Just a small fic in the same universe as the previous stories that doesn't stand alone.
They're driving through the lowlands of New Mexico, where the trees are stunted and Sam's the tallest thing around. Dean's not too fond of the desert in summer. It's alright when it's bloomin' and everything, four foot tall flowers and bushes that suddenly come to life, but in the summer where everything's a dusty, half-strangled green, it's not his favorite place to be.
He used to like California for that, with its sunshine babes, but then Sam'd run off and ruined that for him.
They're on their way to, dunno, some place that's not a hundred degrees of precious "dry heat" in the summer, when Sam leans over him and says, "Hey, caves," sort of wistfully, like he talks about puppies and unicorns.
Dean flexes his hands on the steering wheel and tries not to notice how Sam's damn demons are dancing through his fingertips. "Yeah. Caves, Sam. I'm glad you've finally learned how to read."
"I was reading before you were, jackass," Sam says acidly.
That's not really fair, Dean thinks. It wasn't his fault that Dad didn't think to enroll him in school until he was seven and Sammy plopped down next to him and informed him that he was reading Doctor Seuss wrong.
He's pretty sure the demons are laughing at him. "Shut up," he mumbles.
"The demons are very impressed with your intelligence," Sam says, voice choked and smug. Dean takes his eyes off the road long enough to punch his royal bitchiness in the shoulder; not like there are any sudden twists and turns here in the asscrack of nowhere to ruin his baby on.
It's almost worth the displeased screech and the way his fingers go numb, Sam's damn pets wrapping around them and squeezing out all the heat. He flicks them away and they swirl out the open window with a snarl Dean can feel in his bones.
"At least I could count to twenty without using my toes when I was six," Dean informs the car. "Little slow on the math, buddy. Always have been."
"Whatever." Sam doesn't think it's even slightly weird that his demons filter back in through the car and settle on his shoulders like a snake or something equally disgusting and creepy-crawly. "Let's go see the caves."
"It's not tourist season, Sammy. Also, there is no way in hell you're getting me into a hole in the ground. The fuck would people voluntarily do that for?"
"Left," Sam says.
Dean automatically takes the left exit.
Towards the damn caves, he realizes a second later. The demons laughing sounds like rubbing Styrofoam together and Sam looks smug in the passenger seat.
"I meant to do that," Dean tells them firmly. "Stop laughing, you bastard."
Sam manages to get him out of the car and into the sun, but that's about as far as he's willing to go. He's not going into a hole in the ground. He's not going to go trek through a "strenuous hike" in the middle of the day, and he's not going down any path that tells him that weak knees and exhaustion are common. No fucking thanks.
"Wuss," Sam says.
Dean scoffs and raises a hand to shade his eyes. "I'm not goin' into a cave, Sam. Go by yourself."
For a second, Dean's afraid that Sam's going to say something sissy, like "It's only fun if you come with," or start to whine. Then Sam huffs and leans back against the hood of the Impala with a major bitchface going on.
"We're staying to watch the bats, then," he says.
Dean is totally down with bats. Not like they look like rats with wings or anything like that.
Sam's demons fan out across the ground, mostly invisible, if people don't know what to look for, and disappear over the side of the cliff. Good riddance.
"Jackalope," Sam says quietly.
"You're shittin' me," Dean says, just as quietly. He can count on one hand the number of jackalopes they've seen, even hunting through the deserts and the wastelands of America.
Sam tilts his head towards the other side of the parking lot. Dean picks it out after a few seconds, and, yeah, that's totally a jackalope. Smallest one he's ever seen, with tiny horns that aren't even as big as its ridiculously oversized ears yet.
It freezes when demon smoke drifts overhead, checking back in with Sam, and then relaxes when they scatter again. Dean's pretty sure they're spelunking or something. Demons liked dark, closed, freakin' unstable places, right?
Demons. Mayhem. Big hole in the ground that stupid ass people like to climb into. Not a good combination.
"You better make sure those things don't cause a cave in or anything like that," he tells Sam when it occurs to him.
"Already thought of that," Sam says. He squints a little in the setting sun, and Dean rolls his eyes hard when one of the demons obligingly spreads out like Sam's own mini thundercloud to block it out. "They're mostly just annoying the bats right now, though. They like them."
They both lean against the windshield of the Impala and watch the jackalope sniff cautiously at the cactus lining the pavement.
"Our lives are messed up," Sam says thoughtfully.
Dean grunts. "You're messed up," he says. "You're the one with demons who wants to go die in a tiny underground cave."
Sam gives a long suffering sigh that makes the jackalope freeze again, watching them with its tiny bunny nose twitching furiously. "You do know that their Big Room has a ceiling that's over 200 feet tall, right?"
"The only way you're getting me in there is if there's a giant, bloodsucking bat down there killin' people." Dean pauses, thinks about that. "And even then it's mostly the dumbasses faults for going down there in the first place."
The jackalope decides it's had enough of them and turns to hop away with a flick of its white, fluffy tail. One of Sam's demons trails after it lazily, looking like some kind of weird, fast moving smoke, and Dean tells Sam flatly that he better not find a dead jackalope on the backseat of his car.
"It was a present," Sam says helplessly, opening his hands to let a mouse jump into them.
Dean ignores it. Better a mouse than a rattlesnake. "Better not," Dean says direly.
He did not like waking up in the morning to find a dead rat on his backseat, a cat with demon black eyes watching him from the roof of his baby. Nasty ass things.
The bats turn out to be sort of impressive. They wing out of the caves like clouds of... well, they look like frickin' demons pouring out of hell to him. Dean has a death grip on his bottle of holy water while the demons, the real ones, shoot up to meet the bats.
Then he watches as the bats all shriek as one and frantically turn to fly back into their cave. The demons chase them, gleefully shrieking right back, and Dean does not want to know what they do to the three or four really slow bats they manage to engulf completely.
"Dude," Dean says.
Sam scratches the side of his head and coughs guiltily while all around them people start murmuring about the strange actions of their beloved bats. The bats, meanwhile, continue to scream and dive for cover. The demons giggle like freaky little girls in the back of Dean's skull and catch play catch with one of the slowest bats.
The giggling in the skull thing doesn't really bother him all that much anymore. Sam claims it's some sort of feedback from him, since they're biologically related and all, and the longer the demons have hung around, the more he's started to hear.
But them playing with bats? Weird shit.
"Dude," Dean says again. "Seriously?"
One of the bats comes to land in Sam's hair with a gangly, jerking flight that Dean attributes to a demon, since it doesn't immediately keel over dead from touching Royal Boy King. "They, ah, like the bats," Sam says helplessly.
The bat crawls through his hair and Sam flinches, his hands twitching like he wants to squash it.
"Then they should probably stop eating them," Dean says. A bat skeleton thunks to the ground right in front of them. Dean's pretty glad it's mostly dark, 'cause otherwise the gawkers would be running instead of just murmuring confused to each other.
"This," Dean says gravely, "Is why we don't get nice vacations, Sammy."
Sam plucks the bat out of his hair and scowls. "Shut up."