Fic: Apples to Apples (the root of the problem rehash) | R | Sam and Dean | Gen
Title: Apples to Apples (the root of the problem rehash)
Author: girlguidejones
Pairing: none
Rating: R (for language)
Original story: A Christian Man by apreludetoanend
Author’s notes: Written for kamikazeremix '09. I always enjoy apreludetoanend’s writing, and although this is quite a departure from the original, it's also [sorta] what she asked for. I hope I do it justice. Thanks to poisontaster for beta and eternally unwavering encouragement.
Summary: Sometimes you don’t always get it right the first time...
“Dude. This sucks. I’m getting the axe.”
They’d been digging for almost two hours, chopping through roots with the tips of their shovels, and they’d barely made it three feet down. Sam swiped a dirty hand across his forehead, panting and leaning on his shovel.
“Yeah...you...you do that,” he gasped. “I-I’ll be right here.” Sam heard the creak of the Impala’s trunk lid rising, and Dean’s voice carried back to him, muffled by the metal or the humidity, Sam couldn’t tell. The calendar said it was fall, already, dammit. Why was it still eighty-five degrees out at one o’clock in the morning, anyway?
“Where the hell are all those bigass roots coming from? The closest tree’s a quarter-mile up that hill.” Dean’s boots crunched on the pea-gravel, and the duffel clanked to the ground next to where Sam was standing, ass-deep in the grave. Not looking up, he shook his head by way of reply, too hot to waste words on a non-answer. A moment later something cool brushed Sam’s cheek and he startled, Dean’s laugh sucked up by the wet air as he waggled a bottle of water at him.
“Get a drink, Sammy, and let’s get back at it. At this rate we’ll barely beat the sunrise.” Dean dropped down into the hole with him and began to unpack the duffel while Sam finished the rest of the water. Dean laid the contents out neatly on the squared-off edges of Mrs. Arthur Coble’s final resting place.
“Why do you think she’s doing it?” Sam asked, hiking himself up and out of the way to sit on the edge of the grave, feet dangling down the sides while Dean began to chop through the gnarled roots. They hadn’t figured out exactly why she was snatching people from the neighborhood, but local kids kept going missing from the vicinity of her old house. Everything led back to her. And still...
“I don’t know Sammy, but we went through this already. We got nothin’ else to go on, so this is it. Sometimes it’s just-"
“I know, I know. Process of elimination.”
“Well if you know, then get off your ass and gather up what I’ve chopped so we can be done with this.” By now Dean was ankle-deep in a pile of root pieces, and his ax arm hung at his side as he caught his breath. It was time to dig again, now that they could actually get to the dirt. Sam reached out for the shovel, hopping down into the grave, but the handle caught the can of salt sitting by the edge. End over end, it somersaulted it into the hole, salt flying everywhere just like the pre-movie cartoons with the dancing popcorn.
“Christ! You waste all the salt now and there won’t be enough left when we bust open her coff-Gah!” Dean scrambled out of the opening, but Sam just stood there, staring at the giant white grubs that were suddenly writhing all over the bottom of the grave. “Sam! Jesus, get out of there,” Dean shouted, his hands thrusting under Sam’s armpits and yanking him up. Okay, yeah. Get away from the giant insects, good idea. He scrambled out, backwards, heels digging into the dirt walls and shoving up while Dean pulled.
“What the hell is that?” Sam gasped, crouched by the hole with Dean. “Is it maggots? I think it's maggots. Oh shit.” For as many dead things as they’ve seen, Sam had this...this thing...with maggots. He studied the obits when they were digging up people, and any time there was a possibility of the corpse being...juicy...he maneuvered things so it would be Dean’s turn when it was actually time to bust through the coffin. Blood, bile, ectoplasm...Sam was good with all of that. But bugs chomping on whatever was left of people? That was major squick-factor stuff. And maggots? Maggots were the worst.
Sam could feel his toes curling inside his boots, as if they were still too close to whatever-the-hell was now all over the grave. Dean moved the Coleman closer to the edge, holding it out as far as he could and as low as he dared. It made Sam nervous to see him leaning out so far, and he curled his fist around the back of Dean’s belt. Just in case. The floor of the grave was now a wriggling mass of whitish, rope-like pieces.
“I...uh...I think it’s the roots,” Dean muttered. Sam felt suddenly, ridiculously euphoric. Haunted roots were much better than giant maggots.
“Really? You’re sure? How come they didn’t move around ‘til now?”
“They...I don’t think they like the salt.”
“But they didn’t mind getting Ginsued?”
“Dude, what am I? Paranormal horticulturist? I got no fuckin’ idea,” Dean shot back.
“Do you hear that?” Sam was positive he could hear them, some sort of low hissing sound.
“Uh, maybe. I think that’s just them brushing against each other,” Dean theorized. “Why?” He paused, turning slowly toward Sam and raising the lantern to illuminate Sam’s face. “Can you hear them? Are they calling you, Sam? To leap into the pit? Are they lonely? Hungry?”
“Fuck you.” Sam felt better now, knowing that they weren’t maggots, but just roots. Half-sentient roots, maybe, but-oh, God.
It couldn’t be.
“Dean?”
“What?” Dean was staring into the hole, probably trying to figure out how to dig three more feet down to Mrs. Coble’s body without getting swarmed by Audrey II’s third-cousins.
“Forget Mrs. Coble,” Sam whispered.
“Man, I know you’re squicked, but we can’t just-"
“Mrs. Coble doesn’t matter, Dean. She’s not the problem,” Sam said. He could feel his own pulse ratcheting up, and tried to stay calm.
“How do you know?” Dean asked, dragging his gaze away to look at Sam. The rustling was beginning to quiet down; maybe the root bits were finally dying. Dean’d heard something in Sam’s voice, of course. He always did.
“Nineteen-eighty-nine,” Sam said.
“Yeah?”
“Where were we?” Sam already knew the answer, but he wasn’t sure Dean would remember. Dean stared at him, realization beginning to dawn.
“You were six years old, so...” Sam waited while Dean searched his memory. Secretly, he loved that Dean benchmarked their childhood history by calculating Sam’s age as the point of origin, as opposed to his own. “No. No way.” Dean stood up, and as the light rose with him the slithering sounds from the grave all but stopped.
“Yes, just over that hill. One bedroom. Bathroom sink was weird-"
“-out in the hallway,” Dean finished, “and Dad had to fix the porch step when you busted through it and about skewered yourself.” Sam nodded.
“But we took care of that,” Dean protested, scratching the back of his head. “Dad got rid of it.”
“I told you,” Sam whispered. “I did. I told you it was back!”
~*~
”Dean! Deeeeeen!” Dean heard the smack-smack-smack of Sam’s sneakers on the old linoleum. He wished Sammy wouldn’t run so much. His big toe was about to bust out of the canvas at any moment, and then where would they be?
“What is it, squirt?”
“It’s back, Dean. Hurry. You hafta tell Daddy it didn’t work!” Sam’s eyes were as big as Reese's cups. He was scared all right, but when Dean checked under the sink, the only thing left of the horrific bag of rooting potatoes was the musty smell.
“Sammy, there’s nothing there, little dude. See? Dad took care of it for us. Nothing’s gonna get you, okay? Besides, we’re leaving tomorrow.”
“But Dean, I saw it! I know I did!” Sam’s grubby fingers squeezed Dean’s hand, and his voice dropped to a tiny whisper. “It was moving!” Sam looked like he was gonna cry, but what was Dean supposed to do? There was nothing there. He needed a diversion.
“C’mon, Sammy. You’re going to get a bath,” he said. Bath-time was Sam’s favorite time, but he still looked unsure. Time to pull out the big guns.
“Hey buddy...you wanna sleep in my bed tonight?”
~*~
“Sam, we left that next morning. Dad was in a hurry, and I looked again, but there wasn’t anything under the sink. It was empty,” Dean explained, quiet and patient, like Sam was still the six-year-old needing placated by his big brother. Then, “I thought you just had a bad dream.”
“You should have believed me,” Sam said, “and you didn’t.” He knew he sounded like the whiny six-year-old he was then, but still.
“I know,” Dean said back. “But I do now.”
“Tentaculus Potatorus,” Sam said, hushed, and Dean nodded once, blanching.
“That thing creeps me right the fuck out,” he said. “What are we gonna do?”
“Only thing we can do,” Sam answered.
~*~
“Hey Bobby,” said Sam.
~*~
In the end, there weren’t any spells. No magic, no exorcisms, and no candles. All it took was apples.
Lots and lots of apples.
“You sure Bobby said this would work?” Dean hollered out at him over the noise of the rented dump truck’s diesel engine. Sam was standing in the bed, rocking as the truck’s big tires rose and fell around the uneven perimeter of the property.
When they’d gotten there, the rotten sack of potatoes was long past haunting the small patch of territory under the sink that it’d claimed two decades past when Sam and Dean had been terrorized by it. It had grown so much that they didn’t even make it into the front gate before seeing the massive tubers and sprouts that enveloped the old house and dug themselves into the surrounding soil. Gnarled, ancient roots rustled and slithered as Sam and Dean approached, twisting themselves into tighter knots and shifting the earth as they burrowed toward their feet.
Bobby said it wouldn’t work, but they’d burned the house anyway, and they both felt better even though the sounds from the roots got louder for a while and sounded like shrieks, before stopping altogether. They waited it out in the Impala, her speakers drowning it all, cranking out Santana while the last embers died.
Dean drove the truck-probably slower than anything he’d ever driven in his life. Sam tossed down bushelfuls of apples every couple of feet, scraping them out the back of the truck with a heavy iron rake. They’d gotten all they needed for nothing at the abandoned orchard two counties over, autumn weather conveniently dropping them to the ground, ready for scavenging. They’d only had the squirrels to battle. Sam wiped the sweat away with the hem of his t-shirt; it was cooler today, but shoveling a dump truck’s worth of apples was hot, hard work.
“Supposedly there’s an old wives’ tale that says to keep apples with your potatoes to keep them from sprouting roots,” Sam called back over the idling engine, gathering his next batch of apples. Scoop, scrape, flick. Ride, rock, scoop, scrape, flick. Dean stopped the engine altogether then, jumping down and then climbing back up to join him in the bed of the truck, holding out a cold bottle of beer. Sam was nervous about stopping before they closed the circle, but the burn-out was massive, and they’d salted the ground and doused it at the four corners with holy water for good measure.
He figured they had some breathing room.
“We’re seriously basing our entire strategy on advice from people who rubbed warts with potato halves and planted them under full moons?” Dean asked, opening his own bottle with his ring.
“You wanna call Bobby and tell him his advice is crap, Dean?” Sam swallowed the beer, grimacing and peering at it while Dean snickered beside him. Bottled hard apple cider. “Very funny.” He tried to scowl, but ended up laughing instead. Dean clapped him on the back and winked, tipping the neck of his own cider in salute.
“Whatever, man. We don’t have any better ideas, I guess,” Dean said, rooting around in the truck and coming up with a slightly bruised Granny Smith, crunching it in resignation.
“True. Sometimes it’s just-"
“-process of elimination.”
Author’s note: It is indeed an old wives’ tale (or farmer's almanac tip, or country wisdom, depending on how you look at it) to store apples with potatoes to keep them from sprouting roots. My paternal grandparents swore by this, although since their root cellar was utterly terrifying pitch black and they had five kids, I’m pretty sure that potatoes got used up before sprouting became a problem.
Author: girlguidejones
Pairing: none
Rating: R (for language)
Original story: A Christian Man by apreludetoanend
Author’s notes: Written for kamikazeremix '09. I always enjoy apreludetoanend’s writing, and although this is quite a departure from the original, it's also [sorta] what she asked for. I hope I do it justice. Thanks to poisontaster for beta and eternally unwavering encouragement.
Summary: Sometimes you don’t always get it right the first time...
“Dude. This sucks. I’m getting the axe.”
They’d been digging for almost two hours, chopping through roots with the tips of their shovels, and they’d barely made it three feet down. Sam swiped a dirty hand across his forehead, panting and leaning on his shovel.
“Yeah...you...you do that,” he gasped. “I-I’ll be right here.” Sam heard the creak of the Impala’s trunk lid rising, and Dean’s voice carried back to him, muffled by the metal or the humidity, Sam couldn’t tell. The calendar said it was fall, already, dammit. Why was it still eighty-five degrees out at one o’clock in the morning, anyway?
“Where the hell are all those bigass roots coming from? The closest tree’s a quarter-mile up that hill.” Dean’s boots crunched on the pea-gravel, and the duffel clanked to the ground next to where Sam was standing, ass-deep in the grave. Not looking up, he shook his head by way of reply, too hot to waste words on a non-answer. A moment later something cool brushed Sam’s cheek and he startled, Dean’s laugh sucked up by the wet air as he waggled a bottle of water at him.
“Get a drink, Sammy, and let’s get back at it. At this rate we’ll barely beat the sunrise.” Dean dropped down into the hole with him and began to unpack the duffel while Sam finished the rest of the water. Dean laid the contents out neatly on the squared-off edges of Mrs. Arthur Coble’s final resting place.
“Why do you think she’s doing it?” Sam asked, hiking himself up and out of the way to sit on the edge of the grave, feet dangling down the sides while Dean began to chop through the gnarled roots. They hadn’t figured out exactly why she was snatching people from the neighborhood, but local kids kept going missing from the vicinity of her old house. Everything led back to her. And still...
“I don’t know Sammy, but we went through this already. We got nothin’ else to go on, so this is it. Sometimes it’s just-"
“I know, I know. Process of elimination.”
“Well if you know, then get off your ass and gather up what I’ve chopped so we can be done with this.” By now Dean was ankle-deep in a pile of root pieces, and his ax arm hung at his side as he caught his breath. It was time to dig again, now that they could actually get to the dirt. Sam reached out for the shovel, hopping down into the grave, but the handle caught the can of salt sitting by the edge. End over end, it somersaulted it into the hole, salt flying everywhere just like the pre-movie cartoons with the dancing popcorn.
“Christ! You waste all the salt now and there won’t be enough left when we bust open her coff-Gah!” Dean scrambled out of the opening, but Sam just stood there, staring at the giant white grubs that were suddenly writhing all over the bottom of the grave. “Sam! Jesus, get out of there,” Dean shouted, his hands thrusting under Sam’s armpits and yanking him up. Okay, yeah. Get away from the giant insects, good idea. He scrambled out, backwards, heels digging into the dirt walls and shoving up while Dean pulled.
“What the hell is that?” Sam gasped, crouched by the hole with Dean. “Is it maggots? I think it's maggots. Oh shit.” For as many dead things as they’ve seen, Sam had this...this thing...with maggots. He studied the obits when they were digging up people, and any time there was a possibility of the corpse being...juicy...he maneuvered things so it would be Dean’s turn when it was actually time to bust through the coffin. Blood, bile, ectoplasm...Sam was good with all of that. But bugs chomping on whatever was left of people? That was major squick-factor stuff. And maggots? Maggots were the worst.
Sam could feel his toes curling inside his boots, as if they were still too close to whatever-the-hell was now all over the grave. Dean moved the Coleman closer to the edge, holding it out as far as he could and as low as he dared. It made Sam nervous to see him leaning out so far, and he curled his fist around the back of Dean’s belt. Just in case. The floor of the grave was now a wriggling mass of whitish, rope-like pieces.
“I...uh...I think it’s the roots,” Dean muttered. Sam felt suddenly, ridiculously euphoric. Haunted roots were much better than giant maggots.
“Really? You’re sure? How come they didn’t move around ‘til now?”
“They...I don’t think they like the salt.”
“But they didn’t mind getting Ginsued?”
“Dude, what am I? Paranormal horticulturist? I got no fuckin’ idea,” Dean shot back.
“Do you hear that?” Sam was positive he could hear them, some sort of low hissing sound.
“Uh, maybe. I think that’s just them brushing against each other,” Dean theorized. “Why?” He paused, turning slowly toward Sam and raising the lantern to illuminate Sam’s face. “Can you hear them? Are they calling you, Sam? To leap into the pit? Are they lonely? Hungry?”
“Fuck you.” Sam felt better now, knowing that they weren’t maggots, but just roots. Half-sentient roots, maybe, but-oh, God.
It couldn’t be.
“Dean?”
“What?” Dean was staring into the hole, probably trying to figure out how to dig three more feet down to Mrs. Coble’s body without getting swarmed by Audrey II’s third-cousins.
“Forget Mrs. Coble,” Sam whispered.
“Man, I know you’re squicked, but we can’t just-"
“Mrs. Coble doesn’t matter, Dean. She’s not the problem,” Sam said. He could feel his own pulse ratcheting up, and tried to stay calm.
“How do you know?” Dean asked, dragging his gaze away to look at Sam. The rustling was beginning to quiet down; maybe the root bits were finally dying. Dean’d heard something in Sam’s voice, of course. He always did.
“Nineteen-eighty-nine,” Sam said.
“Yeah?”
“Where were we?” Sam already knew the answer, but he wasn’t sure Dean would remember. Dean stared at him, realization beginning to dawn.
“You were six years old, so...” Sam waited while Dean searched his memory. Secretly, he loved that Dean benchmarked their childhood history by calculating Sam’s age as the point of origin, as opposed to his own. “No. No way.” Dean stood up, and as the light rose with him the slithering sounds from the grave all but stopped.
“Yes, just over that hill. One bedroom. Bathroom sink was weird-"
“-out in the hallway,” Dean finished, “and Dad had to fix the porch step when you busted through it and about skewered yourself.” Sam nodded.
“But we took care of that,” Dean protested, scratching the back of his head. “Dad got rid of it.”
“I told you,” Sam whispered. “I did. I told you it was back!”
~*~
”Dean! Deeeeeen!” Dean heard the smack-smack-smack of Sam’s sneakers on the old linoleum. He wished Sammy wouldn’t run so much. His big toe was about to bust out of the canvas at any moment, and then where would they be?
“What is it, squirt?”
“It’s back, Dean. Hurry. You hafta tell Daddy it didn’t work!” Sam’s eyes were as big as Reese's cups. He was scared all right, but when Dean checked under the sink, the only thing left of the horrific bag of rooting potatoes was the musty smell.
“Sammy, there’s nothing there, little dude. See? Dad took care of it for us. Nothing’s gonna get you, okay? Besides, we’re leaving tomorrow.”
“But Dean, I saw it! I know I did!” Sam’s grubby fingers squeezed Dean’s hand, and his voice dropped to a tiny whisper. “It was moving!” Sam looked like he was gonna cry, but what was Dean supposed to do? There was nothing there. He needed a diversion.
“C’mon, Sammy. You’re going to get a bath,” he said. Bath-time was Sam’s favorite time, but he still looked unsure. Time to pull out the big guns.
“Hey buddy...you wanna sleep in my bed tonight?”
~*~
“Sam, we left that next morning. Dad was in a hurry, and I looked again, but there wasn’t anything under the sink. It was empty,” Dean explained, quiet and patient, like Sam was still the six-year-old needing placated by his big brother. Then, “I thought you just had a bad dream.”
“You should have believed me,” Sam said, “and you didn’t.” He knew he sounded like the whiny six-year-old he was then, but still.
“I know,” Dean said back. “But I do now.”
“Tentaculus Potatorus,” Sam said, hushed, and Dean nodded once, blanching.
“That thing creeps me right the fuck out,” he said. “What are we gonna do?”
“Only thing we can do,” Sam answered.
~*~
“Hey Bobby,” said Sam.
~*~
In the end, there weren’t any spells. No magic, no exorcisms, and no candles. All it took was apples.
Lots and lots of apples.
“You sure Bobby said this would work?” Dean hollered out at him over the noise of the rented dump truck’s diesel engine. Sam was standing in the bed, rocking as the truck’s big tires rose and fell around the uneven perimeter of the property.
When they’d gotten there, the rotten sack of potatoes was long past haunting the small patch of territory under the sink that it’d claimed two decades past when Sam and Dean had been terrorized by it. It had grown so much that they didn’t even make it into the front gate before seeing the massive tubers and sprouts that enveloped the old house and dug themselves into the surrounding soil. Gnarled, ancient roots rustled and slithered as Sam and Dean approached, twisting themselves into tighter knots and shifting the earth as they burrowed toward their feet.
Bobby said it wouldn’t work, but they’d burned the house anyway, and they both felt better even though the sounds from the roots got louder for a while and sounded like shrieks, before stopping altogether. They waited it out in the Impala, her speakers drowning it all, cranking out Santana while the last embers died.
Dean drove the truck-probably slower than anything he’d ever driven in his life. Sam tossed down bushelfuls of apples every couple of feet, scraping them out the back of the truck with a heavy iron rake. They’d gotten all they needed for nothing at the abandoned orchard two counties over, autumn weather conveniently dropping them to the ground, ready for scavenging. They’d only had the squirrels to battle. Sam wiped the sweat away with the hem of his t-shirt; it was cooler today, but shoveling a dump truck’s worth of apples was hot, hard work.
“Supposedly there’s an old wives’ tale that says to keep apples with your potatoes to keep them from sprouting roots,” Sam called back over the idling engine, gathering his next batch of apples. Scoop, scrape, flick. Ride, rock, scoop, scrape, flick. Dean stopped the engine altogether then, jumping down and then climbing back up to join him in the bed of the truck, holding out a cold bottle of beer. Sam was nervous about stopping before they closed the circle, but the burn-out was massive, and they’d salted the ground and doused it at the four corners with holy water for good measure.
He figured they had some breathing room.
“We’re seriously basing our entire strategy on advice from people who rubbed warts with potato halves and planted them under full moons?” Dean asked, opening his own bottle with his ring.
“You wanna call Bobby and tell him his advice is crap, Dean?” Sam swallowed the beer, grimacing and peering at it while Dean snickered beside him. Bottled hard apple cider. “Very funny.” He tried to scowl, but ended up laughing instead. Dean clapped him on the back and winked, tipping the neck of his own cider in salute.
“Whatever, man. We don’t have any better ideas, I guess,” Dean said, rooting around in the truck and coming up with a slightly bruised Granny Smith, crunching it in resignation.
“True. Sometimes it’s just-"
“-process of elimination.”
Author’s note: It is indeed an old wives’ tale (or farmer's almanac tip, or country wisdom, depending on how you look at it) to store apples with potatoes to keep them from sprouting roots. My paternal grandparents swore by this, although since their root cellar was utterly terrifying pitch black and they had five kids, I’m pretty sure that potatoes got used up before sprouting became a problem.