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mass_hipgnosis Jun. 9th, 2007 11:41 am)This is Part Three of my Sam/Dean fanfic series What A Long, Strange Trip It's Been.
Okay, y'all, it gets real slashy from this point on, and if you have a problem with that, well, it's best you don't read it. Gay sex is not everyone's cup of tea. That's okay. More for the rest of us. Oh, and by the way-I own nothing, so any litigious attempts will be snickered at.
Author's Notes: Drunken Sammy karaoke!! (The mob has spoken, and it’s in here). I know this took a ridiculously long time, due to an indifferent Muse, a samurai computer (it commited hare-kiri, swear to God), evil writer’s block, and just life in general getting in the way. To make up for it, I am posting two parts at once. Binge away. After this, it’s Mellow Slow.
This was bad.
This was really, really bad.
Any time Sam saw stuff that Dean didn’t, things went sideways in a hurry. Lawrence and Saginaw were prime examples. “What now?” Sam winced-the uncertain note in his voice made him sound about five years old.
“You sketch everything you see on the monitors. Get Jim to help you. I’m gonna make some calls.”
“What if we don’t find anything?”
“Then we’ll do what we do best,” Dean replied with a shit-eating grin. “Make it up as we go.”
Yeah, because that’s worked out so well in the past.
Research would fix this.
They just needed to find out what kind of demon couldn’t be seen by blonds, or…or…Or you’re a freak, and no amount of research is gonna fix it.
Sam slumped in the Impala’s passenger seat, remembering what Dean had said about thinking Jim was a member of the Psychic Friends Network. Something that only psychics could see. There were a helluva lot of beasties with that particular criteria…it made more sense than any of the straws Sam had tried to grasp at. And he had seen it. And Jim had seen it.
I have these nightmares, and sometimes they come true, or It was like some freaky adrenaline thing, like a…a punch wasn’t going to cut it anymore. He was going to have to actually use the word. “I’m psychic,” he said.
“Okay, random,” Dean observed, taking his eyes off the road to smirk at his brother. “Is it State The Obvious Day?”
Sam shook his head, huffed a little, feeling a flood of relief. I admitted it. And the world didn’t end. Go, me. And Dean, who had looked at him like he was a freak when Sam first dropped it on him, had clearly recovered some time ago, while Sam was busy obsessing.
“So, the gambling part didn’t go so well. I say we move on to getting you drunk and laid,” Dean suggested cheerfully.
“Dean, we have research to do,” Sam reminded him, reflecting that apparently it was State The Obvious Day, and he was the elected orator.
“On it. I already e-mailed stills of what you apparently saw to a digital photo editor to see if they’ve been altered, although since I didn’t see anything and you and Jim did, I really doubt it. Gotta check out the history of the hotel. The Las Vegas Journal has computerized archives at their head office available to the public, but they close at five, so we’re tomorrowing that. In the meantime, I managed to track down Emily Santina. I called her.”
“And you…what? Told her you were a cop, an FBI agent?”
“Tried that,” Dean replied, looking bemused. “She told me Alzheimer’s hadn’t set in just yet, and I better be straight with her or she was gonna hang up. So I was.”
Uh-huh. “And how did that go?”
“Her flight comes in on Sunday night. She believed me, and with Jim being an old friend, she’s flying up from Corpus Christi to see if she can help. Her daughter just had a baby, and since no one’s been hurt or died yet, I told her there was no need to rush.”
“No need to-” Sam began heatedly, knowing that his reasons all had to do with getting out of the Sultan’s Rest Motel as soon as inhumanly possible.
“Sam,” Dean replied patiently, “so far all we’ve got to go on is some creepy shadows and a couple of obscure phrases that could end up being nothing more than a private joke. Now, I realize that fun is a foreign concept to you, but give it a shot, okay?”
“Getting drunk is not my idea of fun,” Sam muttered.
“Then you haven’t been doing it right,” Dean replied with a devilish grin. “Let me show you just how much fun you can have in Vegas.”
Sam bit his lip on the reply that wanted to emerge, something along the lines of, Oh, God, yes, please. Those words and that world-class grin had given him a Technicolor THX 3D virtual reality image of Dean pinning him to those evil, evil satin sheets, his face traced with neon and shadows. He tried to shake it off and saw his brother laughing at him.
“Your upstairs brain may think it’s a bad idea, but I saw that. You were having smutty thoughts,” he observed smugly.
Oh, you have no idea.
“Don’t worry. Anything you do tonight, you can blame on the tequila tomorrow.”
I’m gonna hold you to that.
The 25th Hour.
A bar in the heart of darkness (otherwise known as Fremont Street). This could not possibly lead to anything good. Sam eyed the dirty windows lit with signs advertising brands of beer. “I don’t think there are gonna be a lot of girls in there, Dean. Except maybe the ones who charge by the hour.”
“This is the getting drunk portion of our evening,” he explained. “We’ll go somewhere else for sex.”
Like back to the motel room? Shut up, brain, shut up!
They sat at a table that appeared to be made out of a manhole cover. Dean leered at the waitress. “We’ll have six shots of tequila. Each.”
I should have made out my will before we left the motel. Sam didn’t bother to argue. Better tequila here than beer somewhere else that had karaoke, which seemed to be a Thursday night tradition in bars across the country. But then the waitress, who, although she had a rack that probably required hydraulics rather than underwire, was on the downhill slide from forty and appeared to have applied her makeup with a trowel, winked at Sam as she started unloading her tray, and he started having second thoughts. There was a night in his junior year that was memorable for its' very haziness, but Sam was pretty sure tequila had been involved. “Dean-”
“Could you maybe try not to be a killjoy for, like, once in your life? Relax, let loose, get plowed, and go plow somebody. Okay?”
Six shots later, pool was suddenly an extreme sport. When Sam almost caught a bystander in the throat with the butt of the cue, Dean took it away from him. “Okay, Sammy, no more of that. Let’s go find you a hot girl.”
No, really, that’s okay. I’d rather puke on my shoes. “Girls?” Sam slurred.
“Right!” Dean clapped him on the shoulder and they both stumbled. “Good thing we walked here. I’m thinking cab.”
Sam stepped out of the dim bar. The contrast of dark shadow and glaring streetlights, flashing neon and headlights moving at a fast clip, was disorienting. The world did a slow and wobbly spin before settling-more or less. It still felt like he was walking on jello, or maybe wearing those ridiculous ‘moon shoes’ that every kid had wanted when he was about seven. Who needs toys when you have tequila? he wondered, and chuckled to himself.
“Hey, no talking to dead people, Haley Joel,” Dean suggested from his side of the cab’s bench seat. “Not gonna impress the girls.”
“Don’t wanna impress the girls,” Sam muttered petulantly, wondering when they’d gotten into a cab. I must have missed that part.
“Sure you do. Just don’t get up on stage and we’ll be fine.”
As Dean helped him out of the cab, Sam saw the sign for the Last Chance Saloon, and two words that chilled his soul. Karaoke Night.
Sam had disappeared into the bathroom while Dean was ordering more drinks. Some drunken yahoo finished butchering The Rolling Stones and there was a moment of blessed silence before there was a vaguely familiar guitar lick. Dean wondered where he knew the song from as he turned from the bar, then just about dropped his beer.
“Well, I walk into the room/Passing out hundred dollar bills…”
Sam had lost his hoodie and acquired a straw cowboy hat from somewhere, and he was prowling the stage with loose-limbed movements that indicated he was three sheets to the wind, but only to someone who knew him. He was practically purring into the microphone, and damn, the kid could sing, which pretty much killed the whole blackmail idea, at least until he heard the chorus.
“Cause I saddle up my horse/And I ride into the city I make a lot of noise, cause the girls, they are so pretty Riding up and down Broadway on my old stud Leroy And the girls say, save a horse, ride a cowboy! Everybody says, save a horse, ride a cowboy!”
Dean snapped a couple of pictures of Sam making eyes at a group of hot girls who were hooting and singing along. “Attaboy,” he muttered, and chugged his beer.
The mercifully few times in his life that Sam had been drunk, he’d fallen on his ass a lot and then been really ill. But apparently Sam just hadn’t been doing it right, because this was kind of fun. He had the vague feeling that he was standing outside himself, observing. It’s like watching a play starring me.
Pretty good one, too. Just got bad reviews, is all.
The inner projectionist snorted in agreement. Critics.
Music started. Sam watched as he started to sing. Hey, a musical! I love these! Anyone got any popcorn?
He glanced around. There were pretzels on the bar, but the girls next to them were hooting and hollering and didn’t seem inclined to share. Dean. Dean always has junk food.
And it was his bad luck that he was looking at his brother when he sang the next words. “I’m a thoroughbred, that’s what you said, in the back of my truck bed...” No. Not looking at Dean. Not s’posed to look at Dean. Oh, hey, there’s Mark. Hi, Mark!
The song was over. Applause and catcalls. Mark was smiling and coming up to the stage. “That was pretty cool. I didn’t know you could sing.”
I can sing? Huh. How ‘bout that. “Thanks.” Mark dimpled at him, and Sam tried to dimple back, but he didn't think he'd regained fine motor function yet. The out-of-body feeling had faded, though, and he was hoping that if he didn’t have anything more to drink he could keep from doing something stupid. He thought of belting out a country song in front of God, Las Vegas and his brother and amended that to, Something else stupid.
“Buy you a drink?” Mark offered.
Ooh, bad idea. “Sure.” His mouth was apparently disconnected from his brain, so Sam concentrated on walking like a person. He’d been raised to stalk things, and he still moved on hunter autopilot when he wasn’t paying attention. It tended to creep people out.
“Hey, Pat, two more beers,” Mark called out when they reached the bar, then leaned one hip against it. “So, you here with anyone?”
“Just my brother. Road trip.”
“Right, that guy I saw you with the other night? He's your brother?”
“Yeah.”
“So, how long you staying?”
“Maybe a week or two.” The guy was clearly flirting. Sam decided he could either go with it, or go back to the motel and pass out. Mark was almost as pretty as Dean, and maybe if he got laid, his brother would stop harping on it. He grinned back in an interested way, hoping it didn’t come out like a leer.
Mark handed him a beer and took a step closer. “Cheers.”
“Cheers,” Sam echoed, steadying himself by resting his hand lightly on Mark’s hip as he raised the bottle. Mark didn’t seem to mind.
Dean did.
“Outside. Now,” he snarled viciously, appearing out of nowhere to grab Sam’s arm and propel him toward the door.
“Dean, the hell?” Sam yelped, staggering across the sidewalk and fetching up against a car door. With one foot still on the curb, he managed to get the other stuck in a storm drain.
Dean untangled him. “You’re asking me? Sam, you were hitting on a man!”
“Yes, I’m aware of that actually.”
“Maybe I’m not making myself clear. By ‘man,’ I mean someone with a penis and no boobs.”
“I know. I have done this before,” he added, feeling defensive.
“You huh? What the hell kind of college is Stanford anyway?”
“The open-minded kind,” Sam retorted. “Which is more than I can say for you.”
“Sammy, trust me, I’ve switch hit when the occasion called for it, ya know? I’m not judging you. But-and let me know if I’ve got it wrong here-you left because you wanted normal. Apple pie and white picket fences and all that happy crap. I hate to break it to you, but this ain’t it.”
“Yeah, well, I heard somewhere that psychic visions and telekinesis and, oh yeah, hunting DEMONS isn’t exactly mainstream, so I might as well go all out!”
Dean’s face broke into a grin as wide as Texas. “Well, hell, little bro, if that’s what it takes to get you back in the family business, where’s the parade? Get me a rainbow and sign me up!”
Sam chuckled bitterly. “They don’t have a parade for what’s wrong with me, Dean.”
“Okay, Sam, you either should have stopped before the last beer, or you need about five more. Because you are not on the party train, dude. You are lying on the tracks like a cheap rug. You are stopping the party train. You want a guy? No big deal, we’ll find you a guy. Just not that guy. He looked like a hustler.”
“I don’t want that guy, Dean.”
“Oh. Well, good,” Dean agreed, baffled but mollified. “We’re on the same page, then.”
“I really doubt that.” Sam snickered. Unless your page says, ‘Sam’s a freak.’
Dean pinched the bridge of his nose and breathed deeply. "I didn't bring my Cryptic-to-English dictionary with me, okay? So I'm gonna ask you straight out, and I want a straight answer. Preferably in words with one syllable. Think you can do that?"
Oh, shit! Quick-lie! But he'd never been real good at that, even when he was sober. "No."
Dean gave him a stern look. "Since that was one syllable, I'm going to ignore the literal definition and take it as agreement. Okay. Final Jeopardy. What do you want, Sam?"
"You." Who said that? What do you mean, me? I don't say things like that to Dean. I have a checkpoint. That response would never get clearance to be verbalized.
What do you mean, the guard's drunk? Oh. I see.
Sam waited for Dean to hit him, or laugh, or make some lame comment. He studied his shoes like there was going to be a test later. The silence dragged out past uncomfortable and approached excrutiatingly awkward. It was like a car accident-he couldn't not look. He glanced up.
Dean was smiling, and there was such a sweet joy in his face that Sam's throat ached. His voice was a little unsteady when he said, "Damn, Sammy, it sure took you long enough. I'd just about given up."
The song that Sam sings is "Save A Horse, Ride A Cowboy," by Big and Rich. This part is for Pam, who was sick and writer’s-blocked at the time I finished this (if not at the time that I posted it) and STILL managed fic. You rock!
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What do you mean, the guard's drunk? Oh. I see.
Okay, that right there? Greatest Sam-line ever. Even if he was only talking to himself for a minute there. Thanks so much for the heads up on the updates. I was in dire need of a fix. And your fics are as always awesome.
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