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Eight Crazy Nights Eight (one)
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alexseanchai : what if Sam and Dean were Jewish? Note: I have made very few revisions in SPN’s supernatural canon.
Dean always thought the Winchesters were like the Maccabees. Tough fighters, winning against impossible odds, able to make anything last longer when there was no more cash or no more road. Whether it was God or just stubbornness behind them, they didn’t give in. And there was no mom in the Maccabees’ story either. He’d asked Dad just to be sure.
By the time Dean was ten, Dad was sick enough of religion that he wouldn’t have done anything on his own, but Dean kept track of the holidays for Sammy’s sake. Sammy loved the idea of the covenant (or maybe he just loved the idea of being able to argue, because damn if the boy couldn’t twist his way around a rule like nobody’s business). Dad, when he’d had a few too many, said that God was a bastard if He let demons walk the earth, and Dad knew what he was talking about, but Sammy didn’t have to.
No way was Dad keeping the Sabbath, which Dean totally understood—bad guys didn’t take the Sabbath off either—but Dean could at least make sure that they lit the candles after the nightly round of laying down salt and ashes.
****
The year Sam was twelve, Dean had his first fight with Dad, ever. “You’re not quitting school,” Dad said, with the awesome finality of a prophet. Sure, Dad had broken down and cashed in the college funds when he’d needed to build his arsenal, but there was a rock bottom.
“I’ll keep studying,” Dean swore. “Hunting lore, real stuff. You know they’re not teaching anything I really need.” You know we need the money, he didn’t say, because Dad would only deny it and move them straight out, to prove that he could take care of his boys.
In the end, Dad gave in, possibly just shocked by Dean’s resistance, a lonely outlier in over a decade of unquestioning filial obedience. They spent the whole year in Macon, Dean using his fake ID to work at a local garage, Dad traveling to hunts in a 200-mile radius. The Conservative temple didn’t want to take on a kid so late, but after Sam showed off his Hebrew, the rabbi changed his mind.
Dad missed the bar mitvah. Sam’s classmates all thought it was weird that there was no party, even though the rabbi gave a stern lecture about The Way Things Used To Be, where a boy would be called to the Torah one morning and that would be the only thing different for him—maybe he’d be offered coffee instead of milk after, if he was lucky. Self-evidently, that wasn’t how it worked any more, and Sam went from weird but smart kid to total social outcast in the space of a week, while his classmates digested the new information.
After the service, Sam probably expected Dean to make fun of him about ‘today I am a man,’ since Sam at thirteen couldn’t have looked less manly in a princess costume. Dean thought about it, but he’d seen the looks on the congregants’ faces and he could already tell how this was going to go. Even the kids who didn’t care would be hearing from their parents about how odd the Winchesters were: no proud papa, not even cake and ice cream after. So instead Dean gave Sam eighteen bucks and his first beer, and told him that as far as Dean was concerned Sam had been a man since he shot his first werewolf.
They left Macon a couple of weeks later. By then, Sam was glad to go.
****
Sam defiantly wore a kippah when he was a kid, no matter where they were in the country. Dean thought it was kind of funny that it was Stanford that flipped Sam over into wearing hats instead, maybe because covering his head was no longer some kind of rebellion. But Dean didn’t make any comments, because hats were definitely more flexible in terms of disguises. And, though he’d never, ever say it, Sam looked awesome in a fedora.
****
Dean was in a fine mood. Sam was with him, they knew Dad was alive, and neither of them were bleeding or in jail. He opened the glass door and gestured at Sam to hurry the fuck up. “They tried to kill us. We survived. Let’s eat.”
Sam gave good bitchface, but he followed Dean into the diner. “You know that’s only for holidays,” he complained, resettling his hat on his head as the waitress showed them to their booth.
Dean wanted to bitch right back, but the desire to be the more mature brother just this once prevailed. If Sam wanted to slam on a family post-hunt tradition, that was no different from anything else he wanted. “It’s a joke, dude, I think it can be about any day we want. Especially a day we torched a vampire.”
Sam shot the waitress a look, checking to make sure that she wasn’t listening, but she was already halfway across the restaurant, though still making eyes at Dean.
****
Sam didn’t like to use holy water. Dean was a pragmatist. If you found a religion with lots of effective paraphernalia, you used the paraphernalia, regardless of the theology. “You own a priest outfit, Sam,” he said, annoyed, when Sam waved it off before they went to confront the demons holding Dad.
“It’s not the same.” Sam launched into this complicated explanation about belief and ritual and, whatever, purity of heart, but Dean ignored him, never having been much for purity in any form. He put on the tefillin when Sam said to, though. As stupid as they made him feel, if Rambam suggested that they’d prevent possession then he wasn’t going to ignore a potential protection like that. If they could have worn the tefillin and still dealt with civilians, he would’ve supported keeping them on twenty-four seven, but two hot guys wearing black leather boxes on their foreheads and arms tended to attract a lot more attention than two hot guys on their own.
Sam refused to get a protective tattoo instead, even after that bitch Meg took him over, but Dean figured that out: he knocked Sam out with a mickey in his beer and did the work himself, then propped Sam up in the bed, with a printout from the relevant portion of the Shulchan Arukh holding the involuntary tattooee blameless on the unmarked side of his chest for when he woke up.
****
“Mmm, bacon,” Dean said blissfully, through his mouthful.
“You’re a savage,” Sam told him.
Dean blinked at him, innocent. “Technically, I’m an apostate.”
****
When Dean returned from Hell, the fedora was gone. Dean didn’t need to ask why. He wanted his Sam back, stupid rituals and all, but he couldn’t pretend that he thought much of the God to Whom Sam would be showing respect.
He found Sam’s tallit crumpled up in the back of the Impala, like a rag. Dean took it and folded it and put it back into its embroidered bag. Just in case.
2.turnonmyheels: Chuck: Morgan moves into Casey's apartment because he's tired of being a third wheel with Chuck and Sarah. Casey's daughter moves into Casey's apartment for whatever reason. Casey can't stand being around his *daughter* macking on Grimes so he moves in with Chuck and Sarah. Instead of being a third-wheel with Chuck and Sarah, they wind up in a polyamorous relationship. PG-13, maybe; Sarah/Chuck and pre-Sarah/Chuck/Casey.
Chuck versus the Roommate
“Did we agree to this?” Chuck asked Sarah from over the top of the box of Casey’s clothes he was carrying (“Careful with those, or I’ll kill you.”). “Because—unh!—I’m not sure I remember saying, ‘Hey, Casey, I know that living with Morgan and Alex is stressing you out, so why don’t you fix the problem by moving in with us?’”
“The NSA won’t let him move out of the apartment complex,” Sarah said, effortlessly hoisting her own box of assorted weaponry. “Besides, do you really want to find out what Casey would do to Morgan if he had to watch him and Alex together every night?”
“No, no, you have a point,” Chuck assured her, plonking his box down on the bare mattress of Morgan’s former room. “It’s just—it feels a little musical-chairs, The Real World-tangled-relationships-ish, you know?”
“Don’t think of it as losing a best friend as a roommate,” Morgan suggested, chewing on an apple as he watched them work. “Think of it as gaining an arsenal.”
Casey arrived with another box in time to growl at that. Chuck didn’t know what was in Casey’s box, but it was heavy enough that Casey was sweating and his muscles were standing out really nicely, highlighted by the short BuyMore polo. “What?” Casey snapped, catching Chuck looking.
“Uh, nothing!” Chuck thought about the possibility that they’d be sharing a bathroom, or that Casey would wander around post-shower in nothing but a towel (okay, a towel and a weapon), and gulped. “I’ll just go get another box.”
****
Later, lying in bed with Sarah, he was practically purring as she ran her hand gently down his back. He was so amazingly lucky that this incredible woman, who could do everything from defuse a bomb to knock out an assailant with her pinky finger, wanted to be with him. He opened his mouth to say as much, but Sarah got there first.
“Chuck.”
Oh yeah, that tone was not among his favorites. It wasn’t the worst—not the ‘Chuck, you’re in mortal danger,’ nor the ‘Chuck, I’m going to break up with you because we don’t want the same things.’ It wasn’t even the ‘Chuck, I’m not sure you can do the job.’ But it was a ‘Chuck, we need to talk’ instead of a ‘Chuck, I love you like Leia loves Han.’
“Yeeesss?” He turned his head, ready to face his doom.
“How do you feel about Casey?”
“Buh?” Okay, try again. “Well, for one thing, I’m a little afraid that if I use the words ‘feel’ and ‘Casey’ in the same sentence, he’ll know and he’ll hurt me. But, other than that—I trust him with my life. I trust him with your life.” Chuck stopped, unsure where this was going.
“There was that time you kissed him,” Sarah prompted.
That was in no way the destination Chuck expected, and nothing for which he’d ever prepared. So, pretty much like the rest of his existence. “That was to save his life! I mean, I thought it was. Also, we weren’t together at the time!” He turned on his side, trying to show Sarah his complete sincerity. He was lying down and only in his boxers, which you’d think would help with the sincerity. “Sarah, I love you. The fact that I recognize, objectively, that John Casey is beefsteak central, and that I’d follow him into a hail of gunfire—nothing about that makes me any less committed to you.”
Sarah smiled, and if Chuck had been standing up he’d probably have needed to lie down, what with the completeness of his relief. “I believe you, Chuck. But—I have noticed how you look at him. And I want you to know, I trust him the same way you do.”
“Okay,” Chuck said.
She bit her lip, then looked at him with her Bond-esque steely-eyed resolve. “And if you wanted to ask him to join us, I wouldn’t say no.”
“Why do I have to ask?” Chuck demanded—okay, whined—before her words actually reached his brain. Not to mention other parts. “Wait, what?”
She put her hand on his shoulder, squeezing just hard enough to keep him from hysterics. “You, me, and Casey, we’ve been through a lot together. I realized, I don’t want him to be alone, but I don’t really want to have to share him with anyone else. If you’re not okay with that, I’ll absolutely understand, and you know I’d never do anything without your full approval and participation. But I wanted you to know that the option is there.”
“Whoa,” Chuck said. Sarah’s open expression wavered just enough for him to realize that she was terrified. She wasn’t used to putting herself out there emotionally, and she’d done that for him, and this was the next step for them, even setting Casey aside. “Well, uh.” He swallowed. “First, thank you so much for trusting me enough to tell me that. Each time I think you can’t astound me again with how brave you are, you just go and prove me wrong. So, there’s that.” He reached out and pulled her into a hug, tight enough to say ‘I never want to let you go.’
When he felt her relax a little, he said the next part into her shoulder. “Also, and this is without making any final decision, I’m a little concerned that if I said anything like that to him, Casey would freak, and by freak I mean pummel me into a smudge on the floor. Let’s face it, the U.S. Marines are not exactly known for their open-mindedness, and half the time I think Casey just barely tolerates me. The other half I know he just barely tolerates me.”
Sarah’s body shook with her amusement. “He didn’t kill you for the kiss. Casey looks at you too. He looks at you the way he looks at that twelve thousand dollar rifle scope in his gun catalogue.”
“Really?” Chuck knew how an Intersect reboot felt; this was a shock nearly as great, finding out that a significant portion of what he knew to be true about the world was deeply in error.
“Really,” she said, and kissed him.
What with the kissing and the topic of discussion, he got pretty distracted, so that was the last sustained conversation they had for a while. Afterwards, with Sarah’s head pillowed on his chest, his hand in her hair, he gave it more serious consideration.
“We should ask him together,” he offered. “So he’ll know it’s not a joke. We could hand him a card. Do you want to sleep with both of us, circle yes or no.”
Sarah chuckled, tickling against his skin. “Yeah, he’ll take that seriously.”
“Well, we could always just show up naked in his bed instead.”
“Too threatening. If he feels cornered, he’ll be in the wind before we can regroup.”
“God, this sounds like we’re planning a mission,” Chuck realized.
Sarah raised her head, meeting his eyes. Her hair was so soft against his skin. “Aren’t we?”
Hunh. “Yeah, I guess we are.” He smiled, feeling gooshy with love. “You know, when they talk about work-life balance, I’m not sure that’s the general meaning.”
“Well, it’s us,” she said, as if it were that self-evident.
And yeah, Chuck thought. I guess it is.
3.ariadnes_string: SPN/Fringe: "Once, Olivia Dunham met an angel."
Olivia Dunham’s file said that she possessed a photographic memory. She could read any field report and repeat it back, word for word; the same with a string of numbers. Her ability had greatly aided her acquisition of German and Mandarin vocabulary, though hard work was what gave her fluency.
Most people considered to have photographic memories have trained themselves using various mnemonic devices. Naturally enough, they don’t remember every day of their lives from birth. No one in Fringe Division had reason to question how a woman with eidetic memory could fail to remember distressing events from her early childhood such as the Cortexiphan trials.
In fact, Olivia Dunham’s memories of her childhood were substantially more limited than average. Had it been otherwise, she might one day have realized that her unusual experiences were not limited to those in the Jacksonville Family Day Care Center itself.
Children, by virtue of their age, do not have a particularly good sense of the normal. Olive Dunham, by virtue of her treatment with Cortexiphan, had rather less than most. The fact that the television spoke directly to her was no more surprising than the fact that a room had recently burst into flames around her, leaving her in an untouched corner as if she’d been protected in an invisible egg.
“Olivia,” the voice from the television said.
Olivia frowned at it, because she wasn’t supposed to be watching television without Mom.
“Olivia,” the voice said again, and now there was an image. Olivia thought it was a tree, a winter tree with no leaves like she’d seen in books, only red and blue and pulsing gently. Someone older and better trained might have identified it as an image of the healthy pulmonary circulatory system.
“Hello?” she asked. She wasn’t supposed to talk to strangers, of course, but she wasn’t sure that covered voices from the television. After all, the clown on the morning show talked to children in the audience all the time, though not so much like this.
“Do you have faith?” the voice asked.
“I don’t know what you mean,” she said. She turned away from the television. The picture was too much like the things she saw during tests. She didn’t like the tests, even if there was a little part of her that enjoyed the floating feeling she got after an injection.
“Faith in God,” the television said, faster now, as if it were getting impatient. “I need to know if you are strong in the Lord.”
It was saying words like Olivia heard in church, but it sounded more like the men who gave her tests. Like it wasn’t looking at her (how could a television look?) but down at a clipboard, checking boxes. Like the bruises that made them switch arms for the next set of injections came from Olivia’s deliberate misbehavior.
“I don’t want to talk to you any more,” Olivia said. She went into her room and closed the door on the television.
The clock radio on the night table squealed into life. It hurt her ears, so much that she curled up into a ball, hands trying to protect herself. She didn’t uncurl even when the sound stopped.
“Olivia,” the radio said. “You have been chosen for a great mission.”
“I don’t want it,” she whimpered. “Please.”
She didn’t move for a long time. Not until Mom came home and knocked on the door of her room, wanting to know why the screen of the television had exploded.
Olivia never recovered this, or any memory of that long year. Nor did she receive any overtures again. She was not, precisely, an abomination once the Cortexiphan finished doing its work, but neither was she ideal.
And there were so many other children available.
4.theatervine: Supernatural: What if. Instead of Lisa and Ben it was Cassie that Dean went to and they became the Nick and Nora Charles of Supernatural? She's a reporter, he's a PI, together they crack cases and take down bad guys, human & supernatural? How would that change things when Samuel, Sam and the others showed up? Dean/Cassie.
“It’s not that you’re …” Samuel said, and Dean just waited, though Cassie didn’t look surprised. Then Dean remembered that Samuel was thirty-five years older than he looked. Dean glared at him. “She’s not family!” Samuel said, throwing up his hands.
“How the fuck do you think somebody gets to be family?” Dean demanded, edging closer to Cassie, who folded her arms but blessedly continued to let Dean do the talking. Dean looked to Sam for some help, but Sam continued to give him nothing, leaning in the corner of Samuel’s cluttered office and watching the confrontation like he was waiting to see if a line of ants would succeed in moving a leaf five hundred times their own size. Dean gave him a later-for-you eyebrow raise, even as his stomach dropped Pitwards.
Samuel’s frustrated chuff brought Dean’s attention back. “An investigative reporter, Dean? This isn’t Candid Camera.”
“I don’t even know what that means,” Dean told him.
“It means we can’t just tell the world about what we do!”
“Gee,” Dean said, letting the sarcasm drip heavily, “after a lifetime of hunting monsters, I had no idea that people found it hard to believe. Cassie’s known about us for most of a decade, been doing this herself for a year. The stories she’s sold haven’t been anything that puts us in danger. I trust her judgment.”
“Yeah?” Samuel asked, something cold and assessing in his eye. “I don’t trust yours.”
Dean couldn’t help his silent appeal to Sam, but he didn’t have to stick around when Sam smiled, slick and professional, and held up his hands and tried to pretend like Samuel had a point.
Back at the motel, Cassie got behind him when he sat on the edge of the bed, wrapping herself around him with her knees around his hips and her arms draped over his shoulders. “So,” she said into his ear, “that went well.”
“You thinking what I’m thinking?” Dean leaned back into her, just a little.
Cassie’s voice was pitched low, seductive. “What’s up with Sam, and what on earth does Samuel Campbell think an investigative reporter might find out that he doesn’t want someone else to know?”
“Take out the ‘on earth’ part,” Dean cautioned, and twisted to take her in his arms. She landed on his lap and he kissed her for a while. Eventually he had to stop, even though he kept a hand touching her face. “I know you can handle yourself, and I know you signed on for dangerous. But I’m pretty sure this is gonna be worse. Anything with my family—and Sam back from the Pit, we don’t know why. The last time one of us got grabbed out of Hell it was the apocalpyse. So, you know, I’d probably respect your intelligence more if you walk away.”
Cassie settled herself more firmly on his thighs. “Still smarter than you,” she said fondly.
Dean snorted. “Not a high bar,” he began, but Cassie put two fingers to his still-kiss-warm lips.
“When you showed up,” Cassie said, “I thought you’d probably kill yourself pretty soon. I thought, if I get him through the next month, then maybe he’ll decide to live. And then I thought, maybe if I find him a ghost. I didn’t know how much I’d like it. The stories I tell are supposed to make people’s lives better, Dean. If I can do that some other way—okay, I still want that Pulitzer. But if I can help, then I guess I’ll have to settle for writing the liberal drifter’s answer to Left Behind.”
Dean had his hands on her waist, just keeping her stable. “You can always change your mind,” he promised.
“Idiot,” she said, and kissed him again.
5.eclectic: - Ruat Caelum: Lex just... gives up. Clark secured Lex's body, but his soul turns out to be much more elusive. As it turns out, all you had to do to defeat Lex Luthor is to take away his dreams. Note: as you would expect, a bit depressing!
Clark’s wrong about the timeline. It takes, by his own estimation, ten months for the political dynamics to change enough that Lex would have to fight another war to get his power back. Sure, Napoleon and Churchill pulled off great comebacks, and Lex is at least their equal, but things move faster these days, and Lex was already holding a fragile coalition together; he didn’t have a nation that only needed unification behind him.
He doesn’t ask Lex to confirm his analysis. The fact that Lex stops attempting escape is confirmation enough.
He spends a few more months as close to the Fortress as possible, worried that Lex will think of something dramatic and final. Lex has a couple of tantrums, full-on adolescent flinging-objects-at-Clark events made worse by the fact that Lex has absolutely no control over whether Clark leaves him alone or not. Lex’s privacy, such as it is, is by Clark’s grace, and even though neither of them ever say so out loud they are both well aware of this fact. Nor can Clark give Lex any real solitude, because Lex is still a threat.
The tantrums, too, pass.
Lex spends a week not getting out of bed. It’s a test, seeing which one of them will break first. Clark figures that he can be gracious, so on the seventh day he picks Lex up and carries him, rescue-style, into the small but well-stocked kitchen he’s had the Fortress set up. It’s not exactly decorated like the farmhouse was, because in the Fortress that would be ridiculous, like grafting an IHOP onto a Mies van der Rohe building. But he’s chosen homey colors and softer angles, and there’s a table in the middle of the floor that’s just right for sitting down for dinner at.
“You’re going to eat, and you’re going to do it here,” Clark tells him. He’s kind of expecting Lex to dare him—think you can force my mouth open without breaking my jaw? Think you can make me keep it down?—but Lex hesitates, runs his hand over the back of his head, and then quickly eats his soup.
This is a tactic, Clark knows. And Lex’s strategic goals—freedom, converting Clark to his side—those are obvious too. He’s just not able to figure out the connection of the former to the latter, and it makes him nervous.
They don’t have sex, that night. Clark goes out patrolling instead, even though it makes some of the League antsy that Clark doesn’t really need to sleep. He fights a couple of fires, rescues some lost hikers in a California state park, little things. He doesn’t go home to eat or change because he doesn’t need to eat or change. He doesn’t stop by League HQ to be stared at by worried heroes. Sometimes he misses being Clark Kent, Daily Planet reporter, but there are plenty of other reporters who can chronicle the rebuilding of the world. Still, it would be nice to be able to talk to someone who wasn’t part of the League, whose reaction to his troubles wouldn’t be somewhere between ‘I told you so’ and ‘I don’t see what the problem is.’
The next day, Clark returns and finds that, according to the Fortress, Lex has eaten three balanced meals, spaced appropriately throughout the day. He wants to stalk into Lex’s room and demand to know what Lex is up to, just like old times, but it’s different when Lex can’t even pretend to take measures to keep him out. Instead he knocks and enters like a regular person.
Lex doesn’t say anything. After a moment, he turns and meets Clark’s eyes. Clark shudders but doesn’t know why. The look on Lex’s face is only vaguely familiar.
Clark only recognizes it later that night, after they’ve gone to bed and Lex is asleep next to him.
Lex looked like Tina Greer, or Zod. Like there was someone else at home inside him.
Clark offers Lex puzzles, scientific challenges no one else could solve. Lex treats them like an old, jaded housecat treats catnip: occasionally he plays with them, half-heartedly, because he knows it’s in the job description. Sometimes he produces answers and sometimes he doesn’t, and eventually Clark gives him another one either way.
Sometimes Lex’s answers are right and sometimes they aren’t. Clark wants to believe that this was by design, but usually the Fortress can tell him outright, which isn’t subtle enough for Lex. For Clark’s Lex.
“Are you punishing me?” he asks Lex, once.
Lex tilts his head, questioning. He doesn’t speak.
“Lex,” Clark says warningly, some of the old anger in his voice. He’s tried to be gentle, because he’s responsible for Lex and Lex is entirely dependent on him. The old threats and barely suppressed violence would be … inappropriate, is the least dangerous word. (Abusive isn’t the most.)
“I’m not punishing you, Clark,” he says. Clark flinches. Lex used to say his name differently, like Clark was something precious, extraordinary, and not just another dull fact of his existence.
They fuck a lot. It’s Clark’s penance. Lex says the right filthy words and moves in all the familiar ways, and it’s like fucking the world’s most expensive, most exclusive blow-up doll.
They’re both going to live a long time.
alexseanchai : what if Sam and Dean were Jewish? Note: I have made very few revisions in SPN’s supernatural canon.Dean always thought the Winchesters were like the Maccabees. Tough fighters, winning against impossible odds, able to make anything last longer when there was no more cash or no more road. Whether it was God or just stubbornness behind them, they didn’t give in. And there was no mom in the Maccabees’ story either. He’d asked Dad just to be sure.
By the time Dean was ten, Dad was sick enough of religion that he wouldn’t have done anything on his own, but Dean kept track of the holidays for Sammy’s sake. Sammy loved the idea of the covenant (or maybe he just loved the idea of being able to argue, because damn if the boy couldn’t twist his way around a rule like nobody’s business). Dad, when he’d had a few too many, said that God was a bastard if He let demons walk the earth, and Dad knew what he was talking about, but Sammy didn’t have to.
No way was Dad keeping the Sabbath, which Dean totally understood—bad guys didn’t take the Sabbath off either—but Dean could at least make sure that they lit the candles after the nightly round of laying down salt and ashes.
****
The year Sam was twelve, Dean had his first fight with Dad, ever. “You’re not quitting school,” Dad said, with the awesome finality of a prophet. Sure, Dad had broken down and cashed in the college funds when he’d needed to build his arsenal, but there was a rock bottom.
“I’ll keep studying,” Dean swore. “Hunting lore, real stuff. You know they’re not teaching anything I really need.” You know we need the money, he didn’t say, because Dad would only deny it and move them straight out, to prove that he could take care of his boys.
In the end, Dad gave in, possibly just shocked by Dean’s resistance, a lonely outlier in over a decade of unquestioning filial obedience. They spent the whole year in Macon, Dean using his fake ID to work at a local garage, Dad traveling to hunts in a 200-mile radius. The Conservative temple didn’t want to take on a kid so late, but after Sam showed off his Hebrew, the rabbi changed his mind.
Dad missed the bar mitvah. Sam’s classmates all thought it was weird that there was no party, even though the rabbi gave a stern lecture about The Way Things Used To Be, where a boy would be called to the Torah one morning and that would be the only thing different for him—maybe he’d be offered coffee instead of milk after, if he was lucky. Self-evidently, that wasn’t how it worked any more, and Sam went from weird but smart kid to total social outcast in the space of a week, while his classmates digested the new information.
After the service, Sam probably expected Dean to make fun of him about ‘today I am a man,’ since Sam at thirteen couldn’t have looked less manly in a princess costume. Dean thought about it, but he’d seen the looks on the congregants’ faces and he could already tell how this was going to go. Even the kids who didn’t care would be hearing from their parents about how odd the Winchesters were: no proud papa, not even cake and ice cream after. So instead Dean gave Sam eighteen bucks and his first beer, and told him that as far as Dean was concerned Sam had been a man since he shot his first werewolf.
They left Macon a couple of weeks later. By then, Sam was glad to go.
****
Sam defiantly wore a kippah when he was a kid, no matter where they were in the country. Dean thought it was kind of funny that it was Stanford that flipped Sam over into wearing hats instead, maybe because covering his head was no longer some kind of rebellion. But Dean didn’t make any comments, because hats were definitely more flexible in terms of disguises. And, though he’d never, ever say it, Sam looked awesome in a fedora.
****
Dean was in a fine mood. Sam was with him, they knew Dad was alive, and neither of them were bleeding or in jail. He opened the glass door and gestured at Sam to hurry the fuck up. “They tried to kill us. We survived. Let’s eat.”
Sam gave good bitchface, but he followed Dean into the diner. “You know that’s only for holidays,” he complained, resettling his hat on his head as the waitress showed them to their booth.
Dean wanted to bitch right back, but the desire to be the more mature brother just this once prevailed. If Sam wanted to slam on a family post-hunt tradition, that was no different from anything else he wanted. “It’s a joke, dude, I think it can be about any day we want. Especially a day we torched a vampire.”
Sam shot the waitress a look, checking to make sure that she wasn’t listening, but she was already halfway across the restaurant, though still making eyes at Dean.
****
Sam didn’t like to use holy water. Dean was a pragmatist. If you found a religion with lots of effective paraphernalia, you used the paraphernalia, regardless of the theology. “You own a priest outfit, Sam,” he said, annoyed, when Sam waved it off before they went to confront the demons holding Dad.
“It’s not the same.” Sam launched into this complicated explanation about belief and ritual and, whatever, purity of heart, but Dean ignored him, never having been much for purity in any form. He put on the tefillin when Sam said to, though. As stupid as they made him feel, if Rambam suggested that they’d prevent possession then he wasn’t going to ignore a potential protection like that. If they could have worn the tefillin and still dealt with civilians, he would’ve supported keeping them on twenty-four seven, but two hot guys wearing black leather boxes on their foreheads and arms tended to attract a lot more attention than two hot guys on their own.
Sam refused to get a protective tattoo instead, even after that bitch Meg took him over, but Dean figured that out: he knocked Sam out with a mickey in his beer and did the work himself, then propped Sam up in the bed, with a printout from the relevant portion of the Shulchan Arukh holding the involuntary tattooee blameless on the unmarked side of his chest for when he woke up.
****
“Mmm, bacon,” Dean said blissfully, through his mouthful.
“You’re a savage,” Sam told him.
Dean blinked at him, innocent. “Technically, I’m an apostate.”
****
When Dean returned from Hell, the fedora was gone. Dean didn’t need to ask why. He wanted his Sam back, stupid rituals and all, but he couldn’t pretend that he thought much of the God to Whom Sam would be showing respect.
He found Sam’s tallit crumpled up in the back of the Impala, like a rag. Dean took it and folded it and put it back into its embroidered bag. Just in case.
2.
turnonmyheels: Chuck: Morgan moves into Casey's apartment because he's tired of being a third wheel with Chuck and Sarah. Casey's daughter moves into Casey's apartment for whatever reason. Casey can't stand being around his *daughter* macking on Grimes so he moves in with Chuck and Sarah. Instead of being a third-wheel with Chuck and Sarah, they wind up in a polyamorous relationship. PG-13, maybe; Sarah/Chuck and pre-Sarah/Chuck/Casey.Chuck versus the Roommate
“Did we agree to this?” Chuck asked Sarah from over the top of the box of Casey’s clothes he was carrying (“Careful with those, or I’ll kill you.”). “Because—unh!—I’m not sure I remember saying, ‘Hey, Casey, I know that living with Morgan and Alex is stressing you out, so why don’t you fix the problem by moving in with us?’”
“The NSA won’t let him move out of the apartment complex,” Sarah said, effortlessly hoisting her own box of assorted weaponry. “Besides, do you really want to find out what Casey would do to Morgan if he had to watch him and Alex together every night?”
“No, no, you have a point,” Chuck assured her, plonking his box down on the bare mattress of Morgan’s former room. “It’s just—it feels a little musical-chairs, The Real World-tangled-relationships-ish, you know?”
“Don’t think of it as losing a best friend as a roommate,” Morgan suggested, chewing on an apple as he watched them work. “Think of it as gaining an arsenal.”
Casey arrived with another box in time to growl at that. Chuck didn’t know what was in Casey’s box, but it was heavy enough that Casey was sweating and his muscles were standing out really nicely, highlighted by the short BuyMore polo. “What?” Casey snapped, catching Chuck looking.
“Uh, nothing!” Chuck thought about the possibility that they’d be sharing a bathroom, or that Casey would wander around post-shower in nothing but a towel (okay, a towel and a weapon), and gulped. “I’ll just go get another box.”
****
Later, lying in bed with Sarah, he was practically purring as she ran her hand gently down his back. He was so amazingly lucky that this incredible woman, who could do everything from defuse a bomb to knock out an assailant with her pinky finger, wanted to be with him. He opened his mouth to say as much, but Sarah got there first.
“Chuck.”
Oh yeah, that tone was not among his favorites. It wasn’t the worst—not the ‘Chuck, you’re in mortal danger,’ nor the ‘Chuck, I’m going to break up with you because we don’t want the same things.’ It wasn’t even the ‘Chuck, I’m not sure you can do the job.’ But it was a ‘Chuck, we need to talk’ instead of a ‘Chuck, I love you like Leia loves Han.’
“Yeeesss?” He turned his head, ready to face his doom.
“How do you feel about Casey?”
“Buh?” Okay, try again. “Well, for one thing, I’m a little afraid that if I use the words ‘feel’ and ‘Casey’ in the same sentence, he’ll know and he’ll hurt me. But, other than that—I trust him with my life. I trust him with your life.” Chuck stopped, unsure where this was going.
“There was that time you kissed him,” Sarah prompted.
That was in no way the destination Chuck expected, and nothing for which he’d ever prepared. So, pretty much like the rest of his existence. “That was to save his life! I mean, I thought it was. Also, we weren’t together at the time!” He turned on his side, trying to show Sarah his complete sincerity. He was lying down and only in his boxers, which you’d think would help with the sincerity. “Sarah, I love you. The fact that I recognize, objectively, that John Casey is beefsteak central, and that I’d follow him into a hail of gunfire—nothing about that makes me any less committed to you.”
Sarah smiled, and if Chuck had been standing up he’d probably have needed to lie down, what with the completeness of his relief. “I believe you, Chuck. But—I have noticed how you look at him. And I want you to know, I trust him the same way you do.”
“Okay,” Chuck said.
She bit her lip, then looked at him with her Bond-esque steely-eyed resolve. “And if you wanted to ask him to join us, I wouldn’t say no.”
“Why do I have to ask?” Chuck demanded—okay, whined—before her words actually reached his brain. Not to mention other parts. “Wait, what?”
She put her hand on his shoulder, squeezing just hard enough to keep him from hysterics. “You, me, and Casey, we’ve been through a lot together. I realized, I don’t want him to be alone, but I don’t really want to have to share him with anyone else. If you’re not okay with that, I’ll absolutely understand, and you know I’d never do anything without your full approval and participation. But I wanted you to know that the option is there.”
“Whoa,” Chuck said. Sarah’s open expression wavered just enough for him to realize that she was terrified. She wasn’t used to putting herself out there emotionally, and she’d done that for him, and this was the next step for them, even setting Casey aside. “Well, uh.” He swallowed. “First, thank you so much for trusting me enough to tell me that. Each time I think you can’t astound me again with how brave you are, you just go and prove me wrong. So, there’s that.” He reached out and pulled her into a hug, tight enough to say ‘I never want to let you go.’
When he felt her relax a little, he said the next part into her shoulder. “Also, and this is without making any final decision, I’m a little concerned that if I said anything like that to him, Casey would freak, and by freak I mean pummel me into a smudge on the floor. Let’s face it, the U.S. Marines are not exactly known for their open-mindedness, and half the time I think Casey just barely tolerates me. The other half I know he just barely tolerates me.”
Sarah’s body shook with her amusement. “He didn’t kill you for the kiss. Casey looks at you too. He looks at you the way he looks at that twelve thousand dollar rifle scope in his gun catalogue.”
“Really?” Chuck knew how an Intersect reboot felt; this was a shock nearly as great, finding out that a significant portion of what he knew to be true about the world was deeply in error.
“Really,” she said, and kissed him.
What with the kissing and the topic of discussion, he got pretty distracted, so that was the last sustained conversation they had for a while. Afterwards, with Sarah’s head pillowed on his chest, his hand in her hair, he gave it more serious consideration.
“We should ask him together,” he offered. “So he’ll know it’s not a joke. We could hand him a card. Do you want to sleep with both of us, circle yes or no.”
Sarah chuckled, tickling against his skin. “Yeah, he’ll take that seriously.”
“Well, we could always just show up naked in his bed instead.”
“Too threatening. If he feels cornered, he’ll be in the wind before we can regroup.”
“God, this sounds like we’re planning a mission,” Chuck realized.
Sarah raised her head, meeting his eyes. Her hair was so soft against his skin. “Aren’t we?”
Hunh. “Yeah, I guess we are.” He smiled, feeling gooshy with love. “You know, when they talk about work-life balance, I’m not sure that’s the general meaning.”
“Well, it’s us,” she said, as if it were that self-evident.
And yeah, Chuck thought. I guess it is.
3.
ariadnes_string: SPN/Fringe: "Once, Olivia Dunham met an angel."Olivia Dunham’s file said that she possessed a photographic memory. She could read any field report and repeat it back, word for word; the same with a string of numbers. Her ability had greatly aided her acquisition of German and Mandarin vocabulary, though hard work was what gave her fluency.
Most people considered to have photographic memories have trained themselves using various mnemonic devices. Naturally enough, they don’t remember every day of their lives from birth. No one in Fringe Division had reason to question how a woman with eidetic memory could fail to remember distressing events from her early childhood such as the Cortexiphan trials.
In fact, Olivia Dunham’s memories of her childhood were substantially more limited than average. Had it been otherwise, she might one day have realized that her unusual experiences were not limited to those in the Jacksonville Family Day Care Center itself.
Children, by virtue of their age, do not have a particularly good sense of the normal. Olive Dunham, by virtue of her treatment with Cortexiphan, had rather less than most. The fact that the television spoke directly to her was no more surprising than the fact that a room had recently burst into flames around her, leaving her in an untouched corner as if she’d been protected in an invisible egg.
“Olivia,” the voice from the television said.
Olivia frowned at it, because she wasn’t supposed to be watching television without Mom.
“Olivia,” the voice said again, and now there was an image. Olivia thought it was a tree, a winter tree with no leaves like she’d seen in books, only red and blue and pulsing gently. Someone older and better trained might have identified it as an image of the healthy pulmonary circulatory system.
“Hello?” she asked. She wasn’t supposed to talk to strangers, of course, but she wasn’t sure that covered voices from the television. After all, the clown on the morning show talked to children in the audience all the time, though not so much like this.
“Do you have faith?” the voice asked.
“I don’t know what you mean,” she said. She turned away from the television. The picture was too much like the things she saw during tests. She didn’t like the tests, even if there was a little part of her that enjoyed the floating feeling she got after an injection.
“Faith in God,” the television said, faster now, as if it were getting impatient. “I need to know if you are strong in the Lord.”
It was saying words like Olivia heard in church, but it sounded more like the men who gave her tests. Like it wasn’t looking at her (how could a television look?) but down at a clipboard, checking boxes. Like the bruises that made them switch arms for the next set of injections came from Olivia’s deliberate misbehavior.
“I don’t want to talk to you any more,” Olivia said. She went into her room and closed the door on the television.
The clock radio on the night table squealed into life. It hurt her ears, so much that she curled up into a ball, hands trying to protect herself. She didn’t uncurl even when the sound stopped.
“Olivia,” the radio said. “You have been chosen for a great mission.”
“I don’t want it,” she whimpered. “Please.”
She didn’t move for a long time. Not until Mom came home and knocked on the door of her room, wanting to know why the screen of the television had exploded.
Olivia never recovered this, or any memory of that long year. Nor did she receive any overtures again. She was not, precisely, an abomination once the Cortexiphan finished doing its work, but neither was she ideal.
And there were so many other children available.
4.
theatervine: Supernatural: What if. Instead of Lisa and Ben it was Cassie that Dean went to and they became the Nick and Nora Charles of Supernatural? She's a reporter, he's a PI, together they crack cases and take down bad guys, human & supernatural? How would that change things when Samuel, Sam and the others showed up? Dean/Cassie.“It’s not that you’re …” Samuel said, and Dean just waited, though Cassie didn’t look surprised. Then Dean remembered that Samuel was thirty-five years older than he looked. Dean glared at him. “She’s not family!” Samuel said, throwing up his hands.
“How the fuck do you think somebody gets to be family?” Dean demanded, edging closer to Cassie, who folded her arms but blessedly continued to let Dean do the talking. Dean looked to Sam for some help, but Sam continued to give him nothing, leaning in the corner of Samuel’s cluttered office and watching the confrontation like he was waiting to see if a line of ants would succeed in moving a leaf five hundred times their own size. Dean gave him a later-for-you eyebrow raise, even as his stomach dropped Pitwards.
Samuel’s frustrated chuff brought Dean’s attention back. “An investigative reporter, Dean? This isn’t Candid Camera.”
“I don’t even know what that means,” Dean told him.
“It means we can’t just tell the world about what we do!”
“Gee,” Dean said, letting the sarcasm drip heavily, “after a lifetime of hunting monsters, I had no idea that people found it hard to believe. Cassie’s known about us for most of a decade, been doing this herself for a year. The stories she’s sold haven’t been anything that puts us in danger. I trust her judgment.”
“Yeah?” Samuel asked, something cold and assessing in his eye. “I don’t trust yours.”
Dean couldn’t help his silent appeal to Sam, but he didn’t have to stick around when Sam smiled, slick and professional, and held up his hands and tried to pretend like Samuel had a point.
Back at the motel, Cassie got behind him when he sat on the edge of the bed, wrapping herself around him with her knees around his hips and her arms draped over his shoulders. “So,” she said into his ear, “that went well.”
“You thinking what I’m thinking?” Dean leaned back into her, just a little.
Cassie’s voice was pitched low, seductive. “What’s up with Sam, and what on earth does Samuel Campbell think an investigative reporter might find out that he doesn’t want someone else to know?”
“Take out the ‘on earth’ part,” Dean cautioned, and twisted to take her in his arms. She landed on his lap and he kissed her for a while. Eventually he had to stop, even though he kept a hand touching her face. “I know you can handle yourself, and I know you signed on for dangerous. But I’m pretty sure this is gonna be worse. Anything with my family—and Sam back from the Pit, we don’t know why. The last time one of us got grabbed out of Hell it was the apocalpyse. So, you know, I’d probably respect your intelligence more if you walk away.”
Cassie settled herself more firmly on his thighs. “Still smarter than you,” she said fondly.
Dean snorted. “Not a high bar,” he began, but Cassie put two fingers to his still-kiss-warm lips.
“When you showed up,” Cassie said, “I thought you’d probably kill yourself pretty soon. I thought, if I get him through the next month, then maybe he’ll decide to live. And then I thought, maybe if I find him a ghost. I didn’t know how much I’d like it. The stories I tell are supposed to make people’s lives better, Dean. If I can do that some other way—okay, I still want that Pulitzer. But if I can help, then I guess I’ll have to settle for writing the liberal drifter’s answer to Left Behind.”
Dean had his hands on her waist, just keeping her stable. “You can always change your mind,” he promised.
“Idiot,” she said, and kissed him again.
5.
eclectic: - Ruat Caelum: Lex just... gives up. Clark secured Lex's body, but his soul turns out to be much more elusive. As it turns out, all you had to do to defeat Lex Luthor is to take away his dreams. Note: as you would expect, a bit depressing!Clark’s wrong about the timeline. It takes, by his own estimation, ten months for the political dynamics to change enough that Lex would have to fight another war to get his power back. Sure, Napoleon and Churchill pulled off great comebacks, and Lex is at least their equal, but things move faster these days, and Lex was already holding a fragile coalition together; he didn’t have a nation that only needed unification behind him.
He doesn’t ask Lex to confirm his analysis. The fact that Lex stops attempting escape is confirmation enough.
He spends a few more months as close to the Fortress as possible, worried that Lex will think of something dramatic and final. Lex has a couple of tantrums, full-on adolescent flinging-objects-at-Clark events made worse by the fact that Lex has absolutely no control over whether Clark leaves him alone or not. Lex’s privacy, such as it is, is by Clark’s grace, and even though neither of them ever say so out loud they are both well aware of this fact. Nor can Clark give Lex any real solitude, because Lex is still a threat.
The tantrums, too, pass.
Lex spends a week not getting out of bed. It’s a test, seeing which one of them will break first. Clark figures that he can be gracious, so on the seventh day he picks Lex up and carries him, rescue-style, into the small but well-stocked kitchen he’s had the Fortress set up. It’s not exactly decorated like the farmhouse was, because in the Fortress that would be ridiculous, like grafting an IHOP onto a Mies van der Rohe building. But he’s chosen homey colors and softer angles, and there’s a table in the middle of the floor that’s just right for sitting down for dinner at.
“You’re going to eat, and you’re going to do it here,” Clark tells him. He’s kind of expecting Lex to dare him—think you can force my mouth open without breaking my jaw? Think you can make me keep it down?—but Lex hesitates, runs his hand over the back of his head, and then quickly eats his soup.
This is a tactic, Clark knows. And Lex’s strategic goals—freedom, converting Clark to his side—those are obvious too. He’s just not able to figure out the connection of the former to the latter, and it makes him nervous.
They don’t have sex, that night. Clark goes out patrolling instead, even though it makes some of the League antsy that Clark doesn’t really need to sleep. He fights a couple of fires, rescues some lost hikers in a California state park, little things. He doesn’t go home to eat or change because he doesn’t need to eat or change. He doesn’t stop by League HQ to be stared at by worried heroes. Sometimes he misses being Clark Kent, Daily Planet reporter, but there are plenty of other reporters who can chronicle the rebuilding of the world. Still, it would be nice to be able to talk to someone who wasn’t part of the League, whose reaction to his troubles wouldn’t be somewhere between ‘I told you so’ and ‘I don’t see what the problem is.’
The next day, Clark returns and finds that, according to the Fortress, Lex has eaten three balanced meals, spaced appropriately throughout the day. He wants to stalk into Lex’s room and demand to know what Lex is up to, just like old times, but it’s different when Lex can’t even pretend to take measures to keep him out. Instead he knocks and enters like a regular person.
Lex doesn’t say anything. After a moment, he turns and meets Clark’s eyes. Clark shudders but doesn’t know why. The look on Lex’s face is only vaguely familiar.
Clark only recognizes it later that night, after they’ve gone to bed and Lex is asleep next to him.
Lex looked like Tina Greer, or Zod. Like there was someone else at home inside him.
Clark offers Lex puzzles, scientific challenges no one else could solve. Lex treats them like an old, jaded housecat treats catnip: occasionally he plays with them, half-heartedly, because he knows it’s in the job description. Sometimes he produces answers and sometimes he doesn’t, and eventually Clark gives him another one either way.
Sometimes Lex’s answers are right and sometimes they aren’t. Clark wants to believe that this was by design, but usually the Fortress can tell him outright, which isn’t subtle enough for Lex. For Clark’s Lex.
“Are you punishing me?” he asks Lex, once.
Lex tilts his head, questioning. He doesn’t speak.
“Lex,” Clark says warningly, some of the old anger in his voice. He’s tried to be gentle, because he’s responsible for Lex and Lex is entirely dependent on him. The old threats and barely suppressed violence would be … inappropriate, is the least dangerous word. (Abusive isn’t the most.)
“I’m not punishing you, Clark,” he says. Clark flinches. Lex used to say his name differently, like Clark was something precious, extraordinary, and not just another dull fact of his existence.
They fuck a lot. It’s Clark’s penance. Lex says the right filthy words and moves in all the familiar ways, and it’s like fucking the world’s most expensive, most exclusive blow-up doll.
They’re both going to live a long time.
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And I love your Chuck/Sarah/Casey. <33333333
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I love my crazy spy threesome!
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“You’re a savage,” Sam told him.
Dean blinked at him, innocent. “Technically, I’m an apostate.”
I just have to say I love that exchange.
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And I like all the SPN ones a lot but I have to extra special flail for Dean/Cassie.
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And the last one... suffice to say I felt like a punch to the solar plexus. Because yes, there are many ways to die.
I bow to your greatness! You are Queen of Everything =D
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I'm glad the last one had an impact! I thought it was pretty grim.
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And I found the Jewish!Winchesters one just ridiculously touching. Dean lighting the candles! Making sure Sam had his Bar Mitzvah! Keeping his tallit for him! Like you said, not all that different from canon at all.
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I really love the idea of Jewish!Sam and Dean.
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I kinda want a fusion or xover with "The Yiddish Policemen's Union" now--
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a bit depressiing???? HAHAHAH! god joke!!
*kills this clark and lex out of pity*
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And the Fringe one just freaked me out.
I liked your Cassie a great deal.
And as for the Clex one, does 'a bit depressing' really describe that story? It's more like, 'abandon hope all ye who enter here'!
Brilliant but grim.
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Poor Clark & Lex--yeah, that ended badly.
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Poor Clark & Lex--yeah, that ended badly.
Yes, indeed. A bit too canonical!
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Ha, ha! I love that - and this whole piece. Not telling my kids about that loophole, though. :-)
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