text ♔ to sam & dean

[bittersweeter]

[ sometime in october (~time), both winchesters get separate texts because lila isn't about to make this a group text tango, she's just covering all her bases in supernatural nerdom. ]

Yo brain trust. What do you know about Djinn?

Comments

[likedillinger]

Bad news bears. Do I wanna ask why?

[bittersweeter]

Intellectual pursuit. Can you please elaborate? Google is stuck in Arabic and I only read left to right.

[likedillinger]

Yeah, I believe that.

I've run into some before. All the cliches hold up: bottles, lamps, three wishes, certain rules, and a helluva lot of trouble for the people who think they're gonna solve all their problems. There's always a catch.

[bittersweeter]

Anything that I can't figure out from watching Aladdin?

[likedillinger]

If you've got something you wanna ask, ask.

[bittersweeter]

Are they dangerous? Do you know who their "King" is? How often do wishes go badly and why? Is it one of those selective interpretations thing?

And before you go off on some rant about wishes, I don't have a pet genie at my command. I'm not Jafar in this situation.

[likedillinger]

So who is?

If I'm gonna give you deets, I deserve to know what's going on. You don't fuck around with genies.

[bittersweeter]

If that's the case, thank you for your time. Later.

[ naw son, she ain't outing faye for anything. especially since faye hasn't said YEAH LET'S MAKE SOME WISHES. she's just curious about her bf. yep. ]

Oh actually. Have you ever heard of curse workers in this world?

[ just checking, while she has him. ]

[likedillinger]

The subject change isn't gonna make me forget you asked. If somebody's messing around with djinn, I'm gonna find out about it.

You want my help, I'm all in, but you've gotta be straight with me.

[bittersweeter]

Racism.

[likedillinger]

Experience.

[bittersweeter]

If it becomes an issue you will be the first person I call. That's all I'm giving you since all you gave me was the summary of Aladdin.

Curse workers. Do they exist or not.

[familybusiness]

Are you looking for stories of ones I've run into or do you want strictly info about the ones that hang around on this side of the Veil?

[bittersweeter]

I'll take both if it's on the menu. Trade you one free good dream because I'm nice like that.

[familybusiness]

[Storytime!]

Dean and I were hunting one shortly before I fell over to this side. They're cave dwellers, normally, humanoid with strange tattoos. They're not really anything like genies from stories, though. Djinn feed off of human blood, and they general incapacitate their victims before slowly draining them over time.

They do this through touch, which causes a person to have intense hallucinations, forcing them into a world where they believe their greatest wish has been granted. Their deaths are painless but that doesn't make it any less horrific.

The one we were hunting caught Dean while he was alone. I barely tracked him down in time. My brother was pretty damn weak when I found him gurneyed up in a warehouse.

[bittersweeter]

[ no wonder he is so fussy about it. thanks so much for the dean backstory, sammy, this is why you're her fave winchester. ]

So the wish is a farce, basically. The victim is deluded into think they've got what they want and then they bite it from blood loss presumably.

[ fucking awesome. i mean. what. ]

Are the ones from here anything similar?

[ jordon sort of stopped emma's blood loss, he doesn't look like the type to drain someone dry while they have happy daydreams. but lila doesn't look like the type to sleepwalk someone off a building so she knows looks can be deceiving. ]

[familybusiness]

Yeah, exactly. They get to live through exactly what they want, but it isn't real. Most of them don't notice, and eventually they just fade away. It's a miracle I even got Dean to wake up from it at all.

They're not even remotely the same. Around here, they're more like the kid's stories, only with a few important differences. They're bound to bottles, and whoever holds the bottle is the genie's master. You get three wishes, but you can't wish for someone to love you, or for anyone's death. You can't wish for more wishes, either.

They're all ruled by a king, called the Jareth. And they really do grant your wishes, but most of the time, if there's some kind of loophole in how it's worded, the wish gets twisted into something horrible. They all come with some kind of price, and not one anyone would like to pay.

There are also stories about people vanishing after their wishes were made.

If you want to get really specific, there's three different 'races', the Djinn, the Efreeti and the Janni, though they all play by similar rules.

[A beat, and then he sends this.]

Please don't tell me you found a genie's bottle.

[bittersweeter]

[ she can imagine the ways wishes can go wrong. ask for a million dollars and it shows up on their doorstep followed by the police because it's from a bank robbery. hope they said dollars instead of bucks though, otherwise they're being promptly trampled by a million male deer. immortality without an out so they outlive the plantet, the galaxy. want power? bam, proud owner of an electric company.

wish for safety for their best friend? cat in a cage. yeah, lila can imagine how these wishes can be distorted. ]

I don't have a genie's bottle.

[familybusiness]

They're not something to mess with. I'm not kidding.

[He can't tell if she's lying via text, after all. Going the safe route.]

[bittersweeter]

I will repeat, slowly, so you understand.

[ each text that follows contains one single word. ]

I

Do.

Not.

Have.

A.

Genie.

Bottle.

Okay?

[familybusiness]

Fine Okay Okay Geez

[bittersweeter]

I'm not a moron, I'm not going to mess with wishes.

[familybusiness]

Good. It's not exactly a common questions, so I was worried.

[bittersweeter]

We live in a castle, we're in a knighthood, I can put people to sleep with my fingertips and turn invisible and you've probably been possessed. What would a common question be between us?

[familybusiness]

I guess that's fair.

[bittersweeter]

Thanks for the info, Brain Trust.

[familybusiness]

You're welcome, Lila.