sam. He stretches a little, then sighs in satisfaction. “I should get you mad at me more often.”
Sam groans. “Please don’t.”
“You’re the one who messed with my car,” Dean points out. “And everybody knows that misbehavior is a classic form of attention-seeking.” He grins and elbows Sam. “You were totally asking for it.”
Sam looks murderous, even loose-limbed and fucked out, and Dean laughs and rolls off the bed, ducking the half-hearted swipe. He strips his shirts off and heads for the bathroom to clean himself up.
He’s only in there five minutes tops before Sam’s hammering on the door, and Dean looks up from examining a bite-mark on his neck to see Sam, half-dressed, clutching a section of the newspaper he got while they were out for coffee.
“I figured it out!” he says, waving the paper wildly. “I know what happened to your car!”
“So do I,” Dean says. “Some asshole painted it pink. Are you finally confessing?”
“No,” Sam says exasperatedly. “I mean, I figured out why the car is pink.” He points to an headline on the page, which reads “Police Dumbfounded over Cemetery Damage - Two Graves Desecrated, No Discernable Motive.”
“That’s annoying alliteration,” Dean says. Then, “Wait. Two graves?”
“‘The grave of Gregory Van Winkle, who died two years ago in an industrial accident, was completely excavated, according to police, and the deceased’s remains were destroyed,’” Sam reads aloud. “‘The vandals also left tire tracks across the grave of Hilarie Kramer, who was killed last year in a car accident.’” Sam lowers the paper. “And was also thirteen years old when she died.”
When Dean doesn’t reply, he says, “Don’t you get it? We must have driven over her grave without noticing, and pissed off her spirit!”
“And she what, decided to possess our car?” Dean asks skeptically. “She couldn’t come up with a better plan for revenge?”
Sam shrugs. “Well, we have those anti-possession charms…maybe the car was the only thing she could get hold of.”
Dean fixes him with a sharp stare. “Unless this whole thing is an elaborate plan to throw suspicion off yourself.”
If looks could maim, Dean has a feeling he’d be pretty bloody at this point, so he says hastily, “But there’s one way to know, right?”
Sam bitches the whole way out to the car, more of his usual crap about Dean’s obsession with the car and some shit about Dean not trusting him, so when EMF meter goes crazy the second it gets within five feet of the car, Dean has to admit it wasn’t Sam and throw in an apology as well.
“You owe me so much, man,” Sam says. “Like, laundry for a year and the recommended daily servings of fruits and vegetables and foot massages whenever I want them, much.”
At Dean’s look, he says, “What?”
Dean shakes his head. “Foot massages? You have no imagination, Sam. Also, you’re a woman.”
“Whatever,” Sam says. “What are we going to do about the car?”
“That’s easy,” Dean says. “Burn the girl’s bones. Shouldn’t take more than an hour.”
“That would be easy,” Sam says, looking at the article again. “But not possible, because she was cremated.”
“What the fuck? Why does she have a grave, then?”
“Her ashes are buried there.”
Dean curses. “How the hell can we waste a spirit with no remains?”
“She was obviously hanging around the cemetery before we got there,” Sam points out. “Maybe we can get her to back to haunting her headstone. Make her want to leave somehow.”
It’s as good an idea as any. “Well, what do thirteen-year-old girls hate?” He looks at Sam. “You were a pretty girly thirteen-year-old. Any insight?”
“Do I need to remind you how much you appreciate my dick?” Sam asks.
Dean raises his eyebrows suggestively.
“Dean! Not now!”
“Okay, okay,” Dean says. “So, we have no idea what thirteen-year-old girls hate. Maybe we could find something she likes more than the car, to lure her spirit out.”
“And hopefully convince her to stay in the cemetery and stay quiet,” Sam agrees. He’s silent for a moment, surveying the car, then snaps his fingers. “I’ve got a plan.”
“Excellent,” Dean says.
* * *
Except not, because Dean’s pretty sure that Sam made this plan up just to get back at Dean for the condom-and-thong prank. It’s about the most humiliating thing he’s ever had to do, and that’s saying something, considering that in order to do it he had to drive that monstrosity masquerading as his car. It would be hard to find something Dean hates more than driving a car that looks like the twisted lovechild of Valentine’s Day and the entire fleet of Carebears, but Sam, devious bastard that he is, succeeded.
The store is ridiculously small and crammed wall-to-wall with what looks like every pastel, fuzzy, and sparkly object ever made, along with a dozen teenaged girls. Dean’s clearly not the usual type of clientele, and he feels too big, too tall, and way too male as he tries to navigate around bins and shelves and stands, brushing up against feather boas and snagging his leather jacket on earrings. Fucking Claire’s, and fucking Sam, making him come in this place and actually buy things.
Dean has no idea what a thirteen-year-old girl might like, so he just grabs the first few things he finds and pays as fast as possible. Sam’s smirking as Dean comes out of the mall with an armful of girly crap, but Sam’s also leaning against a car that even Barbie wouldn’t be caught dead in, so Dean figures they’re even.
He climbs into the Barbiemobile again, dumping the supplies into Sam’s lap, and takes the back roads to the graveyard they disturbed two days ago. They’d normally wait until dark to do something like this, especially when the police are clearly aware of the incident, but since there’s no actual illegal activity on the schedule, daylight seems more appropriate.
They drive the car straight through the gates of the cemetery and park as close to Hilarie’s headstone as possible, though they’re careful to avoid so much as bending a blade of grass on any other graves as they get out. Normally Dean might feel bad about a kid this young dying, but after what Hilarie’s done to his car (and what Sam’s done to him in retaliation for Dean’s pranks) Dean isn’t exactly in a sympathetic mood. Especially not when he sees the “sleeping angel” inscription on the headstone, because that is just too supremely ironic.
Sam hands him the Claire’s bag, and Dean kneels down to stick a tiara, fuzzy pen, some freaky oversized doll, headband in the soft ground around grave. He drapes a sparkly scarf and the feather boa over the headstone itself, then tops it all off with a canister of glitter. They wait for a minute, silent except for a faint breeze, but nothing seems to be happening. The car is still pink and hideous, Sam still thinks this is funny, and Dean is really running out of patience.
He gets up from the grave, yanks open the passenger door to the car, and gets to the point. “Okay, Hilarie, I’m sure you’ve been having the time of your life - or death, or spirithood, or whatever - but the fun’s over now.”
As if to mock him, the radio starts up, playing some stupid teen pop crap, and the headlights flick on.
“Very funny,” Dean says, gritting his teeth. “Look, you’ve had your fun. You possessed my car and completely girlified it and nearly gave me a heart attack, so congratulations. But I’d really like my car back to the way it was now, if you wouldn’t mind.”
The radio only gets louder, high voices like the screech of nails on a chalkboard. Dean grits his teeth. “Okay, fuck nice. This is my car, bitch, and quite frankly, your idea of décor? Sucks. If I wanted to drive the most pansy-assed car in the world, I would have bought myself a pink Cadillac and named it Maryanne. But I didn’t, because I like this car the way it was. So you’d better take all your girly shit and your pink paint and all your fucking glitter and get the fuck out of my fucking car before I - before I call your parents!”
It’s a completely lame threat, but apparently Hilarie hasn’t been dead long enough for the thought of disappointing her parents to lose potency. The radio warbles and dies, and the headlights dim down to nothing. A wind comes up, and with a whoosh what seems like a giant pink cloud gathers around the car, then rushes toward Hilarie’s gravestone.
Dean just stares for a second, taking in his no-longer-pink car and the feather boa gently ruffling in the breeze.
“I think you just made the spirit of a little girl cry,” Sam observes.
But Dean doesn’t care, because his baby is back. Back in black. And not even Sam muttering about mental illness when he throws himself across the hood in thanksgiving can ruin that.
When Dean’s done welcoming his car back and making sure she wasn’t harmed by her makeover, he turns to Sam and says, “I love Coldplay.”
Sam looks alarmed. “What? Dean, are you okay?”
“It’s the password to your computer,” Dean says. “‘ilovecoldplay.’”
Sam stares for a minute, then shakes his head. “You are seriously unhinged.”
“Told you you’d never guess,” Dean says gleefully. “So. Truce?”
“Yeah,” Sam says. “Can we please get out of here now?”
“Aw, what’s the matter?” Dean asks. “You didn’t enjoy your stay?”
“This entire county thinks I’m some kind of horny pervert who likes to ‘keep it in the family,’” Sam says.
“And is into bondage and men in lipstick,” Dean adds helpfully.
“Yeah, thanks a lot,” Sam says.
“What? It’s kind of true. I saw the way you kept checking out my mouth when I had that lipstick on, dude.”
“Dean, get in the car.”
“And you’re the one who tied me up. And you’re the one who was keeping it in the family when you jumped me in the motel.”
“Get. In. The. Car.”
“Or what?” Dean wiggles his eyebrows suggestively.
Sam looks like he might paint the Impala pink for real, which is not something Dean even wants to joke about, so he gets in and starts up his extremely manly car, puts in some extremely manly cock rock, and guns it out of there.