SPN FIC - The Birthday Gift
To Cas, friendship is important. So when Dean's birthday rolls around, a gift is in order. Unfortunately, he overlooks the words "instruction manual."
"A rock?" Dean said. "You're giving me a rock?"
CHARACTERS: Dean, Sam, Castiel
GENRE: Gen
RATING: PG
SPOILERS: None
LENGTH: 2000 words
THE BIRTHDAY GIFT
By Carol Davis
"A rock?" Dean said. "You're giving me a rock?"
And the angel just stood there, smiling at him in that oddball way - that weird mixture of I don't speak English and I have no idea what you just said, and I'm loonier than a freaking LOON, with a little bit of If I smile long enough, you'll forgive just about anything thrown in for good measure.
That had been known to happen. The forgiveness thing.
But dammit. A ROCK?
"It's a great rock, Cas," Sam offered.
Like that helped at all.
The object in question had come wrapped in red-and-blue, puppy-and-kitten-themed paper, with a big red bow on top. With no idea what to expect from the bright (if not quite appropriate) package, Dean had torn into it eagerly, and the paper and bow now lay discarded, pushed to one side of the table. Leaving Cas's gift lying in a pool of early morning sunlight, all by itself.
It was about the size and shape of a jelly donut, a mottled dark gray. When he was a kid, Dean had thrown hundreds of rocks just like it at tin cans, empty bottles, and the occasional pigeon, aiming to improve his pitching skills. For a moment he was inclined to heave this particular rock. Then he took one more look at Cas's earnest smile, and he caved.
"Thanks, dude," he told the angel.
"You are welcome, Dean," Cas replied.
Then he vanished.
He'd only been gone a few seconds when Dean sank down onto the end of his bed and let his face collapse into a frown. "A rock?" he complained to Sam. "Seriously, is that at the top of some list these asshats circulate? Ten Recommended Gifts for All Occasions? What else is on it? Old fast food packages?"
"Motor oil?" Sam suggested.
Leave it to Sam to take the wind out of Dean's dismay. Of course he remembered that particular Christmas - they both did.
"It's my birthday," Dean sighed. "I don't get to whine?"
With a shrug, Sam picked up Castiel's gift and turned it over and over in his hands. "The carvings are interesting. Maybe it's some kind of greeting-card verse, but in Enochian."
"You're not gonna let me whine, are you?"
"Maybe you could assume that he meant well."
"By giving me a rock."
"It's the thought that counts."
All Dean could think to do was groan.
~~~~~~~~
They stopped for breakfast at a big, pleasant diner just outside Lincoln, and spent a quiet forty-five minutes talking about the particulars of a possible case over hearty plates of pancakes and bacon, eggs, home fries and coffee.
Half a dozen people, a series of accidents, each one resulting in the loss of a finger.
It prompted half a dozen "finger" jokes from Dean.
"Dude," Sam said.
"Like you weren't thinking exactly the same thing. Anyway," Dean went on, talking around a mouthful of bacon and eggs, "we see a Goodwill somewhere, any time soon, we need to stop. My shirt situation is dire, man. Could use another pair of jeans, too."
"Because it's your birthday."
"Because I've got no friggin' clothes. Tell those freaks we go after to stop oozing on me. It's hell on my wardrobe. After a while, the stain situation just gets out of control. Not to mention the smell."
A little after nine o'clock they were climbing back into the car.
"Sam," Dean said.
Sam raised a brow.
"How'd you do that?"
"How'd I do what?"
Dean gestured toward the backseat, where a dozen flannel button-downs, a couple of pairs of jeans, and an assortment of t-shirts lay neatly folded and stacked. "Those were not there when we went into the diner," he told his brother. "And the car was locked. So… where'd all that stuff come from?"
"I don't know."
"The hell you don't know."
"I'm telling you, man," Sam said, and he certainly seemed sincere about it. "I've got no idea how those got there."
Scowling, Dean climbed back out of the driver's seat, opened the back door, and began to comb through the piles of clothing. It wouldn't have surprised him to discover that they'd been booby-trapped in some way, but they weren't. And each item was his size; all the shirts were colors he preferred.
"Cas?" Sam suggested. "Maybe he heard you bitching about the rock."
"So he conjured me up a pile of secondhand clothes."
"You're determined to be unhappy about this, aren't you?"
"It's my birthday," Dean said, mostly to tweak his brother; the new(ish) clothes made a far better gift than the rock did, and it had been a while since he'd had this many clean, fresh things to wear - a couple of duffels' worth.
"So you get to bitch."
"Nah," Dean replied. "I get to aim high."
~~~~~~~~
Midway between Des Moines and Iowa City, the car's gas tank magically went from nearly empty to brimming.
They were (according to a sign they'd passed a half-mile back) fourteen miles from the nearest gas station.
"Now that's -" Dean sputtered.
"Helpful?" Sam suggested.
"It's unnerving, is what it is."
"We needed gas, dude. You said so."
"We needed gas by stopping at a gas station and pumping it. You can't just - you can't zap gas into people's gas tanks."
"Why not?"
"Because I don't like the zapping! What's next? I say I'm hungry, and all of a sudden my stomach's full of cheeseburger and fries?" Addressing the sky - though really, he was addressing the metal trim strip at the top of the windshield - Dean barked out, "CAS! You hearing me? Enough with the zapping!"
He half expected the entire car, passengers and contents included, to be zapped somewhere, and was mildly disappointed when that didn't happen.
"You're gonna zap stuff, how 'bout a big stack of hundred-dollar bills? Huh?"
That didn't happen either.
"Or a cute little blonde?"
Nope.
Nothing out of the ordinary happened the rest of the way to Iowa City, but that leg of the trip had been so unnerving that when Dean climbed out of the car he immediately retrieved the gun he'd tucked underneath the driver's seat and held it at the ready. Only the realization that he and Sam had arrived in a perfectly normal, perfectly quiet residential neighborhood, and that nothing more threatening than a child's abandoned Big Wheel toy loomed nearby, prompted him to stash the gun against the small of his back, underneath his somewhat worn and slightly smelly suit jacket.
"I don't like being manipulated," he told Sam.
"Neither do I."
"I just want - you know. A little respect. A little dignity."
Sam's eyebrows twitched.
"What?" Dean groused.
"You. Want a little dignity? Dude - you still stick things up your nose when you're bored. I stopped doing that when I was three."
"Yeah, well, you know what? You know what I need right now? I need a little help. I need a little -"
Sam's mouth opened a little, but whatever he'd intended to say got lost. His mouth stayed open, though, and his eyes widened.
"What?" Dean demanded.
Sam's left shoulder twitched.
"Do I want to turn around?" Dean asked.
"No," Sam said. "I don't think you do."
~~~~~~~~
"It's my damn BIRTHDAY!"
He'd made three trips around the block, on foot, Sam keeping pace alongside him, each loop accomplished in a little less time than the last. Each time they came back within sight of the car, Dean hoped to find it sitting there alone, in the company of the few other cars parked along the curb - and not flanked by an entire platoon of plasticky-looking men in camo fatigues.
"I know," Sam said, and to his credit, he sounded sympathetic.
Dean pulled up short, fifty feet from the car. Sam got half a step further along, then stopped too and looked woefully at Dean.
"This is not -" Dean sputtered.
"Maybe we should… take them somewhere?"
"How, Sam? That's not a friggin' clown car we're driving. And where do you figure we oughta take 'em?"
"I'm just thinking… somebody's gonna notice. Eventually."
"And that's just frigging swell, isn't it?"
"Maybe we should go, then."
"JOB, Sam. JOB. There's crazy shit going on in this town, remember?"
At least (though it was a cold comfort at this point) the Incredible Plastic Platoon hadn't actually done anything. Hadn't fanned out to recon the territory. Hadn't opened fire on anything, or anyone - although Dean wasn't at all sure what would happen if the mailman showed up, or one of the local residents came popping out of their home intending to sweep the sidewalk, or walk the dog, or take a trip to Wal-Mart. To a man (or thing; as near as Dean could figure, none of the camo'ed men were human), the platoon was fully armed. It seemed too much to hope for that their weapons weren't capable of inflicting damage.
"CAS!" he bellowed at the sky. "God DAMN it, CAS!"
He didn't get an answer.
"It's my frigging birthday," he told his brother mournfully.
Sam nodded. Heaved a big sigh. "You know what? I take back anything I ever said about getting a package of socks and a Hostess cupcake for my birthday."
Dean returned the sigh.
This just wasn't…
Sam flung his arms around Dean. Crushed him into a bear hug and held on, to the point that Dean couldn't take in a full breath.
"Dude," he wheezed. "What the hell? Let go of me."
"I can't," Sam said.
"What?"
"I can't, man. I can't let go. I'm trying."
"Oh the HELL," Dean said. "What the serious HELL."
~~~~~~~~
It was near sundown by the time Cas showed up.
"Hello, Dean," the angel said amiably. "Hello, Sam."
Almost three hours had gone by, and Sam hadn't relaxed his grip for a second. Dean couldn't collect enough wind to talk, so he settled for scowling.
"Cas," Sam said. "This is a problem, man."
Cas frowned a little.
Sam let go.
More accurately, he fell away from Dean, who, deprived of the support that leaning against Sam had provided, stumbled and dropped to his knees on the sidewalk. "You wanna -" he gasped. "Could you -"
"You misused the gift?" the angel asked.
"Misused? The -" Dean sputtered. "Misused? Come down here, so I can kick the shit out of you."
"It's meant to provide for your needs. You and Sam seem to have a number of needs, so I thought it would be -"
"I could have suffocated him," Sam said.
Cas considered that for a moment. "Apparently, Dean needed a hug."
"I didn't say that!" Dean fussed, struggling to climb to his feet. "I did not say that. I did not at any time say -"
"If the need is strong enough, voicing it wouldn't be necessary," Cas said distractedly, then turned his attention to the platoon of plastic soldiers. "You should be careful with something like this, Dean."
"With what? Wait - you mean the rock? The rock did this? Did the words 'instruction manual' ever cross your mind?"
"I… assumed."
"Yeah? Well, we've got a saying about assumptions."
A simple blink from the angel got rid of the plastic army. With luck, Dean thought, if any of the local residents had seen that happen, they'd put it down as no more worth investigating than the soldiers' appearance in the first place.
"Cas -" he said on a sigh.
"My apologies, Dean."
"You can't - we didn't - I thought it was a damn rock, man."
Castiel matched the sigh. When he glanced into the backseat of the car, Dean told him firmly, "Leave the clothes. And the gas."
"I had only good intentions, Dean."
Dean looked from the angel to his brother and back again. Some days, he could see very little difference between the two of them. Certainly, there was no difference in the woebegone, stressed-out expressions they wore.
Happy birthday to me, he thought, and very nearly laughed. Happy freakin' birthday to me.
"Yeah," he told the angel. "I know you did."
* * * * *
"A rock?" Dean said. "You're giving me a rock?"
CHARACTERS: Dean, Sam, Castiel
GENRE: Gen
RATING: PG
SPOILERS: None
LENGTH: 2000 words
THE BIRTHDAY GIFT
By Carol Davis
"A rock?" Dean said. "You're giving me a rock?"
And the angel just stood there, smiling at him in that oddball way - that weird mixture of I don't speak English and I have no idea what you just said, and I'm loonier than a freaking LOON, with a little bit of If I smile long enough, you'll forgive just about anything thrown in for good measure.
That had been known to happen. The forgiveness thing.
But dammit. A ROCK?
"It's a great rock, Cas," Sam offered.
Like that helped at all.
The object in question had come wrapped in red-and-blue, puppy-and-kitten-themed paper, with a big red bow on top. With no idea what to expect from the bright (if not quite appropriate) package, Dean had torn into it eagerly, and the paper and bow now lay discarded, pushed to one side of the table. Leaving Cas's gift lying in a pool of early morning sunlight, all by itself.
It was about the size and shape of a jelly donut, a mottled dark gray. When he was a kid, Dean had thrown hundreds of rocks just like it at tin cans, empty bottles, and the occasional pigeon, aiming to improve his pitching skills. For a moment he was inclined to heave this particular rock. Then he took one more look at Cas's earnest smile, and he caved.
"Thanks, dude," he told the angel.
"You are welcome, Dean," Cas replied.
Then he vanished.
He'd only been gone a few seconds when Dean sank down onto the end of his bed and let his face collapse into a frown. "A rock?" he complained to Sam. "Seriously, is that at the top of some list these asshats circulate? Ten Recommended Gifts for All Occasions? What else is on it? Old fast food packages?"
"Motor oil?" Sam suggested.
Leave it to Sam to take the wind out of Dean's dismay. Of course he remembered that particular Christmas - they both did.
"It's my birthday," Dean sighed. "I don't get to whine?"
With a shrug, Sam picked up Castiel's gift and turned it over and over in his hands. "The carvings are interesting. Maybe it's some kind of greeting-card verse, but in Enochian."
"You're not gonna let me whine, are you?"
"Maybe you could assume that he meant well."
"By giving me a rock."
"It's the thought that counts."
All Dean could think to do was groan.
~~~~~~~~
They stopped for breakfast at a big, pleasant diner just outside Lincoln, and spent a quiet forty-five minutes talking about the particulars of a possible case over hearty plates of pancakes and bacon, eggs, home fries and coffee.
Half a dozen people, a series of accidents, each one resulting in the loss of a finger.
It prompted half a dozen "finger" jokes from Dean.
"Dude," Sam said.
"Like you weren't thinking exactly the same thing. Anyway," Dean went on, talking around a mouthful of bacon and eggs, "we see a Goodwill somewhere, any time soon, we need to stop. My shirt situation is dire, man. Could use another pair of jeans, too."
"Because it's your birthday."
"Because I've got no friggin' clothes. Tell those freaks we go after to stop oozing on me. It's hell on my wardrobe. After a while, the stain situation just gets out of control. Not to mention the smell."
A little after nine o'clock they were climbing back into the car.
"Sam," Dean said.
Sam raised a brow.
"How'd you do that?"
"How'd I do what?"
Dean gestured toward the backseat, where a dozen flannel button-downs, a couple of pairs of jeans, and an assortment of t-shirts lay neatly folded and stacked. "Those were not there when we went into the diner," he told his brother. "And the car was locked. So… where'd all that stuff come from?"
"I don't know."
"The hell you don't know."
"I'm telling you, man," Sam said, and he certainly seemed sincere about it. "I've got no idea how those got there."
Scowling, Dean climbed back out of the driver's seat, opened the back door, and began to comb through the piles of clothing. It wouldn't have surprised him to discover that they'd been booby-trapped in some way, but they weren't. And each item was his size; all the shirts were colors he preferred.
"Cas?" Sam suggested. "Maybe he heard you bitching about the rock."
"So he conjured me up a pile of secondhand clothes."
"You're determined to be unhappy about this, aren't you?"
"It's my birthday," Dean said, mostly to tweak his brother; the new(ish) clothes made a far better gift than the rock did, and it had been a while since he'd had this many clean, fresh things to wear - a couple of duffels' worth.
"So you get to bitch."
"Nah," Dean replied. "I get to aim high."
~~~~~~~~
Midway between Des Moines and Iowa City, the car's gas tank magically went from nearly empty to brimming.
They were (according to a sign they'd passed a half-mile back) fourteen miles from the nearest gas station.
"Now that's -" Dean sputtered.
"Helpful?" Sam suggested.
"It's unnerving, is what it is."
"We needed gas, dude. You said so."
"We needed gas by stopping at a gas station and pumping it. You can't just - you can't zap gas into people's gas tanks."
"Why not?"
"Because I don't like the zapping! What's next? I say I'm hungry, and all of a sudden my stomach's full of cheeseburger and fries?" Addressing the sky - though really, he was addressing the metal trim strip at the top of the windshield - Dean barked out, "CAS! You hearing me? Enough with the zapping!"
He half expected the entire car, passengers and contents included, to be zapped somewhere, and was mildly disappointed when that didn't happen.
"You're gonna zap stuff, how 'bout a big stack of hundred-dollar bills? Huh?"
That didn't happen either.
"Or a cute little blonde?"
Nope.
Nothing out of the ordinary happened the rest of the way to Iowa City, but that leg of the trip had been so unnerving that when Dean climbed out of the car he immediately retrieved the gun he'd tucked underneath the driver's seat and held it at the ready. Only the realization that he and Sam had arrived in a perfectly normal, perfectly quiet residential neighborhood, and that nothing more threatening than a child's abandoned Big Wheel toy loomed nearby, prompted him to stash the gun against the small of his back, underneath his somewhat worn and slightly smelly suit jacket.
"I don't like being manipulated," he told Sam.
"Neither do I."
"I just want - you know. A little respect. A little dignity."
Sam's eyebrows twitched.
"What?" Dean groused.
"You. Want a little dignity? Dude - you still stick things up your nose when you're bored. I stopped doing that when I was three."
"Yeah, well, you know what? You know what I need right now? I need a little help. I need a little -"
Sam's mouth opened a little, but whatever he'd intended to say got lost. His mouth stayed open, though, and his eyes widened.
"What?" Dean demanded.
Sam's left shoulder twitched.
"Do I want to turn around?" Dean asked.
"No," Sam said. "I don't think you do."
~~~~~~~~
"It's my damn BIRTHDAY!"
He'd made three trips around the block, on foot, Sam keeping pace alongside him, each loop accomplished in a little less time than the last. Each time they came back within sight of the car, Dean hoped to find it sitting there alone, in the company of the few other cars parked along the curb - and not flanked by an entire platoon of plasticky-looking men in camo fatigues.
"I know," Sam said, and to his credit, he sounded sympathetic.
Dean pulled up short, fifty feet from the car. Sam got half a step further along, then stopped too and looked woefully at Dean.
"This is not -" Dean sputtered.
"Maybe we should… take them somewhere?"
"How, Sam? That's not a friggin' clown car we're driving. And where do you figure we oughta take 'em?"
"I'm just thinking… somebody's gonna notice. Eventually."
"And that's just frigging swell, isn't it?"
"Maybe we should go, then."
"JOB, Sam. JOB. There's crazy shit going on in this town, remember?"
At least (though it was a cold comfort at this point) the Incredible Plastic Platoon hadn't actually done anything. Hadn't fanned out to recon the territory. Hadn't opened fire on anything, or anyone - although Dean wasn't at all sure what would happen if the mailman showed up, or one of the local residents came popping out of their home intending to sweep the sidewalk, or walk the dog, or take a trip to Wal-Mart. To a man (or thing; as near as Dean could figure, none of the camo'ed men were human), the platoon was fully armed. It seemed too much to hope for that their weapons weren't capable of inflicting damage.
"CAS!" he bellowed at the sky. "God DAMN it, CAS!"
He didn't get an answer.
"It's my frigging birthday," he told his brother mournfully.
Sam nodded. Heaved a big sigh. "You know what? I take back anything I ever said about getting a package of socks and a Hostess cupcake for my birthday."
Dean returned the sigh.
This just wasn't…
Sam flung his arms around Dean. Crushed him into a bear hug and held on, to the point that Dean couldn't take in a full breath.
"Dude," he wheezed. "What the hell? Let go of me."
"I can't," Sam said.
"What?"
"I can't, man. I can't let go. I'm trying."
"Oh the HELL," Dean said. "What the serious HELL."
~~~~~~~~
It was near sundown by the time Cas showed up.
"Hello, Dean," the angel said amiably. "Hello, Sam."
Almost three hours had gone by, and Sam hadn't relaxed his grip for a second. Dean couldn't collect enough wind to talk, so he settled for scowling.
"Cas," Sam said. "This is a problem, man."
Cas frowned a little.
Sam let go.
More accurately, he fell away from Dean, who, deprived of the support that leaning against Sam had provided, stumbled and dropped to his knees on the sidewalk. "You wanna -" he gasped. "Could you -"
"You misused the gift?" the angel asked.
"Misused? The -" Dean sputtered. "Misused? Come down here, so I can kick the shit out of you."
"It's meant to provide for your needs. You and Sam seem to have a number of needs, so I thought it would be -"
"I could have suffocated him," Sam said.
Cas considered that for a moment. "Apparently, Dean needed a hug."
"I didn't say that!" Dean fussed, struggling to climb to his feet. "I did not say that. I did not at any time say -"
"If the need is strong enough, voicing it wouldn't be necessary," Cas said distractedly, then turned his attention to the platoon of plastic soldiers. "You should be careful with something like this, Dean."
"With what? Wait - you mean the rock? The rock did this? Did the words 'instruction manual' ever cross your mind?"
"I… assumed."
"Yeah? Well, we've got a saying about assumptions."
A simple blink from the angel got rid of the plastic army. With luck, Dean thought, if any of the local residents had seen that happen, they'd put it down as no more worth investigating than the soldiers' appearance in the first place.
"Cas -" he said on a sigh.
"My apologies, Dean."
"You can't - we didn't - I thought it was a damn rock, man."
Castiel matched the sigh. When he glanced into the backseat of the car, Dean told him firmly, "Leave the clothes. And the gas."
"I had only good intentions, Dean."
Dean looked from the angel to his brother and back again. Some days, he could see very little difference between the two of them. Certainly, there was no difference in the woebegone, stressed-out expressions they wore.
Happy birthday to me, he thought, and very nearly laughed. Happy freakin' birthday to me.
"Yeah," he told the angel. "I know you did."
* * * * *