Dizzy Land

Sam stared for a moment, surprised, then dropped his head in embarrassment.

So it wasn't exactly the first time something like that had happened, but it was still awkward. Leave it to Dean to have already found and made a 'friend' of some hot blond girl in pocket-dimension Disneyland. He tapped his fingers against the counter a few times and debated whether it would be better to try to slip into the back room or just stay where he was and pretend to be invisible.

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Dean wasn't really one to get embarrassed easily, but he was caught off-guard this time--he stumbled over his feet a little when Starbuck yanked him toward her. It didn't help any that he could hear Sam's finger-tapping behind him, either.

Blushing uncharacteristically, he regained his balance and stepped back, grinning just slightly. "Crap--uh, hey, you need to meet my brother," he said, pulling the door open to let her inside and gesturing in Sam's direction. "This is Sam; I think I told you about him, right? He just showed up here now. Pretty weird, huh?" Okay, so he was babbling a little.

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It was a good thing then that Starbuck didn't lose her balance so easy or they might have ended up in a neat tangle on the ground. As it was, she kind of liked it - it gave her a little crush of weight and she could keep him on his feet. And that blush was fun to follow since it trailed past his jaw, right down his neck....

But her brain cut off at the words meet my brother. Whoops.

Not that she was overly-modest (living in a close bunk situation with nine to eleven other people 24/7 pretty much demolished that), but it was clear that the one on the counter was. And... wait, that was his brother? Honestly, where were all the normal-looking people around here? "So this is Sam, huh? Lucky you, getting dropped off with someone you know already around," she said with a smile. She felt a stab of worry. She'd been fighting with herself over whether or not she thought it was good to find anyone she knew here, and particularly who she would want to show up if it were to happen. And now Dean had family here. Was it completely random, or was there a system?

She glanced at Dean out of the corner of her eye laughingly because all-in-all, her thoughts would be decidedly darker had he not sounded just a tiny bit flustered. It was pretty funny. So she licked at her bottom lip once just to make him antsy before looking back at Sam, all welcoming smiles and keen interest.

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Sam couldn’t help but grin a little at the collective-Winchester-awkwardness-level in the room and her contrasting unconcern. Sounded like Dean was a bit surprised by the whole thing too.

He slid down from the counter and offered her his hand.

“Hi nice to-”

And then he got a better look at her.

“Katee Sackhoff?”

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She blinked wide at him. I've just been very confused with someone else, she decided, and figured he could be forgiven having just shown up in this pocket-dimension, or whatever-the-hell everyone wanted to call it. "Starbuck," she told him, taking his hand and shaking firmly. "It's my callsign, at least, which your brother hasn't seemed to figure out yet." She looked over her shoulder at Dean and smirked.

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Starbuck?

Sam stared at her. Then he blinked. Then he stared some more. Then, finally, he realized he was staring and blushed furiously, dropping his eyes.

“Oh God, uh… sorry. I’m sorry. I just, uh, I’m a little thrown by all this and you,” he looked back up at her, “you look almost exactly like an actress on this show my girlfriend used to watch.*” Because, you know, she was the actress who played you. “Callsign, huh? That’s pretty cool.”

*And which Sam used to watch too. Jess had been a closet sci-fi geek, and he’d be lying if he said he hadn’t enjoyed curling up on the couch with her to watch Star Wars or Lost in Space or occasionally an episode of “Star Trek: The Next Generation,” along with the weekly episodes of the new “Battlestar Galactica.” He’d also be lying if he said he hadn’t thought Katee Sackhoff (and therefore Starbuck) was totally hot. It was awkward.

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"I had a suspicion," Dean muttered, glowering. And--wait, what the hell was Sam going on about? A show... One that Sam watched? What? He gave Sam a meaningful We'll talk about this later, look, then glanced between Starbuck and his brother.

"So, how 'bout we all go get some food?" he suggested, grinning. Before this gets any more awkward.

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"Uh-huh, and you just never asked," she pointed out with a disbelieving smile. After all, if muttering and glowering had ever bothered her she'd never spend as much time with Lee as she did. "Is this a family thing?" she asked jokingly. "The tandem blushing? Because I would think that would take lots of practice."

Well, something was going on that she had absolutely no idea about, judging from the weird looks getting exchanged all around. Food was probably a good idea then. "Yeah, what does everyone want?" She moved toward the door, whipping the pyramid ball she was still holding over her shoulder at Dean. He had good fighting reflexes, time to see about the rest.

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"...Yeah, well, I was getting around to it," Dean explained. Actually, he'd suspected that if she was keeping her real name a secret, it probably wasn't a good idea to ask. This hadn't been in respect of privacy so much as in fear of getting chewed out.

"We can--" he started to answer, then blinked, catching the ball half-accidentally. He managed not to drop it in surprise, though, which he hoped meant he'd passed the test--or whatever it was. "What is this thing?" he asked, inspecting it.

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Tandem blushing? Sam was vaguely mortified, but it was all he could do not to blurt ‘it’s a pyramid ball!’ when Dean questioned the thing Starbuck had just chucked at his head.

Holy crap this was weird.

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"I'm sure you were," she said with a snort. Now it was getting fun just to watch him mutter over it. And maybe if he got over huffing about it long enough, he'd actually remember to ask.

It was really hard for her not to all-out grin when he caught the ball. Partly due to the completely flummoxed look on his face. Without realizing that she was mirroring Sam's thoughts, she said, "It's a pyramid ball. I built a court with a friend and I'm going to see if I can get games started. You know, do something to stifle the boredom around here." She opened the door and waited for them to follow.

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“Sounds fun,” Sam said, waiting for Dean to start to follow her before doing the same. “Wanna teach us?” Because really. Pyramid.

He’d have to wait for his damn arm to be healed first, though.

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"Pyramid, huh?" Dean looked at the ball again, then shrugged and tossed it lightly in Starbuck's direction. "Yeah, sounds fun."

Now that she'd taunted him about it, he had every intention of asking her about her name. Right now, though, he was too fixated on whatever the hell was bothering Sam to plan a strategy of attack.

"Wanna go to that pizza place by your--uh, house?" he asked, glancing at Starbuck. Heating up any of the New Orleans food seemed unpleasantly similar to actually cooking.

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She caught the ball and dribbled it once or twice on the ground before keeping it in her grip. "Read my mind. You'd probably both be good at it. It involves a lot of tackling and shoving and general brawling type behavior." She glanced at Sam's arm curiously. That would delay him a bit, though. "What did you do to it?"

She nodded at Dean's suggestion and started in the direction of Tomorrowland. "House?" she echoed bemusedly. "I warn you, we're going to be joined by a dog soon as we get into Tomorrrowland." Sador left her alone sometimes when she went walking, but not if she was in 'home space'.

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“Mmm, pizza,” was Sam’s agreement to the suggestion. He was starving, come to think of it; he hadn’t eaten since the lunch they’d fed him at the police station, having spent all night chasing Claire and then Dean, and afterwards being too concerned with the car and putting some miles between them and Baltimore before they dared stop et even a rest area.

He was a bit startled when she asked about his arm.

“Broke my wrist,” he mumbled with an amused twist to his lips, rather hoping that she wasn’t going to ask for details. His eyes flicked to Dean, just for a moment.

“You have a dog?” he asked, partially to avoid the wrist conversation, and mostly out of genuine interest.

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Okay, Dean's nearly identical reaction to the first time they'd eaten pizza was proof enough that they were brothers. It was also kind of weird. It's not like pizza had any great nutritional value. Then again, compared to what she had to eat on Galactica, it was high-quality dining.

At Sam's explanation, she looked back at him with an unimpressed eyebrow raised. That wasn't even as good as the stories she used to make up as a child to fool her teachers when her mom went off on her. It was just plain avoidance. "Yeah, I have a dog," she said, appeasing him briefly. "I didn't when I got here, she just sort of showed up." Because the Anitchrist felt like giving me a dog. That was still weird in her head.

Back to the subject at hand. "Did you really break it, or did some creepy demonish thing do it for you?" she asked. After all, she didn't know it was any great family secret. Dean hadn't made it sound that way.

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Whoops. It occurred to Dean (rather too late) that Sam hadn't mentioned anything about demon-hunting when he'd shown up in front of the gates, and that he probably wasn't going to be happy when he realized Dean had. (In his defense, he'd been pretty damned convinced it was a dream--could he really be blamed for not knowing that this place was real?)

He laughed nervously, then grinned at Sam. "Um--she... I kinda might have mentioned something about that earlier." Yeah, he was screwed.

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Honestly, Sam would have said ‘mmm’ to just about anything, including Mini-Mart microwaved hot dogs. Pizza was more than a couple steps up from that, and he remembered the pizza place in Tomorrowland.

He nearly gave himself whiplash turning to look at Dean, who was giving him oops-I-fucked-up-but-how-could-you-be-mad-at-this-face? grin. Sam countered with a dude-what-the-fuck-were-you-thinking?

Granted, he had told that guy John. But Dean didn’t know that yet. Sam turned back to Starbuck with a pinched expression on his face.

“Something ‘creepy demonish thing,’” he affirmed. “Zombie actually. I got to be the bait.”

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Starbuck made a face. It made her suddenly very glad that she hadn't been sent here a year ago when she'd had that bad accident and screwed up her knee. "Ouch." And she did happen to catch more weirdness going on between the two boys in her company. Yeah, definintely brothers.

And the little one wasn't happy. "Did I... say something I shouldn't have?" she asked. Not that she was trying to make things more uncomfortable, but really, he just got here and Sam was already pissed about something?

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“Oh, no,” Sam assured her quickly, embarrassed (again). “I just, um…” Oh yeah, he was certainly making a great first impression. “I was just surprised that you knew about, uh, what my brother and I do.”

This time the look he gave Dean was more of a help-me-out-here-this-is-your-fault-anyway, all wide eyes and insistently raised eyebrows.

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Dean wasn't sure how Sam had managed to end up being the flustered one, but he wasn't complaining--in return, he gave Sam an I'm-not-sure-why-you're-staring-at-me expression and hoped for the best.

"I let you be the bait for a zombie?" he asked suddenly, frowning. "Weird. I'm guessing it worked, though, right?"

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Sam huffed. Big brothers. Flat out good for squat. Especially where embarrassment and girls were concerned.

“It was your idea,” he said, rolling his eyes. “You said I was ‘more her type.’ And it worked fine, except for the part where she broke my wrist.”

Actually, Sam didn’t blame Dean for that at all. In fact, after that incident and the subsequent revelations he’d gone out of his way to not blame Dean for anything (the resolution had lasted almost a week.) But this wasn’t that Dean, not yet, so Sam was maybe letting himself be just a little sarcastic.

“But you had to do the messy part,” he conceded after a moment.

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Something was very off about this conversation.

"Wait, why don't you remember?" she asked Dean. "Did you get hit over the head with a two by four when it happened?"

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"'More her type,' huh?" Dean grinned. "Well, then I was probably right." He paused for a moment, then asked, "Do I want to ask about the messy part?"

At Starbuck's question, he suddenly realized that, hey, this was probably going to sound even weirder than it was, if that was possible. "I'm... Well, Sam--" He sighed. "Apparently, either I'm from the past, or Sam's from the future, because the last thing I remember before getting here happened about six months before the last thing Sam remembers." It wasn't the weirdest thing about this place, not by a long shot, but it was the thing most severely freaking him out right now.

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