SPN FIC - When You Wish Upon a Box
From the prompt left by Rokhal over at the Batcave Fic + Art Comment Fest! It's a quiet night. Sam's doing his cataloguing, and Dean is... well. Reading. They're alone, of course. Until they're not.
CHARACTERS: Dean and Sam
GENRE: Gen
RATING: PG
SPOILERS: 8.12 and 8.13
LENGTH: 1800 words
WHEN YOU WISH UPON A BOX
By Carol Davis
The naked chick is Dean's first clue that something has gone completely hinky.
Not all naked, though. Wearing a little filmy-ish, white-ish thing. Looks like she's wearing fog, or… rain. Something you can see through. See the boobies. And the… there. And the nipples.
She's smiling. Not saying anything.
"The hell?" he whispers.
He was reading, is all. You know. Looking at the pictures. Reading. He was reading.
Something frigging BARKS in the other room.
"Sam?" he bleats. "Sammy?"
The naked chick leans toward him, and there's… GOD. Nipples.
Whatever that is in the other room barks again. Happy barking. The sound shifts, like the barking thing is moving.
"DEAN?" Sam's voice roars from over there someplace.
The naked chick reaches for him, and oh HELL yes life is just like porn somehow, but that's not right. There's nobody here but him and Sam. They've spent almost a week making sure of that. There's only the one door, and it's… magic-i-fied. Nobody gets in here without the key, and the key's in its fancy little wooden box, sitting in the niche they decided was the right place to keep it. This chick didn't just stroll in here.
Trickster, he thinks, but Gabe's been dead a long time.
Maybe there's another one of those sons of bitches? There's lore, after all. Lots of lore.
"DEAN!"
Garbling things that want to be words but aren't, he scrambles out of his chair, the nice, comfy chair he hauled up here from that weird little room downstairs because it makes him feel more at ease to be within shouting distance of Sam - and see, right here, there's proof that that was the right move - dances a little to get past the reach of the boo - the naked chick - almost loses his footing on the marble floor, recovers, and pivots toward the last place he saw Sam.
"Sammy?"
"Dean? What the hell, Dean?"
The big table's covered with food. Tons of food. Bacon cheeseburgers and pie and steaks and a whole turkey and… Jesus, SALAD?
There's a dog in there with Sam, a good sized-mutt, dancing and yipping around Sam's legs.
"The HELL, man," Sam says.
Enormous flat-panel TV. A big, cushy couch, long enough for Sam to stretch out on. A computer station with six monitors, like the lash-up Frank had, nice for keeping an eye on the world. They're hooked up to the outside, to six different views of the big batch of nothing that's out there - nothing, other than the Impala, of course.
"What did you do?" Sam squeaks. "What did you touch?"
"Me? Why is it me?"
"Because I didn't do anything."
"Neither did I!"
"What were you doing? Just now?"
Sam's gaze drifts on past Dean, and his lips disappear.
"I was reading," Dean replies. "I was sitting in the good chair. Reading."
With the dog trotting merrily along beside him, Sam strides across the room, past Dean, past the naked chick, and starts circling around the chair. Starts poking at it. Peering at it. Lifting it to look underneath. It's a chair, dammit, Dean thinks, but who the hell knows? In this place? Who the hell knows?
There's nothing carved on the chair. It doesn't give off EMF.
"It's just a chair," Dean mutters.
"Then what's all this?" Sam demands, making big, crazy gestures with his hands.
"You've got all the old books, dude."
"Yeah, and I didn't do anything."
"Neither did I!" Scowling, Dean scoops up the copy of Foxy Femmes that went flying when the naked chick appeared. Yeah, okay, she looks a little like the girl who's on page - what is it - page 84, but that doesn't explain all the damn SALAD. Or the frantic little dog that's circling around Sam, hopping and bouncing, begging to be…
Whatever the hell dogs want.
"Trickster," Sam says through his teeth.
Dean shakes his head. Firmly, because he's thought this through. "The whole place is protected, remember?"
"What, then?"
"I don't know. Do I look like I know?"
"SIT, dammit!" Sam yelps at the dog. He's no less startled than Dean when the dog instantly obeys, settling into a placid sit a pace or so from Sam's feet. Grinning, for God's sake. The naked chick is grinning, too, a little, but on her it's kind of distracting, being that it's combined with… You know. Nipples.
Sam lets out a long, controlled sigh.
Says, "Something happened. Obviously. One of us did something."
"Simultaneously."
"What?"
"This all popped up at the same time."
"I - yeah. Okay. I guess."
A glance at his watch confirms what Dean suddenly suspected. "Midnight. It's like 12:02 now. You sure you didn't - some spell or something? D'you copy something out of one of those books?"
"Dude. I know better than that."
Because it would be just wildly awkward to touch the naked chick in front of his brother, Dean side-shuffles over to the table and pokes at the stack of cheeseburgers. They feel real enough, he decides, and they certainly smell real enough. He could try one, take a little nibble, but Sam's been at him his whole life about sticking things in his mouth - and he remembers suddenly the end result of that fancy sub sandwich he wished for, during that whole thing with the mojo'ed-up coin.
"Been here a whole week," he muses. "And nothing's happened at midnight before."
"That we know of."
"Kinda think we would've noticed."
Sam concedes the point with a shrug.
"So what's different?" Dean asks. "We didn't bring anything in here. Just the stuff we bought, and none of that's mystical."
"That we -"
"Dude. Walmart."
"I've just been copying down titles. Authors. For the card catalogue. That's all, Dean."
"There anything special about today? Phase of the moon or something? Date of some freakin' Druid festival?"
"No. It's - no. I don't think so."
But the question sends Sam off to his laptop for some Google-fu. After a couple of minutes of web-surfing, he shakes his head and sighs. "No mystical connections at all. Yesterday or today."
"You wanted a dog?"
"What? No."
"Dude. It wasn't me."
"Right. You wanted the naked girl. And the cheeseburgers. And the big TV."
"I might've. But not specifically. And not all at once. It's not like I was sitting there with a piece of paper and a pen, making up my freakin' wish list for Santa. Dude. I was -"
"And I was -"
Over there.
There's a little box, about twice the size of the one that holds the key. It was sitting in a little niche originally, the niche they decided was the perfect spot for the key, so they moved it to a shelf in amongst the old books.
Damn thing's glowing.
"That's -" Dean says. "Should that be happening?"
"I don't think so. It wasn't like that before."
"Before we moved it."
"No, before about five minutes ago."
Dean heads for the shelf, intending to… well, something, but Sam snags him by the arm and holds him back. Which is a good point, really. Because they've got no idea what the thing is. Or what it does. Or might do.
"Okay, seriously?" Dean blurts. "If there's things that'll do things, would it not be a good plan to… You know. WARN PEOPLE?" He turns to look back at the dog, and the naked chick, both of whom are grinning and placid. Not looking particularly dangerous. But who knows. Those two stunning babes the Trickster conjured up mopped the floor with him. Getting in and out of bed hurt like hell for a good four days after that little song-and-dance. "Seriously?" he asks the naked chick. "They couldn't put, like, little cards alongside these damn things, like in a museum?"
"Dean."
"WHAT?" Dean barks.
"They -"
"Bunch of ASSHATS. I mean, come ON."
"They were trained, Dean."
"What?"
"They were trained. Remember what Henry said? They went through, like, months of training. They probably knew what all these things were, before they ever set foot in this place."
"Which is no reason to be bringing DANGEROUS SHIT in here, Sam."
"Well," Sam says.
"Things don't end well, Sam. You know that. Things never freaking end well."
"They… could. Maybe."
"Which means what? You want a dog in here? And a whole wall of computers? I told you, man: the place isn't wired up for -"
"Then how are they running?"
Okay, so there's that.
But these things just don't end well. They're running like… 0 for sixty thousand on that score, and no bookie in the world would bother with odds that bad.
He stands there for a minute, watching Sam gaze wistfully at the dog and the giant mounds of salad and the computers and that enormous cushy sofa.
He purposely doesn't look anywhere near the naked chick, because that's just… no.
"You want a dog," he tells his brother softly, "we'll maybe think about it. Someday. Down here, dude? It's just not a good idea. But if we ever end up someplace where it makes sense, the world's full of dogs. The couch, though? All right. We can cash in one of those gold bars and buy a couch - but we're kinda gonna have a bitch of a job getting it in through that little door."
"Dean…" Sam sighs.
"It just don't end well, Sammy. The magic."
For a long while, Sam looks twelve years old again. Disappointed. Smart, and all too aware of things, but disappointed.
"I know," he says finally.
Something about putting the box near those particular books, Dean thinks. They mojo each other up, somehow.
Friggin' old DEAD GUYS.
You'd think they would've…
"You work the books," he says to Sam. "Get 'em all catalogued. Figure out which ones are just reference, and which ones are hands-off. I'll work on all this 'decorative' shit. Look it up. Figure out what it is. We can't have this happening. Ya know? It's bad for my nervous system."
Before Sam can respond, Dean strides across the room, grabs the glowing little box from the shelf, and returns it to its original place in the niche. By the time he steps back from the niche, it's already stopped glowing - and the naked chick, the dog, the burgers and the pie and the salad, the couch and the computers and the big TV have all vanished.
"Place is a friggin' time bomb," he sighs.
"Not if we figure it all out," Sam says. "And we can. We're Legacy, remember?"
But Sam doesn't look convinced.
Then he kind of does.
"Like we didn't have enough to do," Dean grumbles.
Seriously. There used to be a team of people here. People who had a leg up on all this… buckets of crazy.
"All right," he sighs. "Let's get to it."
* * * * *
CHARACTERS: Dean and Sam
GENRE: Gen
RATING: PG
SPOILERS: 8.12 and 8.13
LENGTH: 1800 words
WHEN YOU WISH UPON A BOX
By Carol Davis
The naked chick is Dean's first clue that something has gone completely hinky.
Not all naked, though. Wearing a little filmy-ish, white-ish thing. Looks like she's wearing fog, or… rain. Something you can see through. See the boobies. And the… there. And the nipples.
She's smiling. Not saying anything.
"The hell?" he whispers.
He was reading, is all. You know. Looking at the pictures. Reading. He was reading.
Something frigging BARKS in the other room.
"Sam?" he bleats. "Sammy?"
The naked chick leans toward him, and there's… GOD. Nipples.
Whatever that is in the other room barks again. Happy barking. The sound shifts, like the barking thing is moving.
"DEAN?" Sam's voice roars from over there someplace.
The naked chick reaches for him, and oh HELL yes life is just like porn somehow, but that's not right. There's nobody here but him and Sam. They've spent almost a week making sure of that. There's only the one door, and it's… magic-i-fied. Nobody gets in here without the key, and the key's in its fancy little wooden box, sitting in the niche they decided was the right place to keep it. This chick didn't just stroll in here.
Trickster, he thinks, but Gabe's been dead a long time.
Maybe there's another one of those sons of bitches? There's lore, after all. Lots of lore.
"DEAN!"
Garbling things that want to be words but aren't, he scrambles out of his chair, the nice, comfy chair he hauled up here from that weird little room downstairs because it makes him feel more at ease to be within shouting distance of Sam - and see, right here, there's proof that that was the right move - dances a little to get past the reach of the boo - the naked chick - almost loses his footing on the marble floor, recovers, and pivots toward the last place he saw Sam.
"Sammy?"
"Dean? What the hell, Dean?"
The big table's covered with food. Tons of food. Bacon cheeseburgers and pie and steaks and a whole turkey and… Jesus, SALAD?
There's a dog in there with Sam, a good sized-mutt, dancing and yipping around Sam's legs.
"The HELL, man," Sam says.
Enormous flat-panel TV. A big, cushy couch, long enough for Sam to stretch out on. A computer station with six monitors, like the lash-up Frank had, nice for keeping an eye on the world. They're hooked up to the outside, to six different views of the big batch of nothing that's out there - nothing, other than the Impala, of course.
"What did you do?" Sam squeaks. "What did you touch?"
"Me? Why is it me?"
"Because I didn't do anything."
"Neither did I!"
"What were you doing? Just now?"
Sam's gaze drifts on past Dean, and his lips disappear.
"I was reading," Dean replies. "I was sitting in the good chair. Reading."
With the dog trotting merrily along beside him, Sam strides across the room, past Dean, past the naked chick, and starts circling around the chair. Starts poking at it. Peering at it. Lifting it to look underneath. It's a chair, dammit, Dean thinks, but who the hell knows? In this place? Who the hell knows?
There's nothing carved on the chair. It doesn't give off EMF.
"It's just a chair," Dean mutters.
"Then what's all this?" Sam demands, making big, crazy gestures with his hands.
"You've got all the old books, dude."
"Yeah, and I didn't do anything."
"Neither did I!" Scowling, Dean scoops up the copy of Foxy Femmes that went flying when the naked chick appeared. Yeah, okay, she looks a little like the girl who's on page - what is it - page 84, but that doesn't explain all the damn SALAD. Or the frantic little dog that's circling around Sam, hopping and bouncing, begging to be…
Whatever the hell dogs want.
"Trickster," Sam says through his teeth.
Dean shakes his head. Firmly, because he's thought this through. "The whole place is protected, remember?"
"What, then?"
"I don't know. Do I look like I know?"
"SIT, dammit!" Sam yelps at the dog. He's no less startled than Dean when the dog instantly obeys, settling into a placid sit a pace or so from Sam's feet. Grinning, for God's sake. The naked chick is grinning, too, a little, but on her it's kind of distracting, being that it's combined with… You know. Nipples.
Sam lets out a long, controlled sigh.
Says, "Something happened. Obviously. One of us did something."
"Simultaneously."
"What?"
"This all popped up at the same time."
"I - yeah. Okay. I guess."
A glance at his watch confirms what Dean suddenly suspected. "Midnight. It's like 12:02 now. You sure you didn't - some spell or something? D'you copy something out of one of those books?"
"Dude. I know better than that."
Because it would be just wildly awkward to touch the naked chick in front of his brother, Dean side-shuffles over to the table and pokes at the stack of cheeseburgers. They feel real enough, he decides, and they certainly smell real enough. He could try one, take a little nibble, but Sam's been at him his whole life about sticking things in his mouth - and he remembers suddenly the end result of that fancy sub sandwich he wished for, during that whole thing with the mojo'ed-up coin.
"Been here a whole week," he muses. "And nothing's happened at midnight before."
"That we know of."
"Kinda think we would've noticed."
Sam concedes the point with a shrug.
"So what's different?" Dean asks. "We didn't bring anything in here. Just the stuff we bought, and none of that's mystical."
"That we -"
"Dude. Walmart."
"I've just been copying down titles. Authors. For the card catalogue. That's all, Dean."
"There anything special about today? Phase of the moon or something? Date of some freakin' Druid festival?"
"No. It's - no. I don't think so."
But the question sends Sam off to his laptop for some Google-fu. After a couple of minutes of web-surfing, he shakes his head and sighs. "No mystical connections at all. Yesterday or today."
"You wanted a dog?"
"What? No."
"Dude. It wasn't me."
"Right. You wanted the naked girl. And the cheeseburgers. And the big TV."
"I might've. But not specifically. And not all at once. It's not like I was sitting there with a piece of paper and a pen, making up my freakin' wish list for Santa. Dude. I was -"
"And I was -"
Over there.
There's a little box, about twice the size of the one that holds the key. It was sitting in a little niche originally, the niche they decided was the perfect spot for the key, so they moved it to a shelf in amongst the old books.
Damn thing's glowing.
"That's -" Dean says. "Should that be happening?"
"I don't think so. It wasn't like that before."
"Before we moved it."
"No, before about five minutes ago."
Dean heads for the shelf, intending to… well, something, but Sam snags him by the arm and holds him back. Which is a good point, really. Because they've got no idea what the thing is. Or what it does. Or might do.
"Okay, seriously?" Dean blurts. "If there's things that'll do things, would it not be a good plan to… You know. WARN PEOPLE?" He turns to look back at the dog, and the naked chick, both of whom are grinning and placid. Not looking particularly dangerous. But who knows. Those two stunning babes the Trickster conjured up mopped the floor with him. Getting in and out of bed hurt like hell for a good four days after that little song-and-dance. "Seriously?" he asks the naked chick. "They couldn't put, like, little cards alongside these damn things, like in a museum?"
"Dean."
"WHAT?" Dean barks.
"They -"
"Bunch of ASSHATS. I mean, come ON."
"They were trained, Dean."
"What?"
"They were trained. Remember what Henry said? They went through, like, months of training. They probably knew what all these things were, before they ever set foot in this place."
"Which is no reason to be bringing DANGEROUS SHIT in here, Sam."
"Well," Sam says.
"Things don't end well, Sam. You know that. Things never freaking end well."
"They… could. Maybe."
"Which means what? You want a dog in here? And a whole wall of computers? I told you, man: the place isn't wired up for -"
"Then how are they running?"
Okay, so there's that.
But these things just don't end well. They're running like… 0 for sixty thousand on that score, and no bookie in the world would bother with odds that bad.
He stands there for a minute, watching Sam gaze wistfully at the dog and the giant mounds of salad and the computers and that enormous cushy sofa.
He purposely doesn't look anywhere near the naked chick, because that's just… no.
"You want a dog," he tells his brother softly, "we'll maybe think about it. Someday. Down here, dude? It's just not a good idea. But if we ever end up someplace where it makes sense, the world's full of dogs. The couch, though? All right. We can cash in one of those gold bars and buy a couch - but we're kinda gonna have a bitch of a job getting it in through that little door."
"Dean…" Sam sighs.
"It just don't end well, Sammy. The magic."
For a long while, Sam looks twelve years old again. Disappointed. Smart, and all too aware of things, but disappointed.
"I know," he says finally.
Something about putting the box near those particular books, Dean thinks. They mojo each other up, somehow.
Friggin' old DEAD GUYS.
You'd think they would've…
"You work the books," he says to Sam. "Get 'em all catalogued. Figure out which ones are just reference, and which ones are hands-off. I'll work on all this 'decorative' shit. Look it up. Figure out what it is. We can't have this happening. Ya know? It's bad for my nervous system."
Before Sam can respond, Dean strides across the room, grabs the glowing little box from the shelf, and returns it to its original place in the niche. By the time he steps back from the niche, it's already stopped glowing - and the naked chick, the dog, the burgers and the pie and the salad, the couch and the computers and the big TV have all vanished.
"Place is a friggin' time bomb," he sighs.
"Not if we figure it all out," Sam says. "And we can. We're Legacy, remember?"
But Sam doesn't look convinced.
Then he kind of does.
"Like we didn't have enough to do," Dean grumbles.
Seriously. There used to be a team of people here. People who had a leg up on all this… buckets of crazy.
"All right," he sighs. "Let's get to it."
* * * * *