A/N: Just a short one-shot, part of a series. No idea how long it will end up! BTW, this is my first fanfic, so please review truthfully and all that. Thanks. :-)
I don't own Supernatural, it owns me. Want proof? See my life. ;)
Scenes From an American Back Road, Part One
The low growl of the Impala threatened to lull him to sleep, which, considering the swelling lump on the back of his head and the fact that he hadn't hit a musty pillow for about thirty six hours, was extremely dangerous. Concussions were never fun, that much he recalled, but other details, such as why his brother had suddenly decided now was the time to impress the world with spectacularly vomit-inducing donuts in the grass or how come dozens of tiny fireflies had gathered directly in his line of vision, completely obscuring what he was sure were important details, seemed to slip through the cracks of his usually air-tight mind. Determined to put a stop to this anarchy, he objected with a muffled "Mmuh…" Just to reinforce his point, his eyelids promptly drooped shut.
"Hey, Sam. Sammy! Come on, man. Wakey wakey." called Dean, upon noticing his brother's head falling with a thud into the passenger window.
"M'awake…" said Sam sleepily, fooling no one. For no sooner did he say this, than the sun decided to take another rest, and Sam happily went along with it.
"Sam…" Dean pushed harder on the gas, willing his baby to go faster while glancing around to check for unwanted attention by the fine boys in blue. "You gotta stay awake, man. Don't know how many times I gotta say this. You have to stay conscious until I get you checked out. Tell you every damn time…maybe if you'd stop letting every baddie we run into use your head as a punching bag, you'd remember me saying it…" Dean said that last part a little louder, hoping to get a rise out of Sam (and simultaneously keep him awake). He wasn't disappointed.
"I don't let them, jerk. Maybe if you'd been paying attention to IT instead of groping the waitress, I wouldn't have been hit." responded Sam slowly, temporarily more alert due to the injustice of his idiot brother's rambling. He attempted to sit up straight, thought better of it, and waited patiently for the car to roll back over.
"Dude, I was not groping her, I was protecting her. That is what we do, you know. Save people, hunt things. Pretty sure I've told you this already too." said Dean with a sideways glance and a smirk, "Besides, you said you had it."
"Yeah, the gun. You threw me the gun, and I said I had it. Then I was on the floor, while you and Miss Free Pie for Models and Movie Stars' found a booth to make out in."
"Whoa whoa whoa. We didn't make out, Sam. It was one thank you kiss. She was relieved, what can I say? And that pie was good." Dean's smirk was getting wider, growing in proportion to Sam's annoyance.
"Relieved? What the hell did she have to be relieved about? The thing was still alive, tackling ME." said Sam, voice growing stronger, he added, "Ditz."
Glad that he seemed to be almost fully awake now, Dean kept the conversation going with, "Hey now. Don't attack Karen—"
"Michelle." supplied Sam with a roll of his eyes that hurt far worse than it should have.
"That's what I said. Michelle. Anyway, don't attack her just 'cause you let it get the drop on you. Not like you never handled anything like it before. We've only been doing this what, our whole lives?" continued Dean, making a right hand turn into the nearly empty motel parking lot.
"Didn't see it…" Sam's voice was trailing off again. Time to get him inside and checked for bleeding, pupil dilation, etc. Sad how nightly health checks and field medication was one of the closest things to tradition this family had.
Dean, determined to keep his brother talking, got out and jogged around to the passenger side saying, "Didn't see it? Maybe you're the one with the hots for Mandy, Bringer of Free Pie. You seem to know exactly what she was doing the whole time, but you failed to notice the six feet of ugly leaping toward you?"
Sam, who had been focused on keeping said pie down instead of listening to Dean, was suddenly reminded of a strong, deep voice telling a young boy the best way to maim and kill a…something. He couldn't quite remember what, but he didn't dwell on that, as more of this memory, or concussion induced whatever, was flooding his brain.
"Silver's always a safe bet," he was saying to the boy in the chair next to him, toes barely touching the ground. "But you want to make sure. Do as much research as you can, ask around, look it up. Don't want to shoot it with the wrong ammo and make it angrier. Understand?"
"Yes, sir." responded the boy, who was hanging on every one of his father's words. That is, until a toddler decided his juice box would be better if it could fly, and promptly tested this theory.
Sam had a vague feeling of agreement with the little one (himself, go figure), but Dean was talking so he let it go and paid attention.
"Sammy! You just had a bath! That juice isn't water, and your cookies aren't soap." said Dean in his best little boy imitation of a scolding parent. He obviously didn't get the subtle art of beverage aviation.
"Fly, Dean! Fly!!" squealed Sam in response, flapping his arms around and spraying more juice across the floor, which clearly meant "This juice is disagreeable. May I please amuse myself in an alternate fashion while the two of you finish up?"
Just-turned-seven year old Dean didn't understand this gesture either, it seemed, as he quickly made a reach for the juice box and ended up covered in a sticky purple liquid, much to Sam's delight.
"Purple!!" proclaimed Sam, giggling madly at his now dripping big brother. "Dean is purple!!"
"Purple's for girls, Sammy." said Dean with a scrunched up face to show his displeasure, "Ew,"
Sam, however, either did not notice his brother's comment or deemed it unimportant, for he responded by throwing an Oreo at nothing in particular and squeezing the juice box harder. Then, dodging the fountain of grape juice, two large hands scooped the toddler up and grabbed the offending beverage (or what was left of it) and tossed it in the trash.
"Alright, Sammy. That's enough. We don't throw food." John said sternly, looking his baby in the eye.
"Neck juice!" said Sam happily in explanation. Apparently, the juice box had changed form in the last few seconds. Blame it on his rapidly developing imagination.
"Neck juice?" questioned John with a quizzical look, shifting his gaze down to Dean for help. "What's he mean, neck juice'?
Dean, who was now sopping up the mess and attempting to remove the stickiness from his hair, said knowingly, "Holy water. He calls in neck juice' 'cause of the rosary. He means necklace'." then to Sam, "But I'm not a demon. So don't spray me!"
John was quiet for a moment before addressing his youngest, "We only throw holy water, not juice, and definitely not cookies, Sam. And your brother's right, holy water is for demons, not people." He held his smiling Sammy a little longer, possibly contemplating the fact that he had just given both his extremely young sons a course in weapons training for the supernatural, before setting him back down and heading to the sink for a wet rag to clean his boys up.
The memory ended here, and Sam was brought back to the present by a very grown up Dean shaking his shoulder roughly.
"…no way in hell am I carrying your sasquatch ass into the room, Sam. Freakin' giant. Wake up!"
"Whaaa" was Sam's scholarly retort, as he attempted to move in the direction Dean was pulling. The result was a nasty bit of vertigo.
"Nice of you to join us," grunted Dean, masking his relief that Sam was awake and at least partially coherent. "Bitch."
Sam's spinning head prevented him from properly responding, but he was now taking slow steps toward the room, with Dean carrying only part of his weight. It would have to do.
Dean fumbled with the keycard for a few seconds before managing to unlock and kick open the door while still partially holding a now mumbling Sam upright. He guided him over to the bed and began examining yet another head wound. At least nobody had gotten strangled or thrown into any walls this time.
"Well, you're not bleeding. And your pupils look—" Dean re-checked just to make sure, "normal. So I don't know what all your moaning is about." He finished by handing an ice pack to Sam, who was looking up at him blearily from his seat on the bed. "What?"
"That was weird…"
"Not really. You get hit enough times you're bound to form some scar tissue or something." said Dean with a half smile, "Or maybe College Boy's brain is just too fat to be slammed up against his skull."
"Not that…"
"Or maybe, your brain's already permanently damaged. This is the real you, and all this time you've been walking around with a bruised –"
"That doesn't even make sense, asshole." cut in Sam, regaining coherency at last. "And if anyone has brain damage, it's you."
"Ah come on, Sammy. Such harsh words for your caretaker." replied Dean with a feigned hurt look, placing his hand over his heart, "That hurts. Really."
Sam glared and Dean relented, changing his tone, "You need anything else?"
Thinking for a moment, Sam smiled and answered "Do we have any grape juice?"
"Okay, random."
"What? It's a good color for you." said Sam, smiling at his new memory and wondering just how mad Dean would get if he had to wash juice out of his hair tonight. Probably best to do it while he was sleeping.
"Oookay, Sammy. Maybe I missed something. Let me see your head again," said Dean, staring at Sam like he was an alien. "'Cause there ain't no friggin' way purple is my color."
Sam just smiled and let his brother check him over again, wondering if it was possible to make all-powerful demon repellant Neck Juice out of grapes.
The End