Work Text:
It was probably too late to fake a stomach ache, or appendicitis, or whatever Dean's go-to-the-hospital plan would have implied. It was definitely too late to leave the house and run for it—Dad was watching Matt like a hawk, and even if he managed to get out and not be immediately brought back home, he'd be stung to death before he escaped Oasis Plains.
So Matt paced across the sitting room, waiting for the Winchesters and hoping he'd secured his pets well enough that they wouldn't try to kill him. Not that they could—he didn't have any pets with venom that could hurt non-allergic people. Even the red-kneed tarantula, Shelob, didn't have a bite any worse than a bee sting.
Dad was pacing, too, in the living room. Mom was doing a puzzle and pretending to ignore them both. Matt's pets were secure. The other bugs were coming. The Winchesters were nowhere.
Finally, finally, Matt heard the sound of an engine in the driveway.
He ran to the door, but Dad pushed his way out in front of him. Sam was already out of the car. Dean was doing something with the glove compartment.
"Get off my property before I call the cops."
Sam raised his hands. “Mr. Pike, listen-”
“Dad, they’re just tryin’ to help-”
“Get back in the house!” Dad moved as if to block Matt from their line of sight.
"I'm sorry," said Matt helplessly. "I told him the truth."
Dean, just getting out, gestured like what the hell, and Matt shrugged. He couldn't lie for crap.
"It's not too late," said Sam, moving around the hood of their car. "Come with us. Larry, if you stay here, you're dooming your family."
"Stay away from us."
"Matt," said Dean in a voice that allowed no argument, "if you're gonna be the only smart one in your family, you need to come with us and get out."
Matt didn't want to leave Mom and Dad to die.
But he didn't want to die, either, so he ducked under Dad's arm and ran for the car.
"MATTHEW ALFRED PIKE!"
Sorry, Dad.
Follow us, please.
He reached for the handle of the backdoor, but suddenly there was an arm around his shoulder. He was being turned around to face Dad, and Dean was right behind him, holding him in place with one arm.
"Dean?" He wasn't sure he'd said it aloud.
Dad's face was pale. He opened his mouth.
Something touched the side of Matt's head, hard metal, and out of the corner of his eye he could see that Dean was holding a gun.
He'd asked the men if they were serial killers. At the time, it had been a joke. He wondered if their names were really Dean and Sam Winchester. He wondered if they were really a couple after all.
"Here's what we're going to do, Larry," said Dean almost conversationally, like talking teenagers hostage was a daily occurrence for him. Maybe it was. "You are going to keep quiet and come with us. Get in the car, and hurry. Don't say a word." He stepped aside, dragging Matt with him so that Dad could get to the car. Sam held the door like an affably murderous chauffeur, cuffing Dad to the inside of the door. Sam nodded to Dean and glanced nervously in the direction of the woods.
Dean nudged Matt's head with the gun as Sam strode to the porch. "Scream," he said. "No words. We need to get your mom out here."
Matt swallowed. Opened his mouth.
When he'd started screaming, it was hard to stop. He screamed as Dean opened the door and shoved him into the passenger seat. He screamed as his mother burst out of the door and into Sam's waiting arms. He screamed as Sam pulled her into the backseat, as the last door slammed shut.
"You can stop any time," said Dean to Matt, and he knew disobeying wasn't an option. Matt took a deep breath, and then another, trying to stay quiet as Dean pulled away from his home.
"I wouldn't try to escape," said Sam quietly. Matt risked a glance back. His parents were sitting in the outside two seats, exchanging terrified looks across Sam, who was sitting between them and turning over a knife in his hands.
They made a sharp turn onto the main road out of Oasis Springs, jolting Matt's attention back to Dean. The gun, he noticed, was tucked into his waistband, on the other side of his body from Matt.
He discarded the idea of lunging for it. He wasn't desperate enough. Yet.
Dean stared into the the rearview mirror like the police were after them. Like instead of the buzzing that was growing steadily louder, there were sirens. "Damn it, they're-"
And then the bees hit.
A mass of arthropod, crawling over every window until the car was dark and nothing was audible over the buzzing.
For a moment, Matt didn't know what had happened. He'd been too focused on being kidnapped to remember the other threat.
But if he was right…
Had Dean and Sam not known? Had they just seized it as an excuse to get him to cooperate, and never believed it?
So maybe, if he grabbed the gun now…
He glanced back again. Mom and Dad were staring at the windows, ignoring Sam entirely. Sam was looking between them and Matt, holding the knife in a death grip.
All of their lips were moving. Matt didn't know what they were saying.
Back at Dean, who had slowed the car to a crawl, leaning forward to peer out the windshield.
And Matt seized his moment. He lunged across Dean's lap, pulled the gun from his waistband, and aimed it at Dean.
Or at least, he tried. Dean blocked him without looking away from where the road should have been, shoving him back across the seat with one hand. Then Sam grabbed Matt's wrist, pulling one arm back over the seat. The angle hurt, stress on his wrist, and he looked into Sam’s face in fear.
This time, he thought he could actually read Sam's lips: don't be stupid.
His parents hadn't even seemed to notice. The buzzing was starting to get into Matt's brain, and he hoped the bees were too focused on stinging to try and heat the car to death. Probably Dean would turn on the air conditioning first, if the ancient car even had air conditioning.
Or he'd realize that the bugs hadn't just been an exploitable delusion of Matt's, get mad, and kill them all.
Matt begged then; "don't kill me"s tripping over "please"s that nobody ever heard. Sam didn't let go. Dean didn't stop driving, holding the steering wheel in a death grip and staring at the buzzing mass that had replaced the road.
It was only a few minutes before the bees started to leave, flying away in groups like old paint flaking off under a power washer, but it felt like hours.
A clump detached itself from the windshield, and Matt heard Dean's "Damn right!"
Matt was still begging. Mom and Dad had pressed themselves into the leather seat, neither of them able to decide whether Sam was more important to keep an eye on than the bees.
"Matt?"
Matt bit his tongue, tasting blood to keep quiet, and looked Sam in the eyes for the first time that evening.
"Only a few more minutes," Sam promised. "We won't hurt you."
"We might," said Dean.
"Dean-"
"Sam, we're surrounded by bees and panic, and we need them to not do anything stupid."
So Matt kept very still, and they didn’t do anything stupid, and after an eternity the windows were clear and he couldn’t hear any buzzing over the car’s engine and his own rapid breathing. But Dean didn’t stop, only stepped on the accelerator, carrying Matt and his parents away from Oasis Springs as fast as the ancient car could take them.
“Don’t look at me like that,” Dean said when he noticed Matt’s expression. “I need to make sure you get far away from Ground Zero. And”—he glanced over his shoulder at Matt’s parents—”give up on the housing, okay? People are gonna die.”
“Even if you don’t believe us,” Sam put in, squeezing Matt’s arm in what might have been intended as comfort, “believe your eyes. The bugs are real. You can’t control them. They’ll come back.”
Everyone was still digesting that when Dean finally pulled to a stop.
“All right, last stop, everybody out.”
Matt didn’t dare pull back when Sam’s hand loosened on his wrist. Sam didn’t seem to notice, too busy staring at Dean with a bewildered expression. “In the middle of nowhere?”
“Dude, we kidnapped them. It hasn’t even been a month since St. Louis; do you want them to go to the cops right away?”
Sam’s expression got tight and for a moment Matt thought he was going to use that knife on Matt, but Sam just nodded his assent and finally, finally let go. Matt slowly pulled his arm back.
Dean got out and walked around the car to open the door for Matt. He got out, trying to shake the feeling that he was the prom queen and the school gym was right around the corner, while Sam uncuffed his parents from the car doors.
Eventually they all stood awkwardly at the edge of a forest. Matt knew the area well enough to be pretty sure there was another subdivision just over the rise of the road. Dean shuffled his feet.
“Nice to meet you. Don’t keep building. See you never. Uh. Sorry we kidnapped you. We weren’t gonna hurt you.” He made as if to turn back to the car.
"What about-" Mom couldn't finish the sentence, but Dean must have figured it out from the way she looked at him.
"The gun?"
She hesitated for a second before she nodded.
"It wasn't loaded," he said, pulling it out and disassembling it expertly. "No magazine, even, and the safety was on."
Matt suddenly felt light-headed. Dean- he'd never been in-?
Dean tilted a head to Sam. "He's the one you should worry about. The knife's real, and he knows how to use it."
"Dean."
"It's true."
“You don’t need to say it- never mind.”
They ignored the Pikes after that, still bickering good-naturedly as they got into the car and drove away. Matt and his parents stood watching them, and kept watching long after the headlights had disappeared.
Later, there would be phone calls and cancellations and a moving van. Later, Matt would work up the courage to handle Shelob again. Later, there would be coping and crying and college applications. But for now, the Pikes just started walking towards the nearest houses, away from the investment that had turned on them all.