Chapter Twenty-Seven
"Mornin', Little Miss Sunshine," Dean grinned at his brother as he headed for the refrigerator. He peered into the bowl of oatmeal that Sam was poking at while he tapped at his laptop with the other hand. "You know what would improve your breakfast?"
"Uh, let me guess," mused Sam, pulling a dramatically thoughtful face, "I know, how about being left to eat it in peace?"
"No," Dean's grin widened, "Trick question – oatmeal isn't proper food, so it can't be made better, except by having it… set on fire!" With a searing demonic stare, he ignited the offending oats.
"Wha… Dean!" yelped Sam, reaching frantically for a dishcloth and clapping it over the bowl.
"Yes, we have ignition!" Dean shouted in triumph. "I've been practising," he announced proudly.
"You jerk," muttered Sam, removing the cloth to inspect his bowl, "Setting fire to my breakfast, that's really the act of a jerk."
"Never mind, Sammy," Dean's grin was so wide it threatened to split his head in half, "I'll make you some proper food while I do my own."
"Gee thanks," Sam rolled his eyes, taking his spoon and poking at the darkened crust on top of the dish. "Actually, though…" he scooped up a small amount and tasted it. "I… don't believe this."
"What?" Dean's head popped back out of the refrigerator, and he waggled the packet of bacon.
"I don't… this is great!" Sam scooped up another spoonful. "Dean, this is… it must be the syrup – dude, you've invented, like, oatmeal brulée!" He turned a smile on his brother. "You're a culinary genius!"
"Yeah?" Dean shrugged, still grinning. "Well, I can't help it if my awesomeness just spills out in unexpected ways."
"It could be dangerous to try to contain it," nodded Sam, "I mean, if your awesomeness didn't find ways out, you might pop, or something."
Dean sighed wistfully. "I know. Don't hate me because I'm talented."
"I don't," replied Sam equably, "I hate you because your eating habits are disgusting."
"Incur not the wrath of he who holds the spatula, Sammy," Dean intoned seriously, "He who controls the spatula controls the food, and he who controls the food controls the world."
"Onward to world domination, one piece of pigmeat at a time," marvelled Sam. "You know, as demonic strategies go, it's not so bad."
"You can be in charge of the Tofu Brigade, if you like," Dean offered generously. "So, what you doin' there?" He waved the spatula at the laptop.
"Well, I was thinkin' about what you said, yesterday," Sam replied, looking up with an earnest expression. "About how you're still my brother, and you're still a Hunter, you just happen, through no fault of your own, to be a demon…"
"Yeah?" Dean prompted cautiously.
"And, well, I figured, if that's the case, then, I should find us a job," Sam went on, "Because if you're still you, then, well, it's what we do, right? The family business? So, I thought, maybe we should stop angsting over this slight technical hitch of demonification, and just get on with it." He gave Dean a look that made him appear to be all of five years old. "Because you are still my big brother, aren't you?"
Dean gave Sam his most beaming smile. "Course I am," he stated firmly, "Just with certain traits of even more awesomeness."
Sam gave him a happy, dimpled smile. "Cool," he said, "Hey, if you're gonna claw your way to world domination via pieces of pig, I'll do eggs, and maybe vegetables. Free you up to concentrate on meat products."
"That's my boy," Dean murmured contentedly, flipping the bacon in the pan.
They were finishing their genial breakfast when their comfortably routine bickering was interrupted by a shout of "God's tits!" from the living room, so they went to investigate.
"Bobby?" called Sam anxiously, "Bobby, what's wrong?"
"Damned electrons bit me," Bobby chuckled ruefully, poking at the back of the TV. He had his phone clamped between ear and shoulder. "Uh-huh… yeah, it's live, all right… uh-huh… okay, yeah, hang on… okay, good to go, can you punch it from your end?"
There was a moment of silence, then a brief hum, and a sudden pop. Both Winchesters jumped as a small plume of greasy black smoke rose from the back of the set.
"Aha! That's got it! Thanks, buddy, couldn't have done it without ya. Okay. Pass on my congratulations to Phlegmgob. Bye."
"What are you doing to the TV?" asked Dean anxiously, in the tone of voice that might be used by a teenager watching a parent pole at their phone with a sharp metal object.
"Unbunch your panties, idjit," instructed Bobby, "I was just talkin' to Orgle. Seems that his little pal Phlegmgob is now Open Male Imp Farting Champion. The big guy's just stoked."
"Hey, that's great!" enthused Sam. "He's such a friendly little thing. And really, he hardly smells at all, if you breathe mostly through your mouth. Was there a trophy?"
"Can we get back to the TV?" interrupted Dean, "What are you doin' to the TV?"
"Yup," Bobby chortled, "Bigger than him. Little guy's taken to sleeping in it."
"TV! TV!" Dean yelped with increasing agitation, "What about the TV?"
"Oh, I so want a picture of that!" crooned Sam, "How cute would that be?"
"BOBBY, WHAT HAVE YOU DONE TO THE TV?" yowled Dean desperately.
"Calm your tits, missy," Bobby rolled his eyes, "I aint done anything to your precious idjit box. I just called Orgle to get HELL-TV hooked up again. And, might I say, he was a lot more friendly, helpful and professional than some cable guys I've dealt with."
"That diabolical 'channel' for looking at alternative possible branches of reality?" queried Sam.
"That's the bunny," nodded Bobby.
"Oh, hey, let's find the one where I take over the world!" enthused Dean, his worry immediately dispelled. "All hail the Baconmeister! You don't have to curtsey," he added generously.
"Well, I figured that before we try to undemonify Dean, if he doesn't want it, we should check that it's really worth doing," Bobby explained, "Because if he's happy like this, and he says he's still him, well, maybe we should just leave well enough alone." He put a hand on Sam's shoulder. "I know you're worried about him, and so am I, but this may go some way to alleviatin' our concerns. If it really aint that broke, perhaps we'd be better off not tryin' to fix it."
Sam glanced uncertainly at the TV. "Well, if the evidence is right there, I guess we can't just dismiss it for irrational emotional reasons," he said reluctantly.
"That's right," Bobby said, "So, we'll just try to do this as objectively as possible. And that means, before we decide to do anything, we gotta make sure we're in possession of all the facts."
"You'll see, Sammy," Dean nudged his brother, "I'll be as awesome as ever. Your big brother will be your big brother, the Living Sex God will be the Living Sex God, plus, I can play the guitar!"
"I can't wait," Sam deadpanned, heading back towards the kitchen as Bobby turned and headed back towards his study.
"Hey, where are you going?" demanded Dean.
"I'm doing research, remember?" Sam replied. "I think I've found us a job, but I gotta chase up a lot more intel yet."
"I'm workin' up a translation for a guy in Cali," Bobby said, "He needs it ASAP."
"But we were gonna watch HELL-TV!" pouted Dean.
"We will, son," Bobby assured him, "But we got things to do first."
"But this is important!" Dean whined. "I wanna watch it nooooooooow!"
Sam grinned, shaking his head. "Yeah, I think it might still be him," he chuckled. He emerged from the kitchen with his laptop, and followed Bobby to the study. "Hey, Bobby, where's that book with the bit about kelpies in it – not the one written by the monk with not much experience with women but a vivid imagination, the one that's actually useful…"
Dean let out a huff, and flounced across the room, dropping heavily to the sofa. "They're assholes," he told Jimi, who whuffed supportively, "The don't want me to have any fun! I'll start without you!" he yelled.
"Dean, shut up, we're busy," Sam's voice drifted out of the study.
"Don't make me come out there with the spray bottle, boy," added Bobby.
"Bitches," Dean muttered, making a decision.
He headed for the kitchen, where he nuked a packet of microwave popcorn, then took a beer from the fridge and headed back. He settled himself on the sofa, with Jimi Junior snuggled beside him eyeing the popcorn, and picked up the remote.
"We don't need them, do we, J-Man? We'll just have ourselves an awesome TV time!" He turned on the set, and fiddled with the channel selector. "Let's see if we can find the bit where I celebrate a birthday with a spaful of strippers…"
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'Time is the longest distance between two places', wrote Tennessee Williams.
'Time is a drug; too much of it kills you', wrote Terry Pratchett.
'Time is an illusion', wrote Einstein. 'Lunchtime, doubly so', added Douglas Adams.
They're all right, really. Especially the late Mr Adams; lunchtime can be anytime. It depends on many factors: what time you went to bed, what time you went to sleep, what time you woke up, what time you got out of bed, what you remember about yesterday, how many beer bottles and passed-out people you find in the lounge room, what time you have that meeting with your boss that day, etc. It can be quite complicated, which is why nobody has ever bothered trying to write an equation for it, and they've written equations for some pretty complicated things, like the quantum state of the electron of a hydrogen atom, or the flux of carbon donation metabolites through a cell switching from anaerobic to aerobic metabolism, or the probability of a particular individual getting an extras part as a stormtrooper in the next Star Wars movie. But not lunchtime. Because time is, above all, complicated.
Unless it's waffle fries for lunch, in which case, it's very simple: lunchtime is NOW.
If waffle fries are not present, then time is a fluid, branching, spreading thing, a vast radiating network of maybe gradually collapsing towards a tiny point of now; condenses into present, then spreads out again into potential future. Think of an ant at the bottom of a large tuft of ornamental grass, or a tourist attempting to navigate the LA roads system: there are seemingly infinite possibilities, but you won't know which one you're travelling on until you're there. The point is, right up until the moment that you arrive at here, you could possibly end up anywhere. And after that, a whole new web of possible anywheres spreads out before you.
HELL-TV was simply a way to look beyond now, the point where time trickled through the tiny orifice of the present like an illicit chocolate thickshake consumed by somebody after having lap-band surgery. Changing channels was just looking at possible timelines, before they happened, or after they didn't (told you it was complicated). It dealt in possibilities, not certainties, but an astute observer could make some educated guesses about the likelihoods of certain proto-timelines according to how many channels were being received around the lifetime of a particular individual.
Shovelling a handful of popcorn into his mouth and dropping some of the less desirable crunchy bits for Jimi, Dean picked up the remote, and turned the TV on.
Oh dear. Oh dear. What is Dean going to see? It's bound to traumatise him, isn't it, poor demonic darling, but it's all the fault of Scruyu, the goddess of narrative. That, and the Denizens who keep making supplication unto her.
I mean, I come in here this evening, and I find all these prayer scrolls kicking around on the floor. I think some of them have been written in chocolate sauce. What a mess! Look at this one, 'Make all Dean's clothes fall off', and this one, 'Make all Sam's clothes fall off', and there's more, look, 'Make Dean wash his car nekkid', and 'More shower scenes for Sam', and, 'Rough Dean up then tie him up', and 'Rough Sam up then tie him up', it gets worse, 'Shove Sam in a box', that's just typical, isn't it, then this one, 'Make all Sam's clothes fall off then rough him up and tie him up and shove him in a box', Leahelisabeth you depraved beldame, oh, and this one, 'Make all Dean's clothes fall off then rough him up and tie him up', and what's this one, 'Make all Dean's clothes fall off then rough him up and tie him up and shove him in the box with Sam'… LeeMarieJack, you are a dreadful creature.
Send reviews, while I sweep up in here. Seriously, there are days when I think it would be better to use a flame-thrower. And what happens if The Driver comes in and is confronted with This Sort Of Thing? He'll have to go and install a new spa pump in Das Bus or something, just to soothe his nerves.