SPN FIC - Go Tell It on the Mountain
America (or wherever you happen to be) has voted. Here ya go. Christmas 1998.
Characters: John, Dean (19), Sam (15)
Pairings: none
Rating: PG, for language
Spoilers: none
Length: 1667 words
Disclaimer: Nope. Don't own the boys. Wish I did.
John nodded. “We’ll make it, if the snow lets up. If not, there’s enough here to last us for three or four days easy, and we’ve got our own supplies to add to it.” When Dean frowned at that, John asked him, “You got someplace you need to be?”
Go Tell It on the Mountain
By Carol Davis
Snow instead of sand. Cold instead of heat. Either way, the place was an oasis: a little piece of heaven in the form of a single-room cabin midway up the mountain.
“Whoever owns this place?” Dean announced as the three Winchesters stumbled in through the structure’s only door. “Don’t care who they are. I’d kiss ‘em right on the mouth. Damn, it’s cold out there.”
Sam had to push him out of the way so he could get the door closed. “Dude, hands,” Dean protested.
“Fine,” Sam said. “We’ll just leave the door open.”
This far up, there was no electric service; they had to use flashlights to find candles and matches. By the time the boys had lined up and lit half a dozen candles, John had already filled the fireplace with split logs and kindling. He lit the fire with a match Sam passed to him, then rose to his feet and backed off a pace or two.
They’d been up on the mountain going on eleven hours. The first couple, it hadn’t been snowing at all. It’d been coming down to beat the band since midafternoon: more than hard enough to make locating the snow snake almost impossible.
But the bitch didn’t know it was dealing with Winchesters.
It’d been dead almost an hour now. Trouble was, they wouldn’t be able to get back to the truck - not in the dark, with the snow coming down this hard. They’d been looking for a cave to take shelter in when Dean spotted the cabin.
“Hunter?” he said as they watched the fire take hold.
“Hmm,” John replied.
Sam smiled a little, crookedly. “Our kind, or the regular kind?”
“Could be either. Maybe a little of both. Either way, he left it pretty well stocked. Plenty of firewood.”
“Not gonna show up and shoot us for trespassing, is he?” Dean asked.
“We’ll deal with that if it happens.”
“Before or after the shooting?”
“Whichever,” John said mildly.
One room. One bed, shoved into a corner. A couple of beat-up but comfortable-looking chairs in front of the fire. A kitchen composed of an old-fashioned sink and a wood-burning stove, and a stack of shelves holding rows of cans and jars. Sam wandered over there for a look. “Tuna,” he said. “Peanut butter and jelly. Soup, if we can get the stove going. And some tins of crackers.” Turning the faucets at the sink produced nothing but a gasp of air in the pipes.
“Easy enough to melt snow,” John told him.
“Can we get down in the morning?”
John nodded. “We’ll make it, if the snow lets up. If not, there’s enough here to last us for three or four days easy, and we’ve got our own supplies to add to it.” When Dean frowned at that, John asked him, “You got someplace you need to be?”
“Nope,” Dean said.
They all knew what he wasn’t bothering to say: the three of them locked up in one room for several days.
Yeah. That would work.
“There’s checkers,” Dean pointed out.
“There’s no bathroom,” Sam said.
“Outhouse,” John said.
Dean let go of a small, half-smothered laugh. “This’ll be fun, then. Loving it already.”
They made dinner of peanut-butter crackers and canned peaches. Dried their boots and socks in front of the fire.
Sam found a small stack of paperback books and sat close enough to the fire to start reading one.
“You ever seen one of those before?” Dean asked his father. “Snow snake?”
The two of them had laid claim to the chairs; Sam was perched on a folded woolen blanket on the floor.
The room fell almost as silent as if it had still been empty.
“Talked to somebody who saw one a few years back,” John said after a minute. After another minute he added, “Not real crazy about snakes. Even the normal kind. Even if they’re not venomous, getting bit hurts like a bitch.”
“Thing’s got fangs the size of your finger.”
“Not doing it much good now.”
They opened the door long enough for Dean to scoop snow into a big metal basin. Melting it produced nasty-tasting water. The alternative was canned orange juice or V-8 - or the half a bottle of Jim Beam Dean spotted on the bottom shelf. Sam took the juice. His father and brother took a couple of fingers of whiskey in chipped jelly glasses.
“Got snowed in last year, too,” Dean commented.
Sam glanced up from his book and sighed.
“Cut you down a tree if you want,” Dean grinned.
“No thanks.”
“Think Santa’ll find you up here?”
“If he comes up here, he’s crazier than we are,” Sam said, with a sideward glance at his father. Then he went on reading, head bent low over the book. He hadn’t even bothered to show Dean and John what it was - he’d simply picked it out of the stack and turned to page one.
Dean added another log to the fire after a while. As he settled back into his chair, he asked John, “You gonna take the bed?”
“Why? Because my ancient carcass needs it?”
Dean let his eyes say what his mouth didn’t.
“Take it,” John told him. “I’m good here. Not really tired.”
They sat in silence for half of forever, the three of them. It had to be hours. At least it felt like hours.
John finished his whiskey and poured a little more. He didn’t offer the same to Dean.
“You remember the songs?” he asked softly.
Dean raised a brow. “You talking to me?”
John’s gaze shifted to Dean and he smiled a little. Wistfully, absently. “You used to like to sing Christmas songs. Made up the damnedest lyrics.”
“I remember singing at Pastor Jim’s.”
“Before that,” John said.
It was ground Dean never ventured onto. Dangerous as thin ice on a pond. Glistening and beautiful. He pulled in a breath and stared into what was left of his whiskey, a quarter of an inch of amber liquid at the bottom of the jelly glass. “I don’t know,” he murmured.
“Drove the old ladies nuts.”
“Good or bad?”
“’Oh, he’s so precious,’’ John crooned.
“Jesus,” Dean said.
“You don’t remember.”
“Must’ve blocked it out. They do all that cheek-pinching shit?”
“Tried to.”
“I think I’d rather deal with the freakin’ snow snake.”
John turned the jelly glass around in his hand and rubbed at one of the chipped places with the flat of his thumb.
“She taught you,” he said.
Sam looked up from his book. Then back down. Hiding his face.
There wasn’t much Dean could do to hide his. He looked away a little, stared into the fire, then away from it. When he looked back at his father, John’s expression seemed to be an invitation. Maybe it wasn’t, but Dean took it as one.
“She liked to sing?” he ventured.
“All the time.”
“I think I remember that. Sort of.”
“Bad enough to stand your hair on end, sometimes. Never paid a lot of attention to…what is it? Staying on key. Whatever. She just -“ John paused for a moment, picked up the fireplace poker from where Dean had left it and nudged at the logs. “It made her happy. Oldies, mostly. The stuff we heard in high school. Christmas songs. Those she could hit pretty near target on.”
Dean frowned, trying to pull together fragments of memory.
“You,” John went on. “Never could figure out how, but you got it right. I figured you’d copy her and fuck it all up, but you always sounded good.”
“Precious,” Sam said without looking up.
“Precious.”
“I don’t -“ Dean began.
John looked him steadily in the eye. “Figured you’d like stuff like Rudolph. Frosty the Snowman. The little-kid songs. But ‘O Holy Night’ you blew right out of the park. Little bitty kid. You nailed those notes like you had a fuckin’ nail gun. That whole line of shit Jim fed you about somebody having laryngitis? Caroline Lundquist told him you could sing, but you wouldn’t do it anywhere except in the house, with just her listening. Sneaky son of a bitch tricked you into singing.” He tipped his head at Sam. “Him, three years old, they made him the baby Jesus, and you pitched a fit.”
“I did?”
“You were a righteous little cuss when you wanted to be. Stickler for the rules.”
“He still is,” Sam said to his book.
John’s gaze drifted back to the fire. “She would have laughed,” he murmured. “Would have pissed herself laughing.”
Then he closed his eyes. His face was as impassive, as composed as if he had fallen asleep.
Dean let him sit undisturbed for a while, then asked quietly, “You want the bed, Dad?”
“No,” John said. “I’m good.”
Sam glanced up then, asked Dean a question without saying anything. “You take it,” Dean told him. “Get some sleep. You’re gonna kill your eyes reading like that. And don’t drag up that crap about Abe Lincoln. For all we know he was blind as a bat.” Sam’s protest went no farther than a mild frown; then he nodded and set the book aside. A few minutes later he was sound asleep, dressed except for his boots, curled on his side under a layer of wool blankets.
Dean had almost drifted off too when he heard his father say, “Sorry.”
He answered with a look, a raised eyebrow.
“Not what I had planned for Christmas,” John said.
“Doesn’t matter,” Dean told him.
John nestled a little deeper into the chair, found himself a comfortable position. He’d turned down a blanket, said the chill would let him know when the fire was burning down and needed to be stoked up.
His eyes were closed again when he murmured, “You nailed those fuckin’ notes. Every last one of ‘em.”
“I wish I remembered.”
“Yeah,” John said. “So do I.”
Characters: John, Dean (19), Sam (15)
Pairings: none
Rating: PG, for language
Spoilers: none
Length: 1667 words
Disclaimer: Nope. Don't own the boys. Wish I did.
John nodded. “We’ll make it, if the snow lets up. If not, there’s enough here to last us for three or four days easy, and we’ve got our own supplies to add to it.” When Dean frowned at that, John asked him, “You got someplace you need to be?”
Go Tell It on the Mountain
By Carol Davis
Snow instead of sand. Cold instead of heat. Either way, the place was an oasis: a little piece of heaven in the form of a single-room cabin midway up the mountain.
“Whoever owns this place?” Dean announced as the three Winchesters stumbled in through the structure’s only door. “Don’t care who they are. I’d kiss ‘em right on the mouth. Damn, it’s cold out there.”
Sam had to push him out of the way so he could get the door closed. “Dude, hands,” Dean protested.
“Fine,” Sam said. “We’ll just leave the door open.”
This far up, there was no electric service; they had to use flashlights to find candles and matches. By the time the boys had lined up and lit half a dozen candles, John had already filled the fireplace with split logs and kindling. He lit the fire with a match Sam passed to him, then rose to his feet and backed off a pace or two.
They’d been up on the mountain going on eleven hours. The first couple, it hadn’t been snowing at all. It’d been coming down to beat the band since midafternoon: more than hard enough to make locating the snow snake almost impossible.
But the bitch didn’t know it was dealing with Winchesters.
It’d been dead almost an hour now. Trouble was, they wouldn’t be able to get back to the truck - not in the dark, with the snow coming down this hard. They’d been looking for a cave to take shelter in when Dean spotted the cabin.
“Hunter?” he said as they watched the fire take hold.
“Hmm,” John replied.
Sam smiled a little, crookedly. “Our kind, or the regular kind?”
“Could be either. Maybe a little of both. Either way, he left it pretty well stocked. Plenty of firewood.”
“Not gonna show up and shoot us for trespassing, is he?” Dean asked.
“We’ll deal with that if it happens.”
“Before or after the shooting?”
“Whichever,” John said mildly.
One room. One bed, shoved into a corner. A couple of beat-up but comfortable-looking chairs in front of the fire. A kitchen composed of an old-fashioned sink and a wood-burning stove, and a stack of shelves holding rows of cans and jars. Sam wandered over there for a look. “Tuna,” he said. “Peanut butter and jelly. Soup, if we can get the stove going. And some tins of crackers.” Turning the faucets at the sink produced nothing but a gasp of air in the pipes.
“Easy enough to melt snow,” John told him.
“Can we get down in the morning?”
John nodded. “We’ll make it, if the snow lets up. If not, there’s enough here to last us for three or four days easy, and we’ve got our own supplies to add to it.” When Dean frowned at that, John asked him, “You got someplace you need to be?”
“Nope,” Dean said.
They all knew what he wasn’t bothering to say: the three of them locked up in one room for several days.
Yeah. That would work.
“There’s checkers,” Dean pointed out.
“There’s no bathroom,” Sam said.
“Outhouse,” John said.
Dean let go of a small, half-smothered laugh. “This’ll be fun, then. Loving it already.”
They made dinner of peanut-butter crackers and canned peaches. Dried their boots and socks in front of the fire.
Sam found a small stack of paperback books and sat close enough to the fire to start reading one.
“You ever seen one of those before?” Dean asked his father. “Snow snake?”
The two of them had laid claim to the chairs; Sam was perched on a folded woolen blanket on the floor.
The room fell almost as silent as if it had still been empty.
“Talked to somebody who saw one a few years back,” John said after a minute. After another minute he added, “Not real crazy about snakes. Even the normal kind. Even if they’re not venomous, getting bit hurts like a bitch.”
“Thing’s got fangs the size of your finger.”
“Not doing it much good now.”
They opened the door long enough for Dean to scoop snow into a big metal basin. Melting it produced nasty-tasting water. The alternative was canned orange juice or V-8 - or the half a bottle of Jim Beam Dean spotted on the bottom shelf. Sam took the juice. His father and brother took a couple of fingers of whiskey in chipped jelly glasses.
“Got snowed in last year, too,” Dean commented.
Sam glanced up from his book and sighed.
“Cut you down a tree if you want,” Dean grinned.
“No thanks.”
“Think Santa’ll find you up here?”
“If he comes up here, he’s crazier than we are,” Sam said, with a sideward glance at his father. Then he went on reading, head bent low over the book. He hadn’t even bothered to show Dean and John what it was - he’d simply picked it out of the stack and turned to page one.
Dean added another log to the fire after a while. As he settled back into his chair, he asked John, “You gonna take the bed?”
“Why? Because my ancient carcass needs it?”
Dean let his eyes say what his mouth didn’t.
“Take it,” John told him. “I’m good here. Not really tired.”
They sat in silence for half of forever, the three of them. It had to be hours. At least it felt like hours.
John finished his whiskey and poured a little more. He didn’t offer the same to Dean.
“You remember the songs?” he asked softly.
Dean raised a brow. “You talking to me?”
John’s gaze shifted to Dean and he smiled a little. Wistfully, absently. “You used to like to sing Christmas songs. Made up the damnedest lyrics.”
“I remember singing at Pastor Jim’s.”
“Before that,” John said.
It was ground Dean never ventured onto. Dangerous as thin ice on a pond. Glistening and beautiful. He pulled in a breath and stared into what was left of his whiskey, a quarter of an inch of amber liquid at the bottom of the jelly glass. “I don’t know,” he murmured.
“Drove the old ladies nuts.”
“Good or bad?”
“’Oh, he’s so precious,’’ John crooned.
“Jesus,” Dean said.
“You don’t remember.”
“Must’ve blocked it out. They do all that cheek-pinching shit?”
“Tried to.”
“I think I’d rather deal with the freakin’ snow snake.”
John turned the jelly glass around in his hand and rubbed at one of the chipped places with the flat of his thumb.
“She taught you,” he said.
Sam looked up from his book. Then back down. Hiding his face.
There wasn’t much Dean could do to hide his. He looked away a little, stared into the fire, then away from it. When he looked back at his father, John’s expression seemed to be an invitation. Maybe it wasn’t, but Dean took it as one.
“She liked to sing?” he ventured.
“All the time.”
“I think I remember that. Sort of.”
“Bad enough to stand your hair on end, sometimes. Never paid a lot of attention to…what is it? Staying on key. Whatever. She just -“ John paused for a moment, picked up the fireplace poker from where Dean had left it and nudged at the logs. “It made her happy. Oldies, mostly. The stuff we heard in high school. Christmas songs. Those she could hit pretty near target on.”
Dean frowned, trying to pull together fragments of memory.
“You,” John went on. “Never could figure out how, but you got it right. I figured you’d copy her and fuck it all up, but you always sounded good.”
“Precious,” Sam said without looking up.
“Precious.”
“I don’t -“ Dean began.
John looked him steadily in the eye. “Figured you’d like stuff like Rudolph. Frosty the Snowman. The little-kid songs. But ‘O Holy Night’ you blew right out of the park. Little bitty kid. You nailed those notes like you had a fuckin’ nail gun. That whole line of shit Jim fed you about somebody having laryngitis? Caroline Lundquist told him you could sing, but you wouldn’t do it anywhere except in the house, with just her listening. Sneaky son of a bitch tricked you into singing.” He tipped his head at Sam. “Him, three years old, they made him the baby Jesus, and you pitched a fit.”
“I did?”
“You were a righteous little cuss when you wanted to be. Stickler for the rules.”
“He still is,” Sam said to his book.
John’s gaze drifted back to the fire. “She would have laughed,” he murmured. “Would have pissed herself laughing.”
Then he closed his eyes. His face was as impassive, as composed as if he had fallen asleep.
Dean let him sit undisturbed for a while, then asked quietly, “You want the bed, Dad?”
“No,” John said. “I’m good.”
Sam glanced up then, asked Dean a question without saying anything. “You take it,” Dean told him. “Get some sleep. You’re gonna kill your eyes reading like that. And don’t drag up that crap about Abe Lincoln. For all we know he was blind as a bat.” Sam’s protest went no farther than a mild frown; then he nodded and set the book aside. A few minutes later he was sound asleep, dressed except for his boots, curled on his side under a layer of wool blankets.
Dean had almost drifted off too when he heard his father say, “Sorry.”
He answered with a look, a raised eyebrow.
“Not what I had planned for Christmas,” John said.
“Doesn’t matter,” Dean told him.
John nestled a little deeper into the chair, found himself a comfortable position. He’d turned down a blanket, said the chill would let him know when the fire was burning down and needed to be stoked up.
His eyes were closed again when he murmured, “You nailed those fuckin’ notes. Every last one of ‘em.”
“I wish I remembered.”
“Yeah,” John said. “So do I.”