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Author: Guede Mazaka
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: Smecker/Greenly. Jokes about Dean/Sam, or possible incest depending on how seriously you want to read them.
Feedback: Good lines, typos, etc.
Disclaimer: Belongs not to me.
Notes: Supernatural/Boondock Saints crossover (season 1 SPN; mostly references Asylum). Musefic. For dien’s birthday (very, very late).
Summary: Paul Smecker, couples counselor extraordinaire. He even does non-couple couples.
***
Well, this was an interesting one, Paul thought. And not just because afterward he’d have to forgo the usual aspirin-break in favor of planting his boot in Greenly’s ass for sneaking in these two while Paul was still out to lunch. The thirty-to-forty minute wait in the lobby was a crucial step in constructing his personality analyses, and now thanks to Ed’s stupidity, Paul had no idea whether the dark-haired beanpole one actually would go for Women’s Health over Maxim, or if the blond mouthy one would try to hide Highlights inside last month’s Truckin’. This meant he had to start right away instead of wasting another five minutes silently mocking the editorial section of the newspaper.
Paul took a deep breath, noted the are-you-kidding-me look the blond shot to the other one, and pasted on his used-car salesman smile. “Hello, I’m Paul Smecker. Welcome to couples counseling, Sam…” the brunette shifted uneasily “…and Dean.”
The blond wrapped his hands around the ends of his chair-arms and leaned way, way back, like he wasn’t sure what he was smelling off Paul but he knew he didn’t want more of it. “Couples counseling? Why are we in couples counseling? We’re not a couple.”
Eyebrow raised, Paul got out his notepad and his fuzziest purple pen. He ignored the way both Sam and Dean’s eyes immediately zeroed in on it and started doodling a little cartoon demon. “Really? Then why could my secretary put together a montage that’s like a testimony to Conjoined Personal Space with only one night’s worth of footage of you?”
Sam’s head immediately went up, but it took a truly herculean effort for Dean to drag his eyes off Paul’s pen. “You taped us?” he yelped.
“I--we--our job means we--we work in very cramped spaces! And we get into a lot of situations that might look like one thing, but actually…look, I have--I had a girlfriend I was going to marry!” Vigorous nodding from Sam to go with the wide eyes and generally pleading demeanor.
“And I had lots of one-night-stands!” Dean blinked. “With girls. Lots of girls.”
“One word for you: beards,” Paul muttered. He added a second tail to the demon, making sure that his pen’s feathery tufted end waved dramatically in the air as he did. “And Dean? Stop looking so smug. Your brother was way classier just now, by a long way.”
For that he earned himself a death-glare from Dean and the tiniest, most precious little cough from Sam, who glanced away a beat too late when Dean then looked at him. So…Dean hitched himself up, gave his leather coat a manly jerk, and stuck out his shapely, strong, soul-stirring chin at Paul. “We’re not gay, and even if we were, we sure as hell wouldn’t be doing it with each other.”
“That still leaves bisexual.” The demon looked a little imbalanced. After a check at Dean, Paul gave it bigger, dopier eyes. And added a shine-mark to the lips.
“We’re not that either,” Sam said heavily. His right heel started to grind into the carpet. “Look, I know it might look like we spend too much time together—I mean, we do—but that doesn’t mean…we kind of have to. It’s not so much a choice.”
Dean briefly looked torn between his available targets, but in the end he settled on Sam. “Oh, thanks.”
It was a little late for Sam’s chagrined expression. “I didn’t mean it like that. I just meant…you know…we don’t do it because we like each other that much.”
“Yeah, I’m reading you loud and clear,” Dean muttered. He slouched in his seat, hiding his mouth with his hand. “Thanks, Mr. Class. I done been told.”
Annoyance flashed over Sam’s face. He even started to retort, but at the last minute reined himself in and just rearranged his long, long limbs in the small, small chair. Then Sam let out a long-suffering sigh and turned to Paul. “Look, Dr. Smecker. With all due respect, I don’t think this is going to be effective. I’ve tried something like this before and it didn’t really give me any long-term help.”
“Saint Sam,” Dean coughed. He added a couple extra hacks for…well, Paul didn’t know, but it definitely wasn’t verisimilitude…that sent him way forward so his head was almost between his knees.
Sam looked at Dean’s back. His fingers twitched, then curled up as he exerted a visible effort to not see how precariously Dean was balanced. “Do you have to do this?” he hissed. “I wasn’t saying that! You know I wasn’t saying that, but you still—can’t you cut me any slack?”
“Aw, I’m sorry, did I hurt your feelings? I guess back at college they didn’t treat you so bad, like your dumb uneducated bro does. Sorry, man. I just don’t know any better.” When pulling himself back into his chair, Dean ‘accidentally’ kicked Sam’s feet. His drawl thickened like molasses in the freezer.
Paul began a new doodle: a gawky giraffe-like monster with teary eyes. “Well, if you don’t want to talk about the awkward sexual tension, what about this sibling rivalry you two have going?”
He did glance up then, since the contortions through which their faces went were absolutely stunning. Later he’d have to cull some shots from the videofeeds for the picture-book primer on reading body language he was putting together for the BPD.
“There’s no awkward sexual tension,” Dean finally said. “You wanna bring in a girl and have her flirt with Sammy, then we’d have some of that. You know, maybe you should, since I’m not real sure you know what the hell you’re talking about.”
Sam spared his brother a warning glower before he attempted to address Paul. “We’re brothers. It’d be weird if we didn’t have sibling rivalry, wouldn’t it?”
“So what did you go to therapy about before? Parental issues?” Twitches from both of them. “Why you aren’t now wearing a wedding ring?” Paul continued.
Now Sam appeared to be doing his best imitation of the bastard child of Medusa and an NBA player. Dean was grinding his teeth and in a couple seconds he was probably going to be frothing at the mouth, too. He deliberately shifted around so Paul could get a flash of his gun.
“Why don’t we change the subject?” he said.
Paul pretended to consider the idea. Then he raised and dropped his shoulder, and added a line of spines to his giraffe-monster. He gave it enormous hooves. “Well, okay. What do you want to talk about?”
Dean settled back in his chair, looking smug. “Nothing.”
“Could’ve guessed,” Sam muttered. He pretended to ignore Dean’s squinty incredulous look till Dean reached over and hit him on the shoulder, and then he hissed and all but pawed back. “Hey!”
“You saying something, Sammy?” The raised eyebrow paired with the deepening warning tone: deadly! Or at least Dean clearly thought so.
Sam, however, was a good deal less impressed. “Maybe. I mean, come on. We’re here for a reason. Somebody thinks we need help, so Dean, maybe we should listen and try to think this through.”
“Didn’t you just say therapy didn’t work for you?” Paul absently asked, putting the finishing touches on his drawings. He nibbled on the end of his pen, then made a face; the feathers tasted like cleaning solution, so apparently Greenly had been sloppy with his chores. Again.
“Yeah, well, no man is an island. The problem’s not just me,” Sam said. Talking to Dean, who also seemed to have thought that those words had come from his mouth, judging by the belligerent expression on his face. “I can do everything I can and it still isn’t good enough. It still doesn’t change anything, because you don’t want to talk about anything. You don’t even want to talk about—”
“Who decided we need to talk about it, huh? Maybe—hey. Hey. I remember when that—so you went in there and you talked to that head shrink about us? And then—” Dean jerked himself half-off of his chair so he could point down at his brother “—and then you tried to shoot me! See! Talking is bad! Talking makes you homicidal!”
Sam blinked. He unconsciously straightened up, which immediately and effortlessly made him taller than Dean. “Dean. We were in an asylum haunted by the ghost of a psychotic psychologist. Who possessed me. That was why I tried to kill you.”
“Because you had repressed feelings of—of—whatever!”
“Oh, my God. You know, he’s right about the whole sibling rivalry thing.”
“Only on your side, man. I’m fine.”
“Really? Then how do you explain the time when I was twelve and you and Dad…”
Paul watched them for a few minutes. Once or twice, when objects started flying around without anybody touching them, he reached towards the trapdoor emergency button, but then he thought the better of it and just got up. By then Sam and Dean were so busy arguing they didn’t even look up, and Paul made it all the way to the door without them missing a beat in the insults.
“Done already?” Greenly mumbled, hastily putting down his club sandwich. He kicked at something beneath his desk and the crackle of the TV stopped.
“Nah, their dad’s late—some poltergeist fucked up his truck and they’re sending him in via taxi, and I can’t get into Freud till he shows. I’m just going to let them free-associate off each other for a while, and post the tapes online later.” The deli bag on Greenly’s desk still had some pickles in it, so Paul took out one. It was dripping so he gave it a pointed suck—Greenly grimaced and went fuzzy-eyed at the same time—before biting off the end. “So, how’re those Red Sox?”
“Fourth inning and down—aw, shit.” Greenly put down his club and up his other hand at the same time, already turning towards the appointments book. “All right, all right, I know, I know. Overtime for me today.”
Paul grinned and played with his fuzzy purple pen. “Fun as it is when I get to point out what an idiot everyone is, I do love it when work does itself.”
***