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Writing exercise. A story in an hour.
Title: Snuffleupagus
Author:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
kellifer_fic
Rating: G
Category: SPN (wee!chesters)
Word Count: 2,095
Spoilers: None
Disclaimer: Don't own, don't sue, no offense, no money.
Summary: Sometimes imaginary friends... aren't.
It starts when Sammy is five years old.
“Can I have pie for E’gar too?” Sammy asks, small frame pressed hopefully forward to the table and eyes wide and pleading. Dean carefully fixes his eyes on his hands. It seems Sammy had found a way to snag an extra piece of pie and Dean’s not going to run interference.
John ignores the request. There’s a plate of half-finished eggs in front of him and an empty in front of Dean and Sammy which once held the most delicious blueberry pie Dean had ever tasted.
“E’gar’s hungry!” Sammy insists, pointing a blueberry streaked hand at the empty chair at their table. The diner hadn’t been busy so John had plunked them down at a four-seater table, grumbling that he didn’t want to be pinned into a booth and his back wouldn’t like doing the sideways shuffle required anyhow.
“Go wash up. We’re leaving in five minutes.”
“Please dad,” Sammy pleads and Dean groans inwardly. Sammy is really pressing his luck with this one.
“Go wash up,” John repeats. “Bathroom now,” he adds, pointing his pen in Dean’s direction without raising his eyes again.
Dean gets up and puts a hand out for Sammy to take. Sammy casts tragic-looking eyes on his father one last time before sliding from his seat, grumbling about how unfair it is for E’gar to go hungry. When he puts a hand out behind him once he takes Dean’s in his other, Dean looks at him and frowns.
Apparently the imaginary friend is more than just a ploy for pie.
~~~
E’gar, or Edgar, sticks around for about three weeks. Sammy chatters to him when he’s doing normal things like brushing his teeth and getting dressed. When he ties his shoelaces for the first time by himself, Dean asks him just how exactly he did it and Sammy shrugs and says, “E’gar showed me. Two rabbits in a hole.”
Dean starts thinking that maybe he should say something to their father because it’s getting a little creepy when Sammy just up and stops talking about his friend. “Where’s Edgar?” Dean asks, ever mindful of sitting on him which Sam claims he does with great and almost unbelievable regularity. It seemed that Edgar was determined to be wherever Dean was most likely to park his butt.
“He had things to do,” Sammy says with a solemn expression. He’s packing his small backpack, carefully rolling his jeans like he’d seen their father do. Dean tries not to smile when he then proceeds to shove them in the backpack, basically unrolling them in his effort so they still end up a tangled ball.
“He’s gone?” Dean asks.
“Yeah, but he said someone else would come watch me,” Sammy says and Dean feels a chill but in the morning with the sun outside it’s hard to hold onto that feeling and with Sammy not bringing it up again, he forgets.
~~~
Andrea arrives with a little more fan fair than Edgar did. Sammy is in the bathroom two days after his seventh birthday and screams, tearing out in a towel which is wrapped around him up to his armpits.
“You can’t come into the bathroom when I’m naked!” he yells at the door and Dean puts his comic down to stare at his brother.
“Who’re you talking to?” Dean asks, leaning sideways. He hadn’t heard their father come in but it was possible. John didn’t know about Sammy’s seemingly overnight insistence that he have personal space. He had to remember not to let Sammy watch daytime television that wasn’t a cartoon.
“I told her to wait out here but she didn’t listen,” Sam snaps and his eyes dart sideways, Dean getting the impression that he’s following something that he can’t see. Finally his eyes come to rest at the foot of Dean’s bed and Dean resists the urge to move away, gooseflesh breaking out on the back of his neck. “That’s not funny!” Sammy then practically yells. “It’s little because I am!”
Dean does get up then and circles his bed, stopping by Sam’s side and giving his shoulder a push. “You’re too old for an imaginary friend,” Dean says and Sam looks up at him, a frown pulling his features down.
“I tried to tell her that but she said it was okay because she was real.”
“Who?” Dean demands. His eyes skip to the window and then the door, visually checking the salt lines. Their father is out for the night and if he’s let something get in then he’s never going to hear the end of it. Finding the lines unbroken though, Dean can only think of two explanations.
Either there was a spirit already in the room or Sam is messing with him because he ate the last ding-dong earlier.
When you’re a Winchester though, you can’t take chances. Dean resigns himself to the very real possibility of having to move he and Sammy from the room they’re in. Either that or he’s going to have to stay up the whole night with a shotgun full of salt just in case.
He starts running through excuses in his brain for why an eleven year old would want an extra room at a motel at nine o’clock at night and settles on the old chicken pox fallback. My brother has chicken pox and my mum hasn’t had it but my dad has so he’s going to stay in one room while…
Sammy interrupts his train of thought by hugging his towel tighter and saying in a low growl. “I don’t like you.”
“Hey,” Dean protests, stung, but Sammy merely rolls his eyes.
“Not you,” Sammy dismisses and makes a large production out of getting under the covers to get dressed, glaring at that same spot at the end of Dean’s bed all the while.
Andrea lasts three months, Dean knowing she has a name because Sammy talks to her only when he thinks Dean is asleep when they’re curled together in the backseat. Like before, as soon as he starts thinking about telling their father, all mention of Andrea ceases.
~~~
Sam is thirteen so Michael is a little bit of a surprise. Dean is aware of his existence only when he catches Sam having a whispered and heated-sounding conversation with himself at the breakfast table when their father has been gone for three days. Sam looks up when Dean finally announces his presence by clearing his throat and his eyes are large and hunted-looking.
“Am I interrupting something, Janice?” Dean asks, scratching at his belly and yawning. It’s too early in the morning for Sam to be such a crazypants. He needs coffee first.
“I was just practicing,” Sam starts to explain, flushing hotly. “I’m in… a play.” Dean knows he’s lying because Sam always raises his eyebrows almost into his hairline when he does.
“Whatever, freakazoid,” Dean says with an airy wave of the hand. It bothers him though and Dean finally screws up the nerve to say something to John when he gets home later that night. John just looks at him, his Jack Daniels halfway to his mouth.
“Why didn’t you tell me this sooner?” he asks coldly and Dean hunches his shoulders around his ears because there’s such disappointment in his face that it’s a little hard to look at. He’s realised a little belatedly that keeping to himself what Sam was doing was probably the biggest mistake he’s ever made because Sam is either heading for a psychotic break or worse, he has a tailgater, a spirit that’s attached itself to him.
John makes some calls, finally letting Dean know that they’re heading to Pastor Jim’s first thing in the morning. It’s a good plan because Jim can help no matter what side of the fence Sam is coming down on, crazy or haunted. Sam is told nothing, just to get his stuff together and get in the car but he doesn’t complain because that’s business as usual.
However, halfway to Jim’s, Sam gets this look like he knows exactly what’s happening. At a truck stop three hours out, Sam goes to the bathroom and doesn’t come back.
~~~
They arrive at Jim’s one Winchester lighter. Jim greets them at the door, his face tight and dark shadows under his eyes. Dean knows the feeling. He’s still functioning on sugar and sheer determination alone, his father looking worse than he feels which is saying a lot.
Jim practically frog-marches Dean into a spare room to lie down for a few hours and even though he’s sure he’ll just be staring at the ceiling, he basically passes out as soon as his head touches the pillow. When he wakes up, Jim is sitting by his side with a hand on his forehead.
Jim sets aside the book he was reading and crosses his legs, brushing a hand over one knee almost absently. His face is patient and understanding but not sad so Dean is a little relieved. If he’d been there to deliver bad news Dean would be able to read it off Jim’s face.
“How long has Sam been around?” Jim asks gently and Dean just blinks at him in confusion.
“Uh, about thirteen years, give or take,” Dean answers smartly and Jim just nods.
“Ever since you lost your mother?” he prompts and Dean’s starting to get a tight feeling in his chest. Jim is speaking in a level tone, like he doesn’t want to spook anyone, like he doesn’t want to spook Dean.
“What are you asking me?” Dean asks, just as carefully.
“We’re just talking here,” Jim says, putting his hands out, palms up and Dean realises he’s done that because he’s started to get up. Dean moves into a sitting position, hands balled into his lap. He’s starting to get a very bad feeling about all of this. “I just wanted to know more about Sam.”
“What do you mean more about Sam?” Dean demands, not able to control his voice raising which makes Jim flinch back. “He’s stayed here dozens of times. You used to read to us when we were little. One chapter of Alice In Wonderland every time we stayed the night.”
“I used to read to you, Dean,” Jim corrects, still sounding mild and everything in Dean goes cold.
“What are you saying?” Dean asks slowly, eyes drifting to the door. He wants to get out of this crazy conversation, run as far and as fast as he can. “Why are we just sitting around while Sam is missing?”
“There is no Sam, Dean,” Jim says, face devoid of all emotion. “You told your father that Sam had imaginary friends because you were starting to realise-”
“Stop saying his name like that!” Dean yells, getting to his feet. Jim gets up too, moving into the doorway like he could stop Dean leaving if he wanted to, but Dean knows he’s filled out some since he turned seventeen and while Jim is tall, he’s not a solid man by any stretch of the imagination.
“Dean, calm down and talk to me. I can help you.”
“We need to find Sam. I need… Sam,” Dean growls and does dart for the door. As he suspected, Jim tries to block him and fails. He just hopes his father isn’t right outside and is relieved to find that he isn’t. He runs for the stairs and then his feet barely touch them as he slides down, knowing that at any moment his dad could rear up like a flannel clad nightmare and knock him on his ass.
The Impala keys are in the front entryway where John put them when they first came in and now he can hear his father, coming out of the kitchen with a dish cloth slung over his shoulder. His eyes widen when he spots Dean but it’s too late. Dean is out the front door and into the car before his father hits the porch.
Dean doesn’t stop for hours, only pulling over when he starts to nod at the wheel. He has no idea where he is and is about to move into the backseat to get some shut eye when he realises someone is already there.
“I called backseat,” Dean says with a frown.
“I call I’m already lying on it,” Sam returns smartly, sticking out his tongue before rolling over, using one of Dean’s jackets as a makeshift blanket.
“Bitch,” Dean grumbles.
Author's Note: Remix of this story Everything's A-Okay (The Cuckoo's Nest Remix) byignipes.
Title: Snuffleupagus
Author:
kellifer_fic Rating: G
Category: SPN (wee!chesters)
Word Count: 2,095
Spoilers: None
Disclaimer: Don't own, don't sue, no offense, no money.
Summary: Sometimes imaginary friends... aren't.
It starts when Sammy is five years old.
“Can I have pie for E’gar too?” Sammy asks, small frame pressed hopefully forward to the table and eyes wide and pleading. Dean carefully fixes his eyes on his hands. It seems Sammy had found a way to snag an extra piece of pie and Dean’s not going to run interference.
John ignores the request. There’s a plate of half-finished eggs in front of him and an empty in front of Dean and Sammy which once held the most delicious blueberry pie Dean had ever tasted.
“E’gar’s hungry!” Sammy insists, pointing a blueberry streaked hand at the empty chair at their table. The diner hadn’t been busy so John had plunked them down at a four-seater table, grumbling that he didn’t want to be pinned into a booth and his back wouldn’t like doing the sideways shuffle required anyhow.
“Go wash up. We’re leaving in five minutes.”
“Please dad,” Sammy pleads and Dean groans inwardly. Sammy is really pressing his luck with this one.
“Go wash up,” John repeats. “Bathroom now,” he adds, pointing his pen in Dean’s direction without raising his eyes again.
Dean gets up and puts a hand out for Sammy to take. Sammy casts tragic-looking eyes on his father one last time before sliding from his seat, grumbling about how unfair it is for E’gar to go hungry. When he puts a hand out behind him once he takes Dean’s in his other, Dean looks at him and frowns.
Apparently the imaginary friend is more than just a ploy for pie.
E’gar, or Edgar, sticks around for about three weeks. Sammy chatters to him when he’s doing normal things like brushing his teeth and getting dressed. When he ties his shoelaces for the first time by himself, Dean asks him just how exactly he did it and Sammy shrugs and says, “E’gar showed me. Two rabbits in a hole.”
Dean starts thinking that maybe he should say something to their father because it’s getting a little creepy when Sammy just up and stops talking about his friend. “Where’s Edgar?” Dean asks, ever mindful of sitting on him which Sam claims he does with great and almost unbelievable regularity. It seemed that Edgar was determined to be wherever Dean was most likely to park his butt.
“He had things to do,” Sammy says with a solemn expression. He’s packing his small backpack, carefully rolling his jeans like he’d seen their father do. Dean tries not to smile when he then proceeds to shove them in the backpack, basically unrolling them in his effort so they still end up a tangled ball.
“He’s gone?” Dean asks.
“Yeah, but he said someone else would come watch me,” Sammy says and Dean feels a chill but in the morning with the sun outside it’s hard to hold onto that feeling and with Sammy not bringing it up again, he forgets.
Andrea arrives with a little more fan fair than Edgar did. Sammy is in the bathroom two days after his seventh birthday and screams, tearing out in a towel which is wrapped around him up to his armpits.
“You can’t come into the bathroom when I’m naked!” he yells at the door and Dean puts his comic down to stare at his brother.
“Who’re you talking to?” Dean asks, leaning sideways. He hadn’t heard their father come in but it was possible. John didn’t know about Sammy’s seemingly overnight insistence that he have personal space. He had to remember not to let Sammy watch daytime television that wasn’t a cartoon.
“I told her to wait out here but she didn’t listen,” Sam snaps and his eyes dart sideways, Dean getting the impression that he’s following something that he can’t see. Finally his eyes come to rest at the foot of Dean’s bed and Dean resists the urge to move away, gooseflesh breaking out on the back of his neck. “That’s not funny!” Sammy then practically yells. “It’s little because I am!”
Dean does get up then and circles his bed, stopping by Sam’s side and giving his shoulder a push. “You’re too old for an imaginary friend,” Dean says and Sam looks up at him, a frown pulling his features down.
“I tried to tell her that but she said it was okay because she was real.”
“Who?” Dean demands. His eyes skip to the window and then the door, visually checking the salt lines. Their father is out for the night and if he’s let something get in then he’s never going to hear the end of it. Finding the lines unbroken though, Dean can only think of two explanations.
Either there was a spirit already in the room or Sam is messing with him because he ate the last ding-dong earlier.
When you’re a Winchester though, you can’t take chances. Dean resigns himself to the very real possibility of having to move he and Sammy from the room they’re in. Either that or he’s going to have to stay up the whole night with a shotgun full of salt just in case.
He starts running through excuses in his brain for why an eleven year old would want an extra room at a motel at nine o’clock at night and settles on the old chicken pox fallback. My brother has chicken pox and my mum hasn’t had it but my dad has so he’s going to stay in one room while…
Sammy interrupts his train of thought by hugging his towel tighter and saying in a low growl. “I don’t like you.”
“Hey,” Dean protests, stung, but Sammy merely rolls his eyes.
“Not you,” Sammy dismisses and makes a large production out of getting under the covers to get dressed, glaring at that same spot at the end of Dean’s bed all the while.
Andrea lasts three months, Dean knowing she has a name because Sammy talks to her only when he thinks Dean is asleep when they’re curled together in the backseat. Like before, as soon as he starts thinking about telling their father, all mention of Andrea ceases.
Sam is thirteen so Michael is a little bit of a surprise. Dean is aware of his existence only when he catches Sam having a whispered and heated-sounding conversation with himself at the breakfast table when their father has been gone for three days. Sam looks up when Dean finally announces his presence by clearing his throat and his eyes are large and hunted-looking.
“Am I interrupting something, Janice?” Dean asks, scratching at his belly and yawning. It’s too early in the morning for Sam to be such a crazypants. He needs coffee first.
“I was just practicing,” Sam starts to explain, flushing hotly. “I’m in… a play.” Dean knows he’s lying because Sam always raises his eyebrows almost into his hairline when he does.
“Whatever, freakazoid,” Dean says with an airy wave of the hand. It bothers him though and Dean finally screws up the nerve to say something to John when he gets home later that night. John just looks at him, his Jack Daniels halfway to his mouth.
“Why didn’t you tell me this sooner?” he asks coldly and Dean hunches his shoulders around his ears because there’s such disappointment in his face that it’s a little hard to look at. He’s realised a little belatedly that keeping to himself what Sam was doing was probably the biggest mistake he’s ever made because Sam is either heading for a psychotic break or worse, he has a tailgater, a spirit that’s attached itself to him.
John makes some calls, finally letting Dean know that they’re heading to Pastor Jim’s first thing in the morning. It’s a good plan because Jim can help no matter what side of the fence Sam is coming down on, crazy or haunted. Sam is told nothing, just to get his stuff together and get in the car but he doesn’t complain because that’s business as usual.
However, halfway to Jim’s, Sam gets this look like he knows exactly what’s happening. At a truck stop three hours out, Sam goes to the bathroom and doesn’t come back.
They arrive at Jim’s one Winchester lighter. Jim greets them at the door, his face tight and dark shadows under his eyes. Dean knows the feeling. He’s still functioning on sugar and sheer determination alone, his father looking worse than he feels which is saying a lot.
Jim practically frog-marches Dean into a spare room to lie down for a few hours and even though he’s sure he’ll just be staring at the ceiling, he basically passes out as soon as his head touches the pillow. When he wakes up, Jim is sitting by his side with a hand on his forehead.
Jim sets aside the book he was reading and crosses his legs, brushing a hand over one knee almost absently. His face is patient and understanding but not sad so Dean is a little relieved. If he’d been there to deliver bad news Dean would be able to read it off Jim’s face.
“How long has Sam been around?” Jim asks gently and Dean just blinks at him in confusion.
“Uh, about thirteen years, give or take,” Dean answers smartly and Jim just nods.
“Ever since you lost your mother?” he prompts and Dean’s starting to get a tight feeling in his chest. Jim is speaking in a level tone, like he doesn’t want to spook anyone, like he doesn’t want to spook Dean.
“What are you asking me?” Dean asks, just as carefully.
“We’re just talking here,” Jim says, putting his hands out, palms up and Dean realises he’s done that because he’s started to get up. Dean moves into a sitting position, hands balled into his lap. He’s starting to get a very bad feeling about all of this. “I just wanted to know more about Sam.”
“What do you mean more about Sam?” Dean demands, not able to control his voice raising which makes Jim flinch back. “He’s stayed here dozens of times. You used to read to us when we were little. One chapter of Alice In Wonderland every time we stayed the night.”
“I used to read to you, Dean,” Jim corrects, still sounding mild and everything in Dean goes cold.
“What are you saying?” Dean asks slowly, eyes drifting to the door. He wants to get out of this crazy conversation, run as far and as fast as he can. “Why are we just sitting around while Sam is missing?”
“There is no Sam, Dean,” Jim says, face devoid of all emotion. “You told your father that Sam had imaginary friends because you were starting to realise-”
“Stop saying his name like that!” Dean yells, getting to his feet. Jim gets up too, moving into the doorway like he could stop Dean leaving if he wanted to, but Dean knows he’s filled out some since he turned seventeen and while Jim is tall, he’s not a solid man by any stretch of the imagination.
“Dean, calm down and talk to me. I can help you.”
“We need to find Sam. I need… Sam,” Dean growls and does dart for the door. As he suspected, Jim tries to block him and fails. He just hopes his father isn’t right outside and is relieved to find that he isn’t. He runs for the stairs and then his feet barely touch them as he slides down, knowing that at any moment his dad could rear up like a flannel clad nightmare and knock him on his ass.
The Impala keys are in the front entryway where John put them when they first came in and now he can hear his father, coming out of the kitchen with a dish cloth slung over his shoulder. His eyes widen when he spots Dean but it’s too late. Dean is out the front door and into the car before his father hits the porch.
Dean doesn’t stop for hours, only pulling over when he starts to nod at the wheel. He has no idea where he is and is about to move into the backseat to get some shut eye when he realises someone is already there.
“I called backseat,” Dean says with a frown.
“I call I’m already lying on it,” Sam returns smartly, sticking out his tongue before rolling over, using one of Dean’s jackets as a makeshift blanket.
“Bitch,” Dean grumbles.
Author's Note: Remix of this story Everything's A-Okay (The Cuckoo's Nest Remix) by
ignipes.