string_theory | Genderswapped SPN PSL

Genderswapped SPN PSL

She was sitting on the hood of the Impala. God only knew what time it was--either really early or really late, didn't really matter--but Sammy couldn't sleep. Every single muscle was sore, but she knew herself well enough to know that wasn't the reason. Hell, she'd slept on broken bones and poorly stitched flesh wounds before. Sure. No problem. She'd slept in infested bedspreads and stretched out across the backseat of the car and, once upon a time, even on a dorm room floor.

No. Her tired and aching body had nothing to do with it.

Sammy was having feelings again. And De, being De, wasn't exactly the outlet she needed right now. Problem was, she didn't have an outlet. She could talk to herself, sure. But that was a sign you were going crazy, right?

Seemed crazy.

But then, maybe she needed to give in to the crazy. A deep breath and a quick look at her life recently was enough to convince her she was surrounded by it. She was tired of swimming upstream. Just...you know...not tired enough to sleep apparently.

"Oh, man," she grumbled, rubbing her face.

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"Hey, bratface, what's eating you."

De walked passed, pushing a cold tea into Sam's stomach as she went by. Her baby was full, her snack needs were meet, and they still had a few towns to go.

Still, the summer sun felt nice. They hadn't been in the midwest for awhile, and it always felt more....right to De here. Long stretches of green around them, huge stretches of blue above.

Sam let out a surprised grunt as she took hold of the tea. De hadn't hurt her or anything, but now she was really cranky. What was bugging her that her first instinct was to reach for her gun. She'd spent four years trying to break herself of that particular habit, but apparently, everything that caught her off guard her needed to be riddled with bullets.

Great. Just great.

"Tired," she grumped, sliding off of the hood of the car. Her knees were screaming in protest.

"Not sleeping will do that to you."

Not that De had any room to talk. She was a morning person. And a late night person. And pretty much only slept when she passed out, ususally mostly dressed on to the hotel comfortor from exhaustion. Or alcohol. Or both.

The side effects for having a drill sargent instead of a dad.

Sammy let out a sound. Something between a huff and a sigh. De was right, of course (even if she was also being completely hypocritical; Sam knew how much she was sleeping). And it was irritating her that De was right at the moment. Probably not a good sign. Probably meant that they were headed for something, but it could go either way, a blow out fight or another bout of stupid pranks.

She wasn't sure which one she was rooting for right now. God forbid they should actually talking about feelings.

"Yeah," she said, walking around to the passenger side and pulling the door open.

Then she paused. She didn't know what made her say it. She kind of had an out of body experience, standing beside herself and watching as she spoke. "Hey, De? Do you think dad ever had trouble sleeping at night?"

De paused behind the wheel, letting the heat seep out of the car as she considered that question.

Things like that about dad were always strange. Dad was like the mythical being who lived right along side the man who had had to awkwardly send her into walmart to buy her first training bra, and she'd never found the way to bridge the gap. But it was somewhere in questions like this, and she'd never figured out if she wanted to pin it down, or let the gap grow.

"Yeah, I think he must have. He had as many sweet dreams as us, right?"

Well, no one had had 'sweet dreams' like Sam. But she decided not to press that button. She was just glad De wasn't snarling like a cat over the question. Sam never knew what to expect when she brought up the topic of Dad.

Of course, it was possible she was projecting a little bit there. Sometimes, her own mood around him surprised her.

Maybe 'surprised' wasn't the right word. Scared.

She slid into the passenger seat, pulling the door shut. Staring straight ahead at the clear sky, she tempted fate a little further. "I've been thinking about him a lot lately," she said.

She grunted in response, starting the car.

There wasn't really a time De didn't think about Dad. But it didn't surprise her that Sam wasn't the same. Still, curiosity usually got the better of her, and this time was no different.

"Yeah?"

She took a deep breath, leaning against the back of her seat and staring out at the road ahead of them. "Yeah..."

How to handle this situation. Sam felt like she was dealing with a rabid dog. If she made any sudden movements, she'd probably lose her arm.

Okay, that wasn't quite the right way to think of it, she supposed. De was her sister. De loved her. In that quiet, unspoken way they had.

But. Still.

"I guess," she said carefully, "I'm just wondering what he'd think about...this." She made some kind of vague gesture to the two of them, the Impala, and the open road.

"Us hunting?"

De snorted, taking her eyes off the road for a moment to look over Sam.

"It's what he wanted us to do. I'm sure he'd be pretty proud we picked up where he left off."

Ok, so 'proud' might be a bit of a leap. Dad never seemed proud of anything.

So that's what it took to make Dad proud.

After years of hard work and fighting and friggin' leaving when it all seemed like too much. And in the end, it came back to hunting. The only thing that really mattered. The only thing any of them had.

Dad would be proud. Great. But Dad was gone.

Sam rested her temple on her fingertips, staring out the window. "Yeah," she said in a flat, hollow voice. "Yeah, you're probably right."

"...wait, so it bothers you that you're doing what it would take to make dad proud?"

Because that was Sam's 'Everything is bullshit and I hate life' voice. Which was the fastest way to get De to want to rip things up, claws out. Her sister has a special knack for being a petulant brat.

Dad said she would grow up out of it. De was still waiting.

Oh, God. The dog was picking up on a scent. Sam knew it was a bad idea to bring any of this up. Especially now.

Jumping out of the car onto the middle of the highway just wasn't a viable option.

She decided it was probably best to just diffuse. Maybe De could be distracted by a song on the radio or something.

Sam leaned over, turning up the volume a little bit. "Who said anything was bothering me?" she asked.

She let out a snort of laughter, although it was fairly obvious she wasn't amused.

"You don't have to say you're upset about anything Sammy. You communicate quite well without saying a damn thing." She kept her eyes locked on the road, face pursed into a tight scowl. Really, Sammy. Like she didn't know when Sam's nose was out of joint. She had been the one knocking is out of joint for years.

"So what's is it, then?"

"Nothing," Sam said, realizing how lousy of a liar she was. It was a mistake bringing this up in the first place. Stupid, stupid, stupid.

She leaned back in the seat, closing her eyes. Patches of light flashed on the insides of her eyelids.

Of course, now she had to say something.

But what?

The least objectionable topic became readily apparent. "I just was thinking about things," she said uneasily. "I don't know. Maybe I'm dreaming about dad or something."

Wait. No. No, that was not the least objectionable topic.

She grit her teeth. Sammy playing dumb was some how worse than Sammy sulking. Today was apparently 'Hit all your sibling buttons so they want to throw you out of the moving car' day. De though they had finished with those years ago.

Clearly not.

"Dreams, huh?"

"Just...dreams," she said quickly. "Not...you know." Somehow, she couldn't quite bring herself to say it. She was working so hard not to dwell over everything that had happened with her dream-dreams. That was just one more ugly to dredge up.

But Sam knew exactly how crazy she was coming off now.

Just keep digging that hole...

Something in her voice took out a little of De's edge. Because her sister was still her sister, and this scared De shitless, so hearing that note in her sisters voice lessened the tension.

A little.

Plus, if her sister really was dreaming about dad...she could relate to that. Because didn't she dream about dad most every night?

"What do you dream about?"

Sam turned to look at De. She could feel the shift of moods and, while she couldn't quite parse it all yet, she had a gut instinct to just...ride it out. For a little while, anyway.

Until it got tense or uncomfortable again. Then it was back to avoiding everything and anything.

The Winchester Way.

"Mostly about when we were kids," she said. "The summer we hunted that werewolf."

"That sounds like a cheesy learn to read book." De said with a snort, although her mind was already going back to that summer. It was one of those momenst in memory that life caught on, came back to.

"That was forever ago."

"Tell that to my subconscious," Sam mumbled.

It was a summer she'd never quite been able to forget herself. And she knew De was the same way. Sometimes, it seemed like that was one of the few things they'd agreed on as kids. Which was probably why Sam clung.

That and it had made one of her best papers ever.

Nostalgia was creeping up. And that mix of their childhood, of bad and good all twisted up together, all to such extremes. That the worst day and the best day could be the same day. That that happened over and over again.

She swallowed, glancing over at Sam. "Your subconscious seems to have it down."

Sam watched her sister, with that typical swirl of fondness and sadness. "I sort of miss the days when a cigar was just a cigar, to be honest," she said.

It was suddenly too much. Dad. Their childhood. Thoughts of her old dreams. The notion that she'd almost gotten away from it all. Too many emotions for one car to hold. Even if it was the Impala.

So Sam cleared her throat, putting on her game face.

"Where are we going?" she asked in a hollow tone.

Well, if Sammy wasn't going to keep prusuing family talk time, De certainly wasn't going to push it. She shifted in the drivers seat, glad for the shift in subject matter.

"Small town in Illinois. People started killing each other. A lot. Like...old ladies and teenage girls gone Rambo." De reached down to the seat between them, plucking up a handful of news paper clipping from a file without taking her eye off the road. "Weird things, out of nowhere."

She took the clippings, glad to have something to do. It was weird, though, that this felt normal. Lately, it seemed like 'normal' had lost all meaning.

Just go with it, she thought to herself.

"Demons?" she muttered absently. The words were just lines on paper. She just couldn't concentrate on reading.

"I don't think it's our friendly neighborhood black eyed bitches. Unless they have caught a serious case of the stupid. Too many deaths, to weird, to close together."

She pushed through till she found the one about the 70 year old woman killing her husband. "Plus they seem to be personally motivated."

Sam cracked a wry smile. Then immediately regretted it. What was wrong with her?

As she stared at the photo of the couple, probably old enough to remember Moses parting the Red Sea, that pang of guilt swelled, going up into her throat. She tried to swallow it, but it was doing very little good.

Life was so unfair.

"Do you..." She had to swallow again. "Do you think...whatever it is...it's trying to draw attention?"

"Well, if it's not it's certainly doing a piss poor job at it. That town population can't crack 5,000 and they've had 13 murder in the past two weeks. I doubt they've had more than 13 in the past 20 years."

It was a start, and an obvious one. But any hows or whys were devoid from the papers.

The idea of something ugly purposefully trying to draw attention to itself made Sam feel a little twitchy. That feeling you got when you were walking into a trap. And lately, everything they did felt like the supernatural world was just stalling them. Which, yes, she knew was paranoid and wildly ego-centric (not everything the demons did revolved around them, right?), but she just couldn't shake the feeling.

And she couldn't put it into words yet, either.

So she ignored it.

"How long ago was the last one?" she muttered, flipping through the clippings. "Do you think thirteen was the last one? I mean...the number thirteen and all..."

"Last one I have recorded was on Thursday..."

She shrugged. 13 was a heavy number. And nothing with them was ever just what it was. But even if 13 was the last death, she didn't think that was the end of it.

"Next time we pull over, I'll see if I can get a wireless signal. See if there's anything more recent."

Assuming her laptop was working this week.

Absently, she paged through the clippings a little more, not really finding much. Or not troubled enough to look. Wasn't sure which was worse.

They weren't far out, but it was going to be a drive. And De knew how they were going to spend it.

Reaching down, she pushed in the recent tape to make the rounds, a mix tape she herself had taped of the radio in some hotel room or another. A little variety for Sammy.

The music blasted into the car, and De grinned, rolling her window down.

De just...looked so proud of herself. Sam couldn't help but grin a little herself. More at the look on her sister's face than the music. Devil may care. That's what it was.

Only those words sent a little bit of a chill through her.

They were running out of time.

"Maybe after we finish this job, we should head out to Bobby's," she said cautiously.

"And why would we do that?"

So, visiting Bobby wasn't exactly a weird thing. But both of them knew why Sam wanted to go, and De wasn't going to let her pretend like they didn't.

Sam shrugged awkwardly, sinking deeper into her seat. Hard to believe there had ever been a time when she couldn't see over the dash. But right now, she'd kill to be that small again.

Bad idea. Bad, bad idea. Sam knew. De knew that Sam knew. Sam knew that De knew that Sam knew. They were a very knowledgeable family.

"It's been awhile," she said lamely.

"Uh huh."

She chewed her cheek, trying to decided. Have this conversation now, again? Or put it away. Leave it for later.

"Let it go, Sammy."

It was another out of body experience. Sam seemed to be having a lot of those today. She watched herself turning to look at De. She heard her own voice asking, incredulously, "Let it go? How the hell am I supposed to let it go?"

It was so ridiculous, a part of her wanted to laugh.

To laugh.

In De's face.

"I can't do that, De."

"You can. And you will. There's nothing to be done about it, so stop poking at it before it blows up in both our faces."

If a barely over 5 foot, mid-twenties woman could ever sound like John Winchester, De was doing her best to make her daddy proud.

"No," Sam said stubbornly. "No. It's not that simple and you know it. There's a way. There has to be a way out."

The alternative just sucked too much. Sam refused to accept it.

"So what happens if you keep pushing for your 'way' and get both of us killed, huh?" Her voice is starting to rise, bossiness giving way to anger. "And where does that leave me, and what I gave up if you mess it up and screw us both over."

It wasn't fair to guilt Sam like that, she knew it, but she just needed her to stop.

Sam had to say it. It was what everyone had been thinking, for months now. "You shouldn't have done it in the first place," she said hotly, folding her arms and sinking down into her seat. Unfortunately, she couldn't really get much lower.

She could feel lower, but that wasn't the same thing.

"I'm so sorry princess. Would you like me to kill you again?"

She spat it out and, from the tone of her voice, might not be all opposed to that idea.

"You shouldn't have died. Then neither of us would be in this mess."

That solicited a surly look from Sam. Although, truth be told, she was a little more ticked off by the 'princess' than the threat against her life.

De had been engaging in both for a long time. That was surprisingly comforting and familiar.

But she still hated being called 'princess.'

"People die, De," she said. "That's the way life works."

"You don't. Not on my watch."

And that was all there was too it. If Sam didn't understand it, De wasn't going to go into any weepy monologues to explain it to her. She protected Sam. The end.

A dry, humorless laugh lurched out of Sam's throat. "That's funny," she said. "Really funny. Coming from someone who was technically under orders, from dad, to kill me."

Okay, that might have been a step too far.

Sam ran her fingers through her hair, turning to look out the window. She needed to regroup. She hadn't meant to start a stupid fight. And she doubted De had either.

"Look," she finally said slowly, "if I can't die on your watch, you can't die on mine. That's...fair. Isn't it?" It left them right back where they started, of course, but it was the best way to put any of this into words.

Her knuckles were white on the steering wheel as her jaw tightened at that comment.

"Just because dad said it didn't mean I'd do it."

Way to zero in on De's biggest emotional sturggle, Sam. Well, until she'd traded her soul for Sam's life, at least.

"Except you can't Sam. If you unwind this thing, we're back to square one."

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Genderswapped SPN PSL

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Sorry I am so slow rn bb <3

No worries!

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I love how we both have car icons.

:D

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