"Can You Fly?"
Summary: Sam thought he could fly once. Shortest summary in the history of the world, but that's all I got. Set in Season 10.
Rating: M for imagery and violence
A/N: This was inspired by the bit of Sam and Dean jumping off the shed together as Superman and Batman.
A/N #2: Sorry for the lame five word summary, I don't know how to summarize this story without giving parts away.
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"You know what movie would have gone viral? if we still had it,
when you were five and you jumped off the shed because you thought you could fly."
"After you jumped first."
~Dean and Sam Winchester
"Supernatural" Episode: "#Thinman"
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1987
"Dean wait!" Sam scrambled up after his brother on fast legs onto the discarded wooden apple crate that someone had long ago left there; it was half rotted and creaked under his canvas sneakers. The bottom of his black Batman cape snagged on the splintered wood, and jerked Sam down by the collar, choking him for an instant. Sam coughed and pulled the material away, trying to find nonexistent purchase in the slick corrugated metal side of the storage shed. "Dean!"
In the brilliant blue summer sky above him Sam's 9, nearly 10-year-old brother turned down to stare at him, a red and yellow "S" logo emblazoned upon a gray t-shirt over a thread torn pair of second hand Levi's. Dean smirked in that mischievous way of his and turned and reached down to grab Sam's hand and hauled him up high enough until Sam's hand found purchase on the sharp edged lip of the shed's roof.
Sam's legs dangled two feet in the air and he kicked and pushed with upper body strength he didn't have, hands slick with sweats that came from both the lack of breeze in the Florida summer heat and the fear of falling flat on his butt. Sam scrabbled for Dean's hand again, as Dean yanked him up by the gray blue costume of his shirt like a puppy with his scruff, until Sam's small arms reached up and over and he was lying flat on the roof, breathing hard, face pressed into the metal.
"C'mon Sammy, get up." Dean nudged Sam with one dirty white sneaker, and hauled Sam up carefully but firmly by the arm until he was standing in his shorter height beside his brother.
It was mid-July, and the air was sweltering, Dean's whole body was damp and slick with sweat like he'd taken a shower with his clothes on. The shed was 10 feet high and overlooked the patchy back lawns of the little town in Southern Florida they were staying in, more dead grass and gray sand than actual lawns, waving in the hottest heat of the afternoon sun.
When their dad had first told them about the Hunt for a Skin Walker down in Florida Dean had went wild with excitement, not about the hunt, but about the prospects of the beach and the ocean. His excitement had transferred over to Sam, who talked of nothing but building sand forts and castles for days as they drove down from Tennessee to Florida. But when the Impala finally pulled upon its resting spot in the Sunshine State at 8:00 at night it was to a land absent of beaches or ocean. Instead filled with miles of tall pine trees thick weeds, breaking only to wooden houses with scraggly lawns and old dogs sleeping outside in flat patches of brown dirt. They weren't staying in hotel this time, but in a house, a concrete cinder block one bedroom with a carport and a fence shared by their neighbor, an old man who liked to smoke menthols and drink blackberry whiskey until midnight. The inflatable raft and beach toys Dean had managed to buy with his hard earned 20 dollars from hustling Go Fish at School sat in a deflated pile against the fence eyed daily by their neighbor's black lab that stared at them through their shared fence portion, tongue and teeth always lolling within snapping distance of them.
After he had seen their sad excuse for Florida, Dean had tried to keep his disappointment down to a dull roar for Sam's sake because he had hyped up the kid during the entire ride down about the beaches that were so white they looked like snow and the waves of the warm blue water that were perfect for swimming. Sam had even worn a pair of swim trunks and plastic diver's goggles strapped to his head from Atlanta to Eustace, Florida in anticipation of the beach. And the sight of the five-year-old, plastic bucket in his hand, looking around and around for all that promised water in the brown yard that had died a crispy death in the heat made Dean feel like the biggest liar there ever was.
So after their dad had packed up the Impala, given Dean the usual warnings to salt the doors and windows and watch after his little brother and had left with the promise he'd be back in three days' time, Dean had taken it upon himself to cheer Sam up and got his brother up from pretending to be asleep to walk to the store with him.
Eustace was the kind of sleepy town that belonged on the front of a post card, with a main street inhabited by huge pickup trucks sitting under tall sun blocking awnings. Sam complained about the heat the entire time Dean had walked with him down to the local five and dime with half empty shelves of generic foods and cheap looking clothes. Dean had grabbed a loaf of bread and two jars of peanut butter, keeping an eye out for something 'special' for Sam. He had spotted what he was looking for on the racks in the next aisle over next to a Styrofoam display of dusty artificial pink tulips and hanging plastic gardening tools. He perused through the rack of half off Halloween costumes until he came across a Batman outfit complete with real cloth cape and a gray shirt with a Superman logo, no cape, but they were both only three dollars because of some holes at the bottom of the fabric. But no one smart would be looking at the bottom of Batman's cape, so Dean got them both, brushing off the woman with the green beehive hairdo who called Sam "cute" and wanted to offer him some cold lemonade that sat in plastic bottles in the cooler behind the register. He headed home with Sam and his bounty, and once there they divided up the costumes. Sam wanted to be Batman because the Superman outfit didn't even have a cape. So Dean had helped him into the costume, rolling up the black spandex leggings because they were a size two big and painted around Sam's eyes with black magic marker because the plastic Batman mask wouldn't fit him.
This was how both brothers found themselves on the tin storage shed dressed as Batman and Superman.
Sam wiped at his eyes because the magic marker had started to run from his sweat and stared out over their neighbor's yard. "This is really high Dean." Far below the black dog from next door barked at them like he thought Batman and Superman might make a tasty treat.
"It's not too high for Superman or Batman, Sammy." Dean returned his voice full of confidence and more than a little devil may care. He looked down at the grass below, imagining it was a high sky scraper and the Labrador was the Evil Robot Dog of Florida. Their dad had told Dean of some crazy things that he'd killed over the years after Sam had gone to bed, but Dean bet even he had never fought an Evil Robot Dog of Florida with Batman at his side. The dog barked again and Dean stared down at it and shouted in his best super hero voice: "You don't scare us you damn Robot Dog!"
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2014
The fire escape ladder rattled as Dean ascended it, rising up through the air veiled in the shadowed heat of a summer night. Sam was right behind him, his boots banging up each rung of the ladder until he jumped over the last two and landed heavily on the roof the abandoned building.
"Do you think we lost her?" Sam panted thick breaths into the air that had gone the color of misty twilight.
Sam and Dean stood on a roof top of bricks and cement peering over the curved fire escape ladder at the narrowed alleyway of chain linked fences and steam that rose from the puddles in the humid air over sixty feet below them.
A thud and a clank rattled the bolted down ladder, answering Sam's question. He and Dean pulled back from the ladder, which clung like a vine over the edge of the building. But they only backed up a handful of inches, each held a 6 inch sold solid iron blade encircled in a handle made of cypress wood. The city of Miami was a massive sprawl of sky scrapers and heavy tropical heat, and the pawn shops inside the city were equally massive, selling all kinds of things including gold watches, inflatable girlfriends, and weaponry dating back to 1100 BC that went for only 30 dollars each.
For being over nine centuries old, the knife hilt felt amazingly strong in Dean's grip, and balanced all the way down the blade that ended in a row of serrated points that resembled the teeth of a shark. He had yet to actually use the knife, but that was all about to change.
The clanging noise moved up the ladder at a pace that was too fast to be human, Dean bared the knife, and Sam bared the knife's brother in the same stance.
A flash of brilliant white rose like a fog over the ladder, landing hard against the rooftop. A woman in a flowing Grecian style Chiton glowered at them in the fading light. "Where do you think you're going boys?" Her hair was the color of burnt chocolate and it was pilled in a mass on her head by pins of gold so bright they glowed like stars had been trapped in her hair. Her eyes flashed a copper color and a smile that wasn't human pulled on her face. "We weren't finished yet."