This is a disclaimer.
AN: An answer to the flashfic prompt 'creature feature'... why do those things always make me write John-and-Dean fluff?
Abbott and Costello meet Wes Craven's Dracula
It's the first time they've seen each other in nearly two months. Dean's ridiculously, obnoxiously cheerful, the better to hide how tired he really is after his last hunt. John, for his part, is determined that they're going to enjoy themselves this evening, just him and Dean, no interruptions, no emergencies, no fights, but he can't hold back when he sees the stack of videos on the cabinet by the TV and VCR.
"You'd think we got enough of that in everyday life," he says, surveying the films Dean's picked out with a puzzled expression.
"If you'd rather watch Titanic, that can be arranged," Dean retorts. "Movie rental's just down the road, and you can get yourself another room. I don't need you to celebrate my birthday, you know."
"You'd go for the porn channels as soon as I was out of the room," his father says dryly. "All right. Horror movies it is. Don't blame me when you get nightmares."
Dean falls in a graceless heap onto the bed nearest the TV, juggling a bag of popcorn, a beer, and a bowl of strawberries and cream. John's never been overly fond of them himself, but both his boys would take a bowl of strawberries and cream over black forest gateau any day.
Maybe tastes like that are genetic. Mary loved them, too.
"Let it begin!" Dean proclaims, waving his spoon melodramatically.
They start with The Mummy in the Boris Karloff interpretation; then on to Brendan Fraser's. John protests that it hardly counts as horror, but Dean glares. "Those bug things that eat your insides creep me right out," he says. "Ergo, it counts. Besides, there's Rachel Weisz."
After that, Poltergeist. The ten-pack of beer is gone by the time Dean shoves Wes Craven's Dracula into the player, and five minutes into the movie, they're staring at the screen, open-mouthed and horrified.
"Christopher Plummer agreed to this?" Dean says in a sick voice.
John snorted. "He did Sound of Music, too."
"You're not supposed to know that, Dad."
"My stepmother Allison used to watch it every Christmas. Like clockwork."
"Did Mom?" very quietly.
"Jesus, no. Mary's favourite movie was Bringing Up Baby. And The Big Sleep."
Dean chooses that moment to throw a handful of popcorn at the screen. "Dude, what kind of idiot opens a creepy-ass coffin like that on an airplane? There's nowhere to run, for cryin' out loud."
"Leeches?" is all John says, disbelievingly.
The rest of the film is no better. Dean's disgust deepens when it turns out the hot blonde is not, in fact, the star of the film. John can't believe there's only two reporters in the swamp checking out the plane crash, and one of them is in break-neck heels. In a swamp! They both laugh their asses off at the so-called fight in the auditorium, and the gaudy 'weapons'. The lead guy? Doesn't deserve a mention.
"He looks seventeen," Dean says with an eye-roll. "Way too naïve for this job."
Then there's the girl – "Boring!" Dean yells every time she comes onscreen – and Dracula himself is about as scary as six-year-old Sammy in his Hallowe'en costume once was.
"Always the coats," Dean says. "Even on Buffy, all the bad-ass vampires can be easily identified by their floor-length black coats." He shakes his head at the TV gloomily. "Wouldn't last five minutes in the real world, let alone ours."
All in all, John's rather impressed they manage to hold out long enough to reach the finale… or he was, until he looks down and finds Dean half-asleep, eyes drifting shut, most of his weight on his Dad's side.
There are deep dark rings under Dean's eyes, and his face seems pale under his light tan, his scruff of beard. He's thinner than he should be, far too lean. Hollowed-out. Doesn't he eat when they're apart? Jim said he'd had the flu over Christmas, picked it up on that job in Maine, on the coast. John curses that snowstorm that left him stuck in Montana while Dean was sick; kid's never been too careful of his own health, usually because he's never ill, but since that bout of bronchitis he picked up a few years back, he's been a bit more… vulnerable.
John resolves there and then that they're not splitting up again for a few months. The better to keep an eye on the kid. He shifts about a bit, into a more comfortable position, turns the volume on the TV down as Dracula hangs himself (John supposes it was accidental, but with a movie as bad as this one, who knows?). "Happy twenty-fifth, my darling boy," he says quietly.
Dean shifts a bit himself at the use of Mary's old endearment, but doesn't wake up, sleeping deep and peaceful.
John reaches over and picks up Dean's cell, sitting on the bedside cabinet, checks the calls register.
Nothing from Sam.