OPEN

[iwatchtjhooker]

When; Tonight, 24 January
Rating; PG-13 so far (for drinking?)
Characters; Sam Winchester, Dean Winchester, and OPEN (if you know Dean or Sam, you're welcome! or you could just be in the bar)
Summary; Dean's having a birthday. Sam doesn't care what he thinks.
Notes; Multiple threads, thread-jumping, whatever you want! It's a party, anything goes.
Log;

After the prank he'd pulled earlier, Sam thought Dean might need a break. He also thought it might be prudent not to be home when Dean got there. So Sam staked out a favorite bar of Dean's, called some of his friends, and left a note.

Dean--

Hey, didn't feel like cooking so I went out. Meet me at [some bar, come on Dean, it's your favorite! they have tater tots], okay? I have something to tell you. Sam

There was a chance Dean wouldn't come, but it was a bar, and the house would be quiet and lonely, and Sam was pretty sure he'd come. In the meantime, he savored the thought of the day Dean must have had...

Comments

[the_dawnster]

"Not to worry, if you spend any amount of time with me you eventually get hit with a Dawn pout. It even brings down the great Tony Stark, which is saying something cause he's all great and stuff. Not to mention my sister with her Slayer self. My pout can bring her to her knees."

And Sam has been hit with a Dawn ramble. They happen often, nothing Earth shattering about them. Just nod and smile and pretend you're paying attention even if you didn't catch everything she said.

Her eyes light up at the sight of the lighter in Sam's palm. Picking up the brownie with the candle on it, she puts it on a napkin and holds it up for him to light the wick. "You are like the Dean's birthday hero today. You should get a medal or a gold star or something. Anyway you totally rescued this little birthday brownie, not to mention me since I'm the silly who forgot the lighter."

[iwatchtjhooker]

"I really hope there's no reason for you to have a lighter," Sam says, because he doesn't have a little sister but he can still feel righteous about smoking. He lights the candle, grinning. "Usually birthdays are a trip to The Sizzler. You know, on a good year." The kind that didn't involve dying and stuff. "So who's this Tony Stark? You said 'great' twice."

[the_dawnster]

"Well if you ask him, he deserves a double great. And he's my boss at City Solutions here. I mean I ran it for awhile while he was gone but now he's back and I am so glad cause woah a load of stress is gone. I'm just me. Do I look like I could run a big company like that on a long-term basis?"

She shakes her head in answer to her own question, which was really rhetorical, but still. She wasn't made to run a big company like that, at least not yet. She got too easily distracted by shiny things to have that kind of focus.

"Now I'm just the second to Tony, do everything he needs me to do. And really, I'm good with that cause I can do like... eighty million things at once and tell people what to do instead of just telling people what to do and nothing else."

She takes a deep breath. "And sometimes I do carry a lighter cause fire kills vampires. The more you know, right?"

[iwatchtjhooker]

Sam shakes his head. "Not where I come from," he says. "Sometimes I wonder why all the rules are so different. Anyway, sounds like you don't want to be in charge because you don't have enough to do." He sound skeptical. Whoever Tony Stark is, and he may have encountered him once or twice on the network, he sounds like a douche.

[the_dawnster]

"You know, I've noticed that too. All the rules are different in different places. Personally, a vampire you can't kill with fire is super scary to me. I don't have the whole brute force thing going for me like guys do, or my sister. I'm all quick on my feet and stuff but that can only get you so far. Sometimes I can't get the stake all the way through to the heart... and then there's that aim thing."

And then she suddenly realizes how lame she must sound to Dean's cute brother here. She should really be talking herself up instead of not. It sucks to be the nobody in a world of giant sombodies sometimes.

"I mean..." She tucks her hair back behind her ears. "I'm way better than I was when Buffy finally let me start helping out. But I'm more the research-y behind the scenes kind of help better than the in the mix kind of help... with that kind of stuff. I'm better with a computer... or a book... or a sword." Okay, so as far as repairing her lameness from before? That probably didn't go too far.

[iwatchtjhooker]

But Sam's smiling, trying to stop her just so he can reassure her she's cool. "It's hard," he agreed. "And you know, it'd be better if no one had to do these things, right? I know my dad and Dean didn't want to tell me. Tried to keep it a secret for as long as they could. I thought dad was off on business trips, you know. Or that's what they told me, anyway. I think I knew pretty young that wasn't it. But it's hard to learn when people are trying to hard to protect you, isn't it?"

At least, Sam thinks, Dawn didn't have to deal with learning she was some sort of chosen one, destined to let Hell into the world.

[the_dawnster]

Dawn can relate to what Sam is saying so much, it's obvious in the way her eyes go wide and she nods at every word. She rests an elbow on the bar and her chin in her hands, her nose scrunching up just enough and a small, thoughtful crease forming between her eyes.

"Isn't it weird how they try to protect you from the inevitable and yet then since you're already so in the thick of the inevitable even without knowing it, their protecting you has left you pretty much useless in the inevitable? It's like because you were in this bubble, the inevitable kind of creeps up on you and then hits you like an eighteen wheeler speeding down a highway..." Or in a few words about a prophecy written in a journal by one of your favorite people in the world in which he refers to you as 'it' and 'the key'... take your pick!

[iwatchtjhooker]

Sam huffs out a laugh, though it's not the particularly amused kind. "Yeah," he said. "Yeah, exactly. And you know, once I knew, Dad realized he had to tell me. Teach me. Dean did most of it, though. I mean, I wasn't happy about the life but at least I learned how to defend myself."

But not from demon blood. Not from... destiny, or whatever.

"Actually, it kind of went the opposite direction, after awhile. I couldn't wait to get out. Have a normal life, you know? I just wanted to go to college. I wanted... to make a choice. And after all that protecting, Dad just wanted me to follow in his footsteps."

[the_dawnster]

"We are like the same person only I always knew and only when another apocalypse was upon us did my sister decide I needed and deserved to know how to fight since normal was obviously not in the cards for me. Also, you're a boy and I'm a girl... so there's that difference in the same person idea too."

Wooo! Dawn ramble of weirdness. She can understand the needing to get out too. That was why she had tried to go to Berkeley, tried to get an education, tried to do some normal things before the supernatural sucked her back in. And even now that the crisis was averted she wanted to try normal again even knowing that eventually she'd get sucked back in. Stubborn little bb!Summers.

"So are you doing that now? Following in his footsteps? Cause sometimes trying to follow in someones footsteps can be all stress-inducing. Cause it doesn't always leave a lot of room to be you. And you've got to be you sometimes or you forget who you are... inside. And that leads to the badness of the doing things you wouldn't normally do kind. And that leads to regret and guilt and... you get the point."

She picks up one of the brownies and offers it to him. "Brownie?"

[iwatchtjhooker]

Sam had gone from amused by her "same person" theory through uncertain through feeling she knows a little too much. He takes the brownie and takes too large a bite, giving himself time.

He has followed on John's footsteps. Right down to losing the women he loved, in the same way, and falling into the same need for revenge. He hardly ever questioned who he was anymore--what he questioned now was his insistence that Dad had been wrong, that he'd been different. The resentment lingered, emotionally, but he no longer thought that way. Or didn't think he did.

He tries not to think about that.

But here, with Mary and Jess... Sam has been wondering how things might have been different. And he resents that, too. Mom had left before he could really tell her his fears. He hadn't wanted to worry her, to waste time dredging up things she might not be proud of him for. And Jess... he just wants to protect her from all this.

"Yeah," he said finally. "I get the point. I hope you get to be the person you want to be, Dawn. You seem pretty cool."