Impossible Corpse, for spn_summergen
Title: Impossible Corpse
Recipient: spn_summergen (Where a recipient defaulted, the fic becomes a gift to the community.)
Rating: PG-13 (mildly foul language)
Word Count: 1778
Warnings: None
Author's Notes: This is set shamelessly and indeterminately in merry old Season 2.
Summary: When Sam was five he fell prey to a painful and unrelenting obsession with dinosaurs.
When Sam was five he fell prey to a painful and unrelenting obsession with dinosaurs. Every time he closed his eyes at night he saw, with hallucinogenic clarity, a bellowing wreath of gas and fire coming down from the sky and aimed right at him, as if he himself were the lush prehistoric earth that had disappeared under a cloud of comet dust. He dreamed of dying stegosauri and of pterodactyls with burning wings, and woke up sobbing into his pillow. Dinosaurs were extinct, every last one of them - which meant he would never, ever, in all of his life, ever get to meet one.
“There are skeletons,” John said, stroking his hair. “In museums. We could find one around here, I bet.”
“I don't want a dead one,” Sam wailed. “I want an alive one!”
“Well, tough shit,” John said, and Dean, on the cot between the two motel beds, laughed.
“Sammy,” Dean said, “believe me, you don't actually want to hang out with dinosaurs. They'd eat you!”
“They would not,” Sam said, sitting upright to glare down at his brother. “I would be their friend!”
“Dean's got a point,” John said. “Dinosaurs could be pretty dangerous, if you didn't know how to defend yourself. I mean, think of all those teeth.”
Sam's head filled with gnashing white fangs. “But if I was a dinosaur too,” he tried.
“Let's make-believe for a second,” John said. “Let's pretend you did come across a dinosaur, and you were just you. What do you think would be the best way to beat it?”
“Explosions,” Dean said promptly. “Or a flametorch. Or cut off its feet!”
“I would talk to it,” Sam said. “And it could have my lunch.”
“Hopeless,” Dean groaned, but John was smiling.
“You know what,” he said. “That doesn't sound like too bad of a solution.” He dropped a kiss on Sam's forehead. “Now go to sleep.”
Later, as Sam was drifting off, he heard Dean whisper, “Dad, are there actually...”
“No way, kiddo,” John said. “That is one thing you don't have to worry about.”
:::
“Firstly,” Dean said, holding up a bloody pointer finger, “Dad lied. And second, I was right. Explosions were the way to go.”
“The fuck are we supposed to do with this thing, Dean?”
Dean didn't answer right away. He was slumped against the feet of a blank plastic mini-skirted mannequin, and he was breathing in shallow, nostril-flaring sips of air, one arm curled around what was undoubtedly a chest full of fractured ribs. The left shoulder of his flannel was dark with blood. His eyes were blurrily focused on the red exit sign in the corner of the store, and not, as Sam would have preferred, on the enormous scaly mountain of T-Rex that sprawled dead before them, its behemoth tongue lolling out of its mouth like a red carpet. It had taken out several aisles when it'd crashed downward, and strewn all beneath its charred body were flippy floral dresses and giraffe-patterned track pants and leather purses with yards of hideous fringe. The rest of the mall was in a similar state, clothes and shoes and shattered glass everywhere, courtesy of a half-hour chase which had proved that even the famed Mall of America wasn't big enough to run a relay with a tyrannosaurus. The dinosaur museum itself was under the main shopping area, impressive but cramped, the ceilings just barely high enough for the skeletons and life-size models they'd pompously jammed in there. Sam winced guiltily, thinking of the wreckage left behind. Plaster and bones everywhere.
“What store are we in?” Dean managed finally.
“H&M,” Sam said.
“They got guy's stuff here?”
“You're kidding me, right?”
“Could use some new boxers. Couple of black t-shirts.”
“Dean,” Sam said. “Get up.”
“All right, all right,” Dean said, and began the laborious process of getting himself to his feet, grabbing the mannequin's hand for support. Once upright he paused, panting a little, eyes closed, and the sight of him still holding the hand of the giant pouting doll like it was some kind of zombie babysitter was almost too much for Sam's overtaxed mind.
“How bad is it?” he said.
“Well,” Dean said, “let's see. We've got a dead dinosaur to get rid of, about twenty minutes before the alarms and security cams go live again, and we're in a fucking mall. So, I'd say it's not good.”
That wasn't what Sam had meant, but, yeah. “And we still have to burn the anima talisman.”
“Right. Unless you want to stick around and see if we can get up close and personal with a brontosaurus.”
“You know,” Sam said, “I think I'll pass.”
“Should we just burn the whole thing up?” Dean said, and Sam turned disbelieving eyes on him. “Not the mall,” Dean said quickly. “The dino. Better security finds a pile of ashes than an impossible corpse, right?”
“Or we could hack it up and take it out piece by piece.”
Dean's face, already pale from pain and loss of blood, grew paler. “Uh --”
“No, okay, bad idea.” Sam stepped closer to the huge lizard, and reached out to lay a hesitant hand on its flank. It was still warm, and felt like a snake: scaly leather over pure muscle. In the dim half-light of the closed store, the fallen dinosaur looked like the elaborate set piece it had been just hours before, canvas or paper mache or who knows what stretched over a frame of false bones... but it felt absolutely real. God, Sam would've killed for this chance, as a kid. Well - technically he had just killed for it, though in his childish daydreams the dinosaurs had always been friendly and curious like magnificent hens. Not the bloodthirsty, chomping beast this one had been. Although to be fair, it hadn't actually tried to eat either of them - whatever damage it'd caused had been pure size. Dean had caught the worst of it, whipped halfway across the food court by one epic sweep of the tail, and then kicked with a back foot as the creature collapsed.
“New paleontological research suggests that T-Rexes were scavengers, not hunters,” Sam said.
“We don't have any gas, is the problem,” Dean said. “This guy doesn't seem too flammable all by his lonesome.”
“Jurassic Park is inaccurate in a lot of ways, actually.”
“Without some pretty powerful fire we're just looking at a rare barbecue, here,” Dean said. “I mean, we could try using the rest of the dynamite, but it'd send chunks flying everywhere.”
“Hang on,” Sam said. “I think we passed a camping supply place just a few stores back. Bet you they'd have gas.”
“Why the fuck would a camping store have gas?”
“Propane for barbecues,” Sam said. “Lanterns. Stoves. I'm going.”
Dean took a shaky step, then another, then said, “I'll stay here and guard the dinosaur.”
“You do that.”
Sam jogged down the darkened halls of the mall, dodging overturned jewelry carts and bits of debris, his eyes scanning back and forth for the store he could've sworn was here. And yes! There it was, doors locked up tight for the night. Sam shot through the windows without hesitation, barely flinching at the shattering retort of bullet and glass, then climbed carefully inside. It didn't take him long to find the jugs of propane, and he filled a display sleeping bag with as many as he could fit, then heaved it up and out the jagged window, hoping the fabric didn't tear wide open. He trotted, somewhat encumbered by the heavily dragging bag, back towards the glowing red H&M sign, where he found Dean propped up against the dinosaur's side, shotgun between his knees, head tilted back, not quite unconscious but not quite with it, either. If there had been any time to spare, Sam would have taken a photo, but as it was he just stooped to haul Dean upright, careful of his ribs and gashed-up shoulder.
“Ah,” Dean said; a small, clipped syllable that told Sam all he needed to know about his brother's pain levels at the moment.
“Almost done,” Sam said, fighting against worry. There'd be time for that later. “C'mon.”
Together, they doused the beast in gas as best they could, and soaked some of the surrounding racks of clothes for good measure. The dinosaur's silent bulk shimmered wetly under the slick of propane, and for one moment Sam let himself feel the full force of the awe he'd been shoving down all night; the utter wonder that he and Dean had seen a real, live, breathing, biting, thrashing, beautiful dinosaur. They were the only two people on earth who could claim such a thing.
“You first, Sammy,” Dean said. And Sam threw the match.
:::
“What was it about dinosaurs?” Dean asked later. He was leaned uncomfortably up against a couple pillows, shoulder cleaned and bandaged, ribs strapped, bare legs stretched out bruised on the bed in front of him. He'd been drinking whiskey for the better part of an hour and his voice was muffled, sleepy. “What'd you like about 'em so much?”
“Dunno,” Sam said, distracted, his eyes on the muted and hysterical Minneapolis news, but when Dean kept staring at him expectantly, he turned from the fire raging on the TV and said, “I liked the story of them.”
“The story?”
“Yeah, I don't know, how they ruled the whole world for millions of years and everything, until that meteor.”
“It's a sad story, Sam.”
“I guess it is.”
“I always thought it was because of Mom.”
“What? She was into dinosaurs?”
Dean smiled a little. “No. I just mean... how attached you got to something you'd never really known.”
“Deep,” Sam said.
“Yeah,” said Dean, and they both turned back to the news. Onscreen the Mall of America was surrounded by fire trucks, steam curling up into the grey night sky, and somewhere in its depths was the burning body of a creature that only they would ever see. For that short time, it had been so alive, so real - and now it was just history again. A myth.
Like anything, Sam figured.
Recipient: spn_summergen (Where a recipient defaulted, the fic becomes a gift to the community.)
Rating: PG-13 (mildly foul language)
Word Count: 1778
Warnings: None
Author's Notes: This is set shamelessly and indeterminately in merry old Season 2.
Summary: When Sam was five he fell prey to a painful and unrelenting obsession with dinosaurs.
When Sam was five he fell prey to a painful and unrelenting obsession with dinosaurs. Every time he closed his eyes at night he saw, with hallucinogenic clarity, a bellowing wreath of gas and fire coming down from the sky and aimed right at him, as if he himself were the lush prehistoric earth that had disappeared under a cloud of comet dust. He dreamed of dying stegosauri and of pterodactyls with burning wings, and woke up sobbing into his pillow. Dinosaurs were extinct, every last one of them - which meant he would never, ever, in all of his life, ever get to meet one.
“There are skeletons,” John said, stroking his hair. “In museums. We could find one around here, I bet.”
“I don't want a dead one,” Sam wailed. “I want an alive one!”
“Well, tough shit,” John said, and Dean, on the cot between the two motel beds, laughed.
“Sammy,” Dean said, “believe me, you don't actually want to hang out with dinosaurs. They'd eat you!”
“They would not,” Sam said, sitting upright to glare down at his brother. “I would be their friend!”
“Dean's got a point,” John said. “Dinosaurs could be pretty dangerous, if you didn't know how to defend yourself. I mean, think of all those teeth.”
Sam's head filled with gnashing white fangs. “But if I was a dinosaur too,” he tried.
“Let's make-believe for a second,” John said. “Let's pretend you did come across a dinosaur, and you were just you. What do you think would be the best way to beat it?”
“Explosions,” Dean said promptly. “Or a flametorch. Or cut off its feet!”
“I would talk to it,” Sam said. “And it could have my lunch.”
“Hopeless,” Dean groaned, but John was smiling.
“You know what,” he said. “That doesn't sound like too bad of a solution.” He dropped a kiss on Sam's forehead. “Now go to sleep.”
Later, as Sam was drifting off, he heard Dean whisper, “Dad, are there actually...”
“No way, kiddo,” John said. “That is one thing you don't have to worry about.”
:::
“Firstly,” Dean said, holding up a bloody pointer finger, “Dad lied. And second, I was right. Explosions were the way to go.”
“The fuck are we supposed to do with this thing, Dean?”
Dean didn't answer right away. He was slumped against the feet of a blank plastic mini-skirted mannequin, and he was breathing in shallow, nostril-flaring sips of air, one arm curled around what was undoubtedly a chest full of fractured ribs. The left shoulder of his flannel was dark with blood. His eyes were blurrily focused on the red exit sign in the corner of the store, and not, as Sam would have preferred, on the enormous scaly mountain of T-Rex that sprawled dead before them, its behemoth tongue lolling out of its mouth like a red carpet. It had taken out several aisles when it'd crashed downward, and strewn all beneath its charred body were flippy floral dresses and giraffe-patterned track pants and leather purses with yards of hideous fringe. The rest of the mall was in a similar state, clothes and shoes and shattered glass everywhere, courtesy of a half-hour chase which had proved that even the famed Mall of America wasn't big enough to run a relay with a tyrannosaurus. The dinosaur museum itself was under the main shopping area, impressive but cramped, the ceilings just barely high enough for the skeletons and life-size models they'd pompously jammed in there. Sam winced guiltily, thinking of the wreckage left behind. Plaster and bones everywhere.
“What store are we in?” Dean managed finally.
“H&M,” Sam said.
“They got guy's stuff here?”
“You're kidding me, right?”
“Could use some new boxers. Couple of black t-shirts.”
“Dean,” Sam said. “Get up.”
“All right, all right,” Dean said, and began the laborious process of getting himself to his feet, grabbing the mannequin's hand for support. Once upright he paused, panting a little, eyes closed, and the sight of him still holding the hand of the giant pouting doll like it was some kind of zombie babysitter was almost too much for Sam's overtaxed mind.
“How bad is it?” he said.
“Well,” Dean said, “let's see. We've got a dead dinosaur to get rid of, about twenty minutes before the alarms and security cams go live again, and we're in a fucking mall. So, I'd say it's not good.”
That wasn't what Sam had meant, but, yeah. “And we still have to burn the anima talisman.”
“Right. Unless you want to stick around and see if we can get up close and personal with a brontosaurus.”
“You know,” Sam said, “I think I'll pass.”
“Should we just burn the whole thing up?” Dean said, and Sam turned disbelieving eyes on him. “Not the mall,” Dean said quickly. “The dino. Better security finds a pile of ashes than an impossible corpse, right?”
“Or we could hack it up and take it out piece by piece.”
Dean's face, already pale from pain and loss of blood, grew paler. “Uh --”
“No, okay, bad idea.” Sam stepped closer to the huge lizard, and reached out to lay a hesitant hand on its flank. It was still warm, and felt like a snake: scaly leather over pure muscle. In the dim half-light of the closed store, the fallen dinosaur looked like the elaborate set piece it had been just hours before, canvas or paper mache or who knows what stretched over a frame of false bones... but it felt absolutely real. God, Sam would've killed for this chance, as a kid. Well - technically he had just killed for it, though in his childish daydreams the dinosaurs had always been friendly and curious like magnificent hens. Not the bloodthirsty, chomping beast this one had been. Although to be fair, it hadn't actually tried to eat either of them - whatever damage it'd caused had been pure size. Dean had caught the worst of it, whipped halfway across the food court by one epic sweep of the tail, and then kicked with a back foot as the creature collapsed.
“New paleontological research suggests that T-Rexes were scavengers, not hunters,” Sam said.
“We don't have any gas, is the problem,” Dean said. “This guy doesn't seem too flammable all by his lonesome.”
“Jurassic Park is inaccurate in a lot of ways, actually.”
“Without some pretty powerful fire we're just looking at a rare barbecue, here,” Dean said. “I mean, we could try using the rest of the dynamite, but it'd send chunks flying everywhere.”
“Hang on,” Sam said. “I think we passed a camping supply place just a few stores back. Bet you they'd have gas.”
“Why the fuck would a camping store have gas?”
“Propane for barbecues,” Sam said. “Lanterns. Stoves. I'm going.”
Dean took a shaky step, then another, then said, “I'll stay here and guard the dinosaur.”
“You do that.”
Sam jogged down the darkened halls of the mall, dodging overturned jewelry carts and bits of debris, his eyes scanning back and forth for the store he could've sworn was here. And yes! There it was, doors locked up tight for the night. Sam shot through the windows without hesitation, barely flinching at the shattering retort of bullet and glass, then climbed carefully inside. It didn't take him long to find the jugs of propane, and he filled a display sleeping bag with as many as he could fit, then heaved it up and out the jagged window, hoping the fabric didn't tear wide open. He trotted, somewhat encumbered by the heavily dragging bag, back towards the glowing red H&M sign, where he found Dean propped up against the dinosaur's side, shotgun between his knees, head tilted back, not quite unconscious but not quite with it, either. If there had been any time to spare, Sam would have taken a photo, but as it was he just stooped to haul Dean upright, careful of his ribs and gashed-up shoulder.
“Ah,” Dean said; a small, clipped syllable that told Sam all he needed to know about his brother's pain levels at the moment.
“Almost done,” Sam said, fighting against worry. There'd be time for that later. “C'mon.”
Together, they doused the beast in gas as best they could, and soaked some of the surrounding racks of clothes for good measure. The dinosaur's silent bulk shimmered wetly under the slick of propane, and for one moment Sam let himself feel the full force of the awe he'd been shoving down all night; the utter wonder that he and Dean had seen a real, live, breathing, biting, thrashing, beautiful dinosaur. They were the only two people on earth who could claim such a thing.
“You first, Sammy,” Dean said. And Sam threw the match.
:::
“What was it about dinosaurs?” Dean asked later. He was leaned uncomfortably up against a couple pillows, shoulder cleaned and bandaged, ribs strapped, bare legs stretched out bruised on the bed in front of him. He'd been drinking whiskey for the better part of an hour and his voice was muffled, sleepy. “What'd you like about 'em so much?”
“Dunno,” Sam said, distracted, his eyes on the muted and hysterical Minneapolis news, but when Dean kept staring at him expectantly, he turned from the fire raging on the TV and said, “I liked the story of them.”
“The story?”
“Yeah, I don't know, how they ruled the whole world for millions of years and everything, until that meteor.”
“It's a sad story, Sam.”
“I guess it is.”
“I always thought it was because of Mom.”
“What? She was into dinosaurs?”
Dean smiled a little. “No. I just mean... how attached you got to something you'd never really known.”
“Deep,” Sam said.
“Yeah,” said Dean, and they both turned back to the news. Onscreen the Mall of America was surrounded by fire trucks, steam curling up into the grey night sky, and somewhere in its depths was the burning body of a creature that only they would ever see. For that short time, it had been so alive, so real - and now it was just history again. A myth.
Like anything, Sam figured.