Genre: Gen, casefic
Length: ~20K
Rating: PG-13 for language
Characters: Dean Winchester, Sam Winchester, Soulless Sam, Bobby Singer
Spoilers: Through season 6
Synopsis: A casefic set in season 6, soon after "Chained Heat" and before "Appointment in Samarra." Dean and Soulless Sam are in Florida again, where Dean's working two cases - the monster he and Sam are hunting at Disneyworld, and the case of Sam's missing soul. And he's got a lot of soul-searching to do. Which sounds like a bad joke, but his life has turned into a bad joke, so. It fits. With flashbacks to season 4, soon after 4.03, "In The Beginning."
Author's note: Written for the 2019 spn_j2_bigbang. Huge thanks to my artist, amberdreams, who plucked my unloved fic from the reject pile and produced some truly squeal-worthy work - please go visit the art masterpost on LJ or AO3. (Disclaimer: if any Disney lawyers come calling, I'm going to tell them I don't know her.) And equally huge thanks to my ever-lovely beta, themegalosaurus, and to madbadandplaid who went above and beyond in terms of editing, questioning, and poking me with a sharp stick.

Also on AO3

~~~

2010

Dean wakes with a start at the the thunk of the car door closing. He's kind of surprised he actually fell asleep. He doesn't normally sleep well when Sam's driving, and even less so with this particular version of Sam at the wheel. He checks his watch and is shocked to see his nap lasted several hours. It's a tribute to the effectiveness of Jack Daniels, but it also explains why he's got such a godawful crick in his neck. Dammit. How does Sam not understand that do you want to head out in the morning actually means I want to sleep before we head out? And that no, that's fine, I can drive, I don't need to sleep isn't an appropriate answer?

Real Sam got that.

No, not past tense. Real Sam gets that.

RoboSam, on the other hand, drives through the night and doesn't bother to wake Dean when he stops at a gas station. The keys are in the ignition, so Dean pockets them and climbs stiffly out of the car, stretching and popping his neck as he heads toward the building. It's warmer than he expected, the air heavy and humid for December. He peeks at the newspaper rack next to the door to check their location and stops in his tracks, confused. He's still standing there when Sam comes out.

"Sam, why are we in Valdosta, Georgia?"

Sam hands Dean a water bottle and takes a long drink from his own. "Because we need gas? Because Valdosta is a convenient stop on I-75?"

"Goddammit. Why are we in Georgia at all? We were on our way to California. How is Georgia a convenient stop on the way to California?"

"California?" Sam blinks at him for a second, then laughs. "No, dude, we're going to Disneyworld. Disneyland is the one in California. I told you, two employees were mysteriously killed at Disneyworld. Which is in Florida."

Like Dean keeps track of which Disney is where. He just assumed, because… well, because his brother would never have accepted a case in Florida without being talked into it.

"Florida? You're okay with that?"

RoboSam shrugs. Of course he's okay with Florida, in the same way he's okay with everything. "We don't have to go if you don't want to. We can hand this one off to someone else."

"No, it's not that. I'm fine with it. I just didn't think you would be."

"Oh, okay." Sam folds his arms and gets that pissy look on his face. The look that isn't really Sam's pissy look, which makes it worse. "So it's not that you don't want to go to Florida. It's just that you want me to not want to go to Florida."

Because your real brother wouldn't want to. It's like he's waiting for Dean to say it. But Dean's not going to give him the satisfaction, considering how Sam acted after their last conversation about getting his soul back. He'd told Dean he didn't want it back, stomped off and refused to discuss it further, refused to admit Dean was right. They've come to an uneasy truce, if you can call ignoring the elephant in the room a truce. Dean hasn't capitulated, he just temporarily stopped telling Sam how wrong he is.

He shoves the keys into Sam's hand. "I gotta take a piss. Get some gas and then get the a/c running, but when I come back, you're riding shotgun. I'm driving."

And it feels wrong, it feels sneaky and disloyal, dragging Sam's body to the one place he never wanted to go again. But they're on their way to Florida, because no one's here to stop them.


~~~

(At some point in the last few years, Dean's life turned into a bad joke.

Two hunters walk into a bar. The bartender asks for their order, and the first hunter says "Whiskey for me. My brother here will have some demon blood."

The bartender says, "Hey, we don't serve your type here, fella."

The second hunter says "No, it's okay, it doesn't matter if it's not my blood type. I'm just gonna drink it.")

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Do you need a palate cleanser after... whatever that was we watched this week? Let's go back to better times. Let's go back to a time when we were angsting about what Sam and Dean were doing, not what Carver et al were doing. Let's go back to season 4!

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