Festival

[27jj]

Written over at the Sneezy-SPN-Boys Comment Fic Meme on mads3rv3r's LJ (http://mad-server.livejournal.com/44195.html) for the prompt at the end.

***

“Are you serious?”

Sam eyes the vehicle warily, and Dean brushes past him and climbs in.

“Dude, we don’t have a lot of time here, Sam. Get in.”

Sam sighs, then climbs into the truck. He eyes a bale of hay like he wants to put a round or two in it, then settles next to Dean. The straw pokes him through his jeans, and he can already feel his eyes starting to water.

Dean gets antsy when the ride makes a stop at the pumpkin patch, his leg bouncing up and down.

“Why couldn’t we walk, again?” Sam hisses as he bumps his knee against Dean’s. “Quit that.”

“Sam, we have to blend in. The locals are friendly, but I doubt they’d take kindly to a couple of guys stirring up trouble at their festival.” He quickly looks in Sam’s direction when he hears Sam grunt.

“Ehh… heh-ktchsh!” Sam cups a hand around his face just in time to catch the spray, and Dean frowns but doesn’t say anything.

Sam sneezes about a half a dozen more times before they reach the hay maze. His eyes feel puffy and his nose is burning, and he’s suddenly realizing that this probably isn’t going to be the routine hunt it’s supposed to be.

“Uh, Dean…”

Sam stops just outside the maze, and Dean turns to look at Sam.

“What?”

“Dean, I…” Sam pauses, and Dean narrows his eyes.

“What, Sam?”

“I, uh…” Sam takes a step back, rubs his nose vigorously. “It’s the hay.”

“The hay?”

“Echtsh-uh!”

“Oh. Shit. That’s why you’re all…” Dean trails off, gesturing toward Sam’s face.

“And we already, you know, rode on that hayride…” Sam’s nose scrunches up at the memory. His breath hitches, his eyelashes flutter, and he bends forward at the waist, face buried in his sleeve.

“Hitshchuh. Heh-ashch-uh! ETSHCHugnh. God.”

Dean runs a hand through his hair, looks around.

“Sam, I’m not really seeing any other choices, here.”

Sam nods, sneezes, and nods again. “No, it’s okay. I’m okay. So, you find the remains, I’ll get people out of the maze.”

“No, wait. I’ll do this by myself. You stay out here and make sure people don’t go in.”

“Dean, what about the people who are already in there?”

“Okay, Sam, but you go find the remains…you’re better at mazes than I am. I’ll get the people out of here. Hurry the fuck up, alright? We don’t know if Casper the friendly ghost is going to make an appearance or not.”

“Ahhh… Atchnpsh! ‘Kay.”

They take off into the maze.

Sam has studied the bird’s eye view enough times that he’s pretty confident of how to reach the middle. He can hear Dean shouting somewhere to his left and he makes his way through the hay bales. After only a few seconds, he feels claustrophobic, like the walls of hay are closing in on him with every step he takes. He’s sneezing every other step, almost blindly making his way toward the center of the maze.

Right turn. Right turn. Left turn. Go past a dead end. Right turn.

It takes every ounce of concentration he has to remember his route. He can hear himself wheezing, can feel his chest tightening the farther he gets in, but he tries to push past it.

He makes one last left turn, and is relieved to see the scarecrow perched at the end of the row, surrounded by pumpkins.

The straw hat is what he needs to burn, so he reaches up for it. Just as his fingers are closing around the brim, he’s slammed into a wall of hay bales. It knocks the wind out of him, and he sees the ghost flicker, disappear, and then reappear to his right. Hay rains down over him, falling into his hair and lap, and he crumples with a sneezing fit.

He feels himself being slammed against something hard. Pain shoots through his shoulder and arm, but he reaches into his pocket for the matches and salt. He waits a few seconds, but nothing happens, so he pushes himself off the ground and grabs the hat. Just as he tosses the match on it, Dean comes around a corner, out of breath.

“Sam!”

Sam slumps to the ground in another fit of sneezing. Dean falls next to him, holding him up by his arms.

“Sam,” he starts, but a crackling sound draws their attention to the scarecrow, which is now on fire, along with the bales of hay behind it.

“Oh shit,” Sam manages between sneezes.

“The fuck did you do that for?” Dean yells, grabbing Sam by the arm and pulling him toward the direction he came from.

“D-didn’t itchshuh! Do it on p-pur…shit. Ehh-hngkt!” Sam feels himself being pulled along by Dean, but they keep reaching dead ends. The crackling of the fire spreading quickly through the hay is getting louder, closer.

“Yeah right,” he hears Dean say, before they come to another dead end. Sam nearly runs into him, and ends up sneezing all over Dean’s jacket.

“HetshCHOO!”

“Whoa, Sam. Okay. Hold on there. I’ve got an idea.”

Sam coughs, his breath coming in short, raspy bursts. Dean pulls himself up so that he’s standing on a stack of hay bales, and Sam hears a triumphant shout.

“Almost there, Sammy!” Dean says as he jumps down. “We’re taking a shortcut.”

He kicks through the wall of hay he’d just been standing on, and a shower of hay and dust erupts. Dean grabs Sam by the shoulders.

“Sam, look at me.” At this point, Sam has nearly passed out from lack of oxygen, but he manages to focus on Dean’s face. “Keep your head down, hold your breath, and I’m going to get you out of here. Okay?”

He doesn’t wait for any sort of answer from Sam. Instead, he leads them through the hole he’d just created and starts destroying the next wall of hay, and then the next, until there’s finally no more hay in front of them.

They can hear people screaming about the fire, but all Dean is worried about is getting Sam to someplace he can breathe. They skip the hayride and cut through the pumpkin patch, and finally they make it back to the Impala.

Sam slumps again the car, panting and wheezing and sneezing, and Dean holds him up.

“Fuck, Sam, are you okay? Fuck, I should have never let you go in there.”

Sam wheezes, tries to say something, but Dean won’t let him.

“Just focus on breathing, Sammy. We’ll get you some nice allergy meds in a little bit. Just breathe right now.”

“Dean,” Sam croaks, his shoulders shaking. It takes Dean a second to realize he’s laughing.

“What’s so funny?” Dean demands.

“So much for… hup-shchoo! For not stirring up…t-trouble at their festival.”

***

Prompt: It's a reasonably straightforward case, or so it seems. Find the freaky supernatural thing, salt and burn it (or put a consecrated bullet in it, or whatever), leave town, end of story. The locals are friendly, the town is rustic and picturesque. It should be a routine hunt, except for the fact that there's a festival in town, and the bad thing/remains to be burned are smack in the middle of the country's largest hay bale maze.

And guess who is horrifically allergic to hay?

[iluvsneezes]

Looooooooved this!

[MusicaDiabolos]

Hooray!!!!!! This was amazing, loved the maze idea and of course my favourite, allergic!Sam You're the best!

[BlueRandom]

Oh my God. Really really really loved this. (Loved it as soon as I saw the prompt and who'd answered it. )

Poor Sam. But yeah ...

[everest]

Yeah, I pretty much adored this. Allergic!Sam is just so incredibly hot.

[obsessed]

MMMM poor Sammy.

Love this. <3

[27jj]

Looooooooved this!

Thank you!!!

Hooray!!!!!! This was amazing, loved the maze idea and of course my favourite, allergic!Sam You're the best!

Thank you so much:) And you should totally check out the meme, there's more allergic!Sam/Jared over there!

Oh my God. Really really really loved this. (Loved it as soon as I saw the prompt and who'd answered it. )

Poor Sam. But yeah ...

Haha thank you!! I'm glad you liked it:)

Yeah, I pretty much adored this. Allergic!Sam is just so incredibly hot.

Thanks! I'm glad my love of allergic!Sam is shared:)

MMMM poor Sammy.

Love this. <3

Yes, poor muffin:) Thank you!!

[Raining Strawberry]

That. Was. Fantastic. To say the least. Usually I'm far more interested in sick fics than allergies, but this seriously brought allergies to a whole new level. Freakin intense. Poor Sammy. I am in love.

[Alice]

Poor poor Sammy. Though it is fun to see him suffer so much!

[27jj]

That. Was. Fantastic. To say the least. Usually I'm far more interested in sick fics than allergies, but this seriously brought allergies to a whole new level. Freakin intense. Poor Sammy. I am in love. :lol:

Thank you so much!!! I'm definitely more into sick fics as well, but lately I've been on such an allergy kick, especially with Sammy.

Poor poor Sammy. Though it is fun to see him suffer so much!

Yes, isn't it? Thank you:)

[scent]

Looooooooved this!

Thank you!!!

Hooray!!!!!! This was amazing, loved the maze idea and of course my favourite, allergic!Sam You're the best!

Thank you so much:) And you should totally check out the meme, there's more allergic!Sam/Jared over there!

Oh my God. Really really really loved this. (Loved it as soon as I saw the prompt and who'd answered it. )

Poor Sam. But yeah ...

Haha thank you!! I'm glad you liked it:)

Yeah, I pretty much adored this. Allergic!Sam is just so incredibly hot.

Thanks! I'm glad my love of allergic!Sam is shared:)

MMMM poor Sammy.

Love this. <3

Yes, poor muffin:) Thank you!!

Absolutlely love it!

[27jj]

Absolutlely love it!

Yay! So glad you liked it, and thanks again for the idea:)