Art by Sam
Title: Art by Sam
Author: ZanneS
Genre: Gen
Rating: PG (bad language/doodles)
Characters: Dean, Sam
Summary: Sam gets cursed with muteness and Dean is amused by the results.
Author's Note: Thank you to cappy712for betaing! This is from the archives, and it reads like it. But at least it's done! Supernatural belongs to Kripke.
Dean hadn’t noticed anything at first.
To be fair, neither had Sam. He would have thought out of the both of them, that Sam would have been the first one to notice something was wrong.
But they had spent the last seventy-two plus hours on a stake-out for an annoyingly hard-to-pin down revenant that kept showing up at bridal shops of all places. With having to deal with women in a wedding-frenzy all day and watching for the decaying visitor all night, they were both dead on their feet.
Dean might have thought that was funny if he hadn’t needed sleep so badly.
The dead girl’s sister was the one who had been unable to let go, and unable to keep her sister tethered to their house where they had been destined to live together as spinsters, until death do them part. Together forever - that was the plan - until the younger sister had gone and gotten herself attached to some fly-by-night silver-tongued salesman who left her at the altar, leaving her sibling to find her sister’s body swinging from the chandelier not two days later.
It was very Miss Havisham, times two, minus the rotting wedding cake and the prissy niece, Dean had told Sam once they’d figured it out.
Sam had just blinked at him and Dean fidgeted in the driver’s seat, mumbling something about freshman year lit class and Mrs. Gibson’s low cut blouses.
It seemed the older sister had a little talent in the witchcraft department, reanimating her dead sibling and calling vengeance upon the salesman - it was his torn up body that had led them here, after all. Sam really should have known better than to try to use his persuasive skills on a woman who had recently lost her only family to a honey-tongued asshole.
So Dean took comfort in not noticing, because - really - Sam of all people should have said something.
Heh. Said something. Ain’t that a kick in the pants?
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
It was past noon by the time Dean awoke, Sam huffing softly in the other bed. Dean debated the merits of waking Sam, but Sam could be a pissy little princess without enough sleep, and Dean didn’t feel up to dealing with that before his first cup of coffee, so he stumbled his way into the bathroom to take a quick leak and an even quicker shower.
Sam was still snuffling in his sleep when Dean emerged, steam billowing behind him from the overheated bathroom. He pulled on a pair of jeans he found heaped on the floor by his bed, and tugged a shirt that didn’t appear too wrinkled over his damp hair.
It was time to face the beast.
“Sam!” Dean barked, slapping at the lump hidden under the sheets. “S’time to get up!”
His brother just burrowed further into the pillow, and Dean pushed up his shirtsleeves to pull out the heavy artillery.
“Sam!” Dean shouted again, reaching out to tweak his brother’s ear. “I need breakfast!”
Sam jerked in place, his body stiffening at the sharp sting, before he pulled away from the pinch and hit the floor with a muffled thud.
Dean grinned, seating himself on the edge of his bed to yank on a boot, watching as his brother’s rumpled hair peaked over the edge of the comforter when he struggled to sit upright.
Sam collapsed face first onto the bed, his tanned skin looking even darker against the relative whiteness of the crumpled sheets as his fingers clenched against the mattress. Dean gave him another minute to recoup, expecting his brother’s irritated grumbling to begin at any time as he tied up his final bootlace and sat waiting expectantly.
Finally garnering enough energy to raise his head into an upright position, Sam glared at Dean through half-closed lids, his mouth arranged in a mutinous pout.
Dean just gave him another cheerful grin and near-shouted, “Time to wake up, Sleepin’ Beauty! Pancakes await.”
Nothing like sheer volume to irritate Sam most in the morning.
With another glare, Sam opened his mouth, ready to greet the day with a colorful turn of phrase regarding Dean’s hygiene, sexual partners, or parentage, and Dean readied to stand, their morning ritual nearly complete.
But nothing came out.
Sam tried again, his lips moving rapidly as his brows furrowed, clumsily rising to his feet as Dean looked on in wonder.
“Sam?”
His brother stalked across the threadbare carpet, his tirade unceasing, even as it remained inaudible, though from the movement of Sam’s lips Dean guessed he might be glad he couldn’t hear what Sam was saying after all. Not that what he saw made any sense - he couldn’t read Sam’s lips - but maybe Sam had pulled out the SAT words, which was never good for anybody involved.
“You’ve lost your voice?” Dean asked, just to be clear.
Sam nodded reluctantly.
“So, I could tell you that your breath could drop a banshee at fifty paces, and you couldn’t say anything?”
Sam’s response was narrowed down to one select finger.
Dean laughed for nearly two minutes straight.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
“We were out in the damp night air for a few days,” Dean pointed out over his blueberry pancakes, waving his fork in Sam’s direction and dripping a trail of syrup across the cracked formica of the tabletop. “Maybe your delicate constitution couldn’t take it.”
Sam just glared at him from over the scrambled eggs he kept pushing around his plate.
“Open your mouth,” Dean demanded. “Let’s see if your throat’s all red.”
Sam complied, showing off an impressive array of half-chewed eggs and sausage. Dean quickly flicked his balled-up straw wrapper into Sam’s gaping maw.
“Two points!”
His brother hacked up the now soggy missile, along with a generous portion of scrambled eggs, making Dean wrinkle his nose in disgust.
“Dude, gross. This isn’t a 24-hour stomach bug, is it?”
Sam just sat hunched in his seat across from Dean, finally reaching into the pocket of his hoodie - Dean knew Sam always reached for a hoodie like some sort of security blanket when he wasn’t feeling 100% - and pulled out the motel’s complimentary notepad and pen. He bent over the table, tongue sticking out from between his teeth as he scrawled something messily across the paper, tearing it off the pad and slapping the note on the table in front of Dean with a satisfied smirk.
Dean glanced down and stared at the paper for a full minute, his brow furrowing in confusion. “Is this in code or something?”
Sam frowned, craning his neck to read his note upside down, before snatching it back up and looking at it in disbelief.
Bj. Hw jehrla owbqk+i fgiw doi q san*p mdwwx zpsd.
Loe pqmb j derw.
“Heh,” Dean snickered. “You wrote bj.”
Sam quickly jotted down another note, and passed it over to Dean once more.
Lwuh abh DIKN Wqlk!
After glancing down at the note in front of him for several seconds, he gave Sam an assessing look. “That revenant threw you into that fire hydrant pretty hard. Maybe you got some kind of weird brain damage. Maybe we should…” here Dean hesitated, awkwardly playing with his fork, “y’know, see a doctor.”
Sam shook his head curtly, beginning to print another note when he gave up, instead scribbling on the paper before passing it to Dean.
Dean took one look at it before nodding, his nose wrinkled in obvious skepticism. “Okay, so no doctor, and you think the witch did it.” He paused, then asked uncertainly, “But why is that shrimp attacking her?”
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Dean clapped his hands together, falling into one of the chairs with an exhausted sigh. “Well, that was…fun.”
Sam slumped on the bed, falling backwards with only the slight creaking of springs to alert Dean to his presence.
“So, no written communication of any kind - no lip reading, not even sign language. It all comes out nonsense. All we’ve got is your sad attempt at art.” Dean tossed a balled up piece of paper at his brother, who didn’t even twitch. “Don’t take this the wrong way, Picasso, but people generally have eyes on their faces, not their chests.”
Sam just rolled his head and frowned at Dean, gesticulating wildly.
Dean replied defensively, “They looked like boobs! I though you wanted me to tell her you liked her rack!”
Sam slapped a hand over his eyes, his chest heaving in an impressive sigh as he resorted to the one form of communication that so far never failed to get across to Dean when he gave him the finger…again.
“Y’know,” Dean muttered, slouching even further into his seat, “this isn’t a curse; it’s a gift from the gods. I finally don’t have to listen to you ramble on….”
Sam’s eyes widened, his indignant expression fixed in place as he rolled over to scribble on his handy notepad. He then tossed the entire thing at Dean’s head, who ducked the flying missile before picking up the crumpled notepad from the floor, studying Sam’s latest creation as an amused smile crept over his face.
“Awww, isn’t that cute.” Dean tore the picture off and pinned it to the tiny fridge in the corner with one of the magnets littering its surface. “It’s just like when you were in kindergarten, except I don’t remember crayon masterpieces involving horse fucking. But you did tend to be a little abstract back then, so maybe I just missed it.”
Lacking a convenient missile with his notepad currently sitting on the table by Dean, Sam reached behind him and threw a pillow at his brother’s head.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
“Bobby said that maybe you needed to make amends to break the curse. When I said the witch was already dead, he didn’t have any ideas except for crashing a thirteen-year-old girl’s slumber party and stealing her Ouija board.” Dean snickered at Sam’s expression as he snapped his cell phone shut and got out of the car. He walked around to the passenger side, leaned toward the open window, and said with a grin, “Don’t pout; Bobby’s looking into it for us. Now you be a good boy and I’ll buy you a soda pop.”
Sam’s frown, his almost constant expression these days, was aimed at Dean as Sam tore a slip of paper off his notepad and shoved it at Dean’s chest. Dean chuckled, grabbing at the crumpled paper before it fell to the ground and turned to walk towards the gas station mini-mart, glancing at Sam’s latest masterpiece.
He stumbled to a stop when he bumped into someone, automatically reaching out to grab the older lady’s arm to keep her upright. “Sorry, ma’am,” Dean said, appearing embarrassed by the oversight. “I wasn’t looking where I was going.”
“Oh! What an adorable drawing!” the old woman cooed, catching sight of the paper still clutched in his hand. She looked up at him with an understanding smile. “Did your little boy draw it?”
Dean coughed, trying to disguise his chuckle. “Um…no, ma’am, it was my brother.” He gestured towards the car, where Sam’s petulant pout was still visible as he watched Dean converse with the woman.
The older woman’s face softened slightly and she patted Dean consolingly on the arm. “You’re a good boy. I had a brother who was a little…slow, and it wasn’t easy looking after him.” She tutted under her breath and said, “I’ll keep an eye out for him while you’re inside.”
Before Dean could say anything, she had walked over to Sam and was giving him a big smile. “You want a butterscotch, young man? I might have one in my purse!”
Dean ducked his head when Sam’s pleading eyes caught his over the woman’s shoulder, and he ran inside the gas station before a burst of laugher escaped him. The sound soon degraded into a series of strangled snorts when he saw the older lady wiping at Sam’s cheek with a Kleenex, his brother’s aggrieved look making Dean choke on his own spit. He gave Sam a wide smile and two thumbs up, Sam’s betrayed expression making Dean duck behind the magazine rack to hide his glee.
He’d have to sleep with one eye open until they got to Bobby’s because Sam just might kill him.