The Very Plausible State of Oregon
Part I of a Supernatural X-Files AU.

Sam/Dean; R-ish.

--

He's never been this far down in the building, and for a moment Sam thinks the stairs that were pointed out to him lead nowhere. The light fixture flickers, throwing tube lighting on a couple of forgotten file cabinets and dusty metal bookshelves stacked with unlabelled boxes and piles of yellowing paperwork. Sam eyes the single door at the end of the hallway, and the non-descript nameplate stuck to it.

They have to be fucking kidding him.

Not for the first time, Sam wonders what he's done to deserve this. His classes at Quantico were going well, and there was no good reason for him to be pulled and put on this detail. Sam is going to have an abrupt talk with AD Kripke one day over this, oh yes.

A muffled voice answers vaguely when he knocks, and the doorknob turns smoothly; Sam can't say why he'd expected it to be rusty or locked or wired to something electrical.

The room within defies all description: part lab, part library, part museum of the strange and the unusual, part… office, apparently, as some guy is leaning over a small desk against the far wall, squinting through his glasses at a slide he's holding up.

"Sorry," Sam's new partner speaks again without looking at Sam, his tone bored and bordering on hostile. "Nobody down here but the FBI's most unwanted."

Sam resists the urge to roll his eyes. The giant UFO poster on the wall doesn't help. "I'm Sam Winchester, I've been assigned to work with you."

Dean Winchester turns to him, eyeing him with a hint of amusement beneath a more blatant mistrust that seems second-nature. "Sam Winchester?"

The twitch in Sam's jaw is back; he stands very straight, hands joined non-threateningly in front of him, the way you do around crazy people. His new suit itches. "Yes."

Winchester's face breaks into a smirk Sam can tell is going to make him want to smack his partner in the future. "We have the same dad or something? Spooky."

--

Dean (as Sam's resolved to call him to avoid any further 'humor' concerning their common last name) drives like an asshole. He's not sure how one manages to drive a government-issue 1993 Ford Taurus like an asshole, but there are definite delusions of muscle car here, and Sam tries to keep his temper to a simmer by fiddling with the radio, which went crazy a mile back. Static on every station, and they're not even that far out of town.

"What the hell."

Dean's foot has eased on the pedal but to compensate he's acting like a freak, alternately eyeing the compass in his hands, his own watch, and the car radio display with increasing agitation. Honestly, it just doesn't occur to Sam to be surprised. There is, however, a slight tug at the sight of what might border on panic on Dean's face, and maybe there's a bit of caring in Sam's annoyance after all. Wouldn't do to let his new partner, obnoxious though he may be, pit himself against a telephone pole on their first time out, would it. Yes, that's it.

"You all right?"

"Yeah, yeah." Dean leans dangerously over the steering wheel, forgetting for the time being to actually steer.

Sam grabs the wheel with his left hand, eye on the road to keep the Taurus marginally in between the yellow lines. He has the impression that a picture of this exact moment, with him driving from the passenger seat and Dean looking up at the sky like it's the answer to everything, would represent perfectly the rest of Sam's FBI career.

"Dean, would you just. What are you looking f--!"

Just as Sam was working up a good temper, they're hit by lightning or something, because everything goes white in a flash, there and then gone. Sam blinks, stunned, the imprint of things on his retinas lingering for a few seconds more before being replaced by their much darker equivalents as the car rolls silently to a stop on the asphalt.

Sam lets go of the wheel and stares dumbly at Dean, who's trying frantically for an angle in which he can see his watch in the dark. "What the fuck just happened?"

"We lost nine minutes." Dean's tone is more serious than Sam's ever heard it, but he can already see the excitement gathering on Dean's face as he pushes open the door and throws himself out of the car. Sam swears, fumbling for his seat belt.

He finds Dean in the middle of the road, arms raised to the sky, laughing like the maniac he is. "YES!"

"Dean--"

"We lost nine minutes!"

"We lost what?"

"NINE MINUTES."

"Come on." But the fight has gone out of him, replaced by a mild case of nerves; Sam reaches very far indeed for a good argument. "Time-- Time can't just disappear. It's a universal invariant!"

Dean seems to be about to answer something a little less delicately phrased when there's another flash of light, this one sustained and accompanied by a familiar rumble. The Taurus has coughed back to life twenty feet behind them, shining its headlights at them like they didn't just lose minutes or their minds or a possibly very successful career teaching forensics in Virginia.

"Dude," says Dean, suddenly sounding more annoyed than anything else. "Who's driving my car?"

--

Dean is in the middle of some overpriced softcore when the power goes out and his hand pauses on his dick as he stares at the space where a square of moving images had just been.

"Great."

He briefly entertains the idea of finishing himself off thinking of Sam's slightly girly haircut, but the thought is so left-field that he laughs at the ceiling instead and beats (ha) a reluctant retreat with a resounding snap of the elastic waist of his boxers. There's a $12.99 he'll never know the full potential of.

The knock at the door nearly knocks him off the cheap bedspread. He adjusts himself in his shorts and pads over to the door, hoping it's Sam and his haircut. It is. Under the ridiculous fringe are two very wide eyes, and yet another shade of Sam's panic to add to his catalogue. And under that, nothing but a fucking bathrobe. Dean's dick twitches treacherously.

"Hi," he manages, eloquently.

"I want you to look at something."

Considering that's more or less the exact way Miss D-Cup had lured the UPS man inside her den of sin not two minutes ago, Dean considers his reaction very professional and not at all like an overture. "Come on in."

He locks the door behind Sam by habit, peeking out through the curtains for good measure, and when he turns, the bathrobe, an ugly burnt-orange number he hopes doesn't actually belong to Sam, is sliding off Sam's shoulders, leaving Dean's very tall, very attractive new partner bare-assed in the middle of his dark motel room.

Dean's mouth opens, then closes. Sam, unhelpful bastard, just turns around and points at his own ass. It takes Dean a moment of stunned thank you Jesus and another of Sam twisting like an idiot trying to look down his own back to realize that Sam's pointing not as his ass (pert and firm, Dean's happy to report, but he won't) but at the small of his back. Dean, whose extremities (all of them) have gone a bit numb out of self-preservation, fumbles for the Zippo he knows he left on the dresser, and collapses more than kneels on the carpet.

"Dean, what are they?"

Dean clues in to the fact that Sam's most likely not talking about his own ass-cheeks and he flicks the lighter on, admiring appreciatively the soft glow of it on the rounded flesh of--

"DEAN."

"Right, um." He holds the lighter a little higher, glad that it's dark and Sam doesn't have a source of light on Dean's own privates. The weak glow reveals four small welts in the dip of Sam's spine.

"Mosquito bites," Dean smiles, and it takes a Herculean effort for him to get to his feet and meet Sam's eyes when Sam turns, relief making him forget about modesty, apparently.

"Are you sure?"

"Yeah I'm sure. You got freaked by mosquito bites." He snickers, happy to dissipate any potential discomfort with a good round of mocking. For his efforts, he gets an armful of thankful naked Sam and a hello from his renewed hard-on.

Dean wonders how fat his chances are of making it through the next nine years a gentleman.

--

TBC