SPN FIC - One of Those Nights
Yo,
kimonkey7. Happy birthday! Thought I'd get your fic-exchange fic done and let it do double-duty. Just a little bit of fluff to thank you for all the enjoyment your fics have given me. Hope you like. (Dean whumpage? Check. H/C? Check. Naughty talk? Check. And...the other two things you asked for? Check.)
Characters: Dean, Sam, Bobby
Pairings: none
Rating: R, for much salty language
Spoilers: nothing specific past AHBL
Length: 2050 words
Disclaimer: Still no money being made. Getting that printed on t-shirts.
He felt rather than saw Bobby’s shadow fall onto the scuffed linoleum. “You all right?” That was Bobby-speak for Tell me if it’s serious. Otherwise I’m just gonna let you yark, unless you want me to hold your hand. And good luck with that.
One of Those Nights
(Grease Is the Way We Are Feelin’)
By Carol Davis
“Dude. Oh my GOD.”
Yeah. Like there was a way to respond to that. Dean settled for offering Sam a look that said Fuck you in five different languages, including Latin and Conversational French.
“Seriously, man,” Sam said. “It’s like nerve gas.”
“Did I ask you to come in here?” Dean hissed.
“It’s this or go outside and piss on scrub grass. In full view of anybody who might happen to look out the window.”
“Anybody who anybody? There’s nobody here.”
“There’s people. There’s a car in the lot.”
“Fine. Make a fuckin’ drama out of it. I’m the one on the floor.”
And that was about all the conversation that was going to happen in here. Period. El fuckin’ finito. Dean shifted his slump against the bathtub a little and pillowed his head on his arm, cutting down his view of Sam to half a leg (the left one, from the knee down).
When the half a leg didn’t move, Dean grunted, “Use Bobby’s bathroom.”
“Bobby’s room is all the way at the end of -“
“SAM.”
“Fine.”
“You wanna trade places? Huh? I’ll trade.”
The half a leg finally left Dean’s field of view. A couple seconds later Sam started taking what was one helluva necessary leak, given that there was enough of it to extinguish a decent-sized structure fire.
Good thing it stopped when it did.
Actually turning your guts inside out from puking? Seemed possible.
He was clinging to the rim of the bowl when Sam crouched down beside him. “You want… I don’t know,” Sam said with a sigh. “What can I do?”
“Stop bitching at me about the smell.”
“Yeah. I guess that was kind of -“
“Sam.”
“Going.”
He flushed first. Then left Dean blissfully alone.
Alone. Yeah. Alone definitely equaled Good. Definitely didn’t need an audience while every molecule he’d eaten in the last eleven years made a break for freedom.
At least it didn’t try to get out both exits simultaneously.
Last time he’d had it this bad, they’d hauled him off to the hospital.
Long time ago. Just a kid then. Kid, waitin’ for Dad.
He felt rather than saw Bobby’s shadow fall onto the scuffed linoleum. “You all right?” That was Bobby-speak for Tell me if it’s serious. Otherwise I’m just gonna let you yark, unless you want me to hold your hand. And good luck with that.
“Nuh,” Dean mumbled into the bowl.
“Thought those hash browns looked suspicious.”
Bobby wandered off, a miracle on about the same level as the Virgin Mary appearing during the middle of the Super Bowl. Silence settled gently down. Dean’s mind began to drift like a paper boat floating on rain runoff in the gutter.
“…Knew it’d hit him sooner or later,” Bobby said at a level he probably thought Dean couldn’t hear. “Idjit. You can eat all that crap when you’re fifteen, but it starts to add up on you. You dump booze on top of all that grease…”
“And top it off with more grease,” Sam said.
“Told him not to eat the damn hash browns.”
The hash browns had looked just fine. A little soggy, maybe, and the melted butter surrounding them might’ve been a little…
Make it twelve years’ worth of food. Shit, go for fifteen. Hot dogs from freshman year of high school, how ya doin’. Back door of the bus is available if the front’s too far.
“Sam?”
After the third repeat of his name, Sam showed up in the doorway. “What?”
“Kill me,” Dean said.
“I’m not gonna kill you.”
“See if I swap anything for you next time.”
Maybe not a classy thing to say. No, definitely not a classy thing to say. They’d stopped treating the deal like a joke - or Dean had; Sam had been all pinchy bitchfaced about it from the get-go - a couple months ago. From down here with his cheek resting against the rim of the bowl, Dean couldn’t see anything of Sam but knees, not enough to tell if Sam was upset.
Amazing, sometimes, how much of his shit Sam let fly on by.
But then, that bird flew in both directions.
Water ran in the sink. A second later Sam crouched down with a cup of water in his hand. “See if you can keep this down.”
“Not happenin’. Comin’ right back up.”
“Try it anyway.”
“Lea’ me ‘lone, Sam.”
Thing was, if Sam wasn’t in the mood to take direction, he wasn’t gonna take it. It’d been a bitch getting him to do anything for the last…what? Ten years?
Long time.
Helluva way to… Was supposed to be… Hunt. Find the thing that carried off those people..
“Fuck,” Dean ground out.
“No thanks,” Sam said.
Three or four sips of water happened, and stayed where they were supposed to. Then Sam got an arm around him, hoisted him up, and walked him over to the bed. The covers were pulled down, waiting for him.
Bed felt like fuckin’ Nirvana.
He was halfway between asleep and awake, a while later, when he heard Sam’s voice say, “Dean, man, we’re going out to try to find it. The palis. Call me if you need me, okay? We’re not gonna be that far.”
“Don’ need you,” Dean muttered.
“Call me.”
“Sleepin’, Sam. Go th’ fuck away.”
He heard Bobby say something, heard Sam answer him, and refused to try to puzzle out what it was. When he heard the door click shut he squirmed over onto his side, crushed the pillow into a lump between his head and his shoulder, and dropped back into sleep.
Something - voices? a car? - jerked him awake. Sam had left one of the lamps on, enough light for him to see the face of his watch. 3:15.
3:15. No Sam, no Bobby.
Didn’t mean much; they’d track the thing, the - what was it? - till dawn if they had to.
Thirsty.
He tried that idea out for a minute, testing it to see if it would send his stomach rolling downhill, grinning muzzily when everything stayed where it was supposed to be. One hand pushing hard against the mattress got him upright. The room pivoted a little. He blinked hard, then took another look. Nothing around to drink except water. The damn stuff from the tap tasted like it’d been run out of the Impala’s radiator. So…
Soda machine. Not far away. Out the door, hang a left, down maybe fifty feet.
Hunker down slowly, grab the jeans, find some quarters in the pocket. Good to go. Shoes entirely optional.
Ginger ale made him think of long time ago. Dad, trying to get him to drink a little to settle his stomach. Worked, most of the time. He stood by the soda machine, flipped the tab on the can, rested a hand against the cinderblock wall and took a sip with the warm night air of the desert surrounding him like a blanket. The sweetness tasted good. The bubbles brought up a belch that made him shudder.
Then he was flat on his back on the walkway.
The FUCK…??
He flung his arms up to protect his face, tried to bring his knees up to protect his belly, but the thing got him by the ankles. Cold hands grasped at his feet, held on despite his kicking and squirming. He got one elbow planted against the concrete and tried to scrabble back but the thing had a solid grip on him.
“Leggo, you sonofa…”
It was licking his feet.
“Hey! You - what the -“
Big-time licking, like a dog lapping up ice cream off the sidewalk, long spiny tongue like a cat’s swiping up his sole.
There was just no way that made any sense.
The spines started to dig in, tear at his flesh, pull the skin away. In the dirty amber glow of the security lights he could see a dark wetness around its mouth he knew was his blood. He tried again to crab-walk away but the thing gave a solid yank on his ankle and he went flopping down onto his back.
He was wearing a t-shirt and a pair of sweats. No weapons. Not even a pair of goddamn socks, which might have kept this freaky bastard from…
“Let me…let…son of a BITCH, leggo!”
It didn’t, but it sort of pulled back a little, running its tongue around its mouth, sticking it out, grimacing like it’d eaten something sour.
“Let -“
The explosion, confined by the little vending-machine alcove, made his ears ring. The thing screamed, stumbled backwards, collided with the snack machine so hard a couple of candy bars thunked down into the tray. Something exploded again, and finally the thing let go of his ankle.
“Dean! Dean, man, are you okay?”
Sam. And Bobby, holding a sawed-off. Head still swimming, Dean inched backwards until his feet were out of the thing’s reach. Not that it’d be making another grab for him: judging by the size of the hole Bobby had blown into it, it was big-time dead.
“What the fuck?” he wheezed.
Bobby bent down to peer at the thing, then turned a scowl on Dean that would have done John Winchester awesomely proud. “What’re you doing out here?” he demanded. “And without your shoes? For Christ’s sake, Dean.”
Shoes? Shoes were the issue? “’S warm out,” he offered, confused.
“When there’s a palis nearby? Boy, have you got one ounce of sense in your head? It could’ve bled you to death, you imbecile.”
“Palis?”
“It’s what we were hunting,” Sam said in an Earth-to-Dean tone.
“How’m I supposed to know what the fuck you were hunting? You said a couple people disappeared. That’s all I heard.”
“We were talking about it for like three hours.”
“Which three hours? While I was puking up my internal organs, or while I was asleep? You think I was listening to you? Why the hell would I -“ Grunting, Dean got to his knees, then to his feet. Or foot. With one shoulder against the wall, he seized the other ankle and hoisted that foot up to inspect the shredding the thing - palis - thing had done. “The hell kind of a demon is that, anyway? A demon that licks fuckin’ feet? That’s like some damn fetish.”
Sam shrugged, grimacing a little at the condition of Dean’s foot. “Not exactly terrifying. But the blood loss -“
“Would you look at that,” Bobby murmured.
“Now what?” Dean groaned.
Bobby tipped his head at the palis. “Its mouth. It’s all…shriveled.” He thought that over for a moment, then said, “Salt’s its weakness. Says so in all the lore. But it looks like junk food doesn’t do it any good, either. Whatever’s in your blood - another couple mouthfuls and it would’ve keeled over, shotgun or no shotgun.”
“Gee,” Dean said. “Next time I’ll just let it suck my fuckin’ feet till it drops.”
Sam grinned at him.
“This is funny?”
“You poisoned the foot-sucking demon.”
“Yeah? Fuck you.”
Shaking his head, Sam reached down and grabbed the palis by the ankles. “I’ll take it out to where the scavengers can get at it,” he told Bobby. “You want to help old poison toe-jam, here, grab the stuff?”
All three of them looked toward the motel office. There was a light on in there, but that didn’t mean much; the manager had been drunk enough when they’d checked in that he could barely locate the right keys. And if the place had any other occupants, they were sound asleep. Or staying the hell out of whatever had prompted two shotgun blasts in the middle of the night.
Still…
Dean carefully lowered his foot to the ground, heel down, toes in the air. “The freakin’ thing licks feet. The hell is that?”
“It might ask the same about you,” Bobby pointed out. “Breakfast? We get you some fruit. Oatmeal or somethin’.”
“Screw that. My blood kills demons.” Grinning, Dean began to hobble back toward the room. Sam said something too low for him to hear. Not that he wanted to hear it. “Killed the foot-suckin’ freaky demon,” he chuckled. “I am too awesome for fuckin’ words.”
Yeah.
Sure.