.
It had started out such a good day.
Dean had washed the Impala, finally managing to get the red dust out of the rear brake drums. Sam had defragged his laptop, finally managing to make it start up and be ready for action in under three minutes. Bobby had unplugged the labyrinthine phone system, finally managing to get five minutes to himself to enjoy coffee without some yahoo no-hope of a pathetic excuse for a hunter calling to ask what he knew about rugarus or to back up a shoddy FBI alias.
And then the sun had gone in, the rain had come out, and the three of them had retreated to Bobby's study to watch the dirt of the yard turn into a vast mudslick of pangean proportions.
As the morning turned into a wet and windy lunchtime, Dean had taken to stripping guns whilst reducing Bobby's mahoosive stash of pies to a modest assembly of also-rans. Sam had taken to picking books from the eclectic mix on the shelves at random, turning to page forty-two, and trying to run all the seventh lines together to produce absurdly amusing stories. Bobby had taken to mithering Dean about the crumbs he was leaving on the carpet, and Sam re: the unexpected gaps in his shelves.
By late afternoon, the rain was entering an amused state of lethargy, uncertain if it wanted to continue falling or tease the recipients of the water by pretending to stop, then drizzle at random intervals. It went with the former. Until early evening, when it went with the latter.
Bobby turned on the TV, Sam turned on his Blackberry, and Dean turned on his ability to ignore every other sound but the timer on the oven. Not a word was spoken as they marked time, watching the evening get dragged into night, the chill of the day dragged into crisp cold, the silence dragged into a marathon of a reluctance to break it.
Eventually, when food and conversation had been used enough, the TV shows insultingly boring enough, the clock watched enough, the three of them came to the same conclusion in their own way; it was over. Midnight had been reached successfully; no-one had called, beaten down the door, crossed the salt, made it past the sigils or seals, found their contract up, sold their soul down.
Instead of a call to action, excitement, danger, salvation or damnation, all that lay ahead was the sedate, boring, trouble-free option of an uneventful trip to bed.
Yes, it had started out such a good day.
But then, it hadn't ended too badly, either.
.
FIN
.
And that's it for this year, folks! Thanks for reading.
I'll be back in a while with more. Something makes it inevitable. Happy holidays, everyone!