Weapons Training, for azewewish (gen, PG-13)

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Title: Weapons Training
Author: deeplyshallow1 / Joe Strummer
Recipient: azewewish
Rating: PG-13
Author's Notes: ~1100 words. This is in response to azewewish's request for "anything at all to do with weapons training". I was kind of abstract in my interpretation, so I hope you still like it! Just be thankful you aren't seeing the first version of this. I was forced to give it the axe after it started mutating out of control. Enjoy the chopped down version.
Summary: Sammy had some special weapons when he was growing up.

~
The Dimples

Dean was the first one Sam ever smiled at. One morning when Sam was a couple of months old Mary walked in to see Dean in Sam's crib, playing with him. Dean was dropping Sammy's stuffed ball in Sam's face, then quickly picking it up again before Sam could figure out how to grab it with his little baby hands. Sammy had a look of consternation on his face at the ball's repeated success in escaping, and his gurgling was just starting to turn to distressed whimpers when Dean dropped the ball and said, "Here Sammy," and guided Sam's hands to the sides of the ball. Sam's fingers squeezed it a few times, as if to make sure he really had it now, then, right before he brought it to his mouth to be drowned in drool, he made a happy little gurgle and smiled up at Dean. Dean let him keep the ball after that.

Sam was a chubby little thing when he was a toddler, the kind of kid women of all ages wanted to pick up and cuddle. That, plus the two little dimples that popped out when he smiled, made for a killer combination. By the time Sam was four he and Dean had figured out they were more likely to score free candy and toys if Sam did the smiling and Dean did the talking.

When Sam was sixteen Jenny Mooreland agreed to go out with him after he ran into her in the hall and the contents of her bag spilled out all across the floor. He apologized profusely and helped her pick everything up, then gave her a self-effacing grin and said he supposed this meant she wouldn't be interested in going out for coffee. Jenny, whose last boyfriend had been Ben Stevens, the type of jock that thought being nice to a girl made you a pansy, visibly melted.

Sam tried not to smile much when talking information out of witnesses. He hated lying with a smile.

He was good at it though.

The Puppy Eyes

One time when Sam was eleven Dean got out of a misdemeanor charge because of Sam's puppy eyes. They were living in Bluefield, West Virginia at the time, while John investigated several legends in the Appalachians. They lived next door to an old woman named Mrs. Fergenson, who had taken one look at Dean's beat up jeans, Metallica t-shirt, and smirking face and disliked him instantly. Dean, predictably, reacted to this by smirking more and playing Metallica loudly with his windows open whenever she was around. At least until she caught John at home and complained, after which the music stayed down and the smirks turned to glares.

Things probably would have stayed that way until they left if it weren't for Dean's baseball practice.

Dean had gotten on to Bluefield High's baseball team through a combination of luck and chance, plus a little interest and skill on his part. Since Dean had to miss practice sometimes to help John on a hunt, he'd taken to doing his own practicing in the backyard with Sam. They'd play for hours, usually moving from catch to seeing whose aim was better by trying to hit targets with the ball ever smaller and farther away. Eventually they would get bored with that too and move on to batting. One evening when John was out investigating a banshee sighting in Charleston, Sam threw a fastball that Dean swung at so hard it was knocked out of the ballpark. Or would have been, if they had been in a ballpark. Since they weren't, the ball went right over Mrs. Fergenson's rose-twined white picket fence and straight through her dining room window, crashing into a vase full of flowers on the table before finally rolling to a stop on her red Persian rug.

Dean and Sam stood frozen, not even breathing, for one, two, three seconds...then a screech split the air as Mrs. Fergenson rushed into the dining room and saw what had happened. She took in the damage with a glance, then looked up to see Sam and Dean standing there with the bat still in Dean's hands.

They had seen monsters with looks less scary than the one she gave them then.

After that there was a lot of yelling and angry gesturing that Dean just took silently until she said John was raising a couple of hoodlums and they were both going to end up in jail one day. Then he started yelling back just as hard, and things escalated until Mrs. Fergenson said she was heading back inside to call the police on Dean. Sam, who had been watching without saying anything until now, cried out at this and ran over to her. He started talking desperately, saying they were really sorry, he threw the ball too hard, they'd pay for the window and the vase, but she couldn't make them take Dean away. Mrs. Fergenson looked down at Sam's pleading, tear-filled eyes and paused.

In the end Sam and Dean worked in her garden after school every day for three weeks, and by the time they left Bluefield Mrs. Fergenson baked them a batch of cookies to take with them.

The Bitchface

Sam maintained to this day that the so-called bitchface was developed out of necessity for survival in a life spent next to two of the most bullheaded guys on the planet. Sometimes words aren't enough to convey the utter disdain you feel for the other person's position, and their intelligence in general.

Dean maintained to this day that goblins had gotten to Sam when he and John weren't looking and he was cursed to make that face at least once a week until he died. He upgraded once a week to once a day after Sam hit puberty.

Dean would never tell him this, but after Sam left for Stanford he would stand in front of bathroom mirrors sometimes and tried to make 'Sammy faces'. It didn't work.

When he went to Palo Alto to get Sam after John went missing, the sight of Sam's Dean-what-the-fuck-are-you-doing-here expression had him grinning for the first time in what felt like years.