Pretty in Pink for soserendipity
Title: Pretty in Pink for soserendipity
Pairing/Characters: Sam, Dean, Bobby, Rufus, Crowley, Cas
Word count/Medium: 4k
Rating: PG
Warnings: Roseate spoonbills
Summary: "Are those wings, Sammy? Did that thing bite you?"
A/N: This is set in a nebulous time that could be any season of the show. Many thanks to oddishly and glovered.
They were having an argument over Crowley again -
“A stakeout, huh?” Sam called over his shoulder as he stepped into the river. At night. He could’ve been a lawyer, he thought with a sort of yearning that only hit him when he was doing something particularly stupid, and then took another step.
“Crowley said he had a lead,” Dean said from his spot on the shore.
“You had to meet in a bar though? Where no monster ever showed? He just wanted to have drinks with you, Dean.”
“Bigfeet are notoriously difficult to lure, okay?!”
“Oh, right,” Sam said, taking a moment before wading further into the dark water. Dean’s flashlight jumped crazily over the reeds and rocks. “Did he tell you that before you hung out there for a couple hours chit chatting or-“
Dean cut him off. “Are we really going to argue about this in the middle of a hunt or are you going to kill the creepy mermaid?”
“You might have noticed that I’m the one holding a bladed weapon,” Sam grumbled. “Trying not to think about the mud squelching between my toes. You owe me at least some conversation.”
Sam was shivering, four feet deep in the river, not exactly sure why he was the one doing the hard part of the job.
“And besides, it should be a piece of cake killing this thing. You heard what Bobby said-“ He took another step through the water, scanning the water in front of him as he made his way to a cave not far off. “It’s a freshwater mermaid, more dangerous than it sounds but easy enough to kill so long as you can get close enough to behead it. Right?”
“Right,” Dean’s voice echoed his. “Should be a piece of cake.”
The hunt went as planned. Almost as planned.
The fight with the mermaid was abrupt and gory, the mermaid de-speared and beheaded in under a minute. Knee- deep in water after the kill, Sam tried to catch his breath as he finally got a chance to look at the spear he was holding. It had the solid weight of an old weapon and the kind of carvings that meant business. It glinted gold in the light.
He began trudging out of the water, Dean laughing in front of him. Sam made it as far as the reeds, and then something went wrong. He lost a couple seconds, blacked out maybe. When he blinked Dean was on the shore, and something was weighing Sam down, making it harder to get out of the water.
There was something on his back.
Sam lost his balance, tumbling back into the frigid river. He spluttered back to his feet, hacking river water out of his lungs and trying to reach behind him with his free hand.
His hands met feathers.
Next thing he knew, Dean was hauling him out of the river.
“Are those wings, Sammy?” he was yelling.
He rubbed a hand over his face and shook out his wings a little. “Wait a--wings? Wings?”
They were--
“Big,” Dean said.
And-
“Pink!” Dean exclaimed.
And really-
“Goddamn fluffy. Wow, Sammy, I’d be worried if they weren’t so cute.”
“You know who else has wings? Angels. I am probably dead right now, Dean, and all you can seem to do is laugh about it.”
“Come on, featherbrain. Let’s get you back to the motel. See what we can do about your…problem.”
Sam didn’t seem to be dead just yet, but his shirts no longer fit. That was maybe the worst part of it. Since he couldn’t change out of his shirt, couldn’t take it off because the wings were there, he had to sleep in his wet shirt. He spent half the night shivering, an hour trying to blow himself dry in the bathroom with the cheap hair dryer attached to the wall. It didn’t help much.
Dean emerged from the bathroom in the morning looking sprightly and well-rested. He wrinkled his nose when he looked at Sam. “Dude. Don’t worry, they don’t look as pink in the daylight.”
“It’s not the color that’s pissing me off, Dean.”
Dean put his hands up. “Okay, man. You’re no use to me like this, you’ll warn the next monster we’re coming from half a mile away with all that bitching. Just … stay here while I go find us some grub.”
Sam sat at the edge of the bed while he waited, wings dragging uncomfortably on the rough sheets of the bed.
They were often in dangerous situations - that was putting it lightly - but growing extra body parts was something seriously out of left field. If he was honest with himself, now that he was alone, he was seriously freaked out.
He went to the bathroom after a time and took a deep breath before turning to look over his shoulder. The wings were full, with huge feathers. Somewhat like flamingo feathers.
He spun around and crashed out of the bathroom at the sound of the door clicking.
“Falkdjsf-” he said, as his right wing got caught in the door jamb.
“You ok?”
“It’s like I need to learn to walk all over again,” Sam grumbled, sitting back at the edge of the bed.
Dean shook his head, philosophically. “Birds were meant to fly, Sam. So go fly.”
“Did you run afoul of some breakfast or what?”
“That’s the spirit, Sammy,” said Dean. “Oh, shit. Uh.”
“What?”
“It’s an Egg McMuffin. Sorry, Big Bird.”
Sam grabbed the bag and took out his sandwich, and ripped the paper from it viciously. He was no chicken.
“So,” Dean said, probably once he could see that Sam was mildly calmer with food. “What would we do if this was a normal case?”
“Research,” Sam muttered, between mouthfuls. “At some point Crowley shows up, and we ignore him.”
Dean watched him crack a can of beer. “Dude, it’s ten in the morning.”
“So what?” Growing wings was thirsty work. Besides, his throat was dry.
Dean shook his head and continued. “Ok, I’m calling Bobby. I told him while I was out, maybe he’s found something.”
“How’s Big Bird?” Bobby said immediately when he picked up.
Sam growled and Dean said, “Bobby, you’re on speaker. And Sam’s feathers are…ruffled.”
“Oh, hey Sam. How you holding up?”
“Not good,” Sam bit out, and Dean quickly took over.
“So ok, research. Let’s go through the events of yesterday. See if we can figure out where things went wrong. Sound good?”
“Good,” Sam said.
“So yesterday I sent you boys to find the river mermaid, and I talked to you at the river. Then what happened?”
“What happened was Dean was being a jerk-“
“Was not!”
Bobby huffed. “Are we gonna waste time arguing back and forth or are you going to tell me what really happened?”
“Fine,” Sam said, and settled his wings in for the story.
They had been looking into the recent deaths at a river in coastal Texas, along the gulf, and it was almost disappointingly simple. All they had to do was find the creepy mermaid monster, say some mumbo jumbo, and behead the thing, then head back to Bobby’s place.
Sam had even managed to track down the exact coordinates of the creature’s hideout without any trouble. Dad’s journal came through. Their dad actually had come across it once and wasted it, but apparently there was another one of them still alive.
“Easy peasy,” Sam muttered, when they saw the dark maw of the mermaid’s grotto. It was just at the edge of the clearing, just visible in the moonlight. They were hidden in shadows of the trees.
“Pumpkin pie?” Dean said hopefully, shining his flashlight over the dark rocks.
“You can have ten pumpkin pies if you don’t make me get in the water.”
“You wish,” Dean said, and shone his flashlight at the cave. “That it?”
Sam nodded. “Bingo.”
“Jackpot,” Dean agreed, and started toward the shore.
It was a cold, crisp night and Sam would have appreciated it were they not at the edge of a creek playing rock paper scissors.
Dean lost, of course, but Sam’s relief was short-lived. Dean immediately started complaining. “C’mon, Sammy, you owe me for that thing!”
Sam squinted at him. “What thing?”
“You know, the time I went down that mine shaft thing last month. You told me you owed me a favor.”
“The water looks very cold,” Sam told him.
“Yes,” Dean agreed, and nodded meaningfully toward it. “Imagine saving the lives of summer vacationers from a flesh-eating mermaid. Imagine that, Sam. It’ll be all on you.”
Sam looked down at his v-neck. It looked the same as all the others, sure, but it was new. He liked his shirts a certain way, and it took effort to find the perfect one.
“Fine.”
He begrudgingly knelt down and took off his shoes, then counted backwards from ten and waded out into the creek. The sooner he got in, the sooner he got out.
“So you didn’t see the mermaid,” Bobby’s voice said through speaker phone. He sounded like he was maybe taking notes or looking something up in a book at that very moment.
“No,” Sam said. “Not until Dean fired a few shots into the cave, severely blowing our cover.”
“I would like to point out at this juncture that Sam was wading through the reeds by the shore, disturbing a very upset stork. Thus, me firing my gun. To save your life, Sammy,” Dean said, with a look of great censure.
Sam ignored him. “Dean got freaked by something the size of a pigeon, and then shot off like ten rounds, and the next thing I know, we see this creepy, slimy fish thing coming toward me in the dark.”
“Sam!” Dean called from the shore.
But Sam was already stalking the mermaid as he stumbled backwards in the water, feet slipping and sinking into the mud in the shallows of the river. He thought for a brief moment before the creature surface that this would be a stupid way to die, and then he was faced with the cold, blank eyes of someone who looked a lot like the aquatic version of Alex Trebeck.
Dean was shouting but Sam found himself suddenly submerged, feet pulled out from under him, not enough breath in his lungs. He tried to yell the Latin, but all that came out was bullae
As he thrashed and scrabbled at the webbed hands that had claws dug into his pants legs, he lost his knife.
”I can’t believe you lost your knife. You’ve been knife fighting since you were, what, twelve?”
“You try to say some mumbo jumbo underwater while something’s trying to drown you and not lose hold of your knife!”
“Just take care of yourself, is all I’m saying.”
Sam was about to shoot something back. He was the one with giant wings weighing him down, he was the one who got to be pissed off. But the worried desperation on Dean’s face made him come up short.
“Ok,” he said as the phone pinged, and a name flashed on the screen.
Crowley, BFF flashed up on the screen. Sam sent Dean a dark look, mouthing, BFF? He hit Ignore.
“Boys?” Bobby’s voice said over the phone.
Dean cleared his throat. “She had a spear.”
“Yeah, that’s the important part. She had this spear, so I was quick enough, smart enough,” Sam said, “to grab it from her.”
The spear was glowing blue, which wasn’t something Sam noticed until it was in his hand.
“You touched it with your bare hand?” Bobby asked, one-hundred percent incredulous. Sam could imagine the spittle flying onto his phone’s speaker.
Sam stilled, his wings tensing painfully. “Was I not supposed to?”
“No, no, regular old solid gold spear with ornate carvings that glowed blue,” Bobby muttered. “Nothing strange there.”
Sam sighed. Bobby sighed, too.
“But nothing happened after he touched it,” Dean said. “Like, he fought with the thing for a second, and by that point I’d jumped in the water. My gun was out of rounds--”
“Because of the pigeon,” Bobby said.
“Because of the freaking raptor bird, yes,” Dean agreed.
“So I beheaded it.”
There’s a silence. “With its own spear?”
“Yeah.”
“With its magical spear that glowed?”
“And which didn’t do anything weird other than that,” Sam agreed.
“So you didn’t get wings after that?”
“Not until after I killed it and after we started making our way to shore.”
“All’s well that ends well, eh Sammy?” Dean said, slapping him on the back - the back still devoid of wings, Sam remembered longingly.
“Yeah,” Sam said, and kept hold of the spear, the mermaid head impaled on top.
Dean crawled out of the river and Sam started to follow. Then there was a rustling in the tall grasses and Sam held up the spear, spooking at nothing, it turned out, because the thing that burst out of the grass was the bird Dean had shot at earlier.
“Hey, little guy,” Sam said, lowering the spear.
“Come on, Sam,” Dean said. “You promised me pie.”
“Hold on, Dean. You drag me down to the river in the middle of a forest, I’m going to spend some time in nature.”
Sam eyed the bird and then crouched down to hold out his hand. He wasn’t sure what he was going for exactly.
The bird eyed his hand.
And then snapped out and bit him.
And he wasn’t sure what happened after that because the next thing he knew, he had stumbled back a few yards and was shivering, teeth chattering, Dean yelling his name.
“Did that thing bite you?”
Sam held up the mermaid head impaled on the spear, blinking stupidly.
His hands met feathers.
Next thing he knew, Dean was hauling him out of the river.
“Are those wings, Sammy?” he was yelling.
He rubbed a hand over his face and shook out his wings a little. “Wait a--wings? Wings?”
And he felt oddly heavy, feeling dazed and thinking lying down would be nice right now.
“Then I remembered where I was, and Dean made fun of me, a lot, and-”
“The wings,” Bobby continued for him.
“Yeah,” Sam said. And frowned.
“Well, shit. You boys better shag ass up here, then.”
It took them a few days to get to Bobby’s. Not only was the ride long, but Sam was not comfortable in the car.
“All right,” Dean said, after considering the car. “You’re going to have to lie down in the back.”
Sam spent the whole ride curled uncomfortably. The wings folded down along his sides, but he kept sitting on feathers and they were strangely sensitive to the slightest breeze. Dean grumbled the whole way about being a chauffeur, but kept the windows up the whole way without argument.
The wings looked even less pink now. He wondered if it was a trick of the eye.
He wondered if he was dying. His body felt strangely heavy, and he was starting to think that it wasn’t just the wings.
“Getting there as fast as I can,” Dean said, and turned on some eighties hair metal.
At a motel in North Texas, Sam was barely able to fit in the shower. But sleeping with wings had made his body overheat, and he'd woken up sweating after vague nightmares of being hunted for his plumage.
Dean was out getting coffee, so Sam stepped into the main room and wetted a hot wash cloth, and gave himself an army bath standing next to the TV. He was dripping onto the ground, but he already felt ten-times more human. His back itched with the new growth, though, and looking at the clock to make sure Dean wasn't about to burst in suddenly and find him in a stupid situation, he grabbed Dean’s shotgun, unloaded it, and then put the washcloth over the muzzle before awkwardly reaching behind and scrubbing right between the wings.
It felt nothing short of heavenly, and he sighed in relief at the feeling of cool air on his wet back from the open door.
He whirled around, too late, to see why the door was open, and he was met with a scream.
The maid, brandishing a broom, was yelling about demons and monsters, and Sam grabbed the keys and bags and split. Dean found him halfway down the street, standing fake-casually against a bush to hide his wings.
They were half a day’s drive to South Dakota, just below the state line, when Dean almost got his wallet stolen of all things. He was heading out of a 7-11, full daylight, with some rations. Two gas station burritos and a bag of peanut M&Ms. They hadn’t been able to even go through drive-thrus, because people seemed to notice a guy curled up in the back seat with wings.
Sam was dozing in the backseat when he saw the two guys come at Dean from either side, a gun in one of the guy’s hands, the other reaching out.
“Gimme your wallet,” the first guy said.
“Drop the bag.”
Sam opened the door on the other side, and managed to crawl out without making too much noise. Of course, that’s when he knocked the trash can over and knocked the gas hose onto the ground.
“Dude, I could pay someone much better looking than you, but thanks for the offer,” Dean was saying.
“I’m not fucking joking. I’ll shoot you in your pretty face.”
“Why thanks,” Dean said, right as Sam jumped over the hood and took off, swooping through the air to land three feet away and in direct line of sight from the two guys.
They shrieked in unison.
“Stay away from my brother!” Sam said, attempting menacing even though he felt weak and cold. He opened his wings in a motion he had finally perfected without falling over, which brought him, by his estimation, to eight feet across and scary.
“Whoa!” squeaked one of the guys. Sam buffeted him in the face with a flick of his left wing.
The second guy fainted, which took care of that.
“Dude,” Dean said, looking like this was the best thing that had happened to him. Ever. “You totally saved me the trouble of ordering more credit cards. Mighty kind of you.”
Sam fell to one knee, winded and coughing. He had gum stuck to his jeans now, and the sun beat down on his neck mightily.
“Ugh,” he rasped. “Can you help me back into the car?”
Rufus opened the screen door of Bobby’s house before Dean had even knocked. He had an empty bottle of tequila in hand and a sneer on his face. “Winchesters.”
“Rufus made tequila peach pie!” Bobby called through the open door. “Get in here quick before I eat it all.”
“He’s not kidding,” Rufus said. “If I lost my piece to come open this for you guys, couldn’t even open a door yourselves, I’m not going to be happy.”
“Rufus,” Dean said, and nodded meaningfully to Sam and the set of wings.
“Well, it ain’t normal,” was Rufus’s summation of Sam, before he stomped back into the house.
Dean raised his eyebrows at Sam, and then followed. Sam edged himself sideways through the door and staggered to the living room and the smell of freshly baked alcohol.
“Looks like you need this,” Rufus said, and handed him the nearly empty bottle.
Sam took it in hand, which had at least a ninth left of tequila sloshing at the bottom. He thought he might cry at the gesture. This was getting out of hand.
“Thought you said they were pretty in pink,” Bobby said to Dean in a low voice as Sam went to perch at the edge of the couch, ignoring everyone and hoping the tequila would make him forget his troubles.
He thought about his life up to this point.
“He’ll be ok. You’ve gotten through much more than this,” said Bobby.
“The color is literally going out of him,” Dean said into the tabletop. “On Tuesday he was fuchsia. Now he’s a dusty rose at best.”
Sam groaned.
“Now son,” Bobby placated, and Sam decied that for the moment he could leave it to the others as he huddled on the couch, not feeling like himself at all. His head was swimming as he heard Bobby say, “I’ve been doing some research, but nothing about a blue glowing spear, a mermaid, or anything.”
“Here, take a look at this,” Dean said.
“It’s solid gold all right-”
Sam fell asleep.
He was woken some time later when Cas showed up in a flurry of wings that Sam had a new appreciation for.
“Ah, Sam,” said Cas, swimming before his eyes as he struggled awake.
“Am I-one of you?” Sam croaked.
“No,” said Castiel. “You’re still just a human, and an abomination at that. I’m … sorry.”
Sam had never been so happy just to be his abominable self.
Dean barreled in. “And where were you this whole time? What the hell has happened to my brother?”
“I was unaware that action was necessary for the common cold.”
“What the hell are you talking about?
“There’s nothing I can do for your brother.”
“You mean he’s going to die this way?” Dean bellowed.
Sam coughed into a fist, and contemplated laying down on the cool floor of Bobby’s dusty home.
Cas looked alarmed. “Only in the case of extreme complications. Otherwise I believe he will return to full health in three to five days. But I’d recommend three days at least bed rest for that cough. You must have been severely weakened due to exposure for it to get this far. Usually the demon blood keeps you healthy, from my understanding.”
“So he’s not going to die?” Bobby asked. “Just clarifying?”
“Not unless he spends more time in a river. If you’d like the wings to return to their full blush, I’d recommend a diet of krill and shrimp.”
“No, the wings, Cas. We don’t want the wings. Is he going to have them forever?”
“Oh,” Cas said, looking surprised. “Oh, those. I can remove them.”
“Why the hell didn’t you say so?”
“You didn’t specify the nature of the problem,” said Cas. “I assumed you meant Sam’s state of ill health. Many humans have sought the power of flight, it was only natural I should come to the conclusion that Sam had earned them.”
“Well ain’t you a know-it-all,” groused Bobby. “You’re worse than Crowley, and he ain’t even here.”
“You rang?” a voice said, just behind Sam. Sam turned and felt an electric shock as a wing collided with Crowley.
“Blimey,” Crowley said, and picked himself up. “You don’t see one of those every day.”
“Crowley,” Bobby growled.
Crowley frowned, rubbing one of Sam’s feathers in a sensual manner that upset Sam on many levels. “Why does no one call me when the fun stuff is happening?” He whirled to confront Dean. “This hurts, Dean. I thought we were BFF.”
“I knew it,” Sam said.
Dean looked away.
“Sit your ass down, Crowley,” Bobby growled. “And eat some damn pie.”
“Don’t mind if I do,” Crowley said, pleased.
“Now come on, this pie won’t wait for Heaven, Hell, or the milkman,” Bobby said.
They trooped to the table. A feeling of rightness settled over Sam knowing that his trouble was at an end, and he would be able to spend the next week on Bobby’s couch catching up on the West Wing. When he went to take the open seat between Dean and Rufus at the table, however, he paused.
“The wings?” Sam asked hopefully.
“Ah, right,” Cas said, and snapped his fingers.
The wings were gone. As he opened his mouth to take a bite of his pie, Sam sent a prayer of forgiveness to the bird he’d wronged, whose magic Sam had no intention of researching. Some things were better left alone, he told himself.