Notes:
1. This story is a companion fic to my earlier Supernatural story "Angel Blood," which can easily be found on my profile. I recommend reading it first.
2. A friendly reviewer helped me out with the idea for this story. (I'm not sure if you would want to be mentioned here, but you know who you are. Thank you.) I doubt it ended up the way you might have imagined. I didn't even know how it was going to end until I finished it (see end notes).
3. Disclaimer: I consider this to always be implied, but I'll tell you now that I do not own Supernatural.
4. More notes at the bottom of the page.
Sam and Dean walked into a Chinese restaurant. It had been a long day, but they were both in one piece. The evil creature of the week had been disposed in a disgusting enough way that anyone else wouldn't have dreamed of food for a week. But the Winchesters were used to it, so the only change in their diet was that Dean consented to go to a Chinese restaurant for their after-hunting meal. Sam ordered, of course. He sometimes doubted his brother would recognize food if it wasn't pre-packaged or in the form of a cheeseburger. Sam had fun ordering them a serving of practically everything on the menu. Ten minutes later, Sam returned to their table with a massive tray of delicious-smelling food. "Not a bad hunt," he remarked tiredly as he served himself some Chinese chicken salad. So he liked salad. Or so he had convinced himself. It didn't actually taste good, but it was healthy. Sam desperately wanted to be healthy.
"Yeah," Dean answered him, ending their discussion of the hunt. "Leave some of that orange-and-green stuff for me, okay?" In disbelief, Sam left half of the salad for Dean. Maybe he didn't realize that the vegetables weren't cooked. Sam dug in silently. For a while, both brothers were too busy filling their stomachs to hold a conversation. Finally, Sam sat back with a sigh. He wasn't even close to done eating, but he could go at the pace of a normal human being now. Dean was still going, and showed no sign of slowing down. Sam shrugged and sampled a variety of dishes before the fortune cookie caught his eye. How long had it been since he had one of those? Sam unwrapped the cookie and took a bite, remembering the superstition that a fortune only comes true if you eat the cookie before reading it. He took a look at the cookie. Words blurred across the small slip of paper. He blinked in the dim light of Chinese lanterns, realizing that he must be more tired than he had thought. Sam chuckled, waved the slip of paper in front of Dean's face. "It says 'You life will be filled with magical moments." Oh, how ironic that was. Whenever he had a magical moment, it tended to be followed by a horrible moment.
Dean grinned. "Magical moments, huh? I don't think they meant magical monsters." He was oblivious to Sam's self-pity.
"Let's see what the fortune cookies have to say about you," Sam suggested. He tossed Dean a cookie. Dean tried to read the fortune first, of course, but Sam reminded him of the ancient and respected tradition "Nu-uh, you have to eat it first!"
Dean stuffed the fortune cookie in his mouth while squinting at the piece of paper. He choked on it immediately. Sam just shook his head. Would his brother ever learn? "Are you okay?" Sam asked.
"Fine," Dean said. Sam leaned over to read his fortune. "'You need only look to your reflection for inspiration. Because you are beautiful.'" And Sam had thought that his fortune cookie was ironic. Neither of them really noticed beauty anymore, or wanted to look at their reflections, and see their haunted eyes give away too much grief. But Sam didn't want to say something like that. "Aww, that's just perfect for you, Dean!" Sam joked. A minute later he excused himself to the restroom.
When Sam got back, Dean wasn't sitting at their table anymore. He had left the correct amount of money, indicating that he had left willingly. Sam sighed and sat back down. Dean could have mentioned that he wanted some time by himself instead of leaving money and running out the door while Sam was in the restroom, for goodness' sake! "Maybe he went to stare at himself in a mirror," Sam remarked sarcastically, noticing that someone had miscounted and there was a third cookie at their table. Maybe it would have a happy fortune in it. He unwrapped the cookie, and unconsciously mimicked Dean, reading and chewing at the same time. He choked on his cookie with similar timing, too. 'Samuel Winchester' scrolled across the paper in fancy writing. Sam blinked, but it was still there. "What the hell?"
'Samuel Winchester, great tragedy will come to you...'
Sam nodded. He already knew that. Now he was either hallucinating, or a fortune cookie was affirming his extremely pessimistic view of the future. "I already knew that," said Sam.
'Samuel Winchester, a great tragedy will come to you… if you don't stop wallowing in self-pity, no one will ever have sex with you ever again.'
"What the fuck?" Sam was torn between laughing and crying. He dropped the fortune on the table to put his head in his hands. That was the cause of most of the tragedy in the first place. Every woman he slept with consistently died! Well, not every woman, but enough that he wouldn't want to chance inflicting his curse on anyone else. On the other hand, at least the cookie hadn't predicted the end of the world or anything. Anyway, fortune cookies usually weren't this accurate, right? Time to get to the bottom of the mystery. Examining the wrappers, Sam saw that all three had the name of a website, ' ,' below the usual brand logo. When his waitress arrived with the check, Sam casually said "I really like these fortune cookies. Is this the normal brand you have here?"
"No, they're substitutes. Our normal supplier ran out for a while, so we got our order late. We only have one bag of these ones left," the waitress told him.
"Can I buy them?" Sam asked. Five minutes later he had a large bag of fortune cookies and was walking down the street to the motel (Dean could at least have offered him a ride back).
In the crappy motel room, Sam sat on his bed with his laptop and a stunned expression. He had found the fortune cookie website, called the customer support number, and eventually been transferred to a hunter who assured Sam that the fortune cookies were a harmless result of a young psychic trying to control her spiritual energy. "Don't worry about it, the cookies won't poison you," the hunter said mockingly. "Just watch out, they can get snarky sometimes." Wasn't that the truth?
Sam tried watching TV. He tried reading the novel he finally had time for. He tried researching cases… but the bag of fortune cookies was just sitting there.
Sam sighed, grabbed the bag, his favorite pencil and a spiral notebook, and ate his third fortune cookie. 'Need advice concerning your killer sex life, Sammy?'
Sam groaned. It was a bad pun. From a fortune cookie. About his sex life. Why on earth was he putting himself through this? The scrolling words on the cookie faded, replaced by the much more generic, and yet horribly ironic 'Do not fear what you do not know.'
"I have more than enough reasons to fear all the things I don't know," Sam said sadly. Unwrapped the next fortune cookie.
'STOP WALLOWING IN SELF PITY. You're aware that it isn't a legitimate hobby? How about bowling? Or maybe stabbing yourself in the gums with a toothpick?'
Ugh. Next cookie.
'How about watching some anime? Going out to get some pie? Oh wait, that's Dean. You just can't make up your mind whether or not you want to be like him.'
"At least he doesn't leave a trail of dead women," Sam mumbled.
'Stop it. Stop it. Stop it! What's the point of having an entire bag of prophetic fortune cookies if you're going to waste time discussing your lethal history of romance?'
"Am I having an argument with a bag of fortune cookies over whether or not we can discuss this?"
'Yes. Don't question it.'
"Fine. Make up your own topic of conversation."
'Did you know that there are more fake flamingos in the world than real flamingos?'
"Are you saying that my worries about the women I sleep with dying are like fake flamingos?"
'No. It's just a fact. Also, did you know that you need to get over yourself?'
"No. And I'm done, okay? I don't need to read about my pitiful sex life in fortune cookies. Why don't you actually predict something?"
'...are you stupid? Fortune cookies don't ever predict anything. We give advice.'
"I'm done. I am so done. I don't need your advice, you stupid cracker!"
'And yet you unwrap the next cookie. We can both see where this going, Samuel Winchester. Not only do you lack a sex life, you don't have a social life either. Why else would you be relying on fortune cookies for a conversation?'
"I'm going to stop now. Really. Right after this cookie."
Sam was sitting on the bed with his spiral notebook and bag of fortune cookies when Dean and Castiel got back. It was midnight. Sam hurriedly brushed the many wrappers and fortunes off his bed before anyone could notice and comment. "Oh, you're back," he said, trying to pretend he had spent the last few hours reading a book and searching the web. "With Cas?"
Dean smiled at him obliviously. ""I thought you would be ringing your hands and reporting me to missing persons by now, Sammy."
Sam took a moment to really look at Dean and Cas. Dean always looked scruffy, but now he looked like he had been rolling in the dirt. And did Cas have grass stains on his trenchcoat? Sam didn't really want to know. "Well, thanks for leaving me to figure it all out on my own," he said sarcastically, "However, I stopped worrying when I realized that these fortune cookies from the Chinese place are prophetic. Who knew, right?" Sam laughed uneasily.
"How did you figure that out?" Dean asked.
"I got one that had my name on it...it was dramatic but it wasn't very polite."
Late that night, when Dean was sound asleep and snoring loudly, Sam found a flashlight and opened his bag of fortune cookies.
'Who did you just call impolite?'
Notes:
1. So, that ended up all over the place. Anyway, this is what I came up with for what Sam is doing while Dean is out getting addicted to Angel Blood. He is starved for a social life and resorts to (strangely sentient) fortune cookies.
2. So, I originally considered doing making this into a gay!Sam fic, and even including an alternate ending where the fortune cookie convinces him that only women will die from having sex with him. I even considered putting that in as an alternate ending... but I wasn't really sure how to go about it, so Sam just ends up having a weird conversation.
3. I like Sam. He's my favorite Winchester. But now that I think about it... I wrote him as kind of an idiot, didn't I?
Thanks for Reading!