Over Easy - 1/1
Over Easy
Rating: R, Gen
Characters: Dean, Sam, chicks with hankies on their heads, men in black hats. Oh, and a talking egg
Disclaimer: The characters are sadly not mine. I’m just sticking pins into Winchester dolls for the purposes of general amusement. Sorry about the holes!
Word Count: 7,164
A/N: Short Order Winchesters + talking eggs = Crack
Birthday fic for noirbabalon, who totally deserves warped funny crack. Sorry for the inadvertent moments of angst that snuck in amidst the perkier crack, B. I couldn’t help myself. I was possessed. Truly I was.
Thanks go to secret-seer for suggesting what Sam’s subconscious revenge might be.
Warning: Possible blasphemy and abuse of childhood and literary icons. Apologies to Friedrich Gerstäcker’s ‘Germelshausen,’ the films ‘Brigadoon’ and ‘Witness,’ and *blushes* the nursery rhyme ‘Humpty Dumpty.’
Setting: Mirage, Penn. Nov. 14th 2008
Summary: ‘What do you mean-I’m not Harrison Ford?’
Trapped on a mysterious island with Sam’s abilities taking an unusual turn, Dean tries to make the best of the situation.
Sometimes it’s what happens between the battles that’s important.
‘Husqvarna? That’s a brand of sewing machine, right?’ Dean waited, counting silently to himself. One Husqvarna, two Husqvarna, three…
Huh. Sam could still shoot soda out through his nose. Awesome!
‘Way to go, Sammy!’ Dean slapped his brother’s back, hard. ‘Glad to see you haven’t forgotten everything I taught you as a kid.’
Sam staggered sideways, leant against a thankfully sturdy sign that declared in a presumably eco friendly way that Mirage Point was only 5 yards further → if you took the Spruce Tr. , and bent over, arms waving spasmodically.
Possibly he was signalling-Dean just bet Sam knew A.S.L., his brother really was that geeky-those evil ants, ordering them to march on the remnants of their impromptu picnic? Except that it wasn’t a picnic, because that would be too chicky for words. They’d pulled over to take a much needed piss-stop by the river an hour before, and decided to take advantage of the fading twilight and have a quick, completely manly, snack break. Beef jerky, Cheetos, Twinkies, and Dr. Pepper-food of hunters, Sam’s insults to the contrary.
‘Sammy?’ Dean stomped on a few of Sam’s minions just to be on the safe side. Little buggers had feelers, googly eyes, and too many legs, so he lumped them in with monsters and demons on principle. It wasn’t that he begrudged them a few measly crumbs, or anything, but he’d totally missed those last few yummy cheese curls in the bottom of the pack that were now being kidnapped and dragged away to be sacrificed to who knew what? And he was still a little hungr…
‘m gonna … kill … you,’ Sam choked out over the sound of Dean’s continued helpful thumps.
‘Maybe in the morning,’ Dean promised generously. He’d always been that kind of big brother.
‘What the fuck’s up with you and sewing machines all of a sudden?’ Sam asked when he’d recovered his breath.
‘Ngh,’ Dean answered. He felt that said it all, but in case his brother didn’t get it, he tried again. ‘Get off me, you giant … Sequoia!’
Sam deigned to shift and help him up, which was just emo, not to mention stupidly foolish for a Winchester, because that move got him flipped over Dean’s head to land with an almighty thump on the grass.
‘Asshole!’
Heh.
‘Sewing machines, Dean?’ Sam was wandering along peering mindlessly down into the water. Looking for mirages no doubt.
‘Heads up!’ Dean tossed him a beer. He kind of owed it to the kid even if he was spending an awful long time peering at his own reflection. Dean made a mental note to buy him a little pink vanity mirror at the next gas station.
‘I’m still thinking sewing, Dean. So don’t imagine you can distract me with alcohol.’ Sam sat down on the bank at the very end of the Point, popped the top off his drink, and took a healthy slug anyway.
Susquehanna, Husqvarna. Twins separated at birth, right? Dean squatted next to his brother. ‘It was a joke, Sammy. Remember them? I say something stupid, you make a bitch face, we go back and forth for a while like Forrest Gump playing ping-pong.’ The way we used to. Before.
‘Uh huh.’ Sam slanted him a look from under his bangs, which should have been physically impossible. Goddamn hair kept on growing. Dean was just waiting for the moment when Sam flicked it back with a toss of his head worthy of Charlie’s Angels. When that day came Dean had promised himself some quality time with a pair of scissors, and a camera.
‘I know what the river’s called, Sam. I was winding you up.’ How can he not believe that about me?
‘Dean. Two weeks ago I saw you looking at crochet patterns in Walmart!’
Damn. Thought he was busy buying stationary. I’ll have to be more care…
‘Dean? You want to talk about it?’ As usual he wasn’t only asking about the obvious. Had to be the smart one, didn’t he?
No. Dean made another note to make sure his hook and balls of wool were securely hidden under his collection of classic porn magazines. It was the only place he knew that would be perfectly safe from his brother.
‘When do I ever want to talk, Sammy?’ Especially down by a riverside.
Sam stood up, stretching his arms out wide the way he always did when he wanted to ask something that Dean didn’t want to tell him. Dean tried to block out the sudden image of Sam nailed to a cross bleeding down onto him. Fuck, don’t do this to me now. Not here. He focussed on something else instead. Sam had really long arms for a nerd. That was a much safer thought.
Why was it that every time they ended up next to water, Sam insisted on a heart-to-heart? Dean didn’t need a copy of Symbolism for Dummies®, he’d had to repeat that class in Hell, thank you very much.
Can’t keep asking me in the hope I’ll eventually give in and tell you, Sammy. He’d said too much already. He only had three secrets left, and his brother wasn’t the only person who was being protected by his silence. Sewing machines were a better distraction than anything else he’d been able to come up with lately.
‘Knew we should have gone to the Grand Canyon,’ he muttered. He was pretty sure God would have had time to get out of the way when he floored the accelerator peddle.
‘What are we doing here, Dean?’
Fuck philosophy! Sam never did learn when to let go. Not that Dean didn’t know exactly who he’d gotten that trait from. ‘Don’t know about you, but I really needed to take a piss, and you’re such a princess about me recycling bottles that way while I’m driving.’
‘I’m not letting up on you. You damned well said it yourself, we’re stronger together. Let me in, Dean.’
‘Right after you tell me all about your new BFF, Ruby. Besides, you’re the one who got all excited over those DCNR Scenic Drive signs and picked this particular spot. Thought you outgrew your old Greenpeace t-shirt ten years ago. Obviously not.’ Hit him on two fronts, keep him busy.
Sam shrugged. ‘It felt right, okay? What’s wrong with taking time to smell the roses, Dean? We’re a long time d…’
Yeah. I remember. Dean refused to flinch as Sam’s voiced trailed off. He concentrated fiercely on those stupid shifting images in the water again. Maybe if he looked hard enough he could see why his brother kept getting so excited about the whole nature gig. Personally Dean thought the only place for greenery was in the salad bar he bypassed on his way to grab a steak.
Ah, the Hell with it. There was no point arguing about it now. They were always unsettled between jobs. When you’d spent your life being trained to maintain your focus on your target, the days either side of a hunt were full of awkward uncertainties. It wasn’t like they could just revert back to behaving like normal people who put up curtains and had shopping lists that didn’t include ammunition and a gross of rock salt. The only time they acted like everyone else was when they were faking it to gain intel.
Dean didn’t know why Sam loved normal so much that he’d had to run away from home in order to find it. But after all he’d seen lately Dean decided that if his brother wanted it, why shouldn’t he have that even if only for a few minutes?
‘Hey, Sammy. Remember that time we were staying with Pastor Jim, and we were playing naval war games in the pond out the back?’
Sam grinned. ‘I remember you got in trouble because you chased me inside afterwards screaming, “You sank my boat, bitch!”
Dean huffed. ‘Well, you did!’ Sabotage, that’s what it was. He’d been winning right up till then.
‘Dean, we were both soaking wet, covered in green slime and pond weed, and it was in the middle of a wedding.’
Oh yeah. Oops. No wonder Jim Murphy took to keeping a closer eye on them after that. Who knew he was that good at tailing people? ‘sides he’d gotten Dean back good not long after for that accidental interruption to the joyful event-that and a thousand other misdemeanours.
Dean carefully peeled the label off his bottle, and folded it into a minuscule but totally sea-worthy boat.
‘Come here, Sammy.’
‘Wha…? Ow! Fuck, Dean. That hurt.’ Sam was holding his head like he was still the school drama queen.
‘Suck it up, Super Sook. I only took a few hairs. We’re doing this; we’re doing it up right.’
‘Doing what?’ Sam looked down as Dean tugged a few of his own hairs loose without blinking and twisted them together before tucking them gently into the centre of his flimsy construction. ‘You’re kidding right? The last time we did this, we were…’
‘We’d just left Bobby, and we were driving down to Nebraska, You were a kid who still believed in Santa Claus, the Tooth Fairy, and that Dad had a little salt fetish.’ At least until Christmas.
Sam didn’t bother responding to that dig, too busy remembering. ‘We detoured off I183, and ended up camped for the night next to the Loup River. Shit, but it was cold down there.’
‘And you still wanted to take five minutes away from the fire after dinner to go float your boat.’ And make a wish.
‘I was eight, Dean. I just wanted to…’
‘See if it would work,’ Dean finished off. ‘You always did believe all those fairy stories Bobby told you.’
‘They weren’t fairy tales, Dean. They were myths and leg…’ Sam ended up growling in frustration instead.
Dean just quirked an eyebrow. ‘And you told me the legend said that if you set your wish adrift on the ocean, the Gods might return it to you…’
‘If you were pure of heart,’ Sam whispered, turning an unfortunate shade of red.
‘Mmm,’ Dean answered deciding that it was best not to touch the subject of Sam’s putative innocence, even with a very long stick. ‘And then you mixed in all those tales about offerings of locks of hair with your science geek about DNA, and added yours and mine so…’
‘That the Gods would know exactly who we were,’ Sam said as his face changed from red to purple and back again in quick succession. It was like watching a colourblind rainbow struggling to decide what to wear to work after too many Tequila Slammers the night before.
Neither of them had ever been good colours on Sam Dean thought sadly. Maybe green? No, blue. Sam should always be blue.
‘Come on, Sammy. It’s just a kid’s story, right? Still, here we are, as luck would have it, right next to another Goddamn river.’ I’ll do anything; just don’t ask me to talk. ‘Roses, Sam. Time to take a freaking moment if that’s what you want.’ Just a bit of fun, right? Carpe whatever the fuck.
Dean flashed his brother his best ‘Let’s do it!’ smirk. Completely forgetting that the Gods and their opposites seemingly already had a good idea exactly who and what the Brothers Winchester were.
Sam gave him a long look, seemed almost satisfied with the results of that interrogation, or at least willing to overlook Dean’s diversion in the spirit of brotherhood. Then again, maybe he still had a deep-rooted need to play with tiny toy boats.
Dean handed his masterpiece over to its new Captain, and sprinkled a small libation to the Gods in its uncertain wake as Sam launched his ship of dreams.
Once Sam screwed his eyes shut, Dean was forced to follow suit. After a second he opened one carefully, but Sam was still wishing. Either that or he really shouldn’t have let his little brother have that last Twinkie. Possibly there was something to use-by-dates after all?
Dean sighed and decided he might as well go down with the S.S. Winchester too. Wasn’t like it was going to work or anything. Twinkle, twinkle. No, that wasn’t right. Best to keep it simple then. I wish…
‘Uh, Dean?’
‘Are we done yet?’ Dean grumped, keeping his eyes shut in case this was a test.
‘Dean!’
Oh my God!
‘Dean?’
Sam’s voice was definitely a bit wobbly, but for once Dean wasn’t going to call him on it.
‘Do you remember there being an island right out there a few minutes ago?’
Dean presumed that question was rhetorical, because he knew his eyes were fairly clearly yelling ‘Hell, no!’
An island looming out of a mist. Neither mist nor island had been there a minute ago. An island covered in old growth forest, in the middle of a strangely wider, and much faster running river. ‘Islands in the stream’ a voice sang in his head. He told Dolly Parton to shut the fuck up as he watched a small light bob and weave between mammoth trees across the water. It seemed to be heading their way. He hoped the light couldn’t walk on water, because that would be disconcerting, and he sure as Hell wasn’t going to be able to hit it with a rock salt blast from here, no matter how good a shot he was.
How am I going to get us out of this one? Dean didn’t think he’d be able to spray paint anything vaguely useful on the surface of that raging torrent. I’m going to need weapons. This was positively the last time he played ‘Remember When?’ with Sammy. Lots, and lots of weapons.
Sam spun around careless of the crumbling bank; eyes now open wide with shock mingled with what Dean was annoyed to recognise as a tinge of awed excitement. ‘It’s really ther…’
‘Sammy!’
Wet.
He was wet, and Sam weighed a ton. His brother’s hair must be magically akin to wool because it was heavier than both of them put together, and pulling them down.
‘Shit!’ He screamed into an uncaring wave. He spat it back out with malice into a fierce storm that screeched at him with the sound of a thousand bagpipes dancing the Highland Fling with some over-sexed tomcats. There was no way he was going to let Sam-either of them-die in a river in fucking Pennsylvania, especially if it wasn’t named after a sewing machine.
What in everlasting Hell had Sammy wished for?
To be stranded on a desert island apparently. Or rather a heavily wooded, deserted island. Where the fuck were the natives? Dean knew damn well that light hadn’t been a nosey will-o’-the-wisp.
It’s okay. We’re fine! Don’t worry about us. Can rescue my Sammy all by myself, jerks.
‘We’re good, Sam. We’re back on land. We’ll find a phone, borrow a motor boat or something, and be back at the car in no time.’ How did I get turned around and not get us back to the Point? One minute it had felt like they’d been drowning in the middle of an empty and strangely vindictive ocean, the next that peripatetic island had reared up and he’d grabbed it. He wasn’t stupid. This had weird carved in runes all over it, but he’d prioritised while they were out there drowning.
1. Save Sammy.
2. Save himself.
3. Land. Lots of land under starry skies above. What? He was drowning. Who knows where this stuff comes from?
4. Well, fuck him for not being specific while he was trying to do the backstroke with Sammy half choking him.
5. Not island.
6. Go away. Stop nudging me, damn it.
7. Real land. Not completely surrounded on all sides by water land.
8. Fine! Mirage Point. Is that specific enough for you?
9. No?
10. Okay, any land. I’ll do the rest.
11. Get back here!
12. Gotcha.
13. Teaching Sammy to look before he fell next time.
14. No more birthday cakes. No candles. And definitely no wishes. Ever again.
15. Getting back to his baby.
16. Burning down all the DCNR’s Scenic Route signs.
17. Fucking picnics.
He just bet the ants started it.
If there weren’t people and a phone on the other side of the island, Dean was personally taking out all those ants when he got them back to safety.
Sam shuddered again, somehow managing to shrink in height and huddle closer while they staggered up the dark hillside. ‘Deeeeeean! I’m soaked.’
Looked like the appeal of toy boats had finally worn off. Good, cos Dean was so over them too.
He took off his dripping jacket and draped it comfortingly around his brother’s shoulders. ‘You’ve always been wet, Sammy.’
They wandered through the outskirts of the village at daybreak, nodding and smiling at the locals who were busy setting up what looked like a fair. Trying hard to blend in. Moistly. Which was a little harder than usual. Dean hadn’t known they even manufactured suspenders any more. But obviously somewhere in the world a tiny factory was still churning them out. Either that, or one of the villager’s great-great-great-grandfathers had bought up big two hundred years back and his unlucky descendants were stuck with giving them away to all their neighbours for birthdays and Christmases.
Stiff, broad-brimmed, black, frown-inducing hats were apparently also the rage locally, though razors hadn’t quite caught on yet.
None of that really got Dean’s attention other than a quick, ‘Huh! Weird.’ Until it dawned on him that something more serious was wrong with this idyllic looking community.
‘Sam!’ Dean hissed, not bothering to be quiet. He was tired. And wet. And he was beginning to suspect that a phone wasn’t going to be forthcoming. And Sam was still wearing his jacket. His very favourite jacket.
‘What?’
‘Hankies!’
‘H… what?’ Sam asked, confusedly.
Sometimes his brother was a little slow on the uptake. Dean presumed Stanford was easier to get into than its reputation lead people to believe.
‘The chicks! They’re all wearing hankies on their heads.’ He gestured just in case the whole head thing hadn’t been clear enough for Dumbo.
Sam groaned at him, which was irritating, and typical of Sam.
‘They’re not handkerchiefs, Dean. They’re…’ Sam stopped, looked back at Dean and sighed. Loudly.
Bastard.
‘They look like…’
‘Swiss dolls,’ Dean butted in, glad to have something useful to contribute.
‘Mennonites or Amish from their dress,’ Sam finished blandly. ‘And their religious roots do go back to Switzerland, so…’
‘Swiss hankies!’ Dean interrupted again. He didn’t want Sam to ask him to elaborate on dolls. Or go into a diatribe about religious freedoms and diasporas. Or hankies.
‘Yes, Dean. They’re wearing Swiss hankies,’ Sam snapped back, exasperated. ‘Anything else you’d like me to explain?’
‘Noooo,’ Dean said. He preferred leather himself, but if these girls wanted to wear imported hankies, he wasn’t going to stop them. It was certainly better than them choosing to drape a two-ply tissue over their hair any day. But he had another more important objection.
‘Layers!’ Long sleeves, skirts, and what surely must be petticoats of all things underneath, and … ‘Aprons,’ he said in an awed voice. ‘They’re dressed like Betty Crocker’s Great Aunt Ethel.’ All those layers. It was just so wrong he wanted to cry. He could barely tell they were girls under that much fabric. The only real indicators were their smiling faces, the pigtails, the slight, surely accidental, graze of breasts beneath their bibs, and the lack of facial hair-at least on the younger women. That and the fact that none of the men were into hankies except if they had a cold.
‘Dean. We’re the last people who should criticise anyone for wearing layers.’
Okay, Sam did have a small point. But…
‘Hang on Amish. Where do I…? Dude! Harrison Ford!’
‘Oh God.’
There went Sam with the groaning again. Dean hoped it wasn’t upsetting the dolls, because that one over there with the really long brown plaits was smiling at him. Dean waved and started wandering subtly in her general direction. He liked to be friendly. Especially in a new town. It never hurt to be polite. Really polite.
Sam grabbed him, steering him roughly back onto their original route into the centre of the town. ‘Dean, you’re not Harrison Ford. And this isn’t a scene from Witness!’
Dean just pouted because he was always Harrison Ford.
‘Willkommen!’
Uh.
They kept doing that. Smiling. And saying, ‘Howdy!’ he assumed. Why couldn’t they speak Mexican, or Spanish? A language he’d actually bothered to learn at school instead of what Sam said was a variant of German. Because-Chicas! Tequila! That was useful. This was just making Sam look good.
Sam had managed to keep up the nodding and smiling. Dean had given up after the first few minutes because it was giving him a headache. He ended up drifting aimlessly behind his chatty, smiling, German-speaking freak of a brother and started trying to connect the dots. Something was definitely up. Their kind of up. Nobody was this nice all the time. Even Sam. Then there was the whole now you don’t see it, now you do, island thing. And their fucking dream boat. Shit. Shit. Shit.
‘Sam, how do you say, ‘shit’ in German?’ he inquired with purely academic interest.
‘Schei… Nuh uh, Dean.’ Sam crossed his arms across his broad chest and glowered down at him.
Well, at least he’d stopped nodding and smiling and turning his head from side to side at everybody like one of those vintage arcade machines.
‘Forget it, Dean. I’m not helping you be rude to these people. Not when they haven’t been anything but nice to us.’ So far.
Yeah. Sam wasn’t exactly stupid either. He might be Herr Happy on the outside, but he knew they were stuck in the middle of something strange as well as Dean did.
They were both busy cataloguing every detail of their surroundings. Sam just did it with a bigger smile on his face that was all.
One of the more talkative dolls was busy chirping something about Kirk to Sam. Dean slipped her his best ‘Live long, and prosper’ gesture to show he was paying attention. Besides, she was almost as pretty as that other one, even if she was wearing a much scarier hankie.
‘The Mayor’s at the church,’ Sam explained as he headed them further up the main street. ‘Something about helping with the arrangements for a big wedding tomorrow.’
Good. Because-wedding? Food! Dean was getting bored, and antsy. He wanted dry clothes, food, answers, his car, and to save his brother. Not necessarily in that order.
‘Take me to their leader, Sammy,’ he ordered hungrily crisply.
Luckily the Mayor spoke English as he welcomed them to … well, it had a lot of B’s, G’s, D’s and O’s, and probably a lot of umlauts and glottal stops because Dean gave up after the second syllable. He’d already named the place The Island in his head because he always went with what got the job done.
The Mayor, like everyone else on The Island, was so damned suspiciously welcoming he naturally invited the both of them to stay for the wedding as his guests.
Dean figured they might as well get some free food and entertainment out of it while he floated the idea of a phone and a lift back to civilisation. If there was such a thing left outside The Island. He was beginning to have his doubts.
‘Dean!’ Sam snaked the roll right out of his hand, before he’d even got to have a mouthful. He was smiling brightly around at the merry throng inside the church hall as he discretely hid what had been the start of Dean’s breakfast under another of those darned giant linen hankies that were draped all over the platters on the table.
‘Dude. Mine!’
‘No eating. No drinking. Not till we get back,’ Sam whispered.
‘No what?’ No food? Oh.
Shit ‘Close one, Sammy.’
Sam just rolled his eyes. ‘It’s good that at least one of us pays some attention to myths and legends, huh, Dean?’
Dean grunted in reply. No food. It was going to be a long day.
Time to make a deal, or failing that, get themselves voted off The Island before everything went to Hell.
Dean really was hungry.
‘We’re willing to pay a reasonable price to borrow a boat to get ourselves home.’ He was giving the Mayor the full benefit of almost three decades of practice running a con. There was no way the nice, ever-smiling Mayor wasn’t going to help two stranded good old boys get home, was there? Besides, he was offering money. Good money. Not his, naturally. But they weren’t to know that, were they?
‘I suppose we’re what you’d call a non-commercial community,’ the Mayor said apologetically.
‘A what?’
Sam coughed.
Dean ignored his brother’s sudden tragic illness. That’s what he got for going boating with his clothes on in autumn.
‘We’re a cashless society.’
‘sokay. He didn’t have much of that in his wallet anyway. ‘Credit?’ Dean asked with a dazzling smile, nudging a disgustingly phlegmy Sam.
Sam choked, but dutifully placed Bobby Woodward’s damp Visa down on the bench in unison with Carlos Bernstein’s MasterCard.
The Mayor really did look sorry-or he was just as good an actor as they were?-when he said, ‘Perhaps I should have put it more plainly. We don’t use money.’
Huh?
‘At all.’
‘Barter?’
No money? No coins, no notes? No plastic? Fuck. How the heck was he going to earn enough points or whatever these people used to scam their way home?
‘Do you happen to believe in pool, or poker?’
No?
‘Line dancing? Jump rope?’ Dean asked despairingly. ‘Competitive hopscotch?’
Turned out money wasn’t the only thing the community didn’t believe in.
No outside contact with the world. Nada, or whatever the German equivalent was. Dean wished he could remember more of Sergeant Schultz’s sayings from Hogan’s Heroes.
No boats. No motorized transport on the island. No electricity. No…
Dean’s mind skidded to a halt and reversed at high speed. No…
No cars!
Forget the wrongness of hankies, and layers, and no money. No cars!
Dean cringed. So much for the picture-perfect community. Thank God, they weren’t stuck here for good because he’d go crazy without his car. His baby. Abandoned. Deanless and alone in an uncaring world. Something had to be done.
Dean rubbed his hands together enthusiastically.
Sam took a few scared steps backwards. Then a few more. ‘Exactly what have you got in mind, Dean?’
‘Now, Sammy. Don’t be like that. It’ll be just like when we were kids. Mow the old lady’s lawn, she gives you cake. Take your lunch to school, swap it for something better. A little charm, a bit of hard work, the odd switcheroo here and there to upgrade us as we go, and we’re home free.’
He clapped his brother reassuringly on the shoulder. ‘We’re Winchesters. We’ll be out of here in no time!’
The wrinkle deepening in Sam’s forehead signalled his doubt, but Dean bulldozed over all his objections. Just like old times indeed.
That only left Dean with one vital question unanswered.
‘Do you think you can still remember how to make lemonade, Sammy?’
By mid-afternoon of the second day Dean was even hungrier. And he knew Sam was too-those long legs were used to being filled on a regular basis, even if they preferred rabbit food.
And something odd had begun to happen.
Things had started to move. Small things. The lemons kept rolling off Dean’s hastily built booth and making a break for freedom no matter what Dean did to keep them corralled before he sacrificed them for the greater good.
Leaves kept swirling around them, no matter where they were in town. It was like being followed by a frisky pet tornado that just wanted to play.
Dean had started using stones as markers to keep track of how many favours they were owed in return for all the odd jobs they’d been doing around the village. The stones kept rearranging themselves into different sized pyramids whenever he turned his back.
He was starting to get a nasty feeling about what might really be going on.
When Sam shook his hair out of his eyes, and growled at him when Dean handed him the heaviest pot they’d offered to carry down to the party for a little old lady with a hankie so large it qualified as a wimple, and the lid just … rose up … and … hovered … for a minute before crashing back into place? Well, that’s when Dean knew he was on to something.
A Sammy something.
‘Dude! You just totally levitated that sucker!’
Sam, Boy Scout that he’d always wanted to be, delivered the pot silently, and stormed off to sulk under a tree. Which was Sammy all over, except for the psychic floating thing. That was new.
Dean sat down next to his brother. Best to give him a minute. Room to breathe. After thirty seconds he nudged him with his hip. And again, when that got no response. He sighed. ‘Is this something else you haven’t been sharing with the class, Sam? More homework with Ruby?’
‘Something in the water?’ Sam suggested.
He wasn’t going to talk either.
Fucking Ruby. Dean was trying to be considerate. He didn’t call her a bitch. Not out loud anyway. He was just glad Sam wasn’t bleeding this time. He’d spent his life trying to keep Sam from harm. Blood and Sam pushed all his protective buttons. But now? He couldn’t stop remembering. Memories were dangerous.
He swung an arm around him and hauled his brother closer. ‘You know what this means, don’t you, Sam?’
Sam gave in, curling up against him, grudgingly muttering, ‘What?’ into his side.
‘I’m hiring you for all my heavy lifting from now on. And, Dude, we can so use this now! Have I got an offer for you!’
Sammy was not a happy camper, but Dean gave him credit for sticking to it when Dean nominated him as BBQ Chef at the wedding cookout.
Interestingly enough sex wasn’t the only thing that practice made you better at.
After the first hour Sam was psychically flipping steaks, turning sausages, and serving up eggs any way the locals ordered them, and his frown had started to turn upside down along with the food.
It was food poetry in motion. If they’d been charging actual money they would have made a small fortune that day. There were only two problems: Dean just about had to clone himself dodging from one side of the fire to the other to block everyone’s view of Sam’s food handling techniques; and being close to all that food was driving them both crazy.
By the time the meal was over, Dean thought both of them had earned a little R&R with the locals. He didn’t know about his brother, but he had one particular doll in his sights. Who knew that he could pick one hankie out of the crowd from another at forty paces? He was awesome, no doubt about it.
All he needed to do was set Sam up with a little something of his own, or find him a book, so Dean could go and see if she understood the international language as well as German. Dean was determined to check out exactly how many layers she was wearing. He’d bet on seven, but he didn’t mind losing if it turned out the number was less.
It was a shame Sam decided to stop him before he’d even finished that interesting mathematical thought.
‘No, Dean. You’re still not Harrison Ford.’
‘Bitch!’
Uh. Never say that aloud to your brother when he’s tired, hungry, hormonal, and his powers are temporarily turbo-charged.
‘Sammy! Let me down!’
Fuck. Dean really didn’t like heights. Especially when there was nothing visible holding him up.
‘Please?’ Dean could feel all the blood running to his head. Though at least it took his second brain out of the equation for a moment, and he could concentrate on…
‘Stop fucking around, Sammy and put me down, right now!’ He was the big brother; he was in charge, what he said…
‘Ow?’
‘Of course. There’s one other possibility about these people that we hadn’t considered.’
Sam’s musings sounded almost academic, but Dean knew better. Cock-blocker! He decided to stay lying down on the ground for a moment until his blood and internal organs moved back to their normal positions.
You mean apart from the fact that they live in a village on a magically appearing island in the middle of a river? ‘What?’
‘They could be Shakers.’
Thank God he didn’t say fairies. ‘I don’t care if they’re Quakers, Sam. I just wanted to have a few drinks before we go home, but I can’t do that, so what’s wrong with me wanting to say hello to a few girls, maybe grab a little…’
‘Dean!’
‘…dance.’
‘Not Quakers. Shakers.’
‘There’s a difference?’ Same old, same old as far as Dean was concerned.
‘Just one tiny, unimportant one, that shouldn’t affect you at all.’
Sam paused, looking gleeful and expectant. That was never good. Dean was getting a bad feeling about the natives.
Sam boinged in place. Literally. ‘Celibacy, Dean.’
‘Celi… what? No sex?’
Fuck! Or to be more precise. Not.
This wasn’t what Dean had wished for at all.
Sam, über-nerd that he was, did find himself a book while Dean was off trying to forget what it was like to be a human feather counting his stones and trying to calculate his net profit.
‘Dean!’
Sam sounded … freaked. Dean guessed that meant it was important.
‘What?’
‘You know that girl you’ve been mooning over ever since we got here?’
‘Fiona,’ Dean muttered, pissed at the mooning insult. He wasn’t mooning, or thinking about plaits, or hankies, or layers, or… Damn it! ‘What about her?’ He knew he wasn’t going to like the answer.
He was right, as always.
‘She’s kind of…’ Sam twisted the fingers of his left hand through his hair. That was always another bad sign. He was upset. ‘She’s a little bit older than you, Dean.’
So?
‘Like two hundred and thirty-two years older to be precise,’ Sam winced.
Two hundred and …?
‘You told me to shut up, and go find myself a good book. I found the village Bible back at the church. It’s got everyone’s names and dates of birth in there.’
‘So, probably an ancestor or something,’ Dean offered desperately.
‘Mmm. Well, the Bible doesn’t have any record of anyone dying here, either. And the happy couple over there?’ Sam pointed needlessly. ‘They got married two hundred years ago. Two hundred years ago today, Dean.’
Oops.
Dean decided it was time to stop thinking about Fiona’s layers.
Dean sat mournfully on the top of the brick wall surrounding the churchyard watching the celebration. Sam was off in a corner with the Mayor using his puppy-dog eyes to undoubtedly get straight answers to a few pointed questions.
Dean was too depressed to join him. This sort of thing never happened to Harrison Ford, no matter what film he was in.
In a few minutes Sam would be back, they’d have a plan, and they’d fight their way out of here, magic or no magic. But for now, he wasn’t Harrison Ford, or Indiana Jones, or any kind of hero. He was just Dean Winchester, stuck in a time warp lusting after a slightly older hottie who wore too many layers, and he’d kill for some pie.
The universe really did hate him.
‘Fucking amazing party for a bunch of tight-asses, isn’t it?’
Huh? None of the locals talked like that. Dean turned his head cautiously, wishing he’d been carrying more than his boot knife when they did the Winchesters overboard scene.
He really needed a spoon as well as a knife because there was a giant (well, five foot high, four foot wide at least) delicately speckled egg balanced precariously on the wall next to him. A spoon, and maybe some salt and pepper.
A giant, talking, egg.
Cheerfully swinging its legs-neatly stuffed into black and white striped stockings-back and forth, scuffing its polished, lace-up school shoes against the bricks, as it hummed a bawdy sea-shanty that Dean knew only too well.
Christ on a stick!
‘Nah,’ the egg said clearly. ‘Call me C… Pete. Besides, I thought you said you were done with the whole symbolism thing?’
‘Uh.’ Symbolism?
‘Sticks, stakes, crosses, and all that religious jazz,’ the e… Pete answered.
A giant, talking, psychic, egg.
‘You’d prefer a lamb?’
Huh?
An egg that felt familiar.
Holy…
‘Shit!’ C… Pete finished sacrilegiously.
‘You’re an … egg!’ Dean squeaked, endeavouring not to fall off the wall.
‘Sharp, Dean. Very sharp. Regardless of what Missouri ever said about you. It’s one of the reasons God picked you after all. That and the fact that she thinks you look fucking hot in that leather jacket you wear.’
Dean choked. And didn’t blush. No really he didn’t.
‘But let’s just keep that between us, shall we? She’s sometimes a little bashful about coming forward.’
Nnggh.
You’re an egg,’ Dean repeated, uncaring of the fact that he seemed to be stuck in a verbal loop.
‘We don’t always get to pick the damned shell, Dean. You of all people, should know that.’
‘It’s you! You’re an egg, and you’re…’ Blaspheming? ‘Swearing,’ he finished. Best not to insult the celestial egg. Dean didn’t want to find out what divine retribution looked like at close hand. Not today anyway.
‘Hah! If we can’t, who can?’
Good point.
‘The other you doesn’t.’
‘The other me might if you don’t start paying attention, and focussing on the job at hand.’
Bastard.
‘Oh, I can be. And worse if I have to. Don’t push me. Don’t push any of us. We’ve got a job to do, just like you.’
Dean glared at the egg. He could take it. He knew he could take it, if he moved fast, and before the lightning struck.
‘It’s almost decision time, Dean.’
Goddamn angels with their one-track, big-picture, narrow-fucking-minded world-views!
‘Which way are you going to jump? Curious omniscient minds, you know.’
I’m not killing my brother. Not for you. Not for God. Not for Dad. Not even for myself.
‘That an answer or a question, Dean?’
‘Me and Sammy? We’re none of your, or God’s, damned business!’
‘Denial? Gee, that’s a new one.’
The egg had its white-gloved hands on its rotund, hipless, sides. It was hard to tell, what with the smooth shell and all, but Dean knew it was pissed.
‘I’ve been waiting for you longer than you’ve had shit for brains, Dean Winchester.’
Dean couldn’t help wondering which came first. The Island or the egg?
The egg leaned closer. ‘And I’ll wait as long as I need to for you to make the correct decision, but we’re running out of time. All of us.’
Dean flinched.
‘I’ll tell you this for the last time, Dean. You don’t make it, we’ll make it on your behalf.’
The egg looked over at Sam. The question isn’t ‘Why am I here?’ Dean. The real question is, why are you?’
‘Sammy!’
‘What?’
‘Leave your hankie. We’re getting out of here, right now!’
Back, standing on the water’s edge with no other land visible on the distant horizon, Dean took a breath. Fuck the egg! He could do this for Sam. It was the quickest and safest way home, regardless of his own fears, wasn’t it? He let his fingers make the final decision for him.
‘Dean? What are you making this time?’
Duh! Dean opened his eyes and looked down at his hands. ‘Paper plane, dude.’ Please let me not throw up on the return flight. ‘No way we’re getting wet this time. Your hair is too damned heavy, Samson.’
There better be flight attendants in short skirts.
And beer.
Lots of beer.
And maybe a packet of salted cashews.
Make that two packets.
‘Make a wish and put your mind into it when you flip us, Sammy.’
‘Dean? What are you doing now?’
Me? Dean stomped casually, and heavily, all around the car, pretending to examine the paintwork for evidence of feral autumn leaves busy creating their own unique version of bio-graffiti. He focussed on his feet. Gotcha! Gotcha! Gotcha! ‘Nothing,’ he replied innocently.
‘Get in the car, Sam. Vacation’s over.’
As he settled happily in behind the steering wheel with his brother-safe, and apparently side effect, though not headache free after that workout-once more at his side, Dean took a moment to reflect.
For the first and only time, he was glad they hadn’t had the Impala with them. Who knows what damage Sam might have done to his baby while he was under the influence? Dean shuddered at the sudden horrific mental image of his car hovering motionless in mid-air. Some things were simply too terrible to imagine.
‘Hey, what did you get out of the Mayor before we took off? Anything useful? Something that explained who and what they were?’
‘Just people trying to mind their own business and stay out of harm’s way. They had a thing about not being forced to take sides. So they kind of abdicated from the world for a while. We just happened to catch them on a rare on day.’
Huh. Must be a Swiss thing. ‘Nothing else?’
His brother smiled. ‘He said if you love someone enough to want to give up everything to stay with that one person that anything is possible.’
Dean shrugged. He already knew that.
Sam nudged him. He was giving him the benefit of one of his patented scarily thoughtful looks. ‘Dean? I never thought to ask. What did you wish for?’
Dean took a moment, reversed out of the rest area, and sent the car speeding away from Mirage as fast as he dared on the tortuous side road, before he finally answered.
‘Nothing, Sammy. I didn’t wish for anything.’
Sam will tell you that sometimes it’s what happens between the battles that’s important.
Dean, who knows he’s the one Winchester with his priorities straight, will insist that in the end it’s all about his car.
Lying is the least of what Dean’s prepared to do for his brother.
Rating: R, Gen
Characters: Dean, Sam, chicks with hankies on their heads, men in black hats. Oh, and a talking egg
Disclaimer: The characters are sadly not mine. I’m just sticking pins into Winchester dolls for the purposes of general amusement. Sorry about the holes!
Word Count: 7,164
A/N: Short Order Winchesters + talking eggs = Crack
Birthday fic for noirbabalon, who totally deserves warped funny crack. Sorry for the inadvertent moments of angst that snuck in amidst the perkier crack, B. I couldn’t help myself. I was possessed. Truly I was.
Thanks go to secret-seer for suggesting what Sam’s subconscious revenge might be.
Warning: Possible blasphemy and abuse of childhood and literary icons. Apologies to Friedrich Gerstäcker’s ‘Germelshausen,’ the films ‘Brigadoon’ and ‘Witness,’ and *blushes* the nursery rhyme ‘Humpty Dumpty.’
Setting: Mirage, Penn. Nov. 14th 2008
Summary: ‘What do you mean-I’m not Harrison Ford?’
Trapped on a mysterious island with Sam’s abilities taking an unusual turn, Dean tries to make the best of the situation.
Sometimes it’s what happens between the battles that’s important.
‘Husqvarna? That’s a brand of sewing machine, right?’ Dean waited, counting silently to himself. One Husqvarna, two Husqvarna, three…
Huh. Sam could still shoot soda out through his nose. Awesome!
‘Way to go, Sammy!’ Dean slapped his brother’s back, hard. ‘Glad to see you haven’t forgotten everything I taught you as a kid.’
Sam staggered sideways, leant against a thankfully sturdy sign that declared in a presumably eco friendly way that Mirage Point was only 5 yards further → if you took the Spruce Tr. , and bent over, arms waving spasmodically.
Possibly he was signalling-Dean just bet Sam knew A.S.L., his brother really was that geeky-those evil ants, ordering them to march on the remnants of their impromptu picnic? Except that it wasn’t a picnic, because that would be too chicky for words. They’d pulled over to take a much needed piss-stop by the river an hour before, and decided to take advantage of the fading twilight and have a quick, completely manly, snack break. Beef jerky, Cheetos, Twinkies, and Dr. Pepper-food of hunters, Sam’s insults to the contrary.
‘Sammy?’ Dean stomped on a few of Sam’s minions just to be on the safe side. Little buggers had feelers, googly eyes, and too many legs, so he lumped them in with monsters and demons on principle. It wasn’t that he begrudged them a few measly crumbs, or anything, but he’d totally missed those last few yummy cheese curls in the bottom of the pack that were now being kidnapped and dragged away to be sacrificed to who knew what? And he was still a little hungr…
‘m gonna … kill … you,’ Sam choked out over the sound of Dean’s continued helpful thumps.
‘Maybe in the morning,’ Dean promised generously. He’d always been that kind of big brother.
‘What the fuck’s up with you and sewing machines all of a sudden?’ Sam asked when he’d recovered his breath.
‘Ngh,’ Dean answered. He felt that said it all, but in case his brother didn’t get it, he tried again. ‘Get off me, you giant … Sequoia!’
Sam deigned to shift and help him up, which was just emo, not to mention stupidly foolish for a Winchester, because that move got him flipped over Dean’s head to land with an almighty thump on the grass.
‘Asshole!’
Heh.
‘Sewing machines, Dean?’ Sam was wandering along peering mindlessly down into the water. Looking for mirages no doubt.
‘Heads up!’ Dean tossed him a beer. He kind of owed it to the kid even if he was spending an awful long time peering at his own reflection. Dean made a mental note to buy him a little pink vanity mirror at the next gas station.
‘I’m still thinking sewing, Dean. So don’t imagine you can distract me with alcohol.’ Sam sat down on the bank at the very end of the Point, popped the top off his drink, and took a healthy slug anyway.
Susquehanna, Husqvarna. Twins separated at birth, right? Dean squatted next to his brother. ‘It was a joke, Sammy. Remember them? I say something stupid, you make a bitch face, we go back and forth for a while like Forrest Gump playing ping-pong.’ The way we used to. Before.
‘Uh huh.’ Sam slanted him a look from under his bangs, which should have been physically impossible. Goddamn hair kept on growing. Dean was just waiting for the moment when Sam flicked it back with a toss of his head worthy of Charlie’s Angels. When that day came Dean had promised himself some quality time with a pair of scissors, and a camera.
‘I know what the river’s called, Sam. I was winding you up.’ How can he not believe that about me?
‘Dean. Two weeks ago I saw you looking at crochet patterns in Walmart!’
Damn. Thought he was busy buying stationary. I’ll have to be more care…
‘Dean? You want to talk about it?’ As usual he wasn’t only asking about the obvious. Had to be the smart one, didn’t he?
No. Dean made another note to make sure his hook and balls of wool were securely hidden under his collection of classic porn magazines. It was the only place he knew that would be perfectly safe from his brother.
‘When do I ever want to talk, Sammy?’ Especially down by a riverside.
Sam stood up, stretching his arms out wide the way he always did when he wanted to ask something that Dean didn’t want to tell him. Dean tried to block out the sudden image of Sam nailed to a cross bleeding down onto him. Fuck, don’t do this to me now. Not here. He focussed on something else instead. Sam had really long arms for a nerd. That was a much safer thought.
Why was it that every time they ended up next to water, Sam insisted on a heart-to-heart? Dean didn’t need a copy of Symbolism for Dummies®, he’d had to repeat that class in Hell, thank you very much.
Can’t keep asking me in the hope I’ll eventually give in and tell you, Sammy. He’d said too much already. He only had three secrets left, and his brother wasn’t the only person who was being protected by his silence. Sewing machines were a better distraction than anything else he’d been able to come up with lately.
‘Knew we should have gone to the Grand Canyon,’ he muttered. He was pretty sure God would have had time to get out of the way when he floored the accelerator peddle.
‘What are we doing here, Dean?’
Fuck philosophy! Sam never did learn when to let go. Not that Dean didn’t know exactly who he’d gotten that trait from. ‘Don’t know about you, but I really needed to take a piss, and you’re such a princess about me recycling bottles that way while I’m driving.’
‘I’m not letting up on you. You damned well said it yourself, we’re stronger together. Let me in, Dean.’
‘Right after you tell me all about your new BFF, Ruby. Besides, you’re the one who got all excited over those DCNR Scenic Drive signs and picked this particular spot. Thought you outgrew your old Greenpeace t-shirt ten years ago. Obviously not.’ Hit him on two fronts, keep him busy.
Sam shrugged. ‘It felt right, okay? What’s wrong with taking time to smell the roses, Dean? We’re a long time d…’
Yeah. I remember. Dean refused to flinch as Sam’s voiced trailed off. He concentrated fiercely on those stupid shifting images in the water again. Maybe if he looked hard enough he could see why his brother kept getting so excited about the whole nature gig. Personally Dean thought the only place for greenery was in the salad bar he bypassed on his way to grab a steak.
Ah, the Hell with it. There was no point arguing about it now. They were always unsettled between jobs. When you’d spent your life being trained to maintain your focus on your target, the days either side of a hunt were full of awkward uncertainties. It wasn’t like they could just revert back to behaving like normal people who put up curtains and had shopping lists that didn’t include ammunition and a gross of rock salt. The only time they acted like everyone else was when they were faking it to gain intel.
Dean didn’t know why Sam loved normal so much that he’d had to run away from home in order to find it. But after all he’d seen lately Dean decided that if his brother wanted it, why shouldn’t he have that even if only for a few minutes?
‘Hey, Sammy. Remember that time we were staying with Pastor Jim, and we were playing naval war games in the pond out the back?’
Sam grinned. ‘I remember you got in trouble because you chased me inside afterwards screaming, “You sank my boat, bitch!”
Dean huffed. ‘Well, you did!’ Sabotage, that’s what it was. He’d been winning right up till then.
‘Dean, we were both soaking wet, covered in green slime and pond weed, and it was in the middle of a wedding.’
Oh yeah. Oops. No wonder Jim Murphy took to keeping a closer eye on them after that. Who knew he was that good at tailing people? ‘sides he’d gotten Dean back good not long after for that accidental interruption to the joyful event-that and a thousand other misdemeanours.
Dean carefully peeled the label off his bottle, and folded it into a minuscule but totally sea-worthy boat.
‘Come here, Sammy.’
‘Wha…? Ow! Fuck, Dean. That hurt.’ Sam was holding his head like he was still the school drama queen.
‘Suck it up, Super Sook. I only took a few hairs. We’re doing this; we’re doing it up right.’
‘Doing what?’ Sam looked down as Dean tugged a few of his own hairs loose without blinking and twisted them together before tucking them gently into the centre of his flimsy construction. ‘You’re kidding right? The last time we did this, we were…’
‘We’d just left Bobby, and we were driving down to Nebraska, You were a kid who still believed in Santa Claus, the Tooth Fairy, and that Dad had a little salt fetish.’ At least until Christmas.
Sam didn’t bother responding to that dig, too busy remembering. ‘We detoured off I183, and ended up camped for the night next to the Loup River. Shit, but it was cold down there.’
‘And you still wanted to take five minutes away from the fire after dinner to go float your boat.’ And make a wish.
‘I was eight, Dean. I just wanted to…’
‘See if it would work,’ Dean finished off. ‘You always did believe all those fairy stories Bobby told you.’
‘They weren’t fairy tales, Dean. They were myths and leg…’ Sam ended up growling in frustration instead.
Dean just quirked an eyebrow. ‘And you told me the legend said that if you set your wish adrift on the ocean, the Gods might return it to you…’
‘If you were pure of heart,’ Sam whispered, turning an unfortunate shade of red.
‘Mmm,’ Dean answered deciding that it was best not to touch the subject of Sam’s putative innocence, even with a very long stick. ‘And then you mixed in all those tales about offerings of locks of hair with your science geek about DNA, and added yours and mine so…’
‘That the Gods would know exactly who we were,’ Sam said as his face changed from red to purple and back again in quick succession. It was like watching a colourblind rainbow struggling to decide what to wear to work after too many Tequila Slammers the night before.
Neither of them had ever been good colours on Sam Dean thought sadly. Maybe green? No, blue. Sam should always be blue.
‘Come on, Sammy. It’s just a kid’s story, right? Still, here we are, as luck would have it, right next to another Goddamn river.’ I’ll do anything; just don’t ask me to talk. ‘Roses, Sam. Time to take a freaking moment if that’s what you want.’ Just a bit of fun, right? Carpe whatever the fuck.
Dean flashed his brother his best ‘Let’s do it!’ smirk. Completely forgetting that the Gods and their opposites seemingly already had a good idea exactly who and what the Brothers Winchester were.
Sam gave him a long look, seemed almost satisfied with the results of that interrogation, or at least willing to overlook Dean’s diversion in the spirit of brotherhood. Then again, maybe he still had a deep-rooted need to play with tiny toy boats.
Dean handed his masterpiece over to its new Captain, and sprinkled a small libation to the Gods in its uncertain wake as Sam launched his ship of dreams.
Once Sam screwed his eyes shut, Dean was forced to follow suit. After a second he opened one carefully, but Sam was still wishing. Either that or he really shouldn’t have let his little brother have that last Twinkie. Possibly there was something to use-by-dates after all?
Dean sighed and decided he might as well go down with the S.S. Winchester too. Wasn’t like it was going to work or anything. Twinkle, twinkle. No, that wasn’t right. Best to keep it simple then. I wish…
‘Uh, Dean?’
‘Are we done yet?’ Dean grumped, keeping his eyes shut in case this was a test.
‘Dean!’
Oh my God!
‘Dean?’
Sam’s voice was definitely a bit wobbly, but for once Dean wasn’t going to call him on it.
‘Do you remember there being an island right out there a few minutes ago?’
Dean presumed that question was rhetorical, because he knew his eyes were fairly clearly yelling ‘Hell, no!’
An island looming out of a mist. Neither mist nor island had been there a minute ago. An island covered in old growth forest, in the middle of a strangely wider, and much faster running river. ‘Islands in the stream’ a voice sang in his head. He told Dolly Parton to shut the fuck up as he watched a small light bob and weave between mammoth trees across the water. It seemed to be heading their way. He hoped the light couldn’t walk on water, because that would be disconcerting, and he sure as Hell wasn’t going to be able to hit it with a rock salt blast from here, no matter how good a shot he was.
How am I going to get us out of this one? Dean didn’t think he’d be able to spray paint anything vaguely useful on the surface of that raging torrent. I’m going to need weapons. This was positively the last time he played ‘Remember When?’ with Sammy. Lots, and lots of weapons.
Sam spun around careless of the crumbling bank; eyes now open wide with shock mingled with what Dean was annoyed to recognise as a tinge of awed excitement. ‘It’s really ther…’
‘Sammy!’
Wet.
He was wet, and Sam weighed a ton. His brother’s hair must be magically akin to wool because it was heavier than both of them put together, and pulling them down.
‘Shit!’ He screamed into an uncaring wave. He spat it back out with malice into a fierce storm that screeched at him with the sound of a thousand bagpipes dancing the Highland Fling with some over-sexed tomcats. There was no way he was going to let Sam-either of them-die in a river in fucking Pennsylvania, especially if it wasn’t named after a sewing machine.
What in everlasting Hell had Sammy wished for?
To be stranded on a desert island apparently. Or rather a heavily wooded, deserted island. Where the fuck were the natives? Dean knew damn well that light hadn’t been a nosey will-o’-the-wisp.
It’s okay. We’re fine! Don’t worry about us. Can rescue my Sammy all by myself, jerks.
‘We’re good, Sam. We’re back on land. We’ll find a phone, borrow a motor boat or something, and be back at the car in no time.’ How did I get turned around and not get us back to the Point? One minute it had felt like they’d been drowning in the middle of an empty and strangely vindictive ocean, the next that peripatetic island had reared up and he’d grabbed it. He wasn’t stupid. This had weird carved in runes all over it, but he’d prioritised while they were out there drowning.
1. Save Sammy.
2. Save himself.
3. Land. Lots of land under starry skies above. What? He was drowning. Who knows where this stuff comes from?
4. Well, fuck him for not being specific while he was trying to do the backstroke with Sammy half choking him.
5. Not island.
6. Go away. Stop nudging me, damn it.
7. Real land. Not completely surrounded on all sides by water land.
8. Fine! Mirage Point. Is that specific enough for you?
9. No?
10. Okay, any land. I’ll do the rest.
11. Get back here!
12. Gotcha.
13. Teaching Sammy to look before he fell next time.
14. No more birthday cakes. No candles. And definitely no wishes. Ever again.
15. Getting back to his baby.
16. Burning down all the DCNR’s Scenic Route signs.
17. Fucking picnics.
He just bet the ants started it.
If there weren’t people and a phone on the other side of the island, Dean was personally taking out all those ants when he got them back to safety.
Sam shuddered again, somehow managing to shrink in height and huddle closer while they staggered up the dark hillside. ‘Deeeeeean! I’m soaked.’
Looked like the appeal of toy boats had finally worn off. Good, cos Dean was so over them too.
He took off his dripping jacket and draped it comfortingly around his brother’s shoulders. ‘You’ve always been wet, Sammy.’
They wandered through the outskirts of the village at daybreak, nodding and smiling at the locals who were busy setting up what looked like a fair. Trying hard to blend in. Moistly. Which was a little harder than usual. Dean hadn’t known they even manufactured suspenders any more. But obviously somewhere in the world a tiny factory was still churning them out. Either that, or one of the villager’s great-great-great-grandfathers had bought up big two hundred years back and his unlucky descendants were stuck with giving them away to all their neighbours for birthdays and Christmases.
Stiff, broad-brimmed, black, frown-inducing hats were apparently also the rage locally, though razors hadn’t quite caught on yet.
None of that really got Dean’s attention other than a quick, ‘Huh! Weird.’ Until it dawned on him that something more serious was wrong with this idyllic looking community.
‘Sam!’ Dean hissed, not bothering to be quiet. He was tired. And wet. And he was beginning to suspect that a phone wasn’t going to be forthcoming. And Sam was still wearing his jacket. His very favourite jacket.
‘What?’
‘Hankies!’
‘H… what?’ Sam asked, confusedly.
Sometimes his brother was a little slow on the uptake. Dean presumed Stanford was easier to get into than its reputation lead people to believe.
‘The chicks! They’re all wearing hankies on their heads.’ He gestured just in case the whole head thing hadn’t been clear enough for Dumbo.
Sam groaned at him, which was irritating, and typical of Sam.
‘They’re not handkerchiefs, Dean. They’re…’ Sam stopped, looked back at Dean and sighed. Loudly.
Bastard.
‘They look like…’
‘Swiss dolls,’ Dean butted in, glad to have something useful to contribute.
‘Mennonites or Amish from their dress,’ Sam finished blandly. ‘And their religious roots do go back to Switzerland, so…’
‘Swiss hankies!’ Dean interrupted again. He didn’t want Sam to ask him to elaborate on dolls. Or go into a diatribe about religious freedoms and diasporas. Or hankies.
‘Yes, Dean. They’re wearing Swiss hankies,’ Sam snapped back, exasperated. ‘Anything else you’d like me to explain?’
‘Noooo,’ Dean said. He preferred leather himself, but if these girls wanted to wear imported hankies, he wasn’t going to stop them. It was certainly better than them choosing to drape a two-ply tissue over their hair any day. But he had another more important objection.
‘Layers!’ Long sleeves, skirts, and what surely must be petticoats of all things underneath, and … ‘Aprons,’ he said in an awed voice. ‘They’re dressed like Betty Crocker’s Great Aunt Ethel.’ All those layers. It was just so wrong he wanted to cry. He could barely tell they were girls under that much fabric. The only real indicators were their smiling faces, the pigtails, the slight, surely accidental, graze of breasts beneath their bibs, and the lack of facial hair-at least on the younger women. That and the fact that none of the men were into hankies except if they had a cold.
‘Dean. We’re the last people who should criticise anyone for wearing layers.’
Okay, Sam did have a small point. But…
‘Hang on Amish. Where do I…? Dude! Harrison Ford!’
‘Oh God.’
There went Sam with the groaning again. Dean hoped it wasn’t upsetting the dolls, because that one over there with the really long brown plaits was smiling at him. Dean waved and started wandering subtly in her general direction. He liked to be friendly. Especially in a new town. It never hurt to be polite. Really polite.
Sam grabbed him, steering him roughly back onto their original route into the centre of the town. ‘Dean, you’re not Harrison Ford. And this isn’t a scene from Witness!’
Dean just pouted because he was always Harrison Ford.
‘Willkommen!’
Uh.
They kept doing that. Smiling. And saying, ‘Howdy!’ he assumed. Why couldn’t they speak Mexican, or Spanish? A language he’d actually bothered to learn at school instead of what Sam said was a variant of German. Because-Chicas! Tequila! That was useful. This was just making Sam look good.
Sam had managed to keep up the nodding and smiling. Dean had given up after the first few minutes because it was giving him a headache. He ended up drifting aimlessly behind his chatty, smiling, German-speaking freak of a brother and started trying to connect the dots. Something was definitely up. Their kind of up. Nobody was this nice all the time. Even Sam. Then there was the whole now you don’t see it, now you do, island thing. And their fucking dream boat. Shit. Shit. Shit.
‘Sam, how do you say, ‘shit’ in German?’ he inquired with purely academic interest.
‘Schei… Nuh uh, Dean.’ Sam crossed his arms across his broad chest and glowered down at him.
Well, at least he’d stopped nodding and smiling and turning his head from side to side at everybody like one of those vintage arcade machines.
‘Forget it, Dean. I’m not helping you be rude to these people. Not when they haven’t been anything but nice to us.’ So far.
Yeah. Sam wasn’t exactly stupid either. He might be Herr Happy on the outside, but he knew they were stuck in the middle of something strange as well as Dean did.
They were both busy cataloguing every detail of their surroundings. Sam just did it with a bigger smile on his face that was all.
One of the more talkative dolls was busy chirping something about Kirk to Sam. Dean slipped her his best ‘Live long, and prosper’ gesture to show he was paying attention. Besides, she was almost as pretty as that other one, even if she was wearing a much scarier hankie.
‘The Mayor’s at the church,’ Sam explained as he headed them further up the main street. ‘Something about helping with the arrangements for a big wedding tomorrow.’
Good. Because-wedding? Food! Dean was getting bored, and antsy. He wanted dry clothes, food, answers, his car, and to save his brother. Not necessarily in that order.
‘Take me to their leader, Sammy,’ he ordered hungrily crisply.
Luckily the Mayor spoke English as he welcomed them to … well, it had a lot of B’s, G’s, D’s and O’s, and probably a lot of umlauts and glottal stops because Dean gave up after the second syllable. He’d already named the place The Island in his head because he always went with what got the job done.
The Mayor, like everyone else on The Island, was so damned suspiciously welcoming he naturally invited the both of them to stay for the wedding as his guests.
Dean figured they might as well get some free food and entertainment out of it while he floated the idea of a phone and a lift back to civilisation. If there was such a thing left outside The Island. He was beginning to have his doubts.
‘Dean!’ Sam snaked the roll right out of his hand, before he’d even got to have a mouthful. He was smiling brightly around at the merry throng inside the church hall as he discretely hid what had been the start of Dean’s breakfast under another of those darned giant linen hankies that were draped all over the platters on the table.
‘Dude. Mine!’
‘No eating. No drinking. Not till we get back,’ Sam whispered.
‘No what?’ No food? Oh.
Shit ‘Close one, Sammy.’
Sam just rolled his eyes. ‘It’s good that at least one of us pays some attention to myths and legends, huh, Dean?’
Dean grunted in reply. No food. It was going to be a long day.
Time to make a deal, or failing that, get themselves voted off The Island before everything went to Hell.
Dean really was hungry.
‘We’re willing to pay a reasonable price to borrow a boat to get ourselves home.’ He was giving the Mayor the full benefit of almost three decades of practice running a con. There was no way the nice, ever-smiling Mayor wasn’t going to help two stranded good old boys get home, was there? Besides, he was offering money. Good money. Not his, naturally. But they weren’t to know that, were they?
‘I suppose we’re what you’d call a non-commercial community,’ the Mayor said apologetically.
‘A what?’
Sam coughed.
Dean ignored his brother’s sudden tragic illness. That’s what he got for going boating with his clothes on in autumn.
‘We’re a cashless society.’
‘sokay. He didn’t have much of that in his wallet anyway. ‘Credit?’ Dean asked with a dazzling smile, nudging a disgustingly phlegmy Sam.
Sam choked, but dutifully placed Bobby Woodward’s damp Visa down on the bench in unison with Carlos Bernstein’s MasterCard.
The Mayor really did look sorry-or he was just as good an actor as they were?-when he said, ‘Perhaps I should have put it more plainly. We don’t use money.’
Huh?
‘At all.’
‘Barter?’
No money? No coins, no notes? No plastic? Fuck. How the heck was he going to earn enough points or whatever these people used to scam their way home?
‘Do you happen to believe in pool, or poker?’
No?
‘Line dancing? Jump rope?’ Dean asked despairingly. ‘Competitive hopscotch?’
Turned out money wasn’t the only thing the community didn’t believe in.
No outside contact with the world. Nada, or whatever the German equivalent was. Dean wished he could remember more of Sergeant Schultz’s sayings from Hogan’s Heroes.
No boats. No motorized transport on the island. No electricity. No…
Dean’s mind skidded to a halt and reversed at high speed. No…
No cars!
Forget the wrongness of hankies, and layers, and no money. No cars!
Dean cringed. So much for the picture-perfect community. Thank God, they weren’t stuck here for good because he’d go crazy without his car. His baby. Abandoned. Deanless and alone in an uncaring world. Something had to be done.
Dean rubbed his hands together enthusiastically.
Sam took a few scared steps backwards. Then a few more. ‘Exactly what have you got in mind, Dean?’
‘Now, Sammy. Don’t be like that. It’ll be just like when we were kids. Mow the old lady’s lawn, she gives you cake. Take your lunch to school, swap it for something better. A little charm, a bit of hard work, the odd switcheroo here and there to upgrade us as we go, and we’re home free.’
He clapped his brother reassuringly on the shoulder. ‘We’re Winchesters. We’ll be out of here in no time!’
The wrinkle deepening in Sam’s forehead signalled his doubt, but Dean bulldozed over all his objections. Just like old times indeed.
That only left Dean with one vital question unanswered.
‘Do you think you can still remember how to make lemonade, Sammy?’
By mid-afternoon of the second day Dean was even hungrier. And he knew Sam was too-those long legs were used to being filled on a regular basis, even if they preferred rabbit food.
And something odd had begun to happen.
Things had started to move. Small things. The lemons kept rolling off Dean’s hastily built booth and making a break for freedom no matter what Dean did to keep them corralled before he sacrificed them for the greater good.
Leaves kept swirling around them, no matter where they were in town. It was like being followed by a frisky pet tornado that just wanted to play.
Dean had started using stones as markers to keep track of how many favours they were owed in return for all the odd jobs they’d been doing around the village. The stones kept rearranging themselves into different sized pyramids whenever he turned his back.
He was starting to get a nasty feeling about what might really be going on.
When Sam shook his hair out of his eyes, and growled at him when Dean handed him the heaviest pot they’d offered to carry down to the party for a little old lady with a hankie so large it qualified as a wimple, and the lid just … rose up … and … hovered … for a minute before crashing back into place? Well, that’s when Dean knew he was on to something.
A Sammy something.
‘Dude! You just totally levitated that sucker!’
Sam, Boy Scout that he’d always wanted to be, delivered the pot silently, and stormed off to sulk under a tree. Which was Sammy all over, except for the psychic floating thing. That was new.
Dean sat down next to his brother. Best to give him a minute. Room to breathe. After thirty seconds he nudged him with his hip. And again, when that got no response. He sighed. ‘Is this something else you haven’t been sharing with the class, Sam? More homework with Ruby?’
‘Something in the water?’ Sam suggested.
He wasn’t going to talk either.
Fucking Ruby. Dean was trying to be considerate. He didn’t call her a bitch. Not out loud anyway. He was just glad Sam wasn’t bleeding this time. He’d spent his life trying to keep Sam from harm. Blood and Sam pushed all his protective buttons. But now? He couldn’t stop remembering. Memories were dangerous.
He swung an arm around him and hauled his brother closer. ‘You know what this means, don’t you, Sam?’
Sam gave in, curling up against him, grudgingly muttering, ‘What?’ into his side.
‘I’m hiring you for all my heavy lifting from now on. And, Dude, we can so use this now! Have I got an offer for you!’
Sammy was not a happy camper, but Dean gave him credit for sticking to it when Dean nominated him as BBQ Chef at the wedding cookout.
Interestingly enough sex wasn’t the only thing that practice made you better at.
After the first hour Sam was psychically flipping steaks, turning sausages, and serving up eggs any way the locals ordered them, and his frown had started to turn upside down along with the food.
It was food poetry in motion. If they’d been charging actual money they would have made a small fortune that day. There were only two problems: Dean just about had to clone himself dodging from one side of the fire to the other to block everyone’s view of Sam’s food handling techniques; and being close to all that food was driving them both crazy.
By the time the meal was over, Dean thought both of them had earned a little R&R with the locals. He didn’t know about his brother, but he had one particular doll in his sights. Who knew that he could pick one hankie out of the crowd from another at forty paces? He was awesome, no doubt about it.
All he needed to do was set Sam up with a little something of his own, or find him a book, so Dean could go and see if she understood the international language as well as German. Dean was determined to check out exactly how many layers she was wearing. He’d bet on seven, but he didn’t mind losing if it turned out the number was less.
It was a shame Sam decided to stop him before he’d even finished that interesting mathematical thought.
‘No, Dean. You’re still not Harrison Ford.’
‘Bitch!’
Uh. Never say that aloud to your brother when he’s tired, hungry, hormonal, and his powers are temporarily turbo-charged.
‘Sammy! Let me down!’
Fuck. Dean really didn’t like heights. Especially when there was nothing visible holding him up.
‘Please?’ Dean could feel all the blood running to his head. Though at least it took his second brain out of the equation for a moment, and he could concentrate on…
‘Stop fucking around, Sammy and put me down, right now!’ He was the big brother; he was in charge, what he said…
‘Ow?’
‘Of course. There’s one other possibility about these people that we hadn’t considered.’
Sam’s musings sounded almost academic, but Dean knew better. Cock-blocker! He decided to stay lying down on the ground for a moment until his blood and internal organs moved back to their normal positions.
You mean apart from the fact that they live in a village on a magically appearing island in the middle of a river? ‘What?’
‘They could be Shakers.’
Thank God he didn’t say fairies. ‘I don’t care if they’re Quakers, Sam. I just wanted to have a few drinks before we go home, but I can’t do that, so what’s wrong with me wanting to say hello to a few girls, maybe grab a little…’
‘Dean!’
‘…dance.’
‘Not Quakers. Shakers.’
‘There’s a difference?’ Same old, same old as far as Dean was concerned.
‘Just one tiny, unimportant one, that shouldn’t affect you at all.’
Sam paused, looking gleeful and expectant. That was never good. Dean was getting a bad feeling about the natives.
Sam boinged in place. Literally. ‘Celibacy, Dean.’
‘Celi… what? No sex?’
Fuck! Or to be more precise. Not.
This wasn’t what Dean had wished for at all.
Sam, über-nerd that he was, did find himself a book while Dean was off trying to forget what it was like to be a human feather counting his stones and trying to calculate his net profit.
‘Dean!’
Sam sounded … freaked. Dean guessed that meant it was important.
‘What?’
‘You know that girl you’ve been mooning over ever since we got here?’
‘Fiona,’ Dean muttered, pissed at the mooning insult. He wasn’t mooning, or thinking about plaits, or hankies, or layers, or… Damn it! ‘What about her?’ He knew he wasn’t going to like the answer.
He was right, as always.
‘She’s kind of…’ Sam twisted the fingers of his left hand through his hair. That was always another bad sign. He was upset. ‘She’s a little bit older than you, Dean.’
So?
‘Like two hundred and thirty-two years older to be precise,’ Sam winced.
Two hundred and …?
‘You told me to shut up, and go find myself a good book. I found the village Bible back at the church. It’s got everyone’s names and dates of birth in there.’
‘So, probably an ancestor or something,’ Dean offered desperately.
‘Mmm. Well, the Bible doesn’t have any record of anyone dying here, either. And the happy couple over there?’ Sam pointed needlessly. ‘They got married two hundred years ago. Two hundred years ago today, Dean.’
Oops.
Dean decided it was time to stop thinking about Fiona’s layers.
Dean sat mournfully on the top of the brick wall surrounding the churchyard watching the celebration. Sam was off in a corner with the Mayor using his puppy-dog eyes to undoubtedly get straight answers to a few pointed questions.
Dean was too depressed to join him. This sort of thing never happened to Harrison Ford, no matter what film he was in.
In a few minutes Sam would be back, they’d have a plan, and they’d fight their way out of here, magic or no magic. But for now, he wasn’t Harrison Ford, or Indiana Jones, or any kind of hero. He was just Dean Winchester, stuck in a time warp lusting after a slightly older hottie who wore too many layers, and he’d kill for some pie.
The universe really did hate him.
‘Fucking amazing party for a bunch of tight-asses, isn’t it?’
Huh? None of the locals talked like that. Dean turned his head cautiously, wishing he’d been carrying more than his boot knife when they did the Winchesters overboard scene.
He really needed a spoon as well as a knife because there was a giant (well, five foot high, four foot wide at least) delicately speckled egg balanced precariously on the wall next to him. A spoon, and maybe some salt and pepper.
A giant, talking, egg.
Cheerfully swinging its legs-neatly stuffed into black and white striped stockings-back and forth, scuffing its polished, lace-up school shoes against the bricks, as it hummed a bawdy sea-shanty that Dean knew only too well.
Christ on a stick!
‘Nah,’ the egg said clearly. ‘Call me C… Pete. Besides, I thought you said you were done with the whole symbolism thing?’
‘Uh.’ Symbolism?
‘Sticks, stakes, crosses, and all that religious jazz,’ the e… Pete answered.
A giant, talking, psychic, egg.
‘You’d prefer a lamb?’
Huh?
An egg that felt familiar.
Holy…
‘Shit!’ C… Pete finished sacrilegiously.
‘You’re an … egg!’ Dean squeaked, endeavouring not to fall off the wall.
‘Sharp, Dean. Very sharp. Regardless of what Missouri ever said about you. It’s one of the reasons God picked you after all. That and the fact that she thinks you look fucking hot in that leather jacket you wear.’
Dean choked. And didn’t blush. No really he didn’t.
‘But let’s just keep that between us, shall we? She’s sometimes a little bashful about coming forward.’
Nnggh.
You’re an egg,’ Dean repeated, uncaring of the fact that he seemed to be stuck in a verbal loop.
‘We don’t always get to pick the damned shell, Dean. You of all people, should know that.’
‘It’s you! You’re an egg, and you’re…’ Blaspheming? ‘Swearing,’ he finished. Best not to insult the celestial egg. Dean didn’t want to find out what divine retribution looked like at close hand. Not today anyway.
‘Hah! If we can’t, who can?’
Good point.
‘The other you doesn’t.’
‘The other me might if you don’t start paying attention, and focussing on the job at hand.’
Bastard.
‘Oh, I can be. And worse if I have to. Don’t push me. Don’t push any of us. We’ve got a job to do, just like you.’
Dean glared at the egg. He could take it. He knew he could take it, if he moved fast, and before the lightning struck.
‘It’s almost decision time, Dean.’
Goddamn angels with their one-track, big-picture, narrow-fucking-minded world-views!
‘Which way are you going to jump? Curious omniscient minds, you know.’
I’m not killing my brother. Not for you. Not for God. Not for Dad. Not even for myself.
‘That an answer or a question, Dean?’
‘Me and Sammy? We’re none of your, or God’s, damned business!’
‘Denial? Gee, that’s a new one.’
The egg had its white-gloved hands on its rotund, hipless, sides. It was hard to tell, what with the smooth shell and all, but Dean knew it was pissed.
‘I’ve been waiting for you longer than you’ve had shit for brains, Dean Winchester.’
Dean couldn’t help wondering which came first. The Island or the egg?
The egg leaned closer. ‘And I’ll wait as long as I need to for you to make the correct decision, but we’re running out of time. All of us.’
Dean flinched.
‘I’ll tell you this for the last time, Dean. You don’t make it, we’ll make it on your behalf.’
The egg looked over at Sam. The question isn’t ‘Why am I here?’ Dean. The real question is, why are you?’
‘Sammy!’
‘What?’
‘Leave your hankie. We’re getting out of here, right now!’
Back, standing on the water’s edge with no other land visible on the distant horizon, Dean took a breath. Fuck the egg! He could do this for Sam. It was the quickest and safest way home, regardless of his own fears, wasn’t it? He let his fingers make the final decision for him.
‘Dean? What are you making this time?’
Duh! Dean opened his eyes and looked down at his hands. ‘Paper plane, dude.’ Please let me not throw up on the return flight. ‘No way we’re getting wet this time. Your hair is too damned heavy, Samson.’
There better be flight attendants in short skirts.
And beer.
Lots of beer.
And maybe a packet of salted cashews.
Make that two packets.
‘Make a wish and put your mind into it when you flip us, Sammy.’
‘Dean? What are you doing now?’
Me? Dean stomped casually, and heavily, all around the car, pretending to examine the paintwork for evidence of feral autumn leaves busy creating their own unique version of bio-graffiti. He focussed on his feet. Gotcha! Gotcha! Gotcha! ‘Nothing,’ he replied innocently.
‘Get in the car, Sam. Vacation’s over.’
As he settled happily in behind the steering wheel with his brother-safe, and apparently side effect, though not headache free after that workout-once more at his side, Dean took a moment to reflect.
For the first and only time, he was glad they hadn’t had the Impala with them. Who knows what damage Sam might have done to his baby while he was under the influence? Dean shuddered at the sudden horrific mental image of his car hovering motionless in mid-air. Some things were simply too terrible to imagine.
‘Hey, what did you get out of the Mayor before we took off? Anything useful? Something that explained who and what they were?’
‘Just people trying to mind their own business and stay out of harm’s way. They had a thing about not being forced to take sides. So they kind of abdicated from the world for a while. We just happened to catch them on a rare on day.’
Huh. Must be a Swiss thing. ‘Nothing else?’
His brother smiled. ‘He said if you love someone enough to want to give up everything to stay with that one person that anything is possible.’
Dean shrugged. He already knew that.
Sam nudged him. He was giving him the benefit of one of his patented scarily thoughtful looks. ‘Dean? I never thought to ask. What did you wish for?’
Dean took a moment, reversed out of the rest area, and sent the car speeding away from Mirage as fast as he dared on the tortuous side road, before he finally answered.
‘Nothing, Sammy. I didn’t wish for anything.’
Sam will tell you that sometimes it’s what happens between the battles that’s important.
Dean, who knows he’s the one Winchester with his priorities straight, will insist that in the end it’s all about his car.
Lying is the least of what Dean’s prepared to do for his brother.