Title: Playing with Magic
Characters: Sam, Dean
Genre: H/C, humor
Rating: T
Word Count: 2800+
Warnings/Spoilers: Set in Season Seven, various spoilers for that. Warning for language, same as the show
Summary: Written for lauehime's Winchester H/C Meme on LiveJournal, for the following prompt:
The boys have been burning the midnight oil for a while. Maybe they're rushing to get a hunt done (graves found and dug, lunar cycle is right now!), maybe they can't sleep because of what they're hunting (witch, demon that invades dreams,etc).
I would love to see them struggling to stay awake, choking down coffee and energy drinks or just running on sheer willpower. And when it's all over and they're tempted just to sleep in the Impala still parked next to the graveyard, etc, encouraging each other to find someplace safe to sleep before they both crash for real. Or being so tired that they don't think they'll be able to fall asleep and then passing out at a diner or a bar.
"This sucks, man."
"I know."
"Really, really sucks."
"I know, Dean."
"I mean, not just Phantom Menace sucks. This? This is a – a whole new level of suckage."
Sam lets his head bounce lightly off the passenger window; at this point, he has a pounding headache from sleep deprivation and a little extra pain won't even be noticeable. "Dude, I'd take Jar-Jar over you right about now."
His brother looks so totally affronted by this that it brings a tired smile to Sam's face despite their situation. He tries not to be obvious about the fact that his nails are digging into the dingy upholstery of the passenger seat, when Dean carelessly takes a curve about twenty miles an hour above posted-speed-limit and ten below about-to-become-Chitty-Chitty-Bang-Bang.
Dean turns up the music to drown out the sound of rubber being left on the road, and Sam half-wishes he'd accepted the offer of anti-anxiety meds the last clinic had suggested for him after a Hell-induced flashback. They wouldn't stop Lucifer from throwing up his hands and yelling wheeeeee in the backseat every time Dean careens around a curve, but they would at least make Sam relax enough to chance living through a collision with a guard rail.
As if reading Sam's mind, Dean glances his direction, rubbing a fist roughly across his eyes as he half-turns in the seat. "How're you doin', anyway?"
Sam yawns, blearily watches the condensation magically fog the passenger side window. He has a childish urge to scrawl little designs and sigils in it. "I'm fine, Dean."
"You'd tell me if you were boardin' the crazy train, right?"
Sam rolls his eyes fondly. "I'm fine, Dean. Ready to get this thing over with, yeah, but I'm fine."
Dean grunts in acquiescence, and (thankfully) turns his hazy attention back to the road. For a few blessed minutes, only the radio set to the most blistering level of ear-shattering screech possible fills the car. Then –
"DEAN!"
His brother yelps (which will totally be denied later, Sam is well aware) and swerves desperately to avoid the obese raccoon which has just meandered blithely onto the road in front of them. Dean fights the wheel as their clunker-of-the-week rocks back and forth in an increasingly dangerous fishtail. Sam closes his eyes and braces against the dashboard, hearing Dean curse and swear about the shocks and suspension all the way until they rattle to a more sedate speed, further down the deserted road.
"Friggin' fatass raccoon!" Dean yells out the window (in this particular car, it remains stuck halfway up on the driver's side).
"Dean," Sam sighs wearily.
"You have any idea what that thing could do to the alignment? What do they eat around here anyway, to be that size?!"
Dean's rant is mostly a façade, Sam can tell by now, because he can see how much his brother's hands are shaking, how tight the tension lines are around his eyes. Mainlining Red Bull and espresso for the last thirty-six hours has made them both jittery, Dean especially, and has dulled their reflexes to a dangerous degree.
"It's only another few hours," he says, knuckling his eyes in a futile effort at remaining alert.
"Yeah, well, that's another three hours of suck." Dean rolls his neck briefly, and then fixes him with a sidelong glare, as if the mess is entirely Sam's fault.
Sam refrains from bashing his brother upside the head with the empty Pringle can that is rattling around his feet, mainly because it's dangerous enough driving with severe sleep deprivation and caffeine overdose without adding projectiles and brotherly annoyance to the mix.
"What?" he settles for asking in a suitably irritated tone.
"We should be hunting Leviathans right now. But us? We would piss off the only barely-legal witch in the country who has a Disney fetish."
Sam rolls his eyes. "As I recall, it was you calling it precisely that which pissed her off in the first place, Dean."
"Dude, her hoodoo workshop was friggin' pink!"
"And that misogynistic attitude is probably why she targeted the two of us with a spell originally meant for a woman," Sam replies wearily. His phone chirps, annoyingly cheerful, to let him know he has an email; and as reading it is far more entertaining than his brother at the moment, he pulls it out and squints at the screen.
Dean glares out the front window and guns the car through a deserted crossing, ignoring the faded stop sign. "Not my fault the chick digs Sleeping Beauty."
"Aurora," Sam says absently, tap-tapping a return email, an update on the situation to Bobby.
"Huh?"
Sam glances up, sighs tolerantly. "Her name was Aurora, Dean; it's a common mistake that most people seem to just call her by the animated movie title. Which is pretty far-fetched from the original fairy tale, by the way."
Dean's appalled look is enough to send him back to his phone, rolling his eyes again at his brother's lack of literary culture.
"Dude, I do not even want to be sitting beside you right now."
Sam returns the sentiment with a gesture that has gotten progressively more emphatic as the last twenty-four hours have progressed. "You should just be glad she didn't choose Snow White, and poison your next apple pie, Dean."
Dean's face morphs from I-can't-believe-we-are-even-related to what-is-this-new-Hell-you-speak-of.
Sam's sleep-deprived brain seems to think this is hilarious (because, really, in comparison with the hundred-odd other times Dean has died, being poisoned by pie is probably the way he would choose to go). It's not until he's teetering on the edge of crying, hands futilely trying to scrub away exhaustion-and-laughter-induced tears that he really can't seem to stop, that he feels a firm hand reach over and grip his knee, squeezing slightly.
"Hey. I know, man. Keep it together for a few more hours, 'kay?"
Sam nods gratefully, eyes still hidden, because the last thing he needs is to see Lucifer laughing at him in addition to hearing him.
Dean gives his knee one more squeeze and then moves to turn the radio up even louder, somehow knowing without words what Sam needs to banish the Devil from his head for now. Sam slumps back in the seat, eyes blinking slowly.
"We need to sleep, Dean."
"Not chancin' that until I know her post-mortem magic died along with her, Sam." Dean's exhausted eyes glint for a second in his direction. "Last thing we need's to try and find a girl willing to kiss that ugly face to wake you up."
"Such a jerk," Sam mutters into the fabric of the seat, as he rummages around underneath in hopes of finding something caffeinated that isn't four weeks past its expiry. He pulls out a cola can of dubious off-brand authenticity that he doesn't even remember buying, and regards it calculatingly.
"Dude, gross. Gotta stop up ahead and refuel anyway, that's the last place for fifty miles and I don't wanna run out between a psycho witch's house and the backside of nowhere. Get yourself a coffee and me one of those Monster things."
Sam eyes his brother (and his brother's shaking hands) with concern. "Those drinks aren't meant to be chain-chugged, Dean. They can damage your heart and respiratory system. And –" He chokes off the rest as Dean yawns, weaving over the deserted road all the way to the opposite gravel shoulder before jerking the car back on course again and acting as if nothing happened.
Sam swallows hard, and prays to any deity that doesn't yet completely hate them that they'll find the witch in ashes and the books in the same shape, proof that her magic died along with her when they destroyed her altar and the last spell spectacularly backfired, bringing the house down in flames around her. They'd had to retreat in the face of official investigation, and only now were able to return and make sure the body and all her books had burned completely.
If they have to keep this up for more than a couple more hours, one or both of them is going to fall into eternal sleep, literally or figuratively.
He slumps back in his too-small seat as Dean begins to drum with both hands on the steering wheel, the obnoxious percussion enough to keep them both awake hopefully for long enough to see the job through.
Like Dean said. This job majorly sucks.
"Ding-dong, the witch's dead." Dean doesn't even bother with the trunk, just tosses the soot-encrusted shovel into the back seat and promptly falls face first after it. "I'mma sleep here," he mumbles into the musty upholstery.
Sam groans and folds himself like a pretzel into the driver's seat, twisting into a painful yoga position to buckle up, and then begins turn the key in the ignition.
A boot kicks his back. "Nuh-uh. Goin' crash us, Sam."
Given how hard he has to concentrate to ignore Lucifer's gleeful "shotgun!" and appearance next to him, Sam thinks that's probably a very good possibility. But at the same time, they can't just stay here for the rest of the night.
"Dude, we can't sleep here. It's still a crime scene, and those embers are still smoldering."
"Take'r chances," Dean slurs, wrinkling his nose as it rubs against the seat.
"Dean, you know a safe escape is the first rule of hunting. Dean. Dean?"
Lucifer casually lights his seat belt on fire and watches it burn its way slowly down his front, humming to himself all the while. Sam closes his eyes and tries to back away into that place in his mind where he can discern between what's real and what's not – but the walls of that place are at their thinnest due to exhaustion, and his stone number one is ten seconds from blissful unconsciousness in the backseat.
His breath catches when the blistering crackle of flames suddenly spreads to his own seat belt, and if he was scared to close his eyes earlier tonight he's now even more scared to open them, because knowing something isn't real doesn't mean the phantom sensations from it go away.
"Sam. Sammmmm!" The flames vanish under Dean's sleep-muddled grumble. "C'mon, man, lay down."
Sam braces himself, and braves a glance across the car.
Lucifer smirks at him from the passenger's seat, making grabby hands. Yeah, c'mon, Sam. Listen to big brother. Scoot on over, buddy.
"I – I'm good, Dean." He swallows hard, tries to make himself smaller in the driver's seat and bashes his knee on the wheel in the process. "You go ahead and sleep, I'll keep watch for the first shift."
Dean mutters something that Sam can't quite make out, but he seems to flop over and squirm into a comfortable position on the backseat, breathing evenly.
Sam takes a deep breath; he can do this. Once Dean has a nap they can leave, go find a motel and sleep for a couple of days. They have enough cash at the moment, surprisingly, to stay under the Leviathans' radar; and Dean promised him last week they'd spend one night in a place where he didn't have to pee in a broken toilet and sleep in three layers for fear of toxic substances seeping through his sleeping bag. Besides, Dean has bent over backward the last couple of days trying to take care of him; the least Sam can do is let him get a few hours of sleep he more than deserves.
He can do this.
An hour later, sixty long minutes of merciless singing and poking and humorless jokes being slung like the proverbial fiery darts at him, Sam's not so sure he can.
He's scrunched up as small as he can be in the driver's seat, not daring to move for fear of drawing more attention to himself. Lucifer is firmly-rooted now, quite at home in the seat opposite, and no matter what Sam does he can't quite break free, not in this mental state. He wants to sleep so badly, so very badly, that he is closer to tears than he would ever admit to anyone (but there's no hiding anything in the Cage, and he's long past that kind of shame). But there will be no sleep, not right now, because if he does then there is no telling what Lucifer will do, to him – to his brother, completely oblivious in the backseat.
Legs crunched up between his body and the steering wheel, arms wrapped around his head and hands clenched in his hair in a futile effort to block out the sound of the Devil's mocking laughter, he tries a deep breath and shudders it out with a near-whimper of utter exhaustion. He just wants to sleep, just wants one hour of quiet unconsciousness, and he's nearly to the point of breaking down over the fact that he apparently doesn't deserve even that much, because all he can hear are the voices that don't belong to him, feel the distant but fast-encroaching white-hot chill of the Cage…
A startled cry is wrenched from his lips as the passenger door screeches open with an awful scream of rusty hinges. Still shaking, he looks up, glances once at Lucifer's amused expression, and then turns his face up to his brother in despair. Fix it, Dean. Please?
Half-leaning on the car, nearly asleep on his feet, Dean looks from the empty seat to Sam for a minute, eyes soft with drowsiness and concern.
Then he snarls a sleepy "screw this" and fires a round from his Taurus into the filler of the passenger's seat, straight through where Lucifer's heart should be.
Sam jumps, slamming his head into the low roof, but sees Lucifer give him one disappointed grimace before fading from sight, soon replaced by six-feet of solid brother. Dean lurches more than steps into the unfamiliar car, clicks the safety on his gun and puts it on the dashboard, and then closes the passenger door with a grunt.
Sam gapes at him.
Dean stifles a yawn, and squirrels into a diagonal position against the passenger door. "What? 'S not like we gotta pay for the upholstery."
Sam runs both hands uneasily through his hair.
"Shoulda told me it was that bad, Sammy," his brother murmurs, rubbing a fist over his right eye.
Sam's snort of disbelief borders on hysteria. "Didn't think there was anything you could do, Dean."
He receives a self-satisfied smirk that is so familiar it slowly eases the tension that has been holding his body in a vise-like grip for the last few hours. Dean wriggles once more, shoving the seat belt buckle down into the seat so it's not digging into his back, and then blinks, eyes heavy with sleep.
"You want the backseat?" Dean inquires softly.
Sam shakes his head, afraid to move and break the spell. Besides, even Lucifer knows better than to piss off Dean Winchester; he won't be back in that spot, not tonight.
"Fair enough. Just…get some sleep, okay?" A steel boot-toe nudges his leg, and he uncurls slowly from his defensive position.
"Still shouldn't sleep here," he mutters, squirming into a mirroring position against the driver's door.
"Whatever," Dean slurs, head already flopped at an awkward angle on his neck and eyes already closed.
Sam snorts and settles back, relaxing at last.
Lucifer suddenly appears in the mist outside the car, peers in through the passenger window. Sam swallows hard, and sneaks his feet closer to his brother's outstretched ones, toes his own boots under Dean's so their feet are almost tangled together.
Dean never blinks an eye.
Lucifer stares coldly at Sam, and mimics slitting his throat. Sam only raises an eyebrow in silent defiance.
The Devil seethes for a minute in silent fury – and then vanishes into the fog with a growl of frustration, thwarted by the impenetrable magic of a big brother.
Sam smiles, and finally closes his eyes.