Supernatural fic: Just Another Laugh for the Road (PG, Gen)
Wednesday, 8 November 2006 01:05![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
krisomniacTitle: Just Another Laugh for the Road
Author:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
krisomniac
Rating, warning, pairing: PG, none, Gen
Disclaimer: Supernatural belongs to Kripke and the CW
Author's note: Forignipes on the occasion of the anniversary of her birth. You got me into this fandom, and I couldn't be more glad of it. So here's a little Sammy-torture to thank you.
Summary: Sometimes it's all you need to get by. (~550 words)
Just Another Laugh for the Road
Dean's knuckles are red and raw, his neck stiff as a two by four, but he pops an Advil at the next gas station, washes it down with stale black coffee, and fills the tank. Again. If he's lucky, they'll make Boulder by nightfall. He knows a place nearby where they can crash while looking for the demon.
It's the fourth time Ash has tipped them off this month, the fourth electrical storm and rolling wave of blackouts, the fourth baby alone in his nursery, waiting to turn six months old. It's a cross-country rash of mysterious fires.
Any more, and he's considering applying for a one of those airline-sponsored cards. Flying may suck, but the miles are adding up too fast on the road, in the mud caked on the tires, the grinding gears, the worn and hollow look in Sammy's eyes. As it is, they can barely make it to the next site fast enough.
He leans back against the door while the gas pump gurgles, looks out over the flat highway and rolling cloud banks, at the mountains looming on the western horizon, and wonders what the hell they're going to do if they ever catch this thing.
Curled awkwardly in the passenger seat, with his head cradled in his arm, Sam doesn't wake up until they're nearly through Nebraska. Even then, it's not entirely his doing.
Dean may not win for Most Intuitive Brother of the Year, but he's always been good at finding patterns and he's always watched out for Sam--even before the nightmares were this powerful, even when they were just the walking-into-school-naked sort. Sam won't talk about them anymore, hasn't since that night back in Augusta, when Dean found him awake, sweating and shivering, clutching their bottle of holy water like a lifeline.
The visions were rough as they pulled into the last few towns, approached the houses with the children. They left Sam drained and shaking. But the nightmares after they finished the jobs were worse. Dean watched and waited, pretending not to see the empty bottles of No-Doze, Sam red-eyed and twitchy, pacing at all hours of the night, finally crashing when his body couldn't hold it off anymore.
From what he can tell, the nightmares that wake him are more vivid the longer Sam stays out, until finally Dean begins to worry that Sam won't go back to sleep at all.
Desperate times call for desperate measures, and last week desperate measures took the form of Jack's, the greatest joke shop in the Great Lakes.
Dean's been deciding which of his purchases to try today; the rubber spider has potential if properly placed down the shirt, but the fingers-in-warm-water is a perennial classic. Finally, he gives up, grins, and blasts the foghorn in Sam's ear...
There's a fine line between small mercies and mean pranks, and Dean figures that all those years of practical jokes were really just training for this. It's not a perfect system, but he's pretty proud of how well it's worked so far, and Sam's instant of panicked relief followed by a well-rested grunt and scowl is all the thanks he'll ever need.
"How much farther?" Sam asks through a satisfied yawn, blinking in the fading light.
"Not much." Dean stares at the road ahead. "We'll be there soon."
Author:
krisomniacRating, warning, pairing: PG, none, Gen
Disclaimer: Supernatural belongs to Kripke and the CW
Author's note: For
ignipes on the occasion of the anniversary of her birth. You got me into this fandom, and I couldn't be more glad of it. So here's a little Sammy-torture to thank you. Summary: Sometimes it's all you need to get by. (~550 words)
Dean's knuckles are red and raw, his neck stiff as a two by four, but he pops an Advil at the next gas station, washes it down with stale black coffee, and fills the tank. Again. If he's lucky, they'll make Boulder by nightfall. He knows a place nearby where they can crash while looking for the demon.
It's the fourth time Ash has tipped them off this month, the fourth electrical storm and rolling wave of blackouts, the fourth baby alone in his nursery, waiting to turn six months old. It's a cross-country rash of mysterious fires.
Any more, and he's considering applying for a one of those airline-sponsored cards. Flying may suck, but the miles are adding up too fast on the road, in the mud caked on the tires, the grinding gears, the worn and hollow look in Sammy's eyes. As it is, they can barely make it to the next site fast enough.
He leans back against the door while the gas pump gurgles, looks out over the flat highway and rolling cloud banks, at the mountains looming on the western horizon, and wonders what the hell they're going to do if they ever catch this thing.
Curled awkwardly in the passenger seat, with his head cradled in his arm, Sam doesn't wake up until they're nearly through Nebraska. Even then, it's not entirely his doing.
Dean may not win for Most Intuitive Brother of the Year, but he's always been good at finding patterns and he's always watched out for Sam--even before the nightmares were this powerful, even when they were just the walking-into-school-naked sort. Sam won't talk about them anymore, hasn't since that night back in Augusta, when Dean found him awake, sweating and shivering, clutching their bottle of holy water like a lifeline.
The visions were rough as they pulled into the last few towns, approached the houses with the children. They left Sam drained and shaking. But the nightmares after they finished the jobs were worse. Dean watched and waited, pretending not to see the empty bottles of No-Doze, Sam red-eyed and twitchy, pacing at all hours of the night, finally crashing when his body couldn't hold it off anymore.
From what he can tell, the nightmares that wake him are more vivid the longer Sam stays out, until finally Dean begins to worry that Sam won't go back to sleep at all.
Desperate times call for desperate measures, and last week desperate measures took the form of Jack's, the greatest joke shop in the Great Lakes.
Dean's been deciding which of his purchases to try today; the rubber spider has potential if properly placed down the shirt, but the fingers-in-warm-water is a perennial classic. Finally, he gives up, grins, and blasts the foghorn in Sam's ear...
There's a fine line between small mercies and mean pranks, and Dean figures that all those years of practical jokes were really just training for this. It's not a perfect system, but he's pretty proud of how well it's worked so far, and Sam's instant of panicked relief followed by a well-rested grunt and scowl is all the thanks he'll ever need.
"How much farther?" Sam asks through a satisfied yawn, blinking in the fading light.
"Not much." Dean stares at the road ahead. "We'll be there soon."
