Boredom is the physical sensation of chaos

Rituals

astarloa — Sat, 07 Jan 2017 21:50:15 GMT

Title: Rituals
Rating: PG-13
Words: 1,300
Warnings: hurt Dean, permanent injury, amputation/limb loss
Summary: Follows directly on from Sleight Life and probably won't make a whole lot of sense unless you've read that one first.

The morning light is dim and grey.

Dean wakes up slowly, suspended in a half-drifting state somewhere below the surface. The apartment’s quiet. He listens to the sound of the rain for a while and watches stray motes of dust as they float past the window, stuck on an eight-track quest to nowhere.

He shuts his eyes and inhales, trying to gather up his scattered pieces, before turning over. The thudding hurt of last night has levelled off and become something more manageable, a dull ache now rather than actual pain, but still. Mornings are hard.

Sweat prickles against the small of Dean’s back, the warmth of his blanket cocoon growing oppressive. He kicks it off and sits up, riding out the sudden head rush. Swinging himself over to the edge of the bed, Dean settles his good leg on the floor and wiggles his toes back and forth, reassures himself that they’re still there. He tries to ignore the familiar sensation of tilting forward, or maybe it’s of the carpet rising up towards him in a lint-flecked wave, and focuses instead on his centre of gravity; gives his head time to work out all over again that it’s closer to his chest now than his hips.

It seems to Dean that his mind shouldn’t need much of a reminder at this point, but what does he know? Not as much as he should, all things considered. Go figure. As everyone – Sam, Sam, Sam, sometimes other people too, mostly doctors whose names Dean can never quite fix ‘cause they don’t really count, the disposable people never have, there were Bobby and his Dad once, yeah, of course, but then again who knows, it all feels like such a long time ago now - insists on telling him, recovery is a process. Unless the term is being used in connection with chemical cheese products, Dean doesn’t want to hear it.

Once the vertigo wears off, Dean leans forward and inspects his residual limb, checking for damage. The stump’s shrunk a lot since his surgery. Angry red scar tissue fading first to pink and then mottled white, the flesh that remains contracting and changing shape. The skin looks okay, Dean decides, giving his leg a final pat. Slightly inflamed and blistered maybe, but nothing he can’t deal with.

Dean huffs out a relieved breath he wasn’t aware of holding.

Because last night? Okay, so yeah. Sam might have had a valid point about staying healthy. Not that Dean has any intention of telling him that, of course. If there’s one thing Sam doesn’t need, in Dean’s well-considered opinion, it’s encouragement of his mother henning routine.

Pot, kettle, saucepan, black. Whatever.

Dean lowers himself to the floor and crawls over to the corner of the room where a pair of black, forearm style crutches are propped up against a chair. Mornings are definitely for crutching – which is totally a word - because dude. No way he’s going through the rigmarole of putting on his leg just to shower. Given the way it was wobbling yesterday, he’s probably due for another adjustment anyway.

Truth of it is, Dean still feels more comfortable with crutches most of the time.

At least, when he’s in the apartment.

Being outside, around people who aren’t Sam? That’s a whole different story. There’s something about not having his hands free that makes Dean’s skin feel too small and tight, like a demon screaming and smoking inside a paint-wet trap. Been there, done that, don’t want to go back. Dean frowns as the thought repeats in a heavy, metal-wheeled clatter, gives his head a firm shake, trying to dislodge it. And there’s another happy memory to start the day off right.

Dean manoeuvres himself upright and cracks the door open. He scans the hallway for signs of Sam, and then scurries across to the bathroom, silent as a goddamn motherfucking ninja in boxer shorts. The latch Sam had insisted on removing and Dean had screwed right back on again jams shut with a satisfied clink.

The bathroom’s tiny and as worn down as the rest of the building, teetering out on the ledge of a decrepit abyss. Hairline cracks thread their way across chipped, checkerboard tiles, playing a frozen game of tag with the dodgy, pre-war plumbing that’s kept pinned to the wall by rusted brackets. The most that can be said about the bathroom is that it’s usually clean. Which is why, when Dean goes to splash some water on his face, he hesitates at the sight of the pale green slime gathered around the metal plughole at the bottom of the basin.

Huh.

So, that’s weird.

He runs the water for a bit, watching the slime disappear with a mild sense of disgust. It’s a long way off the worst thing he’s had to deal with – that honour is still reserved for the bloated, week old carcass of an Onikuma they’d been called out to inspect by a hysterical hobby farmer whose chickens had turned feral and pecked it to death - but still. Weird. And kind of gross.

The pipes beneath the sink rattle, give a loud, belching gurgle, and then fall silent.

Dean eyes them warily and decides his face doesn’t need washing that badly. The shower will do fine.

He looks up and meets the face staring back at him from the mirror above the basin. It’s slightly gaunt, lines fanning out from eyes shadowed with inky thumbprints. The lower half is hidden behind stubble that’s reached beard territory, collected two hundred dollars, and kept right on going for a gleeful victory lap. Dean scratches his chin and figures he should probably do something about it soon. Like, not right now, obviously, but definitely tomorrow. Definitely. Or maybe the day after.

The mirror image tries out a cocky grin, just for old times’ sakes, a private joke between friends, but falters and never quite gets there.

Turning away, Dean settles himself in the shower. He pulls off his underwear and tosses them somewhere in the general direction of the sink.

Dean’s lip curls at the familiar press of the slick, molded-plastic shower chair against his thighs. He hates that thing. Of course, he’s also less than enthusiastic about Sam having to drag his wet, soapy body off the floor when Dean loses his balance and cracks his head on the way down. Once was more than enough, thanks very much.

So shower chair it is.

Despite the weak pressure and lukewarm water, Dean stays there for a long time.

The water feels good against his skin, washes away the last of the wooziness. He scrubs a hand over his face, eyes closed against the spray, and thinks about the unwelcome conversation he’s gotta have with Sam. ‘Cause it was a dick move to let Sam think he’s back hunting again. No question. But somehow, when Dean had tried to explain what was going on, the words had become a heavy, constricting weight inside him, refusing to squeeze past his throat and be made real. Sam’s anger has always been easier to deal with when it’s directed towards something Dean hasn’t done – or at least, not quite in the way Sam imagines – than what Dean is actually doing. And doesn’t intend to stop.

Or doesn’t want to stop, and there’s the kicker right there. ‘Cause he will if Sam asks.

For an ex-hunter, Dean thinks sourly, towelling himself dry, his brother’s got some real weird hang-ups about breaking the law. Especially now they’re ‘sposed to have gone legit.

Sleight Life

astarloa — Mon, 26 Sep 2016 11:27:36 GMT

Title: Sleight Life
Recipient: Thruterryseyes
Rating: PG-13
Words: 3,100
Warnings: Sam angst, hurt Dean, permanent injury, amputation/limb loss, ableist comment by an OC
Summary: Fast-forward five years: the Winchesters have settled down somewhere in the Pacific Northwest. Sam is a victim of umbrella theft, there may or may not be tiny water demons living in the bathroom, and it never stops raining. Oh, and then there’s the whole angst and lack of communication thing. Yeah. It’s going about as well as you’d expect.
A/N: Written for thruterryseyes for the spn_summergen challenge

After thinking about it some, the police decide to let Dean go with a warning.

A few exceptions aside – namely the involvement of dead or damaged bodies - trespass violations don’t generate a whole lot of excitement. Some middle-aged guy with no prior record caught wandering around a disused grain terminal? Hell no, more paperwork than it’s worth.

There’s no fanfare to accompany his release, just a bored processing officer calling a name that’s both Dean’s and not. Mostly not, although these days the line between real and imagined can get a little smudged. Dean suspects there’s a joke hidden in there somewhere, the kind that’s supposed to be clever rather than funny.

“Want to watch your step, son,” one of the officers calls after him. “Hate to see a fine up-standing citizen like yourself back here again.”

There’s the sound of muffled laughter.

He stiffens, mouth pressed into a flat line, and forces himself to keep going.

“Bag of dicks,” Dean mutters. He swings his duffle bag over one shoulder and makes his way out to the front of the station, navigating around two strung out junkies arguing over their last cigarette.

His pace speeds up as a set of automatic glass doors come into view.

They slide open in a rush of cold, clammy air that Dean should have grown used to by now, but somehow hasn’t. After several hours stuck in an overcrowded cell with people who think of soap as an optional extra, being outside again feels like the next best thing to a shower. He takes a breath and looks around, glaring at nothing in particular.

Even at a little after one a.m. there’s a stream of traffic passing. It moves in random fits and starts, as though time’s skipping over a scratch on reality. An ambulance speeds past, the siren drowning out the rhythmic blur of tyres on wet, gritty asphalt.

It was a dark and stormy night…

Dean snorts.

Dark, yeah, even with thousand watt lights glowing from the windows of empty office buildings, because seriously. Kind of hard to escape, what with the whole nighttime thing. No storms, though, just the fine, steady drizzle that falls from the sky three hundred days of the year and doesn’t quite qualify as rain.

He heads towards a covered corner with a good view of the street and pulls out his cell.

The first message is from Sam.

Twenty minutes

Dean rolls his shoulders, feels something inside him uncurl and relax. Not that he thought Sam wouldn’t come collect him, but - whatever. He stares at the message for a moment, searching for clues. It’s difficult to tell from thirteen letters and a space just how pissed Sam is, but Dean’s hopeful it’ll be closer to, ‘You drank all my milk’ than, ‘You sold your soul without discussing it first.’

He gives an uncertain mental shrug.

It’s Sam, so who knows. Could go either way.

The next one is about the return of an overdue library book. Dean smirks. He types out a quick reply, lets the crew know he’s good, and then shoves the phone into his back pocket. ‘Cause sure, those fucking security guards never stood a chance against Bird and the others, not really. Still, he’ll sleep better knowing they made it out okay and aren’t banged up somewhere.

A sudden gust of wind turns scraps of soggy paper and abandoned plastic into a makeshift tumbleweed around his ankles.

Dean shivers, the novelty of the cold wearing off, and glances at his watch.

There’s probably enough time to make a mad, cross-country dash for the border before Sam arrives. Mexico sounds nice. Hell, right now he’d settle for Louisiana, mosquitoes and all. Kick back in the sun for a while and have a few beers. Or maybe he’d branch out and experiment a bit, try one of those sweet, froufrou drinks with a kick in the tail and tooth-picked cherries.

He frowns as a cramp twists through his leg.

Dammit.

Okay, so no dashing.

He shifts a little and leans against the wall, one hand absently kneading knotted muscle, and scans the street. He’s just about decided to admit defeat and head back inside for a bit when he hears the approaching rumble of the Impala. It pulls up at the curb about halfway down the block.

Sam climbs out.

Seconds later a golfing umbrella springs open in a striped explosion of blue and yellow beneath the streetlights, like carnival bat wings.

Dean winces.

Jesus.

He’d thought Sam’s last umbrella - about half the size and covered in tiny spots - was bad, but this? In retrospect, maybe he should have left well enough alone and not found the umbrella a new home in the nearest dumpster. He was sure Sam had bought his explanation about someone stealing it -

“I’m telling you, there’s something shifty about Mrs Lukovic from 24B.”

“Mrs Lukovic took my umbrella?” Sam asked, incredulous. “Dean, she’s about three hundred years old. And blind!”

- but now, considering his brother’s latest monstrosity…

Dean straightens, grunting at the slight wobble of his leg. It’s stiff and aches like a bitch. He puts a hand on the wall for a moment to steady to himself, and then heads towards the car, conscious of the slick sidewalk beneath him, trying to keep his gait smooth and not stumble.

He pastes on a grin. “Hey, Sammy.”

A momentary beam from passing headlights throws Sam’s face into sharp relief.

Dean expects to find an expression that he’s seen too often over the last year, something caught between frustration and worry. Instead, Sam just looks tired. There’s a deep groove impressed between his eyebrows. His faded flannel is wrinkled and the buttons are crooked, as though he found it by accident, scrunched up in a dusty corner under the bed, and got dressed with his eyes shut.

The memory of teaching three-year-old Sam about the intricacies of buttons and zips tugs with sticky fingers at the back of Dean’s mind. For a while the kid had been totally obsessed with them. Set him up with some cartoons and one of Dad’s old shirts, and you’d think he’d won a trip to freakin’ Disneyland.

It’s curious, he thinks, not for the first time, that the small child of his memory is the same person standing before him, this man with slightly hunched shoulders and streaks of grey around his temples. Both are real and so familiar to him, yet somehow not, like rickety outlines traced over each other on translucent paper. He takes a breath of damp air and lets it out slowly, watches it curl between them in a cloud of white fog.

Sam blinks a few times and stares at Dean without speaking, face impassive.

Well, shit.

“Sorry, dude. I, um -”

“Don’t,” Sam says quietly. He shakes his head and looks away, gaze fixed on the backlit sign of the police department across the street. “Whatever you’re about to say, I don’t want to hear it.“

Dean fidgets with the sleeve of his jacket. “Yeah. Okay.”

The seconds tick by as they stand there, not saying anything.

Rain beads on Dean’s hair and trickles down the back of his neck, traces a frigid path beneath his collar. He doesn’t bother wiping the moisture away. He shuffles a bit, searching for a position that doesn’t hurt. The bag is a leaden weight at his side.

Then Sam turns and walks back to the driver’s side of the car, the line of his back stiff and unhappy.

“Sam?” Dean calls after him. “Sam!”

He waits for his brother to stop or turn around, but both Sam and his umbrella keep moving further away. The sound of the car door slamming closed echoes down the street.

*

Stairs suck.

Going up sideways works better, means Dean doesn’t have to bend his knee as much. He leads with his good leg, the way they taught him in rehab, and then drags the other one up to join it. Rinse and repeat.

Fluorescent lights throb overhead. The narrow stairwell is covered in a collage of old water stains and graffiti tags. Flakes of peeling, beige paint stick to the palm of Dean’s hand where it rests against the wall for balance. A cockroach scuttles along the skirting board at the edge of his vision and disappears into a ventilation grate.

Show off.

Dean heaves a sigh. Even the goddamn bugs can move faster.

Their apartment’s on the second floor, which isn’t actually all that bad. But right now, when Dean’s tired and hurting, it’s like ascending the Linoleum Mountain of Doom. He watches Sam’s beanstalk legs eat up the distance, no problem at all, and disappear around the corner.

Another sucky thing is his brother.

Dean had spent most of the drive home doing what he usually did when Sam shut down on him: chattering away about any and every damn thing that popped into his head. The latest issue of Miss Marvel and the coffee Dean bought from a hole-in-the-wall café near the workshop; a weird smell he’d noticed seeping up from the bathroom basin and was convinced stemmed from an infestation of tiny, fresh water Grindylow.

When Dean mentioned nuking the critters, Sam had snapped, “The only thing living in the pipes is mold. And you’re not using a fucking blowtorch – “

Gotcha, Dean thought.

Only Sam had broken off and closed his mouth again, fingers strangling the steering wheel. He’d waited for a bit, but Sam remained silent. So Dean had reached over and turned up the radio to a truly obnoxious level, succumbing to a stubborn silence of his own. If Sam was gonna be like that about it, then fine.

By the time Dean reaches the apartment he’s flushed, a film of sweat gathering on his upper lip. His mouth twitches into a brief smile at the sight of the door left standing slightly ajar.

Okay, so maybe Sam doesn’t completely suck.

Dean shoulders the door shut behind him and stands in the dark for a moment, catching his breath.

The apartment smells of musty, second-hand books and motor oil, the remnants of whatever it was Sam cooked for dinner, and some other thing Dean doesn’t have a name for but has always associated with his brother. The odour of moldy Grindylow is thankfully absent. Light from the kitchen illuminates a small strip of threadbare carpet, and he can hear Sam banging about inside, the gurgling whistle of the kettle.

Dean scrubs a hand across his mouth, and then makes his way over, poking his head cautiously ‘round the corner. Sam’s standing with his face to the cabinets, feigning a suspicious level of interest in a canister of tea.

The shriek of the kettle grows louder and louder. If he didn’t think it would freak out the neighbours and end up with a second trip to the police station, Dean would be tempted to start screaming right along with it.

Finally, Sam reaches over and pulls the kettle off the gas.

“So, what?” Dean asks, when the sound has died down to a petulant wheeze. A 1990s-era fridge with rust stains along the bottom rattles in the background, an oblivious chorus of one. “You going to keep ignoring me?”

Sam’s only answer is a shrug.

Dean’s jaw tightens. He’s done with this. Sam can just hang out in the kitchen and sulk all night if that’s what he wants. Dean raps a knuckle against the wall and says, “Great. See you in the morning, I guess.”

Head down, he shuffles slowly past the kitchen and towards his bedroom, beyond caring whether Sam notices or not. Behind him, there’s the sound of something hitting the counter with a splintering crunch, followed by a string of muffled curses. Dean swallows a sigh. At this rate they won’t have any mugs left at all and will be stuck using the tiny teacups that live in the back of a cupboard, making nice with the dust.

Although, he thinks, at least Sam will have his soul this time ‘round. So, you know, not a complete disaster. Could be worse.

The light bulb flickers a few times when he flips the switch, filling the room with a dim, yellow glow. Dean sinks down onto the edge of his bed with a groan. He concentrates on breathing steadily and sweeps a hand back and forth across the comforter in sharp brisk strokes, certain that the pain won’t gnaw quite as hard if only he can find the right combination and beat. Without thinking, he starts humming Katmandu in an off-kilter rumble.

“You okay?”

The voice startles him. His hand makes a final, abortive movement, searching out the last stray crumb, before falling still, palm resting over a faded patchwork of cotton. Dean blinks and looks up to find Sam standing in the doorway, gaze fixed somewhere over his shoulder, as though the blank wall behind Dean is covered with electric-bright messages.

Dean clears his throat and forces a smile that’s closer to a grimace, going for reassurance. “Yeah, just gimme a minute.”

Sam lifts his chin and studies Dean, eyes narrow. “Let me see,” Sam says. He takes a few quick steps forward and folds down into a crouch, reaching for the worn hem of Dean’s jeans.

“Dude, stop. It’s fine.” Dean bats his hands away. “For crying out loud, Sam! I said it’s fine.”

Sam rocks back on his heels, shoulders slumped. His face does that weird, scrunched up thing that usually means he’s trying not to cry.

Jesus, Sammy. You’re killing me here.

“Hey,” Dean says. He waits for Sam to look up, and then gestures at his left leg. “I’m good. Spent too long on it is all.”

Sam scowls. “You know what the doctors said.”

“Yeah, I –“

“Skin integrity’s important. Swelling and fluid build-up make injury and infection more likely.” Sam’s mouth works a little, as if trying to hold the words back. And then he’s off again. “And trigger nerve pain. If you don’t stay on top of this you’re going to end up back in the hospital.”

“Thanks for the halftime recap, Florence. You do remember I was there, right? I get it.”

“I don’t.”

Dean raises an eyebrow in confusion. “What?”

It’s always been like this with Sam. Sooner or later Dean finds himself marooned in the middle of a conversation he wasn’t even aware they were having. He blames the difficult, oversized brain ticking away inside his brother’s head. Figures Sam needs all that hair to keep it warm, like insulation or something.

Dean waits for Sam to elaborate.

When he doesn’t – ‘cause hell no, they’re so not doing the silence thing again - Dean says, “Want to share with the class? Don’t understand what?”

“Why you’re doing this.” Sam gives an abrupt laugh that’s stripped of humor. “We’re out, Dean. We finally got out of the life. And first chance you get, there you are, jumping straight back in again.”

Dean chews his lip, shifting as the pain ratchets up half a notch, spreading through the tight muscles of his hip and lower back. He searches for an explanation that Sam will accept. Finally gives it up as a lost cause and settles on the same response he’d used at sixteen when Laura O’Reilly’s dad came home early and caught them with his hand down her blouse.

“It’s not like that.”

“Right. You weren’t on a hunt. Just minding your own business when the police grabbed you off the street for no reason,” Sam says, voice heavy with sarcasm.

Dean flushes. “I’m not an idiot, Sam. I know I can’t -” Dean cuts himself off. Fuck. He stares down at his mud-encrusted boots, hands curled into loose fists, itching to hit something.

Sam pushes himself off the floor. “You’re going to get yourself killed,” he says softly.

“Wouldn’t be the first time.”

In fairness, it really did sound a lot funnier in his head.

Dean sees a flicker of something that might be fury or despair in Sam’s face before he turns his head away, running a hand through his hair. “Wow. Seriously?” The corner of Sam’s mouth twists into a pinched, lopsided smile. “You know what? Do whatever you want. Just don’t expect me to hang around and watch.”

The door closes behind him with a thump.

There’s a part of Dean that wants to get up and follow Sam out, storm down the hall and keep it going for a while. Snarl things he’ll regret in the morning just to fill the vacuum. Instead he stays very still and listens to Sam’s fading footsteps.

He isn’t sure how much time passes. Maybe it’s a minute, or maybe an hour.

Eventually he pulls open a drawer on the nightstand and takes out a packet of brand name painkillers, the heavy-duty kind that don’t get along too well with machinery or alcohol. In Dean’s experience they don’t get along with anything that’s not an immersive, half-conscious stupor, brightly colored, geometric shapes pulsing across the inside of his eyelids.

He thinks about it for a while, and then dry swallows one of the small, white pills.

When the room starts to blur slightly around the edges, Dean removes his boots and pushes his jeans down. He rests a hand on the carbon fibre socket and metal rod that serves as his left leg these days. The surface is smooth and slightly cool beneath his fingers.

He detaches the prosthesis with a grunt, setting it down within easy reach of the bed, and pulls off the silicone, cushion liner. His leg ends a few inches above the knee, a line of scar tissue curling across the end and up each side of his thigh, past deep divots in the muscle. The sight of the stump doesn’t bother him much any more; doesn’t summon up the panicked chant of wrong wrong wrong that had been a constant presence at the hospital, violating all the rules about visiting hours.

Over the years, Dean’s gotten real good at learning how to miss things. His leg’s just the latest entry on a long, messy list.

The rain’s picking up speed now, striking the windowpane in a spray of liquid bullets. Dean strips down to his underwear and crawls beneath the covers, thumping his pillow into shape a few times for good measure. Despite the drugs it still takes him a long time to fall asleep.

He doesn’t dream. Or maybe he does, but just doesn’t want to remember.

A Universe of Moths

astarloa — Mon, 28 Mar 2016 06:26:16 GMT

Title: A Universe of Moths
Characters: Dean, Sam
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: depression, implied suicidal ideation, self-harm, violence, emotional manipulation/abuse
Words: 1,900
Summary: Adjusting to life after Purgatory is more difficult than Dean anticipated. Set in 8x01.

Dean’s spent most of the day lying on the bed, watching TV and pulling at threads on the cheap motel comforter. He’s built a nest of cotton on the small table next to the bed. It’s empty, the imaginary birds that might have lived there burnt away by fluorescent light, just a mess of crinkled brown threads shot through with strands of bright reddish-orange.

The colour reminds him of the sticky clay soil from a hunt down in Piedmont. If Dean concentrates he can still smell it: the waft of something swampy and rotten, like the earth itself had been contaminated with psychic bacteria.

They’d been after the bones of a local farmer who’d started spookin’ on cattle for obscure reasons Dean had never quite grasped. Something about a water licence dispute, maybe. John had grown more and more frustrated as cemetery dirt clung to his shovel, refusing to be dislodged. He’d started by scraping the blade against a headstone but quickly progressed to tapping, then wild, half-controlled swings. A clump had finally broken free only to fly upwards with a wet splatter across his face.

“Dude!” Dean had exclaimed, eyes wide. His shoulders had started shaking.

John had glared back, looking pissed, before relaxing into a crooked smile. And then suddenly they’d both been laughing, bent almost double in the mud and the rain.

The whole case had been pretty dumb was the truth of it, but they’d owed someone a favour, the way people without money did, nothing left to exchange but themselves. And a job was a job. Throw in some free, home cooked food and for a week they’d been nearly golden. Not long after John had stumbled across another lead, free fallen back into obsession, and there hadn’t been a whole lot of fun after that.

Dean gets it. These days he’s all about the hunt, wants it so badly he can almost taste the blood fizzing between his teeth like iron sherbet. Mostly. It’s just that some mornings he’s…whatever.

Today it’s whatever.

He blinks at the TV. There’s a cooking show playing, he thinks it might be some kind of competition. The contestants are all young and shiny, crowding around the celebrity chef like baby birds scared of starvation. The chef’s long nails are painted candy pink. He wonders if bits of food get trapped beneath them, the tips of her fingers slowly rotting away no matter how hard she tries to scrub them clean.

Sam’s hiding in the kitchenette, talking to someone on the phone. Dean catches fragments of conversation but for the most part it’s all hushed, urgent whispers that ebb and flow against empty silence, the percussive beat of oversized boots scuffing against the tiled floor.

It’s probably that woman Sam shacked up with while he was gone. Ruby. No, that was the last time. Amanda? Amelia? Oh yeah, that one rings a bell. Kinda.

Tomorrow, Dean thinks, he’ll wake up and care again. He’ll pick at Sam until they’re both tender and sore, heads aching with the shared buzz of emotional static. But right now? Not so much. Feelings are something best left to that other Dean, the one who’s always angry and gets out of bed. Besides, his tomorrow might stroke out at two minutes to midnight and never quite happen. He probably won’t be that lucky, but…

There’s a burst of applause. Dean closes his eyes and lets the noise wash over him, before opening them and pressing a button on the remote, changing the channel. An endless series of numbers scroll across the screen, financial reports that prophesise a different type of Armageddon. He closes his eyes again and lets himself drift, remembers Sam dressed in a pristine white suit and the sickeningly sweet smell of red roses.

He sits up when Sam walks into the room and throws a cell phone onto the table; tries to disguise that the only thing holding him upright are a couple of flattened pillows squashed against garish wallpaper.

Dean catches Sam's gaze and then swallows, focuses on looking somewhere else.

“What are we doing?” Sam asks evenly.

Dean groans under his breath. “Give it a rest, Sam.” He knuckles his right eye, trying to clear away the grit. Maybe he’s coming down with something. Yeah, that’s all it is.

“No,” Sam says. He runs an impatient hand through his hair. “I didn’t leave everything behind just to hole up in some dump while you watch crappy re-runs. You want to track Kevin down? Fair enough. Like you said, he’s our responsibility. But I had a life there, Dean, and this isn’t -”

“What’s your problem?” Dean says flatly, trying for belligerence and falling short. But since attack is always the best form of defence, he falls back on the training and gives it another go. “You wanted me to get some sleep, so that’s what I’m trying to do. Or, what? It’s fine when you decide to ditch the business and go play Suzy Homemaker, but the rest of us just gotta keep on going? Not like things are gonna get much worse if we take a day to regroup.”

A muscle next to Sam’s mouth jumps.

Dean watches Sam’s fingers clench, relax, and curl into his fists again, feels something inside him crackle to life at the tell. His brother may not always like to admit it, but he’s a damn good fighter. Real smart with it too, the same way he is with everything else. Except when he’s not. And if Sam gets wound up enough about something, then…

Doesn’t happen often, but hell yeah, it’s just what Dean needs right now.

He stands up, ignoring the sudden head rush, and walks purposefully towards Sam; rolls his shoulders and tilts his chin upwards in anticipation of the blow he hopes is coming.

C’mon Sammy, let’s go a round or two. Know you want to. Wake me up for a bit, it’ll make everything better.

He raises an eyebrow. “At least you didn’t fuck a demon this time.”

The first hit still takes him by surprise, rocks his head backwards and fills the stained plaster ceiling with bright, pretty stars. Pain follows a little later, stuck on the usual time delay, but by then he’s already connected a boot to Sam’s knee and sent his brother crashing to the ground.

He follows Sam down when a giant hand shoots out, too fast to follow, tightens around his leg and yanks. Sam lands a series of punches that make his ribs groan and drive the air from his lungs. It’s all good, though, because Dean slams his elbow up into Sam’s stomach. He dials it down a bit – doesn’t really want to hurt the kid, that’s not the point - but still uses enough force that he has Sam gasping for breath, almost gagging.

Somehow Dean finds himself pinned to the ground, Sam’s arms wrapped around him like a vice. He growls and keeps struggling, unwilling to give up more than he has to. Sam doesn’t speak, just holds him in place until Dean finally surrenders and goes limp, face pressed into the worn carpet.

The television’s still playing.

After a while Sam climbs to his feet and walks away, slamming the bathroom door shut behind him.

Dean takes a breath and pushes onto his knees, arms trembling in protest. He crawls towards the nearest bed and props himself against it, legs stretched out across the floor. The adrenaline is burning away faster than he’d hoped, almost completely gone now, but pain’s not a bad substitute in a pinch. He’s certain that without it he’ll disappear, become one of those blurred, black and white photos they used to print on the side of milk cartons, a lost thing destined to end up in the trash.

Dean flinches when a wet cloth hits his face. He squints up at Sam through the eye that’s not swollen shut; takes in the purpling bruise along his brother’s jaw, the split through his eyebrow.

“Clean yourself up,” Sam says. He walks towards the scratched table, trying to disguise a limp, and opens the laptop. The cut above his eye is still bleeding sluggishly, oozing past a crooked butterfly strip. Sam wipes it with the back of his hand, doesn’t succeed in doing much more than painting a scarlet mural down the side of his face. “Four days.”

Dean blinks and mouths at the word, trying to hold it in place. “What?”

Sam keeps his eyes fixed on the screen. “We’ve been here four days.”

Dean shakes his head and wishes he hadn’t when the walls start tilting sideways. That can’t be right. They checked in Tuesday night, so –

He leans over and spits a mouthful of blood onto the floor, shoves down the panic that’s twisting its way through his belly. It’s all spinning out of control. The world changes too fast here, there’s so much useless stuff to keep track of, he can’t keep up.

He rests his head against the edge of the bed and concentrates on taking slow, shallow breaths, one arm braced against his side. There’s a large black moth darting back and forth across the ceiling, trying to batter itself to death against the exposed light bulb. He watches it lazily.

Purgatory was full of moths. They covered the trees in a carpet of living shadows, floating out of the undergrowth only to disappear seconds later. Dean had caught one once, trapped it inside his cupped hands and found himself almost smiling as frantic wings tickled the skin of his palms.

He’d named it Rocky.

Stupid thing hadn’t made it through the night, stopped moving long before the weak, morning light filtered its way past an endless stretch of deformed trees. Dean had placed the brittle body beneath a fallen branch and told himself it didn’t matter, that there would always be more.

He startles when hands slide their way beneath his armpits, tries to bat them away even if it’s a protest that’s mostly for show. “Don’t,” he says automatically. “I’m fine. Just gonna stay here for a bit.”

Sam huffs. “Yeah, whatever. On the count of three.”

Dean braces himself, feels his body being hauled upright and manoeuvred towards the bed. He grunts as the room swirls and pain flares to life down his side, sharp and biting. It’s not a comfort any more, just leaves him feeling confused and sick. He drops onto the sagging mattress with a sense of relief, distantly aware of Sam unlacing his boots and draping a thin, scratchy blanket over him. He runs shaky fingers over it, starts a new search for loose threads.

A metal wastebasket clangs as it’s set down nearby.

He clears his throat, focuses real hard on getting the words right. “Hey, um, what’s a group of moths called?”

“A universe,” Sam says shortly. “A universe of moths.” His eyes narrow, a flash of curiosity moving across his face. “Why?”

Dean stares for at Sam for a long moment, then squeezes his eyes shut against the sudden prickle of tears. “No reason,” he mutters. “Just wondered.”

Like Sylvilagus Floridanus

astarloa — Wed, 23 Dec 2015 01:59:11 GMT

Title: Like Sylvilagus Floridanus
Words: 1,200
Genre: Humour
Rating: PG-13
Characters: Sam/Dean, John
Warnings: um…um…references to object insertion (dear god), complete and utter nonsense
Summary: On what he thinks is his deathbed, John confesses that he’s not Sam’s biological father. And then wishes he hadn’t. Set sometime in the second half of season one.
A/N: Blame tdorian, it’s all her fault.

Dean sat on a hard plastic chair, listening to the steady beep of a heart monitor next to his father’s bed. John's face looked sallow in the harsh fluorescent light, creases thrown into sharp relief.

John shifted restlessly. He sighed, ignoring the stabbing pain in his chest, and turned his head towards Dean. “There’s something I need to tell you. About your brother.”

Dean frowned and leaned forward. “Sam? What about him?”

John hesitated, trying to postpone the inevitable just a little bit longer. Dean would be devastated.

“Dad?”

“But you can’t tell anyone,” John said firmly. “Especially Sam.”

Dean’s eyes narrowed. “Tell him what, exactly?”

“I’m not his biological father,” John said in a rush. The words left a vacuum of silence in their wake. John forced himself to relax and waited for the fall out he was sure would follow.

“Awesome,” Dean said finally, a wide grin breaking out across his face.

John blinked. “What?”

“For a moment I thought you were gonna say something awful, like Sam was infected with demon blood or whatever.“ Dean slapped his hands down against jean-covered thighs and stood up, walking with quick steps over to the door. “Hey Sammy!” he yelled. “Get in here. Dad’s got some good news for once.”

“Dean!” John hissed. He pushed up onto his elbows, fighting a loosing battle against the tangled sheets. “Come back here. And keep your mouth shut. That’s an order!”

For once in his life, Dean ignored him.

“What is it?” Sam said anxiously, appearing in the doorway.

“Dad’s not your real father.”

“Dean!” John screeched.

Sam gave Dean a sceptical look. “Have you been watching Star Wars again?”

“No! Okay, yes, but totally not the point. Dude, seriously. He just told me.”

“Seriously?” Sam repeated. He remained frozen in place for a second, before letting out a loud woop of laughter. He threw his arms around Dean, twirling them around in a misshapen circle.

“You know what this means, right?” Dean said. “We’re off the F.B.I.’s Most Wanted Consensual Incestuous Sex Offenders list.”

Sam’s smile faded slightly. “They’re still after us for all the unexplained deaths, though.”

Dean rolled his eyes. “Jeez, can’t you focus on the positives for once?”

“Sorry,” Sam said. He looked over at John and winced. He tugged insistently on the sleeve of Dean’s shirt. “Hey, Dean?”

“Yeah?”

“Is Dad – um, John - supposed to look that red?”

Dean eyed his father warily, taking in his flushed face. “Maybe?”

“Incestuous?” John spluttered. He opened and closed his mouth a few times, before collapsing back against the bed with a moan. “What?”

Dean scratched the back of his neck. “Well, when two people love each other very much, like Sam and me - ”

“They fuck,” Sam interrupted. “All the time. Everywhere.”

Dean nodded. “Like rabbits.” He thought for a moment, and then added, “Deadly, serial killer bunnies, not the fluffy kind. Although it might explain Sam’s hair, and his obsession with salad…”

“Dean, focus!” Sam said, a too sharp elbow colliding with Dean’s ribs.

“Dude.” Dean raised an eyebrow. “You gotta admit - that carrot thing you’ve got going on is kind of freaky.”

Sam scowled. “One time! It was one time! And you were the one who insisted on googling vegetable porn.”

“Oh, c’mon. You loved it,” Dean said.

“What? Vegetable…what?” John felt his stomach twist sideways and whimpered, squeezing his eyes shut. “Oh god, they got me. The demons got me and dragged me to Hell. I’m in Hell!”

Dean turned to Sam and circled one finger against his temple. “I think it’s the medication. They probably have him on some pretty heavy shit.”

“It’s not the goddamn medication!” John yelled. “It’s the you and the him and the sex and the, oh my god. Everywhere? Everywhere?!”

“Yup,” Dean said. He snickered. “Remember that time your bed had a wet patch? And we told you it must be from a leak in the ceiling?”

John nodded, hands clutching desperately at the bed covers and drawing them up over his mouth.

“Not so much,” Dean said.

Sam snorted. “I still can’t believe you fell for it. We were in New Mexico for Christ’s sake. It hadn’t rained in months!”

“Well, not those kind of showers,” Dean added with a wink.

“What?” John said, voice muffled by the bed covers. “Not those kind of…what?”

Sam looked slightly embarrassed. “Uh, never mind. But you know that weird stain on your flannel shirt - ”

He was interrupted by a knock at the door.

They looked over to see a doctor entering the room, medical chart in hand.

“Good news, Mr Winchester. Your EKG came back clear. It appears you’re suffering from nothing more than a severe case of dyspepsia. Painful, no doubt, but certainly not fatal."

“What?”

“Indigestion, Mr Winchester. Gas. Pick up some antacid, cut down on the chilli, and you should be fine.”

“I’m not dying?” John asked, eyes wild.

“Nope,” the doctor said cheerfully. “Your cholesterol’s a bit high, but that can be put to rights easily enough. You’ll have to modify your diet, of course, start incorporating more vegetables and –“

“Carrots!” Dean exclaimed.

The doctor blinked. “Well, yes,” he said slowly. “I suppose increasing your intake of carrots might do the trick. Of course, balance and variety is the key to making a sustainable life-style change. I’d suggest trying some other fruit and vegetables as well.”

“Cucumbers?” Sam suggested. The corner of his mouth twitched into a sly smile. “Bananas? How about squash?

“Dude,” Dean said, impressed. He cast a speculative glance at Sam. “You think?”

Without warning, John’s hand shot out and wrapped itself around the doctor’s arm in a vice-like grip, dragging him closer. The doctor let out a startled yelp, arms flailing, and tried to brace himself against the metal bed railing.

“Kill me,” John demanded in a low growl. “Accidental overdose, smothering me with a pillow, inexplicable bathroom fall. I don’t care. But if you have an ounce of compassion you’ll put me out of my misery. Hell can’t be any worse than this.”

After a brief tussle, the doctor succeeded in wrenching himself free and scurried backwards. He attempted a polite smile that immediately wilted around the edges. “I’ll have them send up a psych consult,” he said. “This case is obviously more, uh, complex than we initially thought.”

And with that he backed out of the room, closing the door with a decisive click.

Dean looked at Sam.

Sam looked at John.

John shut his eyes and started rocking back and forth. “Just a dream,” he muttered to himself. “It’s just a dream. Everything’s fine, Winchester. Snap out of it.”

He took a few deep breaths, and then cautiously opened one eye.

“Hey,” Dean said, and waved a hand in John’s direction. In retrospect, he probably should have unlaced his fingers from Sam’s first.

John made a noise perilously close to a sob and started chanting.

“Exorcizamus te, omnis immundus lepus, omnis satanica vegetabile, omnis incursio  profanum desideravit fructum…” *

Dean cleared his throat. “Well, this is awkward.” He looked to Sam for inspiration, giving it up as a lost cause when Sam simply shrugged, and then back at John. “So, Dad. What about those demons, huh?”

* We exorcise you, every impure rabbit, every satanic vegetable, every incursion of unholy desired fruit…

Strangerland

astarloa — Sun, 04 Oct 2015 03:18:29 GMT

Title: Strangerland
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 4,800
Warnings: vague spoilers for the s.10 finale
Summary: It starts with the arrival of an invitation. Set immediately after 9.20 – Bloodlines.
Author Note #1: Written for dizzojay for the spn_summergen challenge. Inspired by the prompt: It’s Death’s birthday – whoever would have thought it? Dean is determined to help him celebrate.
Author Note #2: I know you're not a fan of this one, brother, but...I finished it anyway /o\

Afterwards, Dean won’t say much to Sam about it.

There’ll be reasons for that of course, there always are, and they’ll go something like this:

First: the whole thing is weird, but not, you know, weird. Okay, so maybe it’s a little bit weird, but the apocalypse doesn’t show up for a re-match and no one dies hard and bloody. Grab a blunt pencil from the drawer and scratch a mark in the column labelled, “Win”. Lightly, though, just in case it needs to be erased. When you’re Sam and Dean Winchester you learn to prioritize and take what you can.

Second: words always leave Dean feeling lost and slightly panicked, like that time when they wound up at the beach, some forgotten place down near Florida, and Sam convinced him to go swimming in the ocean. As stinging waves crashed against him, Dean had looked over to find that Sam was laughing, eyes squeezed tightly closed and face tilted up towards the sun. And well, yeah, that was that. Dean grit his teeth and stayed in the water for more than an hour.

Third: inarticulate isn’t as much of a problem as it could be, because Sam isn’t speaking to Dean at the time anyway. Imagine a silent film stripped of its title cards and music hall chords, blurred gestures shot at a frame rate levelling out somewhere ‘round sixteen. La sortie des travailleurs du bunker dans le Kansas, by the Lumière Brothers (2014). Angelic possession tends to have that effect.

Fourth: Dean bleeds out on the cold, concrete floor of an abandoned factory a few weeks later, which he figures is a pretty damn good excuse. The air’s heavy with the smell of old diesel, acid-etched with desperation. At least the arms Sam wraps around him are warm. See the first point above; that stuff about priorities, dying hard and bloody.

Five through nine are a tattered pinwheel of witches and vampires, bouts of marrow-sucking rage, a random ghost or two, and black eyes peering up from the bottom of whisky bottles. Okay, so not in that order, but squint and it’s close enough. Kind of. If pushed, even Sam will concede that keeping things straight is a struggle. He understands now why John was so obsessed with that fucking journal.

And then there’s ten, where Death turns to dust and –

But stop, ‘cause that hasn’t happened yet, will only come later. So let’s take a running leap backwards and start at the beginning. Or one of them anyway, the one that works best; let’s start a year earlier, with the arrival of an invitation.

*
Cars jostled for position heading west, the blink of each red light marking the start of an impromptu drag race. Traffic was heavy but moved almost quickly for once, lurching through the city like a woman wearing too high heels and a silk shirt trying to outrun the rain.

Dean shifted in his seat, fingers tapping out a disconnected rhythm against the wheel. He could feel Sam watching him, the series of quick, sidelong glances that his brother still thought passed for sneaky.

“What?” Dean asked.

Sam hesitated for a second before he spoke. “So, that’s it? Chicago’s being run by a syndicate of monsters and we’re just going to leave?”

“Yeah, we really are.”

He waited for Sam to say something else, but it didn’t happen.

“Oh, stow the disapproval,” Dean snapped, breaking the silence. “You want to clean out an entire city? Hell, why stop there! Let’s do the whole of North America while we’re at it. That should only take us, I don’t know, forever.”

Sam sighed, suddenly looking much older. “You know what, never mind.” He pushed his hands through his hair. “What did Cas say?”

Dean shrugged. “Not a lot. Like I said, thinks he has a play on Metatron. Told him to make for the bunker and we’d meet him there.”

“Great.”

“Yeah, actually, it is. So you could try sounding more excited.”

Dean knew the comment was a mistake as soon as he spoke, could see it in the way Sam sat up that just that little bit straighter, shoulders tight, eyes fixed on some distant point down the road. Dean swallowed, something sinking inside him.

“Okay,” Sam said, expression carefully blank. “Thanks for the tip.”

A gas station appeared up ahead on the right. Dean swerved towards it without slowing down, a flurry of protests sounding as he cut off the motorists behind them. He pulled in with an abrupt stop that sent Sam pitching forward, one arm shooting out to brace himself against the dash.

“I’m hitting the head,” Dean said, turning off the engine.

The restroom was dank and empty, cheap fluorescent lights bleaching the walls a nauseating shade of pale green. Strips of pulpy toilet paper littered the floor. Dean grimaced. He walked over to the basin and splashed some water on his face, holding his breath until his lungs started to ache.

It felt like drowning.

He stood up with a gasp, opening and closing his eyes as if willing the scene to change, before grabbing a handful of paper towels. The reflection in the rust-spotted mirror did the same. He gave it a smirk that crumbled around the edges and ran a hand over his jaw, making a mental note to shave soon.

The noise hit Dean like a slap when he stepped outside; a frayed collective of ringing cell phones, the steady whine of passing traffic, and music spilling out from the doors of a nearby convenience store.

Dean rolled his shoulders and started back towards the car, pausing mid-step when he noticed something white fluttering on the ground just ahead. He took a closer look. It was a small, rectangular piece of cardboard starting to curl slightly along one edge, nothing special. Dean twitched, remembering the restroom and then, for some reason, he bent down and picked it up.

He turned the card over. On it were words printed in regular black letters:

To: Dean Winchester

You are invited to hold a birthday celebration in my honour.

When: 31 May 2014
Location: Headquarters of the Men of Letters, Kansas
Time: 11.58pm
RSVP: Not required

It was signed at the bottom with spiky strokes of ink that took Dean a few seconds to decipher: Death.

“Son of a –“ Dean’s voice broke off.

He spun around, hand moving unconsciously to his knife, and scanned the gas station. His mind slipped into that blank, perfect space where all the answers came easy, the uncertainty of what could be tunnelling into the needle prick of now.

A sixteen wheeler chose that moment to try and pull in behind him, exhaust wheezing like the memory of a mechanised dragon Asimov might have dreamed up on a bender. The driver leaned hard on the horn, mouthing silent obscenities from behind the windscreen.

He turned a flat-eyed glare in the driver’s direction, lips curling back from his teeth, and -

“Dean!”

Dean blinked, the world expanding outwards again as if dreaming itself awake.

He looked over to find Sam standing next to the car, eyebrows raised. Dean walked towards him, making sure to move nice and slow, just enough to piss off the truck driver.

“What was that about?” Sam asked.

“Nothing.” Dean frowned, studying the card. For a second he caught a faint smell of something acidic and musty, almonds mixed with stale tobacco and old, rotting leather. “You notice anything off since we’ve been here?”

“No,” Sam said, eyes wary. “Off how? What’s going on?”

Dean didn’t answer, just shrugged and held out the invitation. Sam reached over and plucked it free.

“Wow. Okay, so that’s...”

“Yeah.”

They looked at each other.

“So I guess you’re, uh, throwing a party,” Sam said.

Dean snorted.

“Seriously? I’ve never even been to a birthday party, let alone organised one. I’m supposed to do what exactly? Grab a box of cronuts and book some strippers? It’s freakin’ Death. Pretty sure that’s not gonna do it for him.”

Sam rolled his eyes and passed the card back. “I think you can cross strippers off the list.”

“We’ve got bigger things to deal with right now than throwing a shindig for the Grim Reaper.” He was so tired of this shit, the wheel of his life always landing on black when it should have been red. “If Cas has found something that gives me a shot at Metatron and putting an end to this whole mess? Then I’m gonna take it.”

“Yeah, I get that,” Sam said with a slow nod. “Message received loud and clear.”

“What’s to get?” Dean demanded. He forced himself to take a deep breath. “Look, the bunker’s got inbuilt mojo for keeping supernatural stuff out. So we just pull the lever and problem solved. Death will get bored with the delights of rural Kansas and go back to – “ he waved a hand around “ – while we focus on the job. I mean, that could work, right?”

Sam stiffened, a humourless, lopsided smile pulling at the corner of his mouth, and stared at Dean for a long moment across the roof of the car.

“I don’t know,” he said finally, voice flat and distant, emotion locked safely away and out of Dean’s reach. “Maybe. The wards never gave Gadreel too much trouble. But then you’re the one who let him in.”

Sam dropped his gaze and turned away, climbing into the passenger seat. The soft, metallic sound of the door swinging shut made Dean flinch.

“Good point,” he mumbled.

Dean shivered as a sudden gust of wind swirled around the gas station, pushing accumulated dust and grime across the concrete wasteland. He tried to zip up his jacket, cursing when its teeth jammed together, stuck in a sloppy, open-mouthed grin.

Fuck, fuck, fuck.

Frustration flared through him, kicking up sparks, but it was little more than a reflex that time, anger refusing to catch alight. He sighed and read the card again, before shoving it roughly into his pocket. Just one more thing he’d worry about later.

*
It’s not quite true that Dean’s never attended a birthday party before. He has, it’s just that he was only three and three quarters at the time and the memory of swollen, brightly colored balloons and childish shrieks of excitement has long since been lost in the shuffle. There was a big, round cake made to look like a swimming pool, with the centre scooped out and green jello for water.

Very cool.

Still, if Dean can’t remember then did he still go to that party? Maybe, or maybe not. It’s kind of that glass is half full thing, about hunting down the thrift store truth in the lie.

*
They drove straight through Des Moines without stopping.

Lunch was a travelling picnic of warm, bottled water and the energy bars Sam always kept in the glove box.

Once, Dean would have complained and found them some two-bit diner with sticky, laminated menus and at least two kinds of pie. Probably premade, not the good stuff, but on a scale of making do it still scored higher than nothing. Now he just tore one corner of the foil packet open with his teeth and took a bite, forced himself to chew and swallow. The gritty texture stuck in his throat and made him cough.

When he was finished, Dean screwed up the empty wrapper and held it out of the car window. It danced on the tips of his fingers for an instant in a suicidal waltz, before the wind snatched it away. Sam gave an irritated huff and shifted in his seat, long legs shuffling forward, but didn’t say anything.

“What?”

“Couldn’t you wait and put it in the trash?

“Nope.”

“You know that crap doesn’t just disappear, right? It ends up in the water system and flows out into the ocean. Birds and turtles mistake the garbage for food, and then starve to death when it blocks their stomachs.”

“Huh. Hate to break it to you, Sammy, but there’s not a whole lot of sea turtles ‘round here, unless they went rogue and mutated. Dude! Maybe there’s a bunch of mutant turtles lurking in the middle of nowhere, plotting revenge. Secretly. Like teenage ninjas.”

“You’re such an ass.”

“Hey, just sayin’. Farmers start showing up skewered and we’ve got ourselves a lead.”

“Do you even listen to yourself? No, seriously, because sometimes –“

“Settle down, Mr Environment. Besides, I seem to remember someone tossing plastic bags of clothes out the window. Man, I loved that shirt.”

“One time! It was one time, Dean, and they were covered in ectoplasm. That stuff reeks. You were the one who –“

The voices bounced back and forth inside Dean’s head, filling the silence as the car barrelled its way down the flat stretch of the I-80. He slid a hand into his jacket and thumbed at the creased card. He considered tossing it out as well – let some dumb animal eat it for dinner; see if he cared - before deciding against it, certain the damn thing would only fly right back again.

When not-Sam stopped talking to him, just like the real one, Dean leaned over and cranked up the music, letting the wild screech of guitars fill in the gaps.

It was dark by the time they finally turned off the highway, headlights hitting a dilapidated sign that said, Welcome to Lebanon, all faded paint that might once have been yellow.

Sam was asleep, body curled up at an awkward angle, head resting against the window. Dean glanced over and saw something pinched and unhappy drift across Sam’s face, a misshapen shadow running away from the light, before his expression went slack again.

“Sorry,” Dean said.

His voice was little more than a whisper, pitched low and rough, because despite everything that had happened he still couldn’t mean it the way that he should, not completely. He kept trying and falling short for exactly the same reason, and it was snoring next to him in the passenger seat.

If only wishes were fishes. Or mutant turtles. Whatever.

Dean’s fingers flexed around the steering wheel, the creak of old leather lost beneath the rattling hum of rubber against badly patched asphalt, loose gravel flying sideways. He wanted to stay in the car and keep driving forever, right over the horizon and off the edge of the world.

*
Sam’s developed an irrational fear of maps. Cartographobia. What started out as a vague sense of disquiet has grown into a hairy, eight-legged creeper that scuttles around in the space between his ribs and weaves sticky webs, makes his heart stutter-boom in a way that’s – Jesus Christ, stop - pretty unpleasant.

As if his life doesn’t have enough dread to be getting on with.

When he thinks about it, Sam finds a certain wry amusement in the fact that maps once marked out unknown places with the mythical beasts said to haunt them; serpents and grotesque sirens, winged leviathan that lurked down in the deep and didn’t explode in waves of black goo.

The source of Sam’s phobia is a different thing altogether, the kind of monster that a .45 can’t touch. He hates the sense of disconnection between his world and the small, crooked lines that masquerade as reality, a mad kingdom built on a foundation of lies. It’s fine when they’re in the car, no maps in sight, drifting from one town to the next just like magic. Figures he’d end up stuck in a place he can’t escape them.

Beware, Winchester the Youngest, says the map table in the bunker’s war room, shooting Sam a sly grin as his hands start to shake, for here be dragons.

Sam doesn’t bother much with dreams any more, but if he did…

One day Dean will wake up, sheets twisted around his ankles in a sweaty tangle, and realise moving into the bunker was a mistake; that he should have listened to the angel and stayed on the road.

He’ll barge into Sam’s room without knocking and say, “Wanna get out of here?” Sam will feel a blinding surge of relief and say, “Yeah.”

*
One week became two, transformed into three, gathered speed and started a slip-sliding descent down into four.

Castiel didn’t show up, just left a message on Dean’s cell. Something about atonement and needing more time, intercut with bursts of static. Dean listened and then smashed the cell down onto the table near his bed, over and over until the case broke apart, cheap plastic slicing into the side of his hand.

The weather turned bright and hot, a persistent haze hanging in the air. Thunder rumbled in the distance.

Weeds crunched beneath Dean’s boots when he ventured outside, a sheen of sweat breaking out on his forehead even as a shiver worked its way down his spine. He stood for a while, squinting at the faded graffiti scrawled across one wall of the bunker, feeling achy and strangely absent.

Maybe Sam had a point and he needed more sleep. Dean shook his head, as if trying to clear it, and went back inside.

After the glare, the shadows seemed deeper than usual.

He circled around the balcony, past the black metal railing, and headed downstairs. He grabbed a bottle of whisky from his closet and took it back to the map table, setting it down among a mess of paper and worn, open books. The familiar burn felt good when he swallowed. He chased the taste with his tongue, hesitating for a second before pouring another.

“Yeah, ‘cause that’s going to help.”

Dean looked up to find Sam leaning against the doorframe, hands shoved into his pockets.

“Bite me,” Dean said, raising his chin.

Sam paused, and then cleared his throat. “Have you thought any more about this party?”

Dean pulled one of the books towards him, leafing half-heartedly through the brittle pages. “Not really.”

“I don’t think it’s something you can just ignore,” Sam said. When Dean didn’t respond he tried again. “Look, none of this makes any sense. Why would Death suddenly want a birthday party? How does he even have a birthday?”

Dean slammed the book shut.

“I don’t know, Sam! Maybe he decided to skip the pizza and move straight to cake. Or maybe he’s hopped up on the Horseman equivalent of PCP and just wants to fuck with us. Last I checked you were the one all gung-ho about being reaped, so why don’t you call him and ask?”

“What the hell is up with you lately?” Sam demanded, pushing away from the door. “You smell like a brewery, you don’t sleep, and you’re wound so tight I’m surprised your head hasn’t sprung off. Whatever it is, I swear to god if you take your crap out on me one more time I’m gonna – ”

“Okay, I hear you. I hear you.” Dean slumped back in his chair and blinked up at the ceiling, rubbing absently at his right forearm. Small cobwebs had formed around the light fitting. He watched them wave back and forth in a non-existent breeze.

The chair groaned when Dean pulled himself upright again. He looked at Sam and took a deep breath. “So lay it on me.”

“What?”

“Whatever it is about this invitation thing that has your brain ticking away like a bad episode of 24.”

“There’s another kind?” Sam asked dryly. He bit his lip. “Look, the idea of Death being born – the universe or whatever giving birth to Death - doesn’t really work, right? It’s a paradox.”

“Yeah, I hear you can buy medicated creams for that.”

Sam rolled his eyes. “Philosophers have been debating for centuries whether death operates as a limit on life, or if life is defined by the existence of death. Which came first? Think about it like the chicken and the egg. ”

“Uh, right.” Dean frowned. “Okay. So when Death said he can’t remember who’s older, him or God –“

Sam nodded. “Exactly.”

“And you’re thinking…what? Death wants us to throw a party for his mystical un-birthday?”

“Um, yeah, I guess. A lot of cultures celebrate death anniversaries, but maybe this is supposed to be closer to a wake? I mean, wakes started out as a late night vigil for the dead. It fits with the whole two minutes to midnight thing.”

“Except Death’s not actually, you know, dead.”

Sam shrugged. “I don’t know what else to tell you. Best I’ve got.”

Dean ran a hand across the slick edge of the table, and then swept the books and paper to one side, clearing a space. He kicked at the leg of a nearby chair, pushing it out from under the table. “Looks like we’re having a party, then. You, uh, wanna sit down for a bit and help me plan this thing?”

Sam went very still, staring down at the map table as if it spelt out the secrets of the universe in flashing, neon lights. He took one step backwards, and then another. “I can’t,” he said, before turning away and walking quickly out of the room.

He didn’t look back.

*
Excerpt from Dean Winchester’s Unwritten Guide To Party Planning:

Dude, so you’re planning a party? ~~Kill yourself now.~~ Awesome.

Okay, so the first thing you’ll need is beer. Lots and lots of beer. Or pull out the big guns and go straight for the liquor. That shouldn’t be a problem, because you’ve been a mostly functioning alcoholic for going on four years now and that stuff’s squirreled away everywhere. I get it’s not something you like to think about too much, but times like this? Comes in real handy.

Feeling better? Great, ‘cause now it’s time for step two: deciding on a theme.

Yeah, yeah. It’s kind of douchey, but whatever. Now, you want something that’s gonna make your guest happy, but isn’t too complicated.

Completely lost? Man, I hear you.

Try asking your friends or family for help.

Usually that’d mean my brother, but we’re not talking so much at the moment. Guess that’s why God created the Internet, right? There’s a lot of crazy shit out there, though, so be careful with your search terms. And remember: not everyone appreciates the subtleties of tentacle porn, so if this is your first rodeo you might wanna go with something a little less ambitious.

There’s other stuff to think about too, like food and music and –

Actually, you know what? This whole thing is stupid. I don’t know the first thing about birthday parties or decorations, unless they’re made from beer cans. Ben had a party once, but Lisa pretty much organised everything and I – well, I’d kind of checked out by that point. Guess I should have paid more attention, huh?

Sorry, dude, but looks like you’re on your own with this one. Good luck.

*
The strains of Motorhead stuttered through the speakers Dean had hooked up in the corner, cables running from the bank of old computers in a confused tangle. Looking around the room, it occurred to Dean that parties – or really fucked up wakes for that matter – weren’t supposed to be quite like this.

Faded, metallic red streamers were stuck to the brick wall in awkward clumps, interspersed with the odd balloon. Some of them were already starting to deflate, cheap latex contracting back in on itself. The lights were all on but seemed dimmer than usual, fighting a losing battle against the gloom.

He’d found the decorations in one of the bunker’s storerooms, next to a box of dusty files about a suspected haunting from the nineteen thirties, and decided, what the hell.

Dean sighed and lifted a sweating six-pack of beer out of a plastic bag on the floor, setting it down on a crocheted doily in the centre of the table. He stared at it for a moment, and then tore the cardboard packaging open, pulling out one of the bottles. His fingers fumbled against the cold, slippery glass, losing their grip.

The bottle smashed against the floor.

“Tick…tick…boom,” said a familiar voice. “Starting things off with a bang, I see.”

Dean startled and turned around to find Death standing at the head of the table, one hand resting lightly against his cane. He looked as skeletal as ever, sharp shoulders poking against the fabric of his suit jacket like fossilised wings. Dark eyes glittered in the pale blade of his face.

Dean swallowed and lifted one hand in a half-wave. “Uh, hey.”

“As eloquent as ever,” Death said, face expressionless. He glanced around the room. “I do like what you’ve done with the place. Art Deco meets Cold War utilitarianism with a splash of DIY. It’s a combination I’ve not been exposed to since my last trip to central Europe.”

Dean stayed silent.

“Your brother isn’t joining us this evening?” Death asked conversationally. He started walking around the table in a slow, clockwise circle. Dean found himself edging away, trying to keep a safe distance between them.

“Um, yeah. I mean, no. He had other…stuff to do.” Dean hesitated and then added, “No offence.”

Death cocked his head. “You know, I could almost take an interest in the way Winchester relationships work. Almost. Deceit, irrational loyalties, sacrifice, betrayal. It’s rather like having a front row seat to the evolution of a new bacterial strain.”

“Uh, right,” Dean said. “So you, um, gonna tell me what the deal is with this birthday thing?”

Death sniffed and raised an eyebrow. “You seem to be labouring under the persistent delusion that you’re entitled to an explanation, and that your primitive brain would have the ability to comprehend its meaning even if you were.”

“Great.” Dean sighed. “I just thought that since you’re the one who wanted this little get-to-together –”

“Swat,” Death said, interrupting.

“Swat?” Dean repeated.

“Yes. As in, don’t make me.” Death continued his progress around the table, the tap of his cane a dull echo against the floor. He paused next to the broken bottle and stared down at it for a moment. “I’m sure you’d agree that there’s quite enough mess already.”

Death stepped over the remains of the bottle, cane pressing down on the splintered pieces of glass.

He came to a stop at the head of the table, back in the same place he’d started. He pulled out a chair and sat down, one leg crossed elegantly over the other. “Since this is a special occasion, I’m inclined to give you a hint: for someone like you, Dean, time and space move forward in a single direction, small detours notwithstanding. But to a thing like me, well. Tomorrow happened yesterday and last week’s appointment is tomorrow.”

“Gotta get you a blue box or something,” Dean mumbled, scratching nervously at the back of his neck. “I’ll be right back.”

He walked over to the wooden sideboard in the corner and picked up a silver tray with a domed lid, the kind he’d seen fancy people use in the movies. He carried it back and placed it down on the table in front of Death.

“So, um, Happy Birthday,” Dean said. He pulled off the lid to reveal a cheeseburger sitting in a nest of crinkled aluminium foil. “I know it’s traditional to go with cake and all, but –” He broke off with a shrug. “I’m better with the grill.”

Death studied the burger with eerie concentration.

Dean chewed on his lip. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a small, pink and white striped candle, turning it over a few times between his fingers. He held his lighter to the wick and stuck the candle on top of the bun.

And then he killed the overhead lights, all little kid bravado at the age of thirty-five, trying to pretend that he wasn’t afraid.

“You know,” Death said gravely, breaking the silence, “I think we should make this an annual event.” He reached a hand into his suit jacket and pulled out a small, leather bound appointment book. He wrote something down with the stub of a pencil. “Same time next year. It wouldn’t do to forget.”

Dean made a noncommittal noise.

“Many happy returns,” Death said. Their eyes met, Death holding Dean’s gaze as he leaned down and blew on the candle. The flame flickered wildly for a moment, refusing to go out, and then there was only darkness.

An Intergalactic Guide To Letting Go

astarloa — Tue, 31 Mar 2015 09:10:35 GMT

Title: An Intergalactic Guide To Letting Go
Word count: 2,300
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: space!AU, major character death
Summary: Hauling metric tons of raw metal ‘round the system isn’t anyone’s idea of a dream job, but Dean likes it okay. Well, he did.
AN: written for boysinperil in spnspiration’s April Fool’s Challenge. Prompt: Dean-centric gen, fire in the hole. And…Happy Birthday, Ever-Marvellous-H!!

That's one deep, dark nothing you got there, Dean. Can't fill it, can you? - Famine, My Bloody Valentine

“Mars Base II, this Casimir 15. Over.”

Dean holds his breath and listens.

Zzzzsss – click, click – ssszzzZssszzz – click.

Static whispers through the comm system, teasing at the possibility of connection. He taps out a pattern on the control board and changes the frequency, gives it another try, more out stubbornness than with any real expectation of an answer.

Baby’s an ugly beast of a ship, even on the best of days, but she always does what he asks, eager to please. He appreciates it and returns the favour by treating her like a fancy pleasure shuttle rather than a third-generation hauler with some serious repair work going on.

Dean thought they’d reached an understanding and it hurts to realise that, yeah, maybe not so much. Still, he hates seeing her like this.

‘Course he’s not exactly thrilled about his own situation, either.

He sighs and pushes away from the controls, drifts over to the observation window. It’s still there, maybe a little bigger than the last time he checked; clouds of reddish-pink gas spiralling around a black core, an empty heart pulling the universe in and refusing to let go, trying to kick-start a beat. He’s seen pictures before, they all have, but the reality is something else. His pulse speeds up, hammering fast and heavy. There’s a reason people have always been scared of the dark and he’s looking at it: Newtonian physics locked in a cage fight with quantum mechanics where none of the punches fly right.

Static crackles in the background, and then “ – Mars Base II. Over.”

Dean jerks at the muffled words. He grabs a handful of loose wires on the ship’s ceiling and drags himself forward, hauls ass back to the controls. His fingers shake as they press down on the receiver, flick the switch.

“Hey, Bobby. S’good to hear your voice.”

“Don’t you hey, Bobby me, boy. Want to tell me what kind of damn fool mess you’re in this time?”

There are all kinds of things Dean could say to that, although most of them wouldn’t mean much; or more than he’s comfortable with on an open channel, which amounts to the same thing in the end.

“Casimir 15, this is Mars Base II. Do you copy?”

Dean clears his throat. “Uh, yeah, sorry. Go ahead, sir.”

“What the hell is going on up there?” Bobby asks in a voice more cranky than usual, anger papered over worried cracks. “HUDs dropped out five hours ago and I got one pissed off customer on my back, asking ‘bout delivery.”

“Ship was hit by a radiation storm,” Dean says, running a hand across one of the data displays. His mouth feels dry. “Bad one. Knocked out the thrusters and most of the electrics.“

“Dammit! Cargo still good?”

“Yeah, but –“

“Right, I’ll get things rolling on this end. Patch through your co-ordinates and I’ll pull a few strings, send Garth out with a salvage vessel. He ain’t exactly the brightest star in the sky, but –“

“Bobby! Listen, the storm, it’s…“ Dean trails off, not sure what to say now the moment’s arrived, unwilling to make it real.

Suck it up, Winchester, do your job.

“Sir, reporting a Grade Five Event in Orion Quadrant X-1. Current drift speed one hundred and five clicks, increasing at a rate of three-point-six. Trajectory estimates have the ship crossing the horizon at fourteen hundred.”

He huffs out a brittle laugh.

“It’s a black-fucking-hole, Bobby. I’m screwed.”

There’s a beat of silence, followed by the sound of Bobby cursing and something smashing with a splintering thud. Static squeals through the comm like a pig in its death throes and a voice heavy with reverb yells, “Jesus, get Singer out of here.”

*
They get an audio lock on the ship and set up some kind of shift rotation, Dean’s not too clear on the specifics; only that there’s someone talking to him, waves of noise and small memories that crackle and hiss through the cabin, rise and fall. It keeps him steady, anchored in place by invisible wires. Sooner or later the tether will snap and he’ll start a final free fall, drop down into the glassy black, but whatever. There’s nothing to be done about it, so he’s fine.

Or at least, that’s the unspoken agreement they’ve all reached, the collective lie.

“Any luck tracking Sam down?” Dean asks, trying for casual. He stares blankly at the manifest pinned to the ship’s wall and pulls in a deep, shaky breath, tells himself not to read too much into Benny’s voice, the slight hesitation before he answers. The connection’s all messed up; it’s just the static.

“We’ll get him here, Brother. Gotta say, the Higher Ups weren’t too thrilled about giving a Seeker access to the facility, but Bobby threatened to blow the whole place outta orbit if they didn’t let the kid in. Old Man’s just crazy enough to do it, too.”

“Good call,” Dean says. “Not as stupid as they look, then.”

“Yeah, I reckon not. How’s your pressure holding up?”

“Uh, I’m reading a little over nine.”

“Roger that. I need you to vent down to six, nice and slow.”

Dean studies the gauge controls in silence, struggling with protocols he should be able to recite backwards. And he can, he’s totally got this. It’s just…his stomach churns. If he screws up now it’s all over, and that it’s all over anyway only makes the now matter more.

“Want me to read the procedure up to you?” Benny asks, and there’s something gentle in his voice that sets Dean’s teeth on edge, like he’s trying to soothe down a wild animal, the kind they used to have back on earth.

Dean grunts, “Nah, I’m good. Standby.”

He swallows and reaches for the board, lets his fingers start dancing over the controls, cautious at first and then faster, more certain, wringing out notes made of psi. The caution lights give a petulant flicker as a shudder ripples through the ship, the low groan of distressed metal echoing inside his head.

Don’t think about it.

“So, um, Sam’s gonna be pretty pissed,” Dean says, mostly to himself, keeping his eyes fixed on the data readings. “He’s never been a fan of the Enclaves. Found himself a sponsor and bought his way out as soon as he could, never looked back. Wanted me to go with him, but man, wasn’t my thing. Couldn’t see myself fetching much of a price on the market and ‘sides, there was my Dad and all…I dunno, though. Sometimes wish he’d asked me again.”

The ship gives a final, creaking jitter and settles back into stillness.

Dean drops his head forward with sharp exhale. He’s so fucking tired. “Mars Base II, this is Casimir 15. Helium and O2 configurations look okay. Pressure holding steady at six, over.”

“Roger that. You’re doin’ real good, Brother.”

He gives a mirthless smile that Benny can’t see and doesn’t answer, just sits for a few minutes and lets the crackle of static wash over him, picks at a loose thread on the sleeve of his jumpsuit. There doesn’t seem much left to say; only “What if Sam doesn’t –“

Benny cuts him off. “He’ll be here. There’s still time, you’re not goin’ anywhere yet.”

“Yeah,” Dean replies, squeezing his eyes shut. He leans back in the patched, leather chair. “Yeah, okay.”

*
He loses track of the shift changes after a while, just waits until a new voice comes online and goes from there. Most of the voices belong to people he recognises, knows pretty well in a casual, wanna get smashed kind of way. It could be worse. He pretends not to notice when they drift into uncomfortable silence or disappear altogether, submerged beneath the steady rise of dead air.

The silence stretches out longer this time.

Dean listens to the sound of his own breathing, fingers tapping out a broken, manic drum solo against one thigh, until the comm finally powers back up and a woman’s voice drawls, “Hey, Winchester. Miss me?”

And god knows who he pissed off in a former life, ‘cause there’s the worse.

Dean scowls. “Seriously? What, they didn’t have any drones available?”

“Don’t be like that, baby. It’s all part of the service. Cash upfront and I’m good to go.”

Dean snorts and rolls his eyes. Yeah, that sounds about right. He wonders how much overtime the Company’s promised to pay and whether anyone would’ve shown up without it. Okay, so Bobby, that’s a given, and probably Benny too, although his friend won’t knock back the extra units if they’re offered.

“Bite me,” he snaps.

A low chuckle echoes through the cabin. “Sweet talk like that’ll get a girl hot.”

And there’s one mental picture Dean could live without. He presses the heels of his hands against eyes that feel too hot and dry, wishing she’d go and knowing that he’d transfer every unit he’d ever saved to stop her from leaving if it meant that he wasn’t alone. And how pathetic is that?

“Hey, who knows?” she continues, “Maybe the goons got it right for once and you’ll find yourself living it up on the flipside. A delightful, parallel universe filled with cupcakes and rainbows.”

“No, I won’t,” Dean says.

“No,” she agrees, suddenly serious. ”You won’t.”

“Okay, thanks for the chat. Not.” Dean hesitates, rubbing the back of his neck, and then asks, “You got an ETA on Sam yet?”

“He’ll be here.”

They keep telling him that and each time he believes it a little bit less.

Sam’s not going to come.

Panic slips its leash at the thought, crawls towards him and slips cold, skinny arms around his chest, pulls Dean in tight and close. He takes one rapid breath and then another, wondering where all the oxygen’s gone. There’s a voice calling his name in the distance, fading in and out, and it’s not the right one.

“Hey, Winchester! Sing me a song.”

The command snaps him back to reality. “What?”

“Sing me a song, space boy,” she insists. “I’m told you put on quite a show at last year’s Christmas party. Who’d have thought, tough guy like you belting out some old-time Taylor Swift. ”

“Fuck off, Meg.”

She laughs, rough and loud, and damn if he doesn’t smile back. Despite everything, he’ll miss that.

*
“Dean?”

He mumbles something, mostly asleep. “Five more minutes. S’too early.”

The voice repeats his name, louder now, sounding raw and breathless.

Dean blinks and jerks in his chair, uncertain what woke him. The cabin’s illuminated by a nauseating, red glow and warning lights blink up at him from the control board, an electric carnival abandoned to the weeds. Dean pulls a face as a shiver slides through him, making his shoulders twitch, and fumbles with the strap wrapped around his waist. The restraint pops free and he pushes up with a grunt, stiff muscles protesting.

His body feels heavy and hollow, both at the same time, as though he’s made of air and lead filled bones.

There’s nothing left but random bursts of static.

Dean tries to ignore it at first, but soon finds himself listening anyway, hunting for ghosts in the machine. When he finally remembers the voice it’s all at once, hope exploding inside him hard enough to hurt. For a moment Dean stops breathing. He moves towards the comm system and adjusts the frequency.

Please, please, please.

“Sam?”

There’s a high-pitched, crackling whine and then, “Dean!”

He grins, wide and bright. “Hey, Sammy.”

“Right, I’ll leave you two chuckleheads to it then,” Bobby says in the background. There’s the faint sound of footsteps and a door slamming shut. Bobby doesn’t say goodbye, but that’s okay, Dean gets it.

His mouth twists, excitement already fading. “Didn’t think you’d make it.”

“You’re my brother,” Sam says, as though that’s the beginning and end of the matter right there.

“Yeah.”

It shouldn’t be this hard and Dean hates that it is, the easy back-and-forth they’d shared as kids dull and torn, curling ‘round the edges. They should be kicking back in a dive bar somewhere; downing shots that make Sam screw his face up and shudder, trying to escape the taste, while Dean laughs at him from the other side of the table, listing sideways.

“Uh, I – there’s some stuff I gotta say,” Dean starts uncertainly. He sighs, and then raises his chin. “You’ve done good, Sam. Don’t get me wrong; still think that Seeker cult you’ve fallen in with are a bunch of crazy eco-terrorists, but hell. Guess I don’t have to understand it, is what I’m saying. You’re doing what you think is right and – I’m proud of you.”

A strange, snuffling noise filters through the static.

It takes Dean a moment to recognise the sound, hasn’t heard it since his Dad’s funeral.

“Sammy, don’t. C’mon man, don’t do that.” Dean scrubs a hand across his face and lets out a long, slow breath, throat suddenly tight. “You’re gonna marry that girl of yours, you hear me? Have a whole tribe of kids and tell them stories about their awesome Uncle.”

“Like Batman, huh?” Sam asks wetly.

“Damn straight.” Dean knows it’s not fair, that he shouldn’t ask, but the words force themselves out anyway. “Hey, Sam? Tell me everything’s gonna be okay.”

Zzzzsss – click, click – ssszzzZssszzz – click.

“ –ean?”

Dean curses under his breath and works frantically on the control board. “Sam?”

“ - can you – “…” – me? Dean?”…”- need to tell you –“…”- ean?!”

There’s a sudden wave of white noise, and then nothing.

Dean keeps trying, repeating Sam’s name long after the signal dies, unable to let go. He doesn’t notice the moment that changes, only that he’s watching tiny droplets of water float through the silence, perfect and self-contained.

They look like tears, as though someone was crying.

Dean closes his eyes and lets himself drift, waiting for the bright, burning moment he becomes the singularity.

Your Face Tomorrow

astarloa — Sun, 08 Feb 2015 14:26:12 GMT

Title: Your Face Tomorrow
Rating: PG-13
Genre: Gen, s10
Characters: Dean, Sam
Words: 1,000
Warnings: implied violence, angst, language
Summary: Written for a prompt by liliaeth at hoodie_time: Dean is arrested after another Mark of Cain rampage and sent to an institution. Sam ~~and Castiel~~ [sorry, no Cas in this] wants to rescue him, but Dean refuses, believing that the institution will keep him under control.

Dean’s decided things aren’t so bad, all things considered.

He pushes runny eggs around with the plastic spoon, paints a pale yellow face with a crooked smile against the plate; long wiggly hair and smushed-up beans for eyes. Hey there, Sammy, looking real sharp. Bet you make all the girls hot and don’t even notice.

There’s an explosion of noise somewhere to his right.

He looks up. Lenny’s gone and lost it again, lunging across the table at one of the nurses. Must be a Thursday. She’s screaming for help in mewling, wet gurgles, hands scrabbling against whatever it is Lenny’s managed to hide away this time and stick in her neck.

Dean grins, wide and bright.

Showtime.

He stands up, cracking his knuckles, and heads over for some fun. ‘Cause Lenny’s a real mean fucker, no doubt about it, but that Dean Winchester? Oh, yeah, he’s even worse.

:::

It’s dark when Dean wakes, head thumping unsteady and sullen to the beat of a new same-old, same-old. He swallows, trying to work some spit into his mouth, nausea twisting through his gut. Thinks he can remember the Doc saying something about a concussion, Lenny on life support with a crushed windpipe maybe, but the thoughts slip away too fast to catch.

He gives up and watches shadows shift across the wall for a while instead, before giving his arms an experimental tug.

No surprises there, but damn.

Restraints make his wrists itch, always have. It’d be enough to drive him crazy if something else hadn’t gotten there first. He barks out a laugh, because you know, funny. Then his head protests and the sound shifts down a gear into a groan.

Shut it, Winchester.

:::

Hours pass, memories getting lost in the shuffle. It worried him at first, the gaps left behind by time chowing down on itself, but not so much any more. Everything’s gotta eat, right?

He doesn’t pay much attention when the door to his room cracks open, fluorescent light spilling in from the corridor.

It’s just one of those things, nothing he can do about it. More nurses who avoid his eyes, overweight security guards past their use-by date always trailing behind. On any given day the scariest thing in this place is Dean and no one expects any different. The knowledge brings a strange kind of comfort, if he’s honest.

“Hey, sweetheart, think visiting hours are over,” he says, loose and happy.

Only this time the door closes with soft click, and a voice says, “Jesus, Dean.”

Someone’s sucked all of the air out of the room; he should make a complaint, ‘cause there’s gotta be rules about shit like this, and he will, just as soon as he catches his breath.

Sam can’t be here.

See, Sam’s smart, but at the same time he’s all kinds of stupid. He still sees the brother who tied his shoelaces and mocked his hair, bought him used paperbacks from junk stores. But that guy? He’s worn away, so long gone Dean wonders if he ever existed in the first place. Maybe some drunk dreamt him up one night, coming off the wrong side of a bender.

He doesn’t want Sam within a hundred miles of the reality.

:::

“Came as soon as I could,” Sam is saying, fingers working at the buckles around his ankle. The restraint pops free and Dean grunts, flexing his foot in relief. “The security here’s really tight, like you wouldn’t believe. But I hacked into their camera system and -”

“You need to leave.”

“What?” Sam looks up, confused. “Yeah, man, that’s why I’m here. To get you out.”

Dean growls in frustration and kicks his brother’s hands away. “C’mon, Sam, wake up. I’m not leaving, because places like this? I’m the reason they exist.”

Sam shakes his head, but keeps his eyes fixed on Dean’s chest. “No.”

“Look at me.”

Slowly, Sam raises his head. They stare at each other.

“Those guys I took apart? They were scum, had it coming every which way you look at it. Not losing any sleep over them.” Dean’s throat tightens and something in the back of his mind whispers liar. “But I didn’t do it because they were bad people, Sam. Did it because it felt good.”

Sam’s shaking his head again, so Dean does the only thing he can.

He draws his lips back from his teeth and lets his face fill with the wild, feral rage he’s tried so hard to keep hidden. He pulls against the restraints, hears them creak with the strain. He tracks Sam with his eyes, like prey, and sees the moment Sam gets it; the way his brother’s body straightens as he steps away from the bed, hand moving to the gun resting against the small of his back.

That’s my Sammy.

“Go,” Dean says.

Sam opens his mouth as if to argue, but in the end just gives a defeated shrug and backs towards the door. “Okay. Tomorrow, I’ll…you’re allowed visitors, right? We’ll talk about it tomorrow, when you’re not so - ”

“And the answer will be the same.”

“Tomorrow,” Sam repeats, expressionless, as if Dean hadn’t spoken. He hesitates, and then steps out into the corridor, pulling the door closed without looking back. Still, Dean’s been watching Sam his whole life, knows what it means when his brother sets his shoulders like that.

He’ll keep trying.

Stupid, stubborn bastard.

Dean squeezes his eyes shut and presses the side of his face against the scratchy pillowcase. If he cries it doesn’t matter, there’s no one to see and he’s not gonna tell. Another few hours and they’ll come get him for breakfast. It’ll be eggs again, guaranteed, and maybe today he’ll see Bobby staring back from the plate. No more Sam, not for a while. He can’t risk it.

Hey, Dad, you there? ‘Cause listen, you’d be so fucking proud of me. I’m doin’ my job, just like you said. Keeping him safe.

Wood For The Trees

astarloa — Thu, 23 Oct 2014 09:47:50 GMT

Title: Wood For The Trees | AO3 Link
Rating: PG-13
Word count: ~4,500
Warnings: Show level violence and horror, hurt Dean, reference to serial killers (not Sam or Dean)
A/N: Written for dizzojay at spn_summergen.

Summary: Hikers have been reported missing in Elkhorn National Park. When the Winchesters investigate, Dean discovers more than one kind of monster is lurking in the woods. Case fic set in s1 post-Faith.

The diner was crowded with mismatched, formica-topped tables and crooked wooden chairs. A fan spun listlessly from the ceiling, wobbling back and forth on its uneven axis, waging a losing war against air heavy with the smell of burnt oil. Someone had dropped money in the clapped-out jukebox, Johnny Cash musing about empty pop bottles and paradise lost.

Dean smiled his thanks at a waitress and held the plate up to his face, inhaling the scent of grilled meat. God may have been the one supernatural creature that didn’t exist, but still. When faced with the miraculous creation of steak, Dean was almost willing to believe. Almost.

He glanced across the table at Sam, whose upper body was curled around the laptop like a lopsided question mark. A bowl of rapidly cooling soup sat near his elbow, pushed to one side and forgotten. Given the look of it – dishwater brown, with bits of green poking up through the surface - Dean thought it was probably for the best.

“Find anything?” he asked.

“Yeah. Well, maybe.” Sam pushed back his hair and frowned at the screen. “A Michael Sinclair, thirty-six, disappeared last week while hiking through Elkhorn National Park. His body was recovered from a lake at the bottom of a cliff the locals call Widow’s Drop.”

Dean bit into his sandwich, dropping pieces of greasy onion onto the table, and moaned, before wiping his mouth with the back of his sleeve.

“Sounds inviting,” he said, around a too large mouthful. “And it’s our kind of thing how?”

“You’re disgusting,” Sam said automatically, without looking up. “I did some digging. Over the last decade, eight people have been reported missing while hiking in the area. Now, some of them were never found, but three bodies turned up in the same place as Michael Sinclair.”

Dean raised an eyebrow, unconvinced. “So, some tree huggers decided to enjoy the great outdoors, took a wrong turn, and sploosh - ever-lasting life as a human sponge. What can I say? It’s a dangerous world out there.”

Sam shook his head.

“No, listen to this. In each case the local coroner recorded a finding of accidental death, right? But the autopsy results show the victims all had damaged heart muscle and elevated cortisol levels.”

Dean stared at him blankly.

“Uh, stress hormones.”

“Gotcha. The kind of thing you might have if something –“

“Scared you to death. Literally.”

“You’re thinking, what? Phantom hiker gone boogedy?” Dean asked.

Sam’s lips twitched into a smile. “Close. A Gwyllion. It’s a Welsh hag that manifests as a goat, or an old woman wearing a –“ he broke off. “Uh, never mind.”

“Wearing what?” Dean demanded.

A look of pained resignation flashed across Sam’s face, as though watching a train wreck about to unfold, but powerless to stop it. “A pot as a hat.”

Dean blinked. “A pot? As in a planter box?”

“Yes, Dean, a flowerpot,” Sam answered witheringly. “There’s a murderous hag roaming the woods with a floral arrangement strapped to her head.”

Dean blinked again, and then he smirked. “Dude, you said floral arrangement.”

Sam scowled and turned back to the laptop, fingers striking the keys with more force than was strictly necessary. “Whatever. Think saucepan. Anyway, the lore’s kind of sketchy, but it says here that Gwyllion live in mountain areas. They like to leap out and frighten unsuspecting travellers.”

“That’s gotta give your heart a jolt.”

“Yeah,” Sam agreed. “And anyone who hears the cry of a Gwyllion is likely to find themselves at the bottom the nearest river. Or in this case, a lake.”

“So, a pissed off goat-fairy with a Martha Stewart complex. Seriously? Man, whatever happened to the classics.” Dean looked sadly at the remains of his sandwich and tossed it back onto the plate. “Say anything about how we kill it?”

“Looks pretty standard. Iron should do the trick.”

Dean stood up and pulled out his wallet. “Guess we’ve got ourselves a gig, then. C’mon, let’s go gank us a Gwyllion.”

*
It was mid-morning when they pulled into a small parking lot surrounded by trees.

Fog the color of cigarette smoke crept through the shadowed spaces between them, making the woods appear to shift and move. A painted blue building stood off to one side, behind a chain-link fence. In the pale light it looked slightly washed out and derelict, like a child’s abandoned play set.

A faded sign said: Elkhorn National Park.

“Guess this is it,” Sam said, without much enthusiasm, scrunching down to peer out of the window.

Dean nodded and let the engine fall silent. “Showtime.”

He climbed out of the car and went straight to the trunk, while Sam stood and stretched, arms waving about like a one-man evangelical revival.

“I swear the car keeps getting smaller,” Sam said.

Dean patted the Impala. “Don’t you listen to him, baby. Growth hormones do strange things to the mind.”

“Can I help you boys with something?”

Dean turned to see a woman standing in the building’s now open doorway, a rifle resting against her leg. She was tall and solid, with short dark hair. A pair of glasses hung from a nylon cord around her neck.

“Thought we’d take a walk,” he called back. “Check out the view.”

The women shut the door firmly and started down the front steps towards them, her stride confident and unhurried. Up close she was older than Dean had first thought. About mid-fifties, with a web of fine wrinkles spreading out across her face and hard brown eyes.

Dean tracked the shifting sway of the rifle and moved until he was standing slightly in front of Sam.

The woman stopped a few feet away. “Strange time of year for visitors. Usually another month or two before the tourists start showing up.”

“Guess we wanted to beat the rush,” Sam said. He stepped forward and held out his hand. “I’m Sam, and this is my brother, Dean.”

The woman hesitated. “Thelma McMillan,” she said eventually. She reached out and briefly gripped Sam’s hand with her own, before letting it drop. “I’m the caretaker here during the off season.”

“Must get kind of lonely,” Sam said.

Thelma shrugged. “Suits me fine. The bears don’t bother me none, and I don’t bother the bears. Besides, in my experience it’s people cause most of the world’s troubles. Nothing but deceit and fornication these days. No, the less I have to do with people the better.”

Silence.

Dean opened his mouth, before thinking twice and closing it again. He pursed his lips together and gave Sam a look. Dude, this one’s all yours.

Sam cleared his throat. “Uh, right. Do you get many hikers passing through?”

“Enough.”

“Place like this must attract a lot of ghost stories. People ever talk hearing about hearing strange noises? Weird stuff happening in the woods?”

“Wouldn’t know. None of my business.”

“Notice any cooking utensils go missing lately?” Dean asked. He grunted as Sam’s elbow connected painfully with his ribs. “What?” he hissed, turning to glare at Sam.

Sam rolled his eyes.

“Trail picks up about a hundred yards down that path,” Thelma interrupted, pointing at a small gap at the edge of the parking lot, barely visible through the encroaching wilderness.

“Ain’t something I’d recommend for beginners though,” she added, giving Dean a skeptical once over. “Forecast says a rain system’s rolling in later today and things can get pretty nasty up there. It’ll turn you about ‘til you don’t know your up from your down.”

Sam smiled politely. “Thanks for the warning. We’ll be sure to head back at the first sign of trouble.”

*
Two hours later, Dean was beginning to think Thelma might have had at least one valid point.

The trail was hard going.

What had seemed like a nice scenic stroll when considered after a few beers, from the comfort of a seedy motel room, was in fact a steep climb up the side of a mountain. The slippery, uneven path twisted through the trees, leading this way and that, as if trying to swallow itself.

Added to which, the weather had turned.

Dean glanced up at the dark, overhanging branches and sighed. While offering protection from the worst of the rain, they made the forest feel claustrophobic, as though the gnarled trees were tightening around them, intent on suffocation.

Suddenly, he missed the sky.

“So, uh, what does this Gwyllion sound like again?” Dean asked, more as a distraction than anything else. The amusement of watching Sam screw his face up and attempt a high-pitched, howling Ww-bwb! noise was just an added bonus.

Sam huffed and ignored the question. “We should reach a clearing around the next bend,“ he said, panting slightly. “There’s an unofficial look-out point above the lake.”

Dean nodded.

His fingers tightened around the stock of a modified, repeating crossbow, narrow iron bolt cocked and loaded. Spares rested in a holster strapped around one thigh. He shouldered his duffle, drawing comfort from the familiar weight.

They walked in silence for another few minutes; the only sounds were an eerie murmur of wind pushing against the trees and monotonous, squelching thud of their footsteps. The skin between Dean’s shoulder blades started to itch, adrenaline swirling deep in his gut.

And then, the woods thinned and parted.

They stepped out onto an exposed, rocky outcrop fringed with black mud and coarse tufts of grass. Dean blinked and shifted uncomfortably. Be careful what you wish for. Although the rain had died off to a misty drizzle, the air was biting. A still grey lake stretched out beneath them, melding with the sullen sky; an abandoned snow globe wrapped up in butcher’s paper.

“I think this is it,” Sam said, pulling a creased map out of his backpack. He traced a finger over the tiny, red and yellow lines, giving up as a random gust of wind plucked at the paper, threatening to carry it away. “So, what’s the plan?”

For a long moment Dean didn’t respond, just stood very still and let the question hang. There was something weird about this place, he thought, almost absently, with its dizzying view and the sensation of being watched from the shadows, as if the trees were making notes and keeping score. Something old and strange and wrong, wrong, wrong…

“Dean?

“Huh?” Dean replied. He turned, taking in Sam’s pinched expression, and forced a grin. “Guess we wait a while and see if Martha’s feeling frisky.”

*
They did a quick sweep of the area and retreated back to the edge of the woods, hunkering down next to a fallen log. The unease Dean had felt faded, but didn’t disappear entirely, crackling in the background like static from a distant radio station.

After unzipping their bags and sorting through the weapons – a couple of guns loaded with wrought iron rounds, knives, spikes, and some prototype hex bags - it didn’t take long before Dean grew impatient and started to fidget.

“Well, this is thrilling,” he grumbled. “Where’s a Wendigo when you need one?”

Sam snorted. “Yeah, ‘cause it was so much fun last time.”

“Dude, it was awesome,” Dean protested. “Hey, once this is done, what do you say we head out to Vegas? Take a week off and have ourselves some fun.” He positioned the crossbow against an upraised knee and checked the scope again. “You know what’s in Vegas? Showgirls.”

“Showgirls?” Sam echoed, making a face. “We’re not driving to Vegas just so you can harass some poor woman! Besides, what happened to the whole saving people thing?” There was a beat of silence, and then he muttered, “Or does that only matter when you’re not looking to get laid?”

“Fine,” snapped Dean. “Here’s an idea: maybe you can bunk down with Thelma. The two of you can sit around all day judging people and being miserable. Discuss the uplifting themes in The Road or something.”

Sam blinked. “Cormac McCarthy?” he asked, sounding curious rather than annoyed, as if Dean had transformed himself into a cryptic crossword clue. “Really?

Dean felt himself flush and turned away, pretending to rummage through his bag. “Reading’s a thing, Sam. Think you’ll find its actually pretty common these days.”

“No, I didn’t mean –“ Sam broke off. “It’s just, you weren’t really, uh, into books much. Before.”

“Don’t worry, you’re still the geek in the family.” Dean straightened and rubbed a hand across his face, feeling the prickle of stubble under his palm. He stood up, groaning slightly as chilled muscles complained, and grabbed the crossbow. “Stay here and keep watch. I’m gonna take another look around, see if I can lure it out.”

Sam immediately scrambled to his feet. “No way! Just because that’s what Dad –“

“It’s got nothing to do with Dad,” said Dean firmly. “It’ll be fine. Besides, twenty-six, remember?”

Sam glanced at the clearing, fingers flexing around the grip of his gun, and nodded reluctantly. “Stay away from the edge,” he instructed, sighing as Dean immediately set off towards it. “Or not.”

The breeze had picked up again, gusting over the cliff.

Without the protection of the trees, the cold was vicious. It circled frigid fingers around Dean’s neck and wrists, and crept up the sleeves of his jacket. He forced back a shiver and rolled his shoulders, keeping his eyes focused on the slope of craggy rock jutting out over the lake.

He walked across it, stopping several feet from the edge, unwilling to move any closer. The wind made his eyes tear. Although Dean had never had a problem with heights before, something about the congealed, swirling clouds made his stomach flip-flop unpleasantly. He took a deep breath and swallowed, leaning forward slightly to stare at the ground.

Near his feet was a pile of stones. They were stacked haphazardly on top of each other, one after the other, to form a small pyramid. Or something resembling a cairn.

“What the hell?” Dean muttered. He crouched down to examine them more closely.

He picked one of the stones up and turned it over. Scratched roughly onto one side, so tiny he almost missed them, were a set of tally marks. Taking notes and keeping score. Dean traced the vertical lines with a thumbnail, before setting it on the ground and selecting another. He scowled as the pitted surface resolved into a second set of marks, more worn than the first.

Crap.

That was a hell of a lot more than eight dead or missing hikers and fond as Dean was of random coincidence, it only stretched so far. Added to which, he’d yet to come across a monster that memorialized its victims. Not of the supernatural variety, anyway.

And what all of that meant was…nothing remotely good.

Spooked, he shoved the stone into his pocket and stood up, rubbing the warmth back into his hands. He turned to find Sam watching tensely, wide eyes flicking from Dean to the woods and back again. Dean waved an arm to signal everything was fine, going for casual.

He startled, heart thumping wildly, when the wind gave a long mournful shriek. Only to realize seconds later that the treetops weren’t moving, and it wasn’t the wind.

“Sam!” Dean yelled, raising the crossbow. He scanned the trees for any sign of movement, watching from the corner of one eye as Sam backed slowly towards him.

For a long moment everything was still.

The silence was shattered by a mindless scream. It echoed through the woods, scooped out and hollow, like a tormented Tin Man bereft of a heart. Dean felt something inside his chest lurch and stutter, an unfamiliar wave of fear crashing over him. His breathing tightened.

Sam was a solid presence at his shoulder, gun held straight and steady. “Can you see it?” he asked, voice shaky but determined.

Dean shook his head, trying to clear it. “No, I –“

He caught sight of a pale shape flickering between the trees. It circled around the clearing to the right – quick, slow, quick, quick, slow - as if dancing with the gloom, disappearing somewhere behind their abandoned gear; which just happened to be alongside the trail.

“Looks like this one’s smart,” Sam said.

The figure re-appeared at the edge of the woods. It could have been an old woman torn from the grave, three weeks past dead. Her body was tattooed with swollen blue veins, collarbones jutting out sharply from beneath an ash colored smock, trying to claw their way out. A lumpen, black pot was fused to her skull, bloodied flesh growing over the edges.

The hag peered out at them from behind a tree, fingernails digging into the bark, and grinned slyly. She took one slow, dragging step towards them, and then another, twigs snapping sharply beneath her feet.

Dean tried squeezing the trigger of his crossbow, only to realise he couldn’t, that he was frozen in place, unable to move. His breathing sped up until it was panicked and gasping, lungs working overtime to keep pace with his heart.

The sudden roar of Sam’s gun was deafening.

The bullet went wide, thunking harmlessly into a tree. The hag shrieked and rushed towards them, her face stretched and blurred, like an overexposed photograph. Another gunshot rang out. Dean was dimly aware of Sam calling his name, before something crashed into his side, knocking him to the ground. The crossbow slipped from numb fingers and skidded across the rock, out of reach.

The world frayed at the edges, reality skipping a beat and sliding into different, black-edged frame.

Dean blinked at the sky, disoriented and uncertain about whether he’d passed out. The hag’s face swam into view above him. She was straddling his body, an emaciated hand splayed out above his heart. Dean could hear her terrible breathing, a strangulated wheeze that gurgled and popped.

“Pwll in ois oisou,“ she hissed, eyes bulging with glee.

Terror pulsed through him like an electrical charge, followed seconds later by a spasm of laughter. Because seriously, after the whole Rawhide thing, what were the chances? Hey, Sammy, guess what? Think my heart’s about to get all fucked up again. The vice around Dean’s chest tightened, like a belt being cinched after a hard winter, and his thoughts tumbled away, went someplace dark and lonely.

He struggled weakly, listening to the slow pulse of blood in his ears.

The hag’s expression shifted to shock as an iron bolt emerged without warning from the center of her chest, its razor sharp tip resting not far from Dean’s own. Her mouth opened wide in a silent scream of rage, before she exploded in a shower of dirt. The particles seemed to hang in the air, suspended in time from invisible thread, and then they were gone.

Dean took a deep, shuddering breath, lungs inflating like a crumpled paper bag. He raised his head. Sam was standing maybe ten yards back, holding the crossbow. His face was blank and white, absolutely still apart from eyes that locked frantically onto Dean’s and refused to let go.

“I’m good,” Dean rasped. “We’re good.”

The tension snapped, life flowing back into Sam’s face. He jogged towards Dean and sunk down into an awkward crouch beside him, all knees and elbows.

“Dean! Hey. Hey, you okay?”

Dean felt hands tugging at his shoulders, hauling him upright. The world tilted sideways, monochrome lights sparking behind his eyes, before clicking back into place. He swallowed heavily and looked at Sam, taking in a grazed cheekbone and the tight lines bracketing his brother’s mouth.

“Dude! Enough with the groping,” Dean said, pulling away. “Seriously, we’re finding you a girl. I’m fine. Just gimme a minute.”

Sam scowled, but rocked back on his heels, relaxing slightly.

They sat for a moment without speaking, silence on the wrong side of comfortable. The temperature was falling. Dean’s chest ached, the way it sometimes had after training sessions as a kid, before he’d learnt to block properly. If Sam hadn’t been there he would have rubbed it. Gradually, the bruised feeling faded, his heart settling back into a familiar, steady rhythm. The kind you barely noticed and assumed would last forever, until suddenly it didn’t.

Dean levered himself up, trying to ignore the way Sam’s outstretched arms hovered around him without quite touching, like a human safety net.

“C’mon,” Dean said, bumping Sam’s shoulder with his own. “Let’s go. We’re losing the light.”

*
By the time they stepped out of the woods and into the parking lot dusk had fallen, distant stars winking in and out of existence. The Impala was parked where they’d left it, a darker shade of black among the shadows.

Dean dropped his duffle on the trunk and glanced towards the caretaker’s residence. It looked strangely bloated now, a toad made of painted wood crouching half-hidden in the grass. Fluorescent light spilt through the thin, patterned curtains and across the overgrown yard, not quite reaching the fence.

A smudged face appeared at the window.

Thelma.

Dean stiffened. He scrubbed a hand over his mouth and turned back to find Sam watching him closely. Dean raised an eyebrow, feigning innocence, and pressed the crossbow into Sam’s empty hands. “Take the string out,” he instructed. “And make sure it’s tied down properly. Vibrations screw with the -”

“Quiver,” Sam finished, rolling his eyes. “Yeah, I remember.” He stood, fingering the leather grip, gaze drifting to the lit up building. “Uh, maybe we should just put everything in the back and take off. Wait until we don’t have an audience.”

“No,” said Dean immediately. The hinges on the trunk groaned slightly as he pulled it open. “I wanna get this done.”

Sam frowned, but didn’t argue.

They worked quickly, unloading the weapons without speaking. When everything was packed away, Dean cleared his throat and tossed the keys to Sam. “Your turn to drive,” he said. “Start the car, I’ll be back in a minute.”

“What?” Sam asked. “Where are you –“

“Sam. Get in the car.”

Fear and resentment sparked between them in a brittle feedback loop, gaining momentum in the dark, before Sam lowered his head and muttered, “Fine.” He walked around the car and slid into the driver’s seat, slamming the door closed. It left behind a vacuum of silence.

Dean took a deep breath, holding it for a few seconds, and rapped a knuckle against the roof of the car. Three times for luck. He checked his gun, and then walked across the lot, gravel crunching beneath his boots, wet and gritty.

His hand was resting on the rusted metal gate when the front door swung opened.

From somewhere inside came the sound of a television playing, canned laughter drowning out cheesy theme music. A large, rawboned dog appeared in the doorway. It tilted its head at Dean, starting up a low, steady growl.

“You made it back,” Thelma said, flat and conversational, stepping around the dog and out onto the porch. Her glasses caught the light, twin beacons glowing on a blank face. She patted a thigh, calling the dog closer, and ran a hand over its head, pulling gently on one ear. “Any problems?”

Dean shrugged. “We took care of it.”

“Ah.” Thelma looked over his shoulder, contemplating the mountain, and for a second she seemed almost wistful. “That’s a shame. Grandmother had been there a long time, did a real good job of scaring folk off. Should have known you boys were gonna to be trouble.”

“Guess you should,” he agreed.

Dean shifted, staring into the shadows at his feet, before looking up again. Suddenly, he wanted to turn around and go back to the car; tell Sam to keep driving until they reached a bar, somewhere bright and crowded, and lose himself in the smile of a woman with whiskey wet lips.

Instead he asked, “How many?”

Thelma went still and didn’t answer.

Bingo.

Dean’s fingers slipped into his pocket and brought out the scratch marked stone. “How many?” he repeated, holding it up.

“Twenty years, and you’re the first one to ask me that,” Thelma said. Her voice thrummed with something that in anyone else Dean would have called excitement, and the frightening thing was that he got it, could understand why.

We do what we do and shut up about it.

She walked over and leaned against the railing, body loose and relaxed, like a puppet whose master had let go of the strings. He tracked the movement of her hands, certain she’d have a weapon somewhere, even if he couldn’t see it.

Thelma regarded him with unblinking eyes.

“Drive away,” she said. “I’m not your kind of monster.”

“No, but maybe you should be.” Dean fought down the urge to draw his gun. “Close enough.”

“Really. You sure about that? Besides, what would that brother of yours think? It’s Sam, right?”

“You don’t know anyone called Sam,” Dean said. Emotion bled from his voice, leaving behind something cold and sharp. “And if that ever changes my dance card is open.”

Thelma tilted her head in acknowledgment, mouth quirking into a transient smile. “It seems we have ourselves an understanding then.” She straightened and walked back to the doorway, whistling once for the dog. “In another life I might almost have liked you. Happy hunting, Dean.”

The door closed with a dull thud, followed by the sound of locks clicking into place.

Dean exhaled sharply and walked away without looking back.

The ground felt unsteady beneath his feet, as though the world was stuck on a conveyer belt that had moved on without him. Frustration buzzed beneath his skin. Sure, he’d make an anonymous call to the police, for all the good it would do. Exactly zero. People were never willing to believe until their lives were being kicked in, and by then it was too late.

Sam was standing next to the car, gun hanging loose at his side. He didn’t say anything, just held out the keys. His expression reminded Dean of a confused five year old, the one who’d clung to his hand on the first day of school.

“You’re driving,” Dean said. He moved around to the passenger seat and climbed in, fingers fumbling with the handle.

The scent of worn leather wrapped around him.

Sam settled down behind the wheel. He started the engine, and then reached back to pull out the box of cassette tapes. Plastic cases clattered as he sorted through them, squinting hard at faded, handwritten labels.

Dean sighed. “Look, I get that you’re pissed, but can we –“

“Shut up,” Sam said tightly. “Just…shut up.” He selected one of the tapes, holding it up to the light, and then shoved it into the player. The distorted, bottom-heavy guitars of Led Zeppelin filled the car.

Dean blinked in surprise. “Dude. Good taste must be contagious.”

Sam huffed and pressed down on the gas, the parking lot disappearing behind them in a storm of loose gravel and exhaust fumes. By the time they reached the highway the needle was sitting pretty on ninety.

Stuck

astarloa — Sat, 07 Jun 2014 10:24:05 GMT

Title: Stuck (Part 2 - Adventures In Falling)
Characters: Loki,
Genre: Gen, angst, humour
Words: 1,500
Rating: PG
Summary:Loki’s fall comes to a temporary halt when he finds himself hanging from one of Yggdrasil’s roots.
A/N: written for the following prompt by the lovely tattooeddevil: The silence was deafening, the colours loud. Who was he? Apologies in advance for the rather idiosyncratic melding of mythology and the Marvel cinematic universe.

Pretty man.

Lying and Seduction

astarloa — Sat, 10 May 2014 13:01:11 GMT

Rather embarrassed disclaimer: I stopped watching Supernatural halfway through season 8 and what was originally intended as a temporary hiatus has somehow become permanent. Occasionally I’ll toy with the idea of catching up again, but the episode reviews and meta I’ve read aren’t encouraging. Yes, I continue to read meta etc. for a show I don’t watch…is that strange? It’s probably a little bit strange. But it does allow a type of vicarious participation, I suppose, and has the additional benefit of not leaving me frustrated and annoyed. Mostly.

And besides, reading other people’s thinky-thoughts is always interesting.

Anyway, amidst the general outcry that greeted 9.01 it occurred to me that the transition from the church scene in 8.23 to Dean’s compulsive fibbing could, perhaps, be understood as a game of seduction. In the sense meant by Baudrillard because, really, who else? It’s a half-formed idea I keep returning to, even though I’d have to watch hours and hours (and hours) of television to develop it properly.

So, for Baudrillard seduction exists as an ongoing duel – a kind of strategic reversibility - played out between two people. One of his more accessible and well-known essays on the topic is Please Follow Me (1983) which accompanied a piece called Suite venetienne by the French conceptual artist Sophie Calle.

Calle follows a man (referred to in her journal as Henri B.) with whom she is slightly acquainted through Venice for several days. During that time she continually photographs him, the places he visits, and even the same scenes he photographs, apparently without his knowledge. The result is a series of images that show someone unaware of having been followed. Baudrillard argues that the piece can be understood as a game of seduction played out between Calle and Henri B.

In following Henri B. Calle isn’t trying to learn some special secret about him or motivated by sexual attraction. Either of those things would only degrade the game. Rather, Calle tries to shadow Henri B.’s free will and make his reactions her own by mirroring or doubling his life. She erases his trace. Initially it seems that Calle occupies the dominant position in the relationship, because rather than Henri B. controlling Calle and leading her through Venice there’s a strange sense in which Calle knows in advance where Henri B. wants go and leads him there.

It is as if someone, behind him, knew where he was going – in such a way as to rob him of his objective and seduce him. (PFM)

However the subtle twist to the game is that, in order for the seduction to be successful, Henri B. must also have a haunting intuition that he’s being followed. It’s a second stage of seduction - the game moving into reversibility - in that Henri B. may only allow Calle to believe she’s exerting control over him, while she’s in fact subject to his own intentions. That is, Calle’s initial seduction functions as a challenge for Henri B. to enter the game and seduce her in turn.

At some point Calle may become aware that Henri B. has noticed her following him, and Henri B. may be aware that Calle is aware that he’s noticed. And yet in neither situation could they be certain of the other’s challenge or response. The possibility that Calle is not only the seducer, but also the seduced – that she is now absent from herself and exists solely in Henri B.’s trace as he leads her around Venice – is what establishes the game as a duel.

So, seduction is presented as the continuous ritual of making another follow you without an application of force.

Although there are no formal limits to the game, Calle can’t win by simply confronting Henri B. and announcing her presence, because in doing so the game would cease to exist. Similarly, if Henri B. asked Calle to stop following him then he’d be stripped of his own power (which may or may not exist) and prevented from taking revenge. The paradox is this: in order for either to triumph neither can win. An attempt by either Calle or Henri B. to occupy a position outside of the game and objectively view their relationship will always fail. Conversely, Calle will only lose the game if Henri B. is completely unaware that he’s being followed and refuses to play.

Finally, in opposition to seduction is voyeurism (and pornography, which attempts to make itself more real than sex). For Baudrillard, voyeurism and pornography exist as a kind of hypervisibility or non-traditional obscenity that destroys the uncertainty central to seduction and demand something ever more real and perfect; Calle isn’t spying on Henri B. when she follows and photographs him, but seducing him.

Emotional pornography and an invitation to play

When Dean arrives just as Sam is about to complete the ritual in 8.23, what follows is an apparently honest and heartfelt declaration:

Dean: Don't you dare think that there is anything, past or present, that I would put in front of you! It has never been like that, ever! I need you to see that. I'm begging you.

While Dean’s plea has the temporary effect of convincing Sam to abandon the trials, it doesn’t result in a sustained bond between the brothers. With the arrival of 9.01 we’re back in the position where Sam is ready to let go and Dean is, once again, searching for a way to convince him otherwise. Clearly, something more is needed if Dean’s going to prevent Sam from dying. And what he ultimately comes up with is interesting: he allows Ezekial / Gadreel to possess Sam’s body and then lies about it.

Interesting, because you can’t seduce by force. Hence the ‘please’ in Please Follow Me.

I’ll come back to the idea of force in a moment. But in this case we might say that Dean’s initial declaration operates as a failed seduction, because it’s a form of emotional pornography that destroys the ambiguous rhythms and space required for the game of seduction to be played out.

Lying is something entirely different, however, as is Dean’s invitation to follow – a request (strongly worded, but still posed as a question) or challenge, as opposed to a demand. That Sam accepts Dean’s challenge in 9.01 without asking for details also points to the strategy at stake in seduction (as does the presence of Death during the exchange, which is a whole separate meta that would take too long to get into here). And that the conversation between Sam and an illusionary Dean takes place as an internal dialogue while Sam’s in a coma doesn’t really matter. After all, in order to seduce you must first be seduced.

First stage of seduction: power

In keeping secrets Dean exerts power over Sam by trying to dictate his brother’s perceptions and knowledge. Narratively, what we’re given is Dean allowing Gadreel to possess Sam as a means of preventing his death. But the effect of Dean’s actions is to position himself as the mirrored truth of Sam’s reality, thereby creating a space that prevents Sam from acting of his own volition. And if seduction involves removing someone else’s trace and claiming it for your own (seduction as murder) then Gadreel is a tool of that erasure.

Second stage of seduction: the game’s afoot

However the reversibility at stake in seduction also exists in the challenge presented by a lie, the possibility that your secret will be uncovered. In concealing the truth from Sam (playing with appearances) Dean creates multiple variations of reality. Sam begins to doubt whether certain events occurred and is arguably haunted by the possibility that they’re a mere invention, either of his own mind or by someone else. What does Sam know or suspect? And if Sam does suspect that Dean’s deceiving him, to what extent is Dean aware of that suspicion and motivated by it? There’s a lingering possibility that Sam does know, and is simply allowing Dean to believe that his lies have succeeded. If Sam were to confront Dean then his power to exact revenge by seducing Dean in will be forfeit. Similarly, if Dean were to confess then the space necessary for their game to exist would be lost.

It’s important that Dean make his lies convincing, and yet not so convincing that Sam has no chance of discovering the truth:

Consider one of life’s novel situations: that of the game of hide and seek. What a thrill to hide when you are being looked for, but…If you play at disappearance too well, the others forget that you are there. You are forced to abandon yourself…It is like using a word that is too clever, so subtle that you are reduced to explaining yourself. (PFM)

So, rather than the secrets between Sam and Dean signalling a form of emotional disconnect between them, what plays out is in fact a strange kind of intimacy where the threat of discovery is constantly teased at and postponed. Neither can step outside of the game without losing the relationship to the other it allows them.

Third stage of seduction: force

What then, about force?

If seduction occurs by making someone follow you without coercion, then aren’t the issues of consent raised by Dean allowing Gadreel to possess Sam problematic (beyond the obvious)? Well, not necessarily. First of all, when Baudrillard talks about force what he’s really concerned with is the unspoken or ambiguous invitation to play discussed above, in contrast to ironic seduction that involves an overt statement of intent or a situation where the seducer believes themself immune from being followed.

But even if we accept Sam’s possession as an act of coercion contrary to seduction, the game may still continue. The ambivalence central to seduction means that, even if the rules are transgressed, there’s always the potential for breaches to be incorporated back into its framework. Nothing is necessarily lost or abandoned. So, seduction can be understood as both the ‘thing’ that allows someone to be controlled and what remains in the aftermath.

Play, challenge, and provocation are just beneath the surface. Its very brutality is rich with the inflections of love and complicity. It is a new manner of seduction. Or this conversation, taken from the novelist Philip K. Dick’s The Schizophrenic’s Ball:

“Take me to your room and fuck me.”
“There is something indefinable in your vocabulary, something left to be desired.”

One can understand this as: your proposition is unacceptable, it lacks the poetry of desire, it is too direct. But in a sense the text says the exact opposite: that the proposition has something indefinable about it, which thereby opens the path to desire. A direct sexual invitation is too direct to be true, and immediately refers to something else. (S42-43)

The secrets between Sam and Dean certainly don’t stop upon Sam discovering the truth of his angelic possession; they merely shift focus and continue on in a different form. Neither brother is willing to stop playing because, in some ways, they’ve reached a point where each exists only as a trace of the other. It’s that continuous doubling which is seductive. And in that light, perhaps, “there ain’t no me without you” can be understood as a statement about what it actually means to make the other disappear.

It Sucks, To Be On The Losing Side Of The Memory Game - Part 6

astarloa — Sun, 13 Apr 2014 01:27:02 GMT

Title: It Sucks, To Be On The Losing Side Of The Memory Game - Part 6
Characters: Sam, Dean, Bobby
Genre: Drama / angst
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 1,500
Warnings: Early-onset Alzheimer’s Disease, terminal illness, implied major character death
A/N: Written for the Dean-focused hurt/comfort comment meme (6) at hoodie_time for this anonymous prompt.
A/N: Given that I started this story two years ago, an update was in order.

The doctor’s appointment doesn’t quite happen.

Something comes up, the way things always do, meaning and events rearranged to create a new story. There’s a rumour of demonic activity near a small church outside of Shueyville, Iowa and well, that’s that, really. Sam won’t let it go, and Dean’s not about to argue. Tracking down things that go bump in the night is what they do, after all; it’s their own brand of normal.

The beginning of the end slides past them unnoticed, lost to the stretch of empty back roads and dead fields covered in frost. They don’t speak much. Dean’s foot presses heavy on the gas, fingers loose and easy around the wheel, while Sam stares fixedly out of the window, expression concealed by growing shadows. The needle on the dashboard twitches, creeping past ninety.

Glancing at his brother, Dean wonders if forgetting is a biological safety switch, a mechanism that stops people from being crushed under the weight of despair. There’s something almost sweet about it, an overdose of vicodin coated in sugar that smooths away the jagged edges of memory.

Maybe it’s Dad and Sam who are defective.

Oh, Dean fakes it well enough, has had a lifetime of practice, but he’s never believed that answers are waiting to be found, or that much of anything will change if they are. Not really. Because that’s not how life works, is it? Especially not theirs. The knot of maybe and why and what if won’t magically unravel if they find the demon that killed Mom, and…and…the other one. Smurfs. That girl Sam knew, the one who died.

He doesn’t remember her name.

And if there’s a difference between ‘doesn’t’ and ‘can’t’ then Dean tries to ignore it.

He keeps on trying until it’s too late and everything falls apart.

::::

Two days later…

Sirens have split the night open.

A police officer stands by a scratched patrol car that’s seen better days, wary eyes tracking the scene. Half an hour ago she was doing paperwork and drinking burnt coffee, artificial sweetener added to mask the taste. She frowns, hand moving towards the gun on her hip before drifting away again. When her partner leans inside and flicks off the siren the sudden silence is shocking.

“Want me to call this one in to the Sherriff’s office?” he asks.

She hesitates, and then shakes her head. “Let’s see what we’ve got first.”

Red and yellow lights continue to flash, mocking the broken remains of stained glass windows. They paint patterns of displaced violence in the snow and across a small group of people standing under the twisted, bare branches of an oak tree, huddled together against the night.

Paramedics are crouched over a body.

It’s lying across the worn, stone steps of the church, an overgrown puppet whose strings have been severed. An oxygen mask is slapped over a slack face and elastic ties tangle in hair grown too long. A second figure sits nearby, slumped to one side with blood stained jeans up drawn towards its chest as though in a last, futile attempt at protection. Unblinking eyes stare at a sign that reads, ‘Jesus Saves’. Or would, if only half of the letters weren’t missing.

Words echo faintly in puffs of white air.

“Pulse steady.”

“Pupils equal and reactive.”

“Sir, can you tell me your name?” one of the paramedics asks, rubbing knuckles hard against the front of a worn, faded jacket.

There’s a muffled groan, and an arm waves unsteadily, trying to push away the mask. “Arrrgghh, stop! It’s S’m.”

“Okay, Sam. Can you tell me where you are?”

“Hurts.”

“Where does it hurt? Sam? I need you tell me where it hurts.”

“Head.”

“Alright. Does it hurt anywhere else?”

“Nggghh.”

Dean stands still and silent on the lawn, watching from a distance, unsure what to do. He pulls a creased packet of cigarettes from the back pocket of his jeans, only to curse and screw it into a ball when he finds that it’s empty. His hands are shaking. The world moves around him, or perhaps he’s falling through it, pieces flying apart in confusion and growing panic.

They need to go, before people start asking questions he can’t answer. They need to go now. He doesn’t know where the car is, but Sam will. Sam needs to get up, so they can leave and find the car. Dad’ll be so fucking angry if Dean’s lost it, there’s no way he won’t notice. He wants a cigarette, and Sam’s probably hidden them on purpose, just to screw with him, the fucker. Maybe he’s hidden them in the table. No, not the table, the car. Maybe Sam’s hidden the cigarettes in the car, so Dean can’t find them. Sam has to get up, so they can go and find the fucking car…

“Sir, I’m Officer McCullough. I need to ask you a few questions,” a voice says.

Dean blinks, startled, and turns around to see a woman standing a few feet away. She’s older than he is, maybe forty-five, blue uniform stretched tight over a short, sturdy body. He thinks she could be kind, in a blunt, no nonsense sort of way, given the right circumstances, but there’s only cold suspicion in the eyes that catch his and refuse to let go.

“My b-brother. I want, he - what’s…” Dean says, words stumbling over each other.

She jerks her head in the direction of the church. “One of those men is your brother?”

He takes a deep breath and scrubs a hand over his face, trying to calm himself. “Uh, yeah. The one they’re –“ going to make sure is okay, get done what Dean couldn’t. He needs a cigarette.

“Your name?”

Dean doesn’t know what the right answer is, can’t remember who he and Sam are supposed to be. Names slide through his mind, one after the other, flickering briefly only to disappear into blackness. Dean straightens his shoulders and forces a smile, the one he uses to score a free cup of coffee when the money’s running low. “You know, it’s the w-weirdest thing. Having a little d-difficulty remembering right now. Must be the shock.”

“You don’t remember,” she repeats, flatly. “And what about your brother?”

Dean pretends to think for moment. “Nope, guess not.”

“Well, let’s just see if it comes back to you. How about you take me through what happened while we’re waiting.”

“Nothing much to t-tell,” Dean says. “We were driving through, decided to stop and stretch our legs a bit. My brother’s got a thing about“ - crocodiles, crosses, Blue Earth, Pastor Jim, cherries - “churches, ever since he was a kid. C-can’t get enough of ‘em.”

“And?” she prompts.

He shrugs, a sharp movement of one shoulder, and doesn’t answer. There’s safety in silence.

“You must have walked a fair distance,” she says. “Not really the weather for it, especially at night. Where’s your car?”

And isn’t that the sixty-four thousand dollar question.

“Listen, I n-need to go check on –“ and Christ, what’s he doing, dancing with this cop when Sam needs him. They should have been out of here the second things went bad. He’s so fucking dumb. Stupid, stupid, stupid.

“We’ve got a nice little community here,” McCullough says, taking a firm step towards him. Deep, vertical lines bracket her mouth and for the first time Dean sees what he’d missed before: her fear and anger. “Good, honest folk, for the most part. Not much trouble beyond a bit of petty vandalism and the local drunk beating his wife when he gets home from the bar on a Saturday night.” He can feel her contempt. “So, I’m sure you understand why I’m finding the situation here real upsetting.”

She leans further towards him and lowers her voice.

“I’m going to be honest with you. Here’s what I think: I think you and your brother are neck deep in this shit. I think that if I take you back to the station and run your prints it’ll tell me all kinds of interesting things; show me all the dark, nasty, little secrets you to like pretend don’t exist when you’re flirting with some pretty girl. C’mon, don’t be shy now. Tell me, you think that’s likely?”

Sam had a pretty girl once, with blonde hair like Mom, but…

"They burnt alive on the ceiling,” Dean says, and then wishes he hadn’t.

“Daniels!” McCullough yells for her partner, moving backwards and drawing her gun.

Time slows down after that, crawling towards him in fits and starts as if on shattered limbs. There are voices screaming at him to get down on the ground and for a second Dean’s tempted to shut them up. He could do it. Eliminate the threat, grab Sam, and get the hell out of here. And maybe - even if it didn’t work, maybe it wouldn’t be so bad, as endings go: hard and bloody.

Only, if he’s gone, who will take care of Sam?

Something crashes into Dean’s back, knocking the air from his lungs and pinning him in place against the cold, wet ground. Confusion and panic, Dean thinks, as his arms are jerked back and cold metal locks around his wrists, are fucking contagious.

Comorbid

astarloa — Sun, 16 Feb 2014 08:55:17 GMT

Title: Comorbid
Fandom: Death Note
Characters: Light and L
Genre: Humour, Gen
Words: 1,200
Summary: In which Light is sleep deprived and L is himself.
A/N: Written for tdorian. It’s not quite Eel ‘Verse, brother, but close.

Tap.

Rattle, clink.

Tap, tap, tap.

Clink.

Tap.

Rattle, rattle.

Tappity-tappity-rattle-clink-tap.

Light stared blankly at the bedroom wall, itchy blankets drawn up over his mouth. They smelt of lemon-scented detergent and carried a faint, underlying hint of something sweet, like icing-sugar. It wouldn’t have surprised him to learn that Watari sprinkled the stuff about on a daily basis, just in case his precious L found himself in need of a midnight snack.

Barely had the thought occurred when an image of L sucking on the bedclothes shuffled into Light’s brain and refused to leave.

He gave an involuntary shudder and rubbed a hand over the pillowcase, indulging in a quiet sigh of relief when no damp patches materialised. It seemed he was safe enough, for tonight at least, even if nightmares of hitherto unknown horror were now almost certain.

Of course, Light thought bitterly, in order to experience a nightmare he’d first have to fall asleep.

It didn’t seem likely.

Three weeks had passed since Light had been released from solitary confinement only to find himself chained to L, a heavy metal cuff secured firmly around his left wrist. That Light had contributed to his own predicament by agreeing to L’s scheme in the first place did nothing to soothe his growing irritability.

Every evening was the same.

At around 7.30 p.m. – 7.43 at the latest - Light would start hinting that he was rather tired and of the opinion that L would be better placed to unravel the mysteries of Kira after a good night’s rest. Experience had shown that at least six hours of escalating complaint were required if Light was to succeed in wearing L down.

For a time he’d toyed with the idea of moving the schedule forward by an hour, just to be on the safe side, before concluding, after much careful consideration and devious plotting, that expressing a desire for sleep directly after dinner may sever the bindings of believability and arouse unnecessary suspicion. Or lead L to conclude that Light was an over-eating glutton on the verge of succumbing to a food coma, which wasn’t at all the impression Light wished to convey.

In truth, he feared that L would view Light’s apparent condition as a clue and insist they start trawling through the records of Overeaters Anonymous for leads on Kira. While such misdirection would undoubtedly have been to Light’s advantage, he couldn’t bring himself to do it. There was, after all, a small but important distinction to be drawn between an Evil Genius and the Incurably Insane.

All of which left Light with little choice but to press on with his current strategy of exaggerated yawning and eye-rubbing, followed by polite requests, whining, demands, and, finally, full-blown tantrums. For the most part it did the trick and had the added benefit of reducing Light to a state of genuine exhaustion.

Unfortunately, that wasn’t the end of the matter.

Upon reaching his bed Light would curl into a tight, sullen, ball, and start counting criminals plummeting to their deaths from tall buildings. It appealed to him more than sheep or fences. Meanwhile, L would crouch within a nest of blankets on the twin bed opposite and continue working, laptop keys clacking at random intervals.

Tap.

Tap.

Tap. Tap.

Tap.

Tappity-tap-tap-tap.

Each movement would in turn be accompanied by a corresponding rattle of the chain. Light was convinced that he wasn’t attached to the world’s greatest detective at all, but rather a percussive ensemble of one with a penchant for found objects.

Tonight was no different.

Forcing back a sneeze, Light tugged fretfully at the blankets until they were once against secured firmly under his chin. While not overly fond of sweet things himself, he considered it best to err on the side of caution and avoid temptation. He feared that L’s eccentricity may prove contagious in such close quarters. Specifically, that he’d find himself unable to recall the proper method for sitting on a chair and instead start perching in an undignified fashion, as if balancing on an invisible and too-small beanbag.

His dismal thoughts were interrupted by L’s voice floating, unexpectedly, out of the darkness. “If Light is cold I can have Watari find him an additional blanket.”

“I don’t need a blanket,” Light snapped, refusing to turn around. “I’m perfectly comfortable and nearly asleep.”

“You don’t sound nearly asleep. Besides, you’re rather thin and probably have insufficient body fat to maintain an adequate core temperature. Perhaps you should consult a physician. I hear they have excellent lolly-pops.”

“I’m rather thin?” asked Light, in amazement. He rolled over and a glared at the shadowed figure illuminated only by the eerie glow of the monitor. “Me? By that logic you should be frozen solid!”

“My brain generates heat through constant activity. It’s unfortunate that your neural feedback mechanisms are less efficient.”

Light snorted. “You’re about the size of an eel,” he said, aware that it was a ridiculous statement, but unable to stop. “With the brain of one. Idiot.”

“What type of eel?” L asked, monotone voice giving the impression of supreme disinterest.

“What type of…”

“Eel,” supplied L, helpfully. “Anguilla, being any fish of the order Anguilliformes. If Kira continues to forget words at this rate he will soon be reduced to exterminating cats sitting on mats. Or perhaps mats sitting on cats.” L carefully typed out a string of letters, before deleting them again. “Given that there are four suborders, twenty families, one hundred and eleven genera and eight hundred species I require further details of the eel in question to determine the accuracy of your statement.”

“I don’t know!” Light shrieked, lurching upright as the last remnant of his patience unravelled. “Just an eel! You’re a skinny, unhygienic, eel with messy hair that eats too much sugar and won’t let me sleep!”

The said head of messy hair swivelled in his direction, black eyes blinking at him in a disturbingly eelish fashion.

“Hmmm, “ L said, thoughtfully, before turning his gaze to the ceiling and pressing one forefinger against the corner of his mouth. “It seems that Kira is prone to childish tantrums when cold and suffers from an irrational dislike of eels. Such behaviour is consistent with his actions to date and increases the probability of Misa as the second Kira by at least twelve percent.”

“I wouldn’t know, since I’m not Kira,” Light snapped, flopping back onto the mattress and burying himself under the covers. “And I don’t dislike eels.”

As it happened, both statements were untrue.

Light had developed a morbid fear of eels after falling into a pond as a small child and being bitten by one. Or, perhaps more accurately, nibbled upon, since the eel in question was of advanced years and wholly toothless.

“Just shut up and go to sleep,” Light moaned.

There was a moment’s silence, broken only by the rattle of the chain, before the room fell unexpectedly dark.

“Sweet dreams,” murmured L.

And if Light hadn’t known better he would have sworn L was smiling.

Adrift

astarloa — Mon, 06 Jan 2014 10:50:37 GMT

Title: Adrift (Adventures In Falling)
Characters: Loki, Thor
Genre: Gen, angst
Words: 1,100
Rating: PG
Summary: Bifröst breaks, and Loki falls. Or perhaps it’s the reverse.
A/N: written for the following prompt by the lovely tattooeddevil: The silence was defeaning, the colours loud. Who was he? Apologies in advance for the rather idiosyncratic melding of mythology and the Marvel cinematic universe.

Graceless poppets with painted, gaudy, faces

Prompt me

astarloa — Fri, 27 Dec 2013 01:56:53 GMT

I did this several years ago now and had a lot of fun with it:

Stolen from a few people on my flist: Tell me a story I haven’t written, and I will give you 1-3 sentences from or about it.

Similar deal this time around, except it's really just a case of give me a prompt and I'll write you something between a micro-drabble and a ficlet (Autocorrect keeps changing it to "fillet". Never fear, out of all the things you may be unfortunate enough receive a slice of meat isn't one of them.)

An Intimate History Of Collecting

astarloa — Sun, 10 Nov 2013 10:10:52 GMT

Title: An Intimate History Of Collecting
Rating: R
Genre/Pairing: Gen, Pre-series through to 8.01
Characters: Dean, Sam, John
Words: 4,500
Warnings: Graphic description of suicide attempt / implied major character death (as an adult). Possible triggers.
Summary: Okay, so. Here’s the thing you need to understand: Dean Winchester collects other people’s medication.

Prompted by a comment posted by maypoles at hoodie_time: You know how Dean sometimes has these mystery pills onscreen? It’s my head-canon he takes them from (deceased) victim’s medicine cabinets on cases they’re on. What are they? How many is he taking? Something about how this doesn’t end so well for him.

Okay, so. Here’s the thing you need to understand: Dean Winchester collects other people’s medication.

::::

It’s dark and humid.

The heavy, almost sweet smell of rot lingers in the air, coating the back of Dean’s tongue when he takes a shallow, experimental breath through his mouth. He presses his lips together again and swallows, pushing damp strands of hair away from his face with the back of one arm. New beads of sweat immediately break out across his forehead.

He slumps against the kitchen counter, knobbly drawer handles digging uncomfortably into his back, and looks around the room. It’s pale and narrow with heavy, exposed, beams that stretch across the ceiling; a dead forest designed by a gardener obsessed with geometry. Moonlight shines through a row of high-set windows only to be swallowed up by the yellowed glow of an electric light bulb.

Cabinets with frosted glass and irregular lead piping cover three walls. The fourth has been left strangely blank, as if the builders grew bored before it was finished and wandered away.

Maybe the money ran out and there’s nothing but tins of spaghetti and damp, mould-spotted bread hidden inside one of the cupboards, Dean thinks; the remains of crushed cornflakes and a carton of milk with crusty, white residue coating its rim, two days past sour.

He gives a mental shrug. There are worse things.

An oversized refrigerator hums quietly in the corner. If he touched it, would the vibrations travel through his arm and become trapped under his skin, alongside the grinding rattle of the car?

Dean sighs and scuffs at black and white tiles with the toe of his shoe. The excitement he’d usually feel is back at the motel they checked out of yesterday, wrapped up in cheap, scratchy sheets, fast asleep.

A block of knives sits on the opposite counter.

He walks over and pulls out one of the blades. Its plastic handle feels slick between his fingers, lacking the weight and balance to be truly useful. He runs the serrated, stainless steel edge over the ball of his thumb, testing its sharpness, and flinches. Fine dots of red appear on his skin as the knife hits the ground with a clatter.

“For God’s sake, Dean.” John’s voice, irritable and whisky rough, comes from the floor, where he’s crouched over the remains of two ruined bodies whose names used to be Phyillis and Keith Montgomery.

Well, technically they still are. It’s not the same, though. Dean’s only ten, but he’s not stupid. He knows things, and that’s one of them.

The man’s skin is shrivelled and brown, like an apple gone bad and mummified by the sun. Fine wisps of hair stubbornly cling to his scalp, waving back and forth – back and forth, back and forth - in a non-existent breeze. The second body is wearing a stained, floral nightdress, cotton rucked up over what used to be thighs, slipping skin torn and bloodied.

Mrs Montgomery, Dean guesses.

Her hand’s stretched towards the man as if trying to touch him, a tarnished ring that might have been gold hanging from the stump of one finger.

Someone should tell her to stop, that it’s too late for that now.

“Quit screwing around and make yourself useful,” John continues. “Go check on your brother.”

“But I can help –“

John looks up. “You need to stop with the attitude and do what I tell you. No arguments.” His face is damp and flushed a dull red, eyebrows drawn low over eyes circled with shadows. A small muscle jumps at the corner of his mouth.

There’s a moment of silence.

Dean feels himself nod, as if connected to strings being pulled from a distance, and then he says, “Yes, sir.”

::::

Dean likes multi-coloured capsules and small, plastic bottles covered in pharmacy labels the best, the kind that rattle when you shake them. Sometimes he’ll pick up an inhaler, but not often.

Paracetamol’s boring.

There’s nothing special about non-prescription medication. It’s too impersonal, not worth keeping.

His collection’s nothing fancy to look at, just a series of small, zip locked bags with initials and dates written on the corner in black, permanent marker. AM-19.11.06. DB-8.11.05. MJA-28.02.06. He keeps them inside a plastic shopping bag whose handles are knotted together and stuffs the whole lot inside his duffle, underneath sweat-stained t-shirts and socks.

Some of the drugs are practical – muscle relaxants and painkillers, anti-nausea medication that helps take the edge off a concussion – and others aren’t, not unless Dean develops several rare and potentially fatal conditions simultaneously.

It doesn’t matter. He steals them anyway.

::::

He walks down a hallway on rubber-soled sneakers, the frayed end of one shoelace dragging behind him. Photographs of too cheerful faces stare down at him from their frames on the wall. They remind Dean of insects, bright smiles spread out like wings, pinned and mounted inside a display case.

He pulls a face. They’re fucking creepy.

The corridor opens out into a large, square room cluttered with side tables and knick-knacks, furniture squeezed between them as an afterthought. Everything’s covered in a fine layer of dust. Curtains hang limply along one wall, obscuring the windows.

Sam’s sitting on the edge of a high, overstuffed sofa, chubby legs swinging back and forth. The room’s lit only by a television. It casts static filled shadows that flicker and die in random bursts, like silent gunfire, blood-slicked fingers pulling the trigger over and over and over without quite knowing why. The volume’s turned down so low all Dean can hear is a faint buzz.

He stands in the doorway for a moment, or maybe longer, and watches Sam watching make-believe people who see nothing at all.

“Hey,” he says, finally, pushing away from the wall and dropping down next his brother, bouncing slightly. Springs squeak of protest. “Change the channel. This is boring.”

Sam frowns. “No. I was here first.”

“Yeah, but I’m older, so you have to do what I tell you.”

“Do not.”

“Seriously, dude. It’s, like, a law or something.” Dean shrugs, and looks back at the television. “They spent a whole, stupid class explaining it at school. You must have been out sick that day.”

He peers at Sam from the corner of one eye.

The kid’s face is scrunched up like a paper bag, worry imprinted on every crease.

Dean’s lips twitch and he bites down on the inside of his cheek. It won’t take Sam long to realise he’s being conned, because the kid’s smart – so fucking smart, and it always makes Dean want to punch him and pull him close, both at the same time - but it’s fun while it lasts.

He starts a silent countdown: three, two, one, and…

“Jerk,” Sam exclaims, suddenly, punching him on the shoulder.

Dean grins and retaliates by shoving a cushion into Sam’s face.

“Ow! Quit it, Dean.”

“Quit it, Dean,” he echoes, voice pitched high. Sam just glares, eyes narrowed to malevolent slits, and then ignores him.

The house creaks, settling around of them, and the silent television continues to play.

“How much longer do we have to stay here?” Sam asks, eventually.

Dean ruffles Sam’s hair. Well, what’s left of it, after John dragged Sam into the bathroom last week with cheap pair of clippers in hand. It prickles softly against his hand. “Not long. Dad’ll be finished soon.”

Sam huffs and shuffles down to the far end of the sofa, out of Dean’s reach. “You always say that. You’re such a liar.” He pauses for moment, before adding, “A big fat liar who can’t spell,” as though it’s the worst insult in the world.

For Sam, it probably is.

So what if Dean’s handwriting is made up of ugly, crooked letters that sometimes come out in the wrong order. They make sense to him. It’s good enough for taking down messages and writing directions, all of the stuff that’s important.

“Whatever,” Dean says, and smirks, because that’s what he does. He’s awesome like Batman, even when the walls are closing in and the other kids are laughing and a part of him just wants to run away and hide. “Stay here and wait for Dad. I’m gonna take a look upstairs.”

Then he gets up and walks out of the room without looking back, not even when Sam hisses his name.

It’s fine.

His father wouldn’t have brought Sam along unless it was safe.

::::

When Dean’s twenty-two and Sam four years younger, he’ll stand silent and watch as his world’s set on fire for the second time. “I don’t want this life,” Sam will shriek, and John will reply, “Well, get out then,” his face twisting into a dead smile.

Dean will think that he’s never seen his brother look so angry, that he’s never seen his father look so scared. Or perhaps it’ll be the other way around. It’s hard to tell.

He’ll sort through the all words that mean 'stay' but discard them, knowing he’d probably just pick the wrong one anyway. At the end he’ll be left in the same place he started, only a little more tired and tattered; a second hand book that keeps finding itself returned to the discount bin outside on the footpath.

Sam will be seventy-five dollars richer when he leaves in the night and there’ll be a small medical kit filled with the best pieces of Dean tucked into the side pocket of his bag. Sam won’t discover it until he’s two days, a thousand miles, and an entire world away. He won’t understand what it means when he does because Dean never told him and by then it’s too late.

Dean will spend the next six moths hunting things, saving people, and re-stocking his collection with medication that once belonged to the people he doesn’t. He’ll tell himself that it’s no different than applying for credit cards until the cheque for his pro-ball career finally arrives in the mail; that it’s just common sense, nothing more.

Sure.

Absolutely.

But see, here’s another thing: Sam was right. Dean Winchester’s also a bit of a liar.

::::

Dean finds himself climbing a sharply angled flight of stairs.

Shadows pool above him on the second floor, greedy mouths kept in check only by the light left behind. An endless carpet runner pattered with intertwined fish - or perhaps they’re supposed to be take-away coffee cups - deadens the sound of his footsteps. He leaps over the final two stairs on a whim and arrives with an exhaled thump on the small landing. Looking around, Dean feels the same sparking thrill that marks his father’s return from a hunt, excitement suffocating the cries of a fragile dread he refuses to acknowledge in case it becomes real; his very own, salt-stained monster lurking under the bed.

A narrow corridor stretches away into another dimension, building blocks formed out of black pitch and silence. His hand hesitates for a moment, resting against one hip, over the comforting weight of a pocketknife. The flashlight Dean should have brought with him is sitting on the couch next to Sam, watching television.

It’s cooler up here, as if a window’s been left open, fresh air seeping in to wage a losing battle with the must. A chill so faint that it might be imagined settles against Dean’s skin, dragging invisible fingers along the back of his neck and across his shoulders. His face feels tight and vaguely itchy beneath a film of drying sweat.

He takes a few steps forward and pauses, cautiously reaching out a hand into the darkness. His knuckles brush against the smooth, painted wall. A voice in his head says he ought to go back, repeating its message until the words are reduced to a stream of white noise, useless and easily pushed to one side.

Besides, he’s not some baby who needs looking after.

Decision made, he takes a deep breath and starts walking again, feeling his way further into the house. As his eyes adjust, Dean realises that the hallway is lined with doors, all of them closed except for one further down on the left. He moves towards it and braces one shoulder against the frame, leaning carefully inside. He can just about make out a large bed covered with crumpled sheets and a quilt that’s been flung to one side. Ghosts made of bathrobes are slumped over the back of a chair in the corner. A pillow lies abandoned on the floor.

Dean thinks about the people who used to sleep here and the two bodies lying in the kitchen downstairs. About waking up in the morning with warm body of his brother scrunched up beside him, pulling on second hand clothes every morning, and the new jacket Sam will need before winter. Then he reaches over, wraps his fingers around the handle, and steps back out into the hall.

The door closes with a soft click.

::::

Collecting is a philosophical expression of ego, an attempt to re-order the world in a way that makes sense. Where the microcosm of self and strangeness of the universe intersect lurks an insecure desire. It’s about finding comfort in order and the need to possess.

Have you ever wondered why so many demons hang out at crossroads?

Soul collection.

It’s not something demons acknowledge, either to themselves or each other, that last, gasping reminder of what it means to be human. They record names and dates in painstaking detail and lock contracts away with metaphysical keys. Souls are bought and sold in a vicious cycle of want, where each price paid leaves the demon both more powerful and a little more lost, the need to keep its human past present an ever-burning itch under dead skin.

And demons being demons, they can’t help but scratch.

So, it all starts again, around and around, a carousel of horrific wonder spinning to a soundtrack of screams.

Dean was no different; it’s just that his collection started with the medical marvels people keep hidden behind a mirror, over the bathroom basin. He only switched to souls after breaking, when he climbed off the rack. In truth, Dean was never allowed to keep any souls of his own, but he took care of Alistair’s and sometimes he’d pretend they were his.

::::

The cut on his thumb is a bright sting in the dark.

Dean can hear himself breathing.

He could have been walking for seconds or days, although the backlit numbers on his watch say it’s closer to minutes. Despite his best efforts Dean’s thoughts start to drift, shuffling sideways in an awkward one-step, two-step, three-step, four, colliding with things yet to happen. Where will they go next, when they leave this house that’s not theirs? Maybe it’ll be a city. He tries to picture it, but can’t. Cheap weatherboard houses and scrubby fields yellowed by the sun stubbornly insert themselves between grease stained take-away containers and stretches of concrete.

He turns a corner, fingers tracing the wall. When, a few seconds later, they stumble over a light switch it all feels strangely familiar, as if he’s the mirror-trapped reflection of a Dean who’s already been here and done this before. He takes half a step forward and freezes at the sound of a high-pitched whine, teeth gnawing against glass bones.

He flattens himself against the wall, pulse stuttering, and waits. The noise comes again but softer now, discordant and jangling. Goosebumps rise on his skin.

Dean knows he should leave, has memorised the rules more thoroughly than any multiplication table. The voice in his head is back and stuck on replay, loud and insistent, only this time it sounds a lot more like his Dad: You know the drill. You see something? You don’t go after it. No playing the hero, Dean. This is real, not one of your comic book adventures. You get your brother and come find me.

Sam. Safe. Escape. Find Dad.

It’s simple enough, or would be if only he hadn’t disobeyed an unspoken order by climbing the stairs in the first place.

What should he do? Choices batter against him in a suicidal rush. Behind the door may lurk a monster, only waiting to pounce, but down below are the sharp, tearing teeth of disappointment and anger. It’s a stillborn thought that trails away into silence and finishes itself, slurred logic curling around to answer its own question.

It’s simple enough. Right now, in this moment, Dean’s where he should be. All the things he’ll become are circling around him, possibilities rubbing gnarled hands together and stretching thin lips into sly, approximated grins as their eyes meet in the dark, over the top of his head.

Excitement curdled with fear pulls him forward. Bracing himself, Dean takes a shallow breath and hits the switch.

His eyes close a second too slowly against an explosion light.

::::

It’s too hot to sleep.

At least, that’s one of the stories Dean will tell himself every night, even when hope is nothing more than a fucked-up prayer on a funeral pyre, floating away like so much invisible ash. Another is that things will be better tomorrow and that he’ll find a way out. They’re nursery rhymes for the desperate and Dean knows them by heart, has done since childhood.

He won’t let himself think about Sam, convinced that, if he does, the memories will be stolen away by the dark and become one of the lost things Purgatory hoards in its shadows. Instead, he’ll force himself to forget even as Sam-shaped ghosts wail in protest and continue to haunt his subconscious.

On this night Dean will be sitting on the ground, back pressed against the trunk of a tree whose bark is shedding in diseased strips. His knees will be curled towards his chest. It won’t be any different to the nights that went before or follow after. Well, not until Benny turns up, like a bad, shiny penny, but it’ll be another few months before that happens.

For the moment Dean will still be alone.

Actually, do you want to know a secret? Dean will be alone even then.

Sweaty hands will rub up and down the length of his mud-stained jeans in short, jittery strokes that make a mockery of comfort, before reaching into one pocket and pulling out a small, dark green capsule that looks black in the night. He’ll roll it back and forth between his thumb and forefinger, rubbing away specks of lint, until its surface turns soft and tacky. Then he’ll place it against his tongue, tip his head back, and swallow.

Dean won’t know what he’s taken, not really, only that it’s the last survivor from a bottle he stole about a year ago, from a man called Michael Skellig.

Nice guy, you know?

Well, from what his family said he’d had potential, anyway, back before the whole possession thing.

::::

Dean takes a step back, hand wiping away involuntary tears, and squints through a veil of damp eyelashes.

“Shit,” he curses, under his breath.

The scene resolves itself into a small, empty bathroom. His gaze flicks from the toilet to the shower curtain to the towel rack, automatically cataloguing a set of Venetian blinds hanging over a half-opened window, bent metal ends scraping against the wall as a breeze moves through the room.

The adrenaline he’d had felt only moments before seeps away, like rain through leave-clogged gutters. Dean shakes his head, feeling oddly lost and empty without it. Forcing his shoulders to relax – nothing happened, everything’s fine - he steps into the room and heads towards the basin. A hairline crack threads its way through the off-white porcelain, disappearing into rust stains that have gathered around the metal plughole at the bottom. He twists the tap, waiting until the water runs clear, and then gulps down mouthfuls of tepid water from between cupped hands.

When Dean looks up, the eyes that meet his in the cabinet mirror are kind of glassy and lined with red. The cabinet lets loose a faint squeal when he pulls it open, hinges protesting against the movement. He leans forward, lifting onto the tips of his toes, hands clenched around the rim of the basin, and peers inside.

The narrow, dusty, shelves are empty except for a plastic container. There’s no particular reason for it to be there, only it is.

He lifts it out.

It’s light and about the size of a lock-picking kit, one of those fancy ones he keeps bugging John about. Someone’s written “Phil’s Pills” across the top in black marker. The slanted, spiky letters stand out, like a challenge or a warning, against a bright yellow background.

Dean inspects each side of the box, turning it this way and that, listening to the rattle inside, and then pops open the lid. Tablets of different colours and sizes sit inside square shaped compartments, each labelled by the days of the week; a small defiance against the threatened promise of sickness and death. Monday is filled with a striking combination of pale blue and red capsules, while the ones for Thursday are mostly green.

And suddenly, without understanding why, Dean wants.

He snaps the box close and shoves it into the waistband of his jeans, against the small of his back. Plastic corners rub against his skin as he walks out of the room and turns off the light, goes back downstairs to check on Sam.

John always said it’s not stealing if no one notices it’s missing, not if you need it more. It’s a shame Mary died before reading him Alice In Wonderland.

::::

Sam said, “I saw a diner about a mile back. You hungry?”

“Not really.” Dean shrugged and kept his eyes fixed on the television. He leaned back against the headboard and plucked the remote from the quilt, drifting from channel to channel.

…it’s currently eighty degrees, but humidity levels will begin to - click -joining me on the show is Reverend Brown, president of the - click - up next, when animals - click - reports say new tax cuts will be announced for those affected by…

“Dean.”

“What, Sam? If you wanna go out, then go out.”

Sam sighed. “Fine,” he said, tightly, and grabbed the car keys off the table. Windows rattled in their frames when the door slammed closed.

The air inside the motel room was murky, touched with fever, scented with the smell of dust and stale sweat. Dean flicked the television off and closed his eyes, swallowing mouthfuls of air, and let himself sink into memories of Purgatory. His pulse gradually slowed to a slow, steady, thrum. He knew Sam’s frustration over his refusal to turn on the air-conditioner would boil over soon, scalding them both, but he didn’t know what to say. Each time he tried his throat would close up, words scraping roughly against the inside of his chest.

Dean blinked and rubbed his face, feeling bruised and hollow.

He slid off the bed, grabbing his duffle from the floor, and moved towards the tiny kitchen. The worn ends of his jeans pooled around bare feet. A bottle of whisky sat on the scratched counter. He unscrewed the lid, hand loose and relaxed, and took several long swallows, exhaling sharply at the familiar burn. When he opened the duffle and pulled out a plastic bag the crackle sounded loud against the silence.

He lined them up, one by one.

White plastic bottles and anonymous blister packs, orange containers with childproofed lids, imprinted with names that once belonged to someone else. There weren’t as many as before, and it wasn’t the quite the same, not really, but looking at them Dean still felt strangely content.

He tipped their contents out onto the counter.

Without pausing to think, Dean swept the pills into his hand and choked them down with a chaser of whisky. He repeated the action until none were left, and his collection was gone. Dean stood, hip pressed against the cabinets, and stared blankly out of the fingerprint-stained window above the sink. Two kids were playing in the parking lot, invisible guns blazing as they leapt out from behind cars and threadbare shrubs, ambushing each other in turn.

When the pills tried to come back up Dean took another hard pull of liquor to prevent himself from retching. The bottle slipped away, out of numb, trembling fingers, bouncing slightly against the lino. It should have smashed, Dean thought, suddenly wanting to laugh. It should have smashed. He pressed a fist against one eye and stumbled out of the kitchen; kept moving until his knees collided with the bed, pitching him forward.

The patterned walls of the motel room were a retreating blur, bugs squirming beneath the skin of faded, paper horses as small flowers exploded around them, red and sullen, like bullet-wounds. Dean squeezed his eyes closed and curled into a ball, only to lurch forward a few seconds later and vomit strings of frothy bile onto worn carpet. He had time to spit once, to try and rid his mouth of the taste, before the world turned black.

His darkness was interrupted by the sound of someone chanting, repeating jumbled words that didn’t make any sense. Maybe later he’d ask Bobby to look up a translation, but right now he just wished the voice would stop and let him sleep.

“Don’t you fucking do this. Don’t you do this. Oh, God. Open your eyes, Dean. Jesus fuck!”

His eyes flickered open and tried to focus. He was still lying on the bed, only now it was shaking, or maybe it was him, and he wondered about Armageddon and earthquakes, cindered fragments of thought that crumbled before he could catch hold of their meaning.

Sam’s face appeared and then vanished again as the room tilted sideways. He was distantly aware of being yanked from the bed and dragged across the floor, past the empty screen of the television and walls of dying horses. Time moved through him in jagged pieces, fast and slow, now and before. Never and always and wrong. Dean gasped and felt a sudden spike of panic, convinced he was drowning, when a spray of cold water hit his face, quickly soaking through his shirt and jeans. His hands scrabbled uselessly against the tiles of the shower floor.

Arms were wrapped around him, rocking him from side-to-side in sharp, broken movements more desperate than gentle. The sound of someone crying was drowned out by the rain.

“I’ll never forgive you. If you die now I’ll never forgive you.”

Dean shuddered and mouthed the word, “Sorry,” against Sam’s chest. Cold, wet, cotton dragged against his lips. The saddest thing was that he only half meant it, because as bad as this was? It was also kind of perfect.

::::

So, that’s how it goes. In the end is where you’ll find the beginning: when he was ten, Dean Winchester started to collect other people’s medication.

Sam Winchester Versus The Octogurt

astarloa — Mon, 07 Oct 2013 09:48:14 GMT

Title: Sam Winchester Versus The Octogurt
Characters: Sam, Dean
Genre: Crack
Words: 1,100
Rating: PG
Prompt: written for the hurt/comfort meme at hoodie_time for a prompt by marieincolour: I'd like to see some good old-fashioned H/C. No monsters, no fuglies, no witches. Just.. Say there's a long drive, and a gas station and, oh, Dean, what are you doing on the floor behind the candy isle?

Life, Sam thought, poking at the wilted leaves of a cabbage with the tip of one finger, was filled with uncertainty.

As thoughts go it wasn’t especially profound.

For this Sam blamed the fact he’d been trapped inside the car with his snuffling, wheezing brother for eight hours straight, only to find himself wandering through a rundown supermarket-come-gas-station. He leaned down to peer doubtfully at a box of laundry detergent whose faded graphics suggested a manufacturing date circa 1970, and then ambled off to look at yoghurt.

Against the cruel and capricious winds of fate yoghurt stood firm and certain; both in its eternal proliferation of flavours and the knowledge that the ones you actually wanted would never be packaged together.

In many ways, Sam decided, developing his theory further, a sick Dean was a lot like yoghurt: filled with frightening cultures of unknown origin and yet utterly predictable. As much as Sam may have wished otherwise, it was a universal truth that Dean Winchester in possession of the common cold, influenza, or other miscellaneous plague, would cling to denial like a particularly tenacious octopus, suction cups poised and at the ready.

Yeah, his brother was totally an Octoghurt…or perhaps a Yogopus. As an almost-Stanford-graduate and hunter extraordinaire, Sam knew these things.

Earlier that day Dean had proclaimed his sneezing fits were an allergic reaction to Sam’s aftershave, not even slightly dissuaded by Sam’s insistence it was the same brand he’d been using every day for the last four years. Of course, allergies or not, Dean had also denied any knowledge of the tissue box wedged under the driver’s seat of the Impala, its white squares only emerging when he thought Sam wasn’t watching.

Which, you know, whatever.

Dean was fine. Sam was fine. Everything was fine.

Or it would have been, if only Sam hadn’t made a grave tactical error and expressed the view that Dean looked flushed. At which point his brother launched into a complex explanation of fevers and coughing that had nothing whatsoever to do with the human immune system. As best Sam understood it, Dean’s analytic framework revolved around the combined and hitherto unknown effects of Global Warming, possums, and egg whisks. He’d been secretly impressed, if not more than a little disturbed.

Sam had been on the verge of flinging himself out onto the road, gravel rash be damned, when Dean pulled into the gas station and forced Sam inside with much poking, prodding, and the occasional pinch. Sam didn’t really understand why, given that he’d been promptly abandoned next to a magazine rack at the front of the store and left to fend for himself. The last he’d had seen of his brother was a pair of bowed, jean-clad legs disappearing off down aisle three with a wobbly, if determined, gait.

Sam hunched over to make himself look as small as possible – which wasn’t very – and started reading the nutritional label on a block of cheese. As an Unusually Tall Person, he’d learnt from bitter experience that entering a supermarket unaccompanied could be a risky enterprise. All it took was one person asking him to pull something from the top shelf before the hoards would descend, beady eyes alight at the prospect of having a human crane at their disposal.

All of which Dean knew very well, the dick.

Sam may have continued working himself into a fit of fratricidal annoyance had his thoughts not been interrupted by the sound of a loud crash. He looked down to see a tin of clam chowder emerge from a nearby aisle, roll happily past him, and continue on towards the toilet paper.

Huh.

So, that was a little weird.

Tossing aside the now deformed and finger-marked cheese, Sam crept towards the aisle and peered cautiously around the corner. The source of the crash quickly became evident. A man wearing an all too familiar Henley was lying on the dirty, linoleum floor, surrounded by canned goods.

“Dean!”

Sam abandoned his hiding spot and lumbered towards Dean with barely concealed panic, not unlike a buffalo making its annual migration.

“Hey, man, what are you doing down there?” he asked, hands moving up and down Dean’s chest, automatically searching for broken bones or life-threatening bite marks. Good call, Sam, ‘cause you can never be too careful with those carnivorous potatoes, a voice in his head mocked. He shoved it away and refocused his attention on his brother.

The bright spots of colour on Dean’s cheeks and nose were now matched by an angry, red lump on his forehead.

“Soup,” Dean grunted, miserably, one arm flailing at the tins.

“Soup?” echoed Sam, the corner of his mouth flirting with a smile, because seriously. Dean sounded all of about five years old. Not that Sam could remember his brother at that age, of course, or knew much of anything about children, but still. Five sounded about right.

It was almost adorable.

Dean nodded, eyes glazed and watery, before contorting with a violent sneeze. “Souuuup,” he moaned, flopping back onto the ground.

“Soup,” Sam agreed with a sigh, rocking back on his heels to avoid another fine spray of droplets. If he’d harboured any doubts that Dean was sick, finding him collapsed under an avalanche of canned soup pretty much cleared up the uncertainty. Dumbass.

After much careful study, Sam had discovered the most accurate way of tracking Dean’s health was to watch for the appearance of soup in his diet. Deep-fried everything with a side of grilled lard would be pushed aside – usually the second or third day after the initial onset of symptoms - in favour of chicken broth, creamed tomato soup and, on one memorable occasion, split pea. His brother wasn’t half as sneaky as he liked to believe. Sam thought the soup thing must be a leftover memory from childhood; something their Mom had fed Dean before everything went to crap.

When Dean showed no further signs of moving, Sam hooked his arms around his brother and dragged them both upright, grunting slightly at the dead weight. He could feel heat radiating from Dean’s body and worried for a moment about fever induced convulsions and brain damage, before deciding the latter probably wouldn’t be all that noticeable.

He propped Dean against the shelves and took a step back.

Despite his obviously diminished state, Dean had been sufficiently lucid to grab a can of minestrone on his way up. It was now cradled against his chest, being rocked gently from side-to-side to the congested refrain of “Enter Sandman”.

Sam grinned and pulled out his phone.

He really shouldn’t.

Oh, except he so absolutely, fucking was.

Asleep, Inside The Cabinet Of Mr Adler

astarloa — Sat, 21 Sep 2013 08:35:30 GMT

Title: Asleep, Inside the Cabinet of Mr Adler
Rating: PG-13
Words: 4,000
Warnings: Spoilers for 4.17, some disturbing imagery, brief reference to animal death
Summary: Dean Smith tells Sam to leave and then changes his mind.
A/N #1: Written for spn_summergen for Zirastiel, who asked for some Smith and Wesson featuring Castiel. Huge thanks to my partner in crime tdorian, who has an unerring sense of when something works. And when it doesn't.
A/N #2: Title taken from 'The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari' and lyrics are from 'Tiny Apocalypse' by David Byrne.

Extended notes and thoughts can be found here.

“Really knowing is good. Not knowing, or refusing to know, is bad, or amoral, at least. You can't act if you don't know. Acting without knowing takes you right off the cliff.” – Ray Bradbury, Something Wicked This Way Comes.

He was standing in the office at night. Lights from nearby buildings shone like mechanical stars in the window. If Dean had turned around he would have seen them, but he didn’t turn around. He just looked at Sam and said, “Know me? You don’t know me, pal. I think you should go.”

The words were a lie. He said them anyway.

His voice was cold and certain. Last week he’d told Adler that the company could expect upward growth during the next quarter, despite the depressed mining sector, in exactly the same way.

It was the tone he used to reassure nervous, junior executives.

He’d practiced in front of a mirror at home, alone in the small bathroom. His voice had echoed against the tiles. There’d been a disconnection between image and sound, as if his mouth were moving a fraction too slowly. He’d tracked the unsettling movement of his face in the glass, breathing through creeping nausea, unable to stop.

For a brief moment the memory covered Sam’s face, like inexpertly applied wallpaper. Reality intermingled. Dean stood motionless, before dropping his eyes to a point somewhere over Sam’s shoulder.

Suddenly, he was tired.

Adrenaline had faded and his left ankle ached.

His tie was missing. When did he take it off? Was it on the desk behind him? He couldn’t remember. He wanted to ask Sam to help him find it, but was scared that Sam would only frown and say, “Your tie isn’t real, Dean. Don’t you get that? None of this is real. Neither are you.”

So, he didn’t ask.

His hands started to shake. Fine, fluttering tremors, as if half-formed moths were trapped beneath the skin, desperate to escape. His fingers tightened around a bloodstained cloth, relaxed, and then tightened again. It didn’t work. His hands kept on shaking.

There was silence. Neither of them spoke, and then Sam walked away.

Dean watched him leave.

The words come back were trapped in his throat. He couldn’t say them. He concentrated instead on the tightness of his chest and thought about diets and cholesterol, high blood pressure and heart attacks. It was easier that way. He heard the faint echo of the elevator’s arrival and then nothing. No footsteps walked towards him; no one called his name. Sam didn’t come back.

He turned and looked out of the window. He didn’t see the stars.

When the cleaning staff arrived, before dawn the next morning, Dean was sitting in the dark, behind his desk. The computer screen was blank. One of the cleaners screamed when she saw him. She apologised and said that she was superstitious, that the place gave her the creeps. She’d mistaken Dean for a ghost.

::::

It was 5 o’clock.

The sun was an undercooked egg on the horizon, pale and slightly runny. Dean drove towards it, against an unsteady flow of traffic. In a few hours he’d switch lanes and return to the office. A voice on the radio thanked the station’s sponsors - extolling the virtues of a new laundry detergent - and then cut to the weather. Rain was forecast.

He turned it off.

The engine amplified an aching buzz inside his head. He pressed down on the accelerator and started to tap out a pattern against the steering wheel. Something sharp and restless, like a zipper tugging against bent, metal teeth. There was dried blood beneath his fingernails. He lost himself in the movement, the gritty slide of skin against fake leather. The sides of the car pressed claustrophobically around him.

A fire engine screamed past.

He grabbed at the wheel, overwhelmed by a sudden sense of vertigo. The car’s rear wheels slipped to one side, tyres screeching, before correcting course. Dean wheezed, “Fuck,” and forced himself to breathe slowly, trying to still the pounding of his heart. He coughed, tasting something acrid, like burnt plastic and fireworks. Steel-capped boots kicked sullenly at the walls of his chest.

He couldn’t remember how long he’d been driving.

His watch said it was five o’clock.

Music was playing on the radio. Raise up – shake them lazy bones. Read the t-shirt but still don’t understand. Comin’ home with a little apocalypse. It comes, now do you have time for this? Dean let the words wash over him. When the song ended an announcer thanked the station’s sponsors, waxing lyrical over a new brand of ammunition - sacramental shotgun cartridges - and then cut to the weather. Storms were forecast.

He winced at the sudden, crackling burst of static and turned it off.

Fifteen minutes later he parked on the curb, outside his apartment building, beneath a blue and yellow sign that read, ‘Give Way’.

It was quiet.

People were still asleep.

He sat and stared blankly through the windscreen. It needed washing. His thoughts drifted to a magazine article he’d once read, about a Soviet dog named Laika who’d been launched into space. She’d died while orbiting the earth, travelling alone through the night, inside a metal spacecraft. Sputnik II. Dean tried to imagine how she’d felt. Then he got out, mouth twisting into a grim smile, and mocked himself for being morbid. The cool morning air made him shiver. He decided that he’d have the car cleaned on Saturday.

He crossed the street and went inside.

::::

Shadows painted the ground floor with darkness. The door to an empty office was open in the corner. He saw a lamp flickering on the desk, casting unsteady light over a pile of neatly stacked paper, ordinary and impermanent. Wisps of steam spiralled lazily from a mug. Dean paused and called out, “Hello? Anyone there?” His voice was swallowed by the silence. He sighed, scrubbing a hand over his mouth, and walked towards the elevator, steps tense and deliberate. He pressed the button and waited, shifting his duffel from one arm to the other. There was a soft, clanking sound from inside.

The doors to the elevator slid open. A man stepped out and said, “Hello, Dean.”

Dean flinched.

His pulse stuttered once, twice, and then picked up speed. The man looked like someone from the accounting department; someone he might have stood next to in a coffee store, or made awkward conversation with over the drone of a photocopier. The man looked like none of those things.

“Oh, c’mon! You’ve got to be kidding me,” Dean exclaimed, anger flaring to life. He jerked away as the man moved closer. “It’s an elevator thing, right? Let me guess - you’ve been having weird dreams about us hunting zombie chickens in the sewer together.”

The man opened his mouth and then closed it again. “Zombies are a myth created as an expression of human fear and anxiety. They don’t exist,” he said finally, head tilted to one side. “And I don’t sleep. You already know that.”

“Sure. Of course you don’t.” Dean shook his head, as if to clear it, and took another step back. They were circling each other in a brittle, two-dimensional dance. “Listen carefully, ‘cause I’m only going to say this once: I don’t know you. I don’t want to know you. We’re not friends, or long lost, co-joined cousins separated at birth, or - ”

“You need to stop talking. I don’t have much time. Once Zachariah discovers my presence an order will be given requiring me to leave. And I will leave, Dean. My purpose is served by following Heaven’s command.” Something frightening and bitter flashed across the man’s face, like cancerous wings wrapped in barbed wire. It left an afterimage floating on the back of Dean’s eyes. “Your hair is certainly more well organised here, but I know you, Dean Winchester. I’m the one who raised your soul from hell and stitched it back together.”

Dean stared.

His thoughts were spinning, crashing to the ground, confused and gasping, only to get up and start running again with bruised, bloodied knees.

He exhaled a harsh laugh.

“Okay, newsflash, pal. Whatever brand of crazy you’re selling? I’m not buying. You picked the wrong guy for your little Kool-Aid drive. I’m in sales and marketing, I con people for a living.” Dean fumbled through his duffel for the wrench, only to find he was holding a half-empty bag of salt. He held it out in front of his body, both as a shield and a threat. “So, here’s what’s gonna happen. I’m gonna get in the elevator. You won’t speak to me. You won’t follow me. If you see me in the street you’re gonna turn around and start walking in the opposite direction. Do you understand what I’m telling you?”

He reached out blindly and pressed the elevator button, holding it down until the doors opened. He backed inside. The man stood and watched, curious and impassive.

“You think you can’t do what God asks. That you will fail and cause hurt to those you care about,” the man said. “You need to understand that fate and faith are two different things, Dean. Your struggles are caused not by fear of what may come to pass, but because you believe and don’t want to.”

The man disappeared as the doors slid closed. The salt slipped from Dean’s hand and scattered across the floor.

::::

Steam filled the bathroom.

Water on the wrong side of too hot burnt stinging patterns onto Dean’s shoulders, as though a thousand needles were dragging invisible thread through his skin, embroidering the names of people he’d forgotten. The air contracted and then expanded again, heavy and bloated. His eyes were closed. One hand was braced against the tiled wall for balance, and the expression on his face was something close to despair.

When the water started to cool he twisted the taps and climbed out.

The shower door let loose a high-pitched squeal as it opened. He’d tried to fix it soon after signing the lease - using a toolkit he’d found hidden in the back of a cupboard - but given up after half an hour, unsure what to do. Tightening the hinges had only made things worse.

Dean towelled himself dry, gestures deliberately rough, in a pantomime of constrained violence.

Turning, his eyes settled on the blurred figure in the mirror.

He stood very still, before reaching out to scrawl Winchester in the condensation, across the slick, greasy glass. Fragments of his face were reflected in the letters. As children, he and his sister, Jo, had scared themselves silly with stories of Bloody Mary, each daring the other to call her name. They never had. The game had usually ended in a flurry of shoving and insults. If he said Dean Winchester three times in a row, what would happen? Would a spirit be conjured out of the mirror, or would he fall in and become trapped?

Dean leaned forward. His hair formed a corona of dark, dripping spikes around his head, like dandelion fluff stained with mud. Your hair is certainly more well organised here. He gave a damp, involuntary shudder and looked away, palming it flat.

The towel was left in a sodden heap on the floor, used and abandoned.

He got dressed, pulling on a pair of black trousers and a blue business shirt, fastening its buttons all the way up to the top. The starched collar pressed tightly around his throat, making it difficult to swallow. Then he lay down on the bed, arms limp by his side, and stared at the white stretch of ceiling, hair cold and wet against the pillow. He felt feverish and wondered absently if he was coming down with the flu. His feet were bare.

Minutes crept past in a disorderly queue, one after the other.

He had the sensation of dreaming while awake, as if reaching out to grab hold of someone who’d already let go. He raised one hand off the bed and studied it carefully. It didn’t look any different: blunt and inelegant, with square, bitten nails. His middle finger was disfigured by a callus he’d had since college.

Sighing, he rolled over and grabbed his cell phone off the nightstand, squinting at the brightness of the screen. There weren’t any messages. Dean told himself it was hunger, and not disappointment, curling through his belly. Eyebrows scrunched together, he scrolled through the list of contacts and pressed call.

There was a sound of distant ringing. A machine picked it up.

“You’ve reached Bob and Ellen. We’re not here right not now, but if you leave – “

The woman’s voice broke off. He could hear muffled bickering in the background: Why can’t folk just wait ‘til we’re home or feel like talkin’ to ‘em? Because we’re pretending to be fine, upstanding members of society, Robert. Now hush up, before I kick your ass.

“ - What I was about to say, before my damn fool of a husband interrupted, is that we’re not here, but leave your number and we’ll call you back.”

Dean cleared his throat. His eyes were dry and tight.

“Hey, it’s me. Um, guess you guys are still sleeping. Sorry if I’ve woken you up or something. Listen, I was thinking of driving down one weekend. It’d be good to get out of the city. See everyone. Things have been kinda crazy here, so…yeah. Anyway. Call me back.” He shifted the phone from one ear to the other, pressing it tightly against the side of his head, as if to prevent any sound from escaping. “Mom, listen. I know it’s early, but I really need you to pick up. Just for a minute, okay?”

He waited, searching the silence for a familiar voice, thick with annoyance and sleep. It never came. The call ended with a loud beep. Dean hung up and immediately hit redial.

He didn’t leave another message.

At seven o’clock, when the alarm started to shrill, Dean got up and finished dressing. He chose a conservative, pale blue tie and a suit jacket with three buttons, selecting them carefully, like a Halloween costume intended both to disguise and intimidate. Today was a continuation of yesterday. His keys jangled as he walked out the front door, letting it slam closed behind him.

He bought a stale donut and a cup of cheap, black coffee on the way to work, even though it made him late. Powdered sugar stained his tie.

::::

Dean spent the morning trying to lose himself in the labyrinth of the corporate machine. He sent emails and made telephone calls; finalised a report on the pricing of civil infrastructure projects during the last quarter. The market for iron ore was expected to remain volatile. And yet doubt continued to scratch at his mind, jagged and incomplete, always leading him back to the exit.

There’s a golf bag in the corner of my office. I don’t know how to play. I live alone. I remember two beds. I have a sister. When I think of her I hear screaming. I’m the Director of Sales and Marketing. This isn’t how it’s supposed to be. My name’s Dean Smith. It says so on the door.

His fingers stilled on the keyboard.

Watching the steady flash of the cursor – stark and flat, a moment in time looped around and repeated – he had an urge to smash the computer open, suddenly convinced that he’d find nothing but shadows inside. Ghosts in the machine. He swallowed, squeezing his eyes shut, and then muttered, “Fuck it. Just…fuck it.” He was sick of feeling frightened.

The phone rang, loud and insistent.

Dean pressed the button on his headset, answered the call without thinking, like a child reciting the multiplication table.

A voice said, “Um, hey. It’s Sam…Sam Wesson.”

“Oh. Right.” Dean stood up, one hand gripping the back of his chair. His fingers turned white. “Listen, about that stuff you said last night. I - ”

“No, I get it, man. The whole ‘ghosts scrambling our brains’ thing was pretty far out there,” Sam said, words tumbling over each other, nervous and frayed around the edges. “I, uh, spoke to someone from the phone company. Turns out they’ve been getting complaints about faulty lines or something, so I guess that’s how I ended up calling the animal hospital. Maybe…I think maybe I just wanted it to be true, you know?”

Dean didn’t respond. He could hear faint puffs of air against the receiver. “Uh, to tell you the truth, not really,” he said, finally. “You’re saying, what? You wanted your ex-girlfriend – fiancé, whatever – to be imaginary? ‘Cause I gotta say, man, that’s a serious case of denial.”

“God, you’re such a dick sometimes.” Dean smirked, surprised to find himself amused by the insult. “All I know,” Sam continued, “is us hunting that ghost together? Helping people? It felt like, I dunno, some kind of wake up call, I guess.”

“I told you, man, it’s the cubicle thing. You just need to –“

“Yeah, about that. I’ve resigned. Okay, technically I was fired. But I would’ve quit anyway, so it’s more of a timing issue, really. The HR rep says Ian mistaking his neck for a pencil sharpener and Paul’s head exploding might count as extenuating circumstances. Workplace stress.”

“Fired!” Dean moved towards the open door of his office, panic rising. He looked out, anxiously, at the people milling through reception and then eased the door closed with a soft click. He was sweating. “I told you we should’ve checked the security cameras again! How much do they know? What did they say?”

“Dude, calm down. It’s got nothing to do with that. Well, not directly. There was an, um. An incident.”

“An incident? What the hell does that mean? I swear to God, Sam, if you don’t -”

“I attacked my desk phone with a fire poker,” Sam said, voice resigned.

“Sorry, you what? With a…”

“Poker.”

Dean’s face distorted and broke into a smile. “Dude, seriously? Are we talking, like, Russell Crowe, or Full Metal Jacket for the geek squad?”

“The only fatality was a phone,” Sam said, dryly. “So, on a scale of socially inappropriate outbursts, I’m thinking Russell. And watch who you’re calling a geek, Mr I Love Research.”

“Stand down, Gomer Pyle, that’s an order. We’ve all got our special talents.”

“Well, apparently mine involve scaring the crap out of everyone. Enough for security to show up, anyway.” There was a pause. When Sam spoke again he sounded smaller somehow, hesitant and embarrassed. “I totally lost it, man. Kinda scared myself a bit too, to be honest.”

The words floated between them like a grey-scale confession. Dean sat on the edge of his desk, elbow resting against an upraised knee, and stared out the window. It had started raining.

“Yeah, I hear you. There’s been some of that going ‘round lately,” he said. His eyes darted to the bronzed golfer standing on the cabinet, its arms frozen in an eternal swing. “So, what’s your next step? I might know someone who’s hiring, if you’re interested.”

“Actually, I’m gonna take some time off…hit the road for a while, see what happens.”

“Uh, sure. Got anywhere in mind?”

“Yeah. I couldn’t sleep last night, after…after, so I did some digging around on-line. About the, um, supernatural stuff? I took another look at that Ghosterfacers site and followed a few links. I mean, at first a lot of it seemed like complete crap, right? There were people asking for advice about werewolves and, I dunno, these things called ghouls? It was like a horror movie from the 1950’s.”

“Okay, well that doesn’t sound disturbing at all,” Dean said.

Sam huffed in annoyance. “Anyway, I exchanged a few messages with this one guy who seemed legit. Sort of. He mentioned a bar in Nebraska…uh, Harville’s Roadhouse? I think it’s part of an underground network for ghost hunters or something. Thought I’d check it out.”

“Sam, c’mon. You’re just gonna drive to Nebraska, after hooking up with some weirdo on the Internet, and ask a group of strangers if they’ve spoken to Casper lately?”

“Why not?” Sam asked, stubborn and defensive. “Remember what the Ghostfacers said: Homework, Infiltration, and Face Time. It worked okay when we took out Sandover. Look, maybe you’re happy to pretend nothing’s changed, but I can’t live like that. Not now. I have to - ”

Dean stood up and pulled out the chair, slumping into it with a silent groan. He let Sam’s voice drift over him and clicked absently on the mouse, killing the company’s screensaver. His inbox held seven new emails, three of which were marked urgent. He left them unread. Fear came rushing back, subtly different, threading its way through a series of warped, irregular cracks and Sam-shaped spaces. The room seemed very quiet.

He took a deep breath and said, “You’ll need a car.”

“ - What?”

“A car. You’ll need one to get to Nebraska.”

“Well, yeah. I’m not catching the bus, dude.”

“We could take mine. My car, I mean.”

“We? Oh. Okay. Yeah, that’d be – it’s just…you made yourself pretty clear last night. I’d rather not be left on the side of the road if you freak out and change your mind again. Uh, no offence.”

“Trust me, pal, I’ve used up nine lifetimes of freak since this whole thing started. I’m running on an empty tank here.” Dean sighed, rubbing the back of his neck. “Look, I’m not saying this monster gig is a forever kind of deal, okay? We’ll probably be sick to death of each other by the end of the first week. Hell, chances are you’ll ditch me in the middle of the night and take off back to school, or hook up with some chick. But I’m…something about this isn’t right, man. So, screw it. We drive to Nebraska, ask some questions, and go from there.”

Sam said, “Okay.” Dean could hear him grinning.

::::

There was a sharp knock on the door.

Dean stopped typing and looked up, startled. There was a half-finished letter on the screen. It said he was resigning.

Adler smiled and asked, “Got a minute?” Fluorescent light cast shadows across his face, twisting it into something unexpectedly strange; menace tempted out of hiding by the promise of prey. The bulk of his body merged with the grey walls of the office, smooth and blank.

“Sure, of course,” Dean replied, raising both eyebrows.

He bit down on the inside of his mouth and told himself that everything would be fine, that it was only his mind playing tricks. In another few hours he’d be somewhere else, drinking beer with Sam and planning a trip to Nebraska.

Dean told Adler that he’d decided to leave.

His explanation imploded under its own weight, sentences reduced to uneasy, stuttered words. He flushed, embarrassed, and felt an absurd surge of relief when Adler’s smile only widened.

That is, until he heard Adler say, “Dean, Dean, Dean.”

He thought, in horror, Bloody Mary. A distant part of him wanted to scream. Instead, he could only watch, silent and trapped, as Adler reached out and pressed two fingers against his forehead. He flinched. There was a bright, flaring pulse of pain, and then…

They arranged to meet at Dean’s apartment that night.

“You tried calling them, didn’t you? Your family,” Sam said, suddenly.

He didn’t reply.

Sam tried to apologise. Variations of sorry tripped over each other until Dean cut them off. “Hey, I think they need you back on set, Oprah. Let’s just concentrate on how we’re going to fund this little adventure.”

“So, I guess we’re really doing this, huh?” Sam asked. “I swear, man, you and me on the road together? It’s gonna be great.”

…Dean Winchester blinked and woke up.

Notes: Asleep, Inside The Cabinet of Mr Adler

astarloa — Sat, 21 Sep 2013 07:24:04 GMT

So, in many ways this was my ode to the silent horror film “The Cabinet of Dr Caligari” (1920)…via Dean Winchester.

"Of course," you say. "It's obvious!" Yeah, probably not so much.

“Dr Caligari” tells the story of a carnival showman, Dr Caligari, who exhibits the somnambulist Cesare as a sideshow attraction in a coffin-like cabinet by day and sends him out on murderous sprees at night, under hypnosis. The narrator of the film is Francis, who investigates these strange occurrences after his friend falls victim to Cesare. However by the end of the film it’s revealed that Francis is in fact the inmate of a mental institution whose director is Dr Caligari. Whether Francis has succumbed to instability as a consequence of his brush with the supernatural, or whether the tale is nothing more than a distorted imagining, is left to the viewer. Unlike “classical” cinema there are ambiguous causal links that destabilise the narrative.

(On a side note: Edward Scissorhands, meet Cesare. Seriously.)

That sense of hesitation is reinforced at a visual level by highly theatrical sets with flat, painted surfaces, awkward angles and elongated shadows. Space is presented simultaneously as both true and manifest illusion – a combination of real locations with jarring visuals – that further challenge the reality status of what we’re watching. It’s an expression of the “fantastic”, a peculiar doubling which creates a profound sense of unease and anxiety, something Freud wrote about in his essay “The Uncanny”.

All of which, on its surface, seems miles away from “It’s A Terrible Life”.

Except, not really.

Beyond the comedic elements of the episode what we’re presented with are two characters who have been stripped of their memories, identity and familial connections (arguably one and the same within the world of Supernatural) and inserted by Zachariah into a world that’s not truly illusion, and yet is still fabricated insofar as Sam and Dean are concerned. It’s not difficult to draw a parallel between the manipulations of Zachariah (corporate boss and angel) and Dr Caligari (sideshow operator and psychiatric consultant) who keep their respective charges in a state of deliberate unknowingness – a waking sleep – and let them out at night to wreak havoc for their own end game. Underneath the comedy there’s something profoundly unsettling and disturbing going on.

In terms of narrative doubling Dean is both Smith and Winchester, Sam Winchester and Wesson, and Zachariah Adler and angel. It’s not until the conclusion of the episode that those uncertainties are somewhat resolved. I say, “somewhat” because I think there's ultimately a question about the extent to which Smith and Wesson’s personas are an artificial construction. There’s clearly some overlap, a sense in which the brothers' connection to each other and their subconscious memories of hunting creep through, which in turn raises the possibility that other aspects of their personalities aren’t as “against type” as they may first appear. After all, Wesson’s still the one willing to challenge the status quo of his life and look for something different, while Smith prefers routine and what he knows, all the while seeking approval from his boss.

I’d also argue that in the mise-en-scene of “It’s A Terrible Life”, with its bright primary colours, deliberate costuming, and repetitive, whirring pencils, we have something that’s not radically different to the effects created in “Caligari”. While we recognise the environment as a modern, corporate office, it’s never-the-less a hyperreal world whose slick surfaces and pristine order are (perhaps paradoxically) the equivalent of cardboard houses and crooked streets leading nowhere.

Cesare and Caligari

Dean Smith and Adler. Your office is a box is your coffin.

Smith and Wesson repeatedly meet inside ~~an elevator~~ a box.

I spy: unlike the majority of camera angles used in the episode, we’re given a high angled shot when being introduced to Smith and Wesson’s respective working spaces. It’s a choice that implies an act of observation from those “higher up”, control, and dependence on the corporate machine. Sleepwalkers performing at a sideshow.

We only know Cesare’s name because of Dr Caligari’s show. Dean knows his name because Adler’s written it on the door.

Anyway, those ideas all informed the imagery of the story, with varying levels of success. There was also a play on some specific canon images, the most obvious being Dean’s thoughts about Sputnik II and travelling through the dark, inside a metal spacecraft. Distorted memories.

So, why Dean? One of the things that’s always intrigued me is Dean’s change of heart between the unequivocal rejection of Sam after P.T. Sandover has been dispatched and his conversation with Adler the following day. It’s a significant shift in attitude and not one we’re given much explanation for. However my thoughts kept returning to Cesare who, despite his somewhat dire sleepwalking difficulties, falls in love with a woman named Jane. Unable to kill her, Cesare abducts Jane and ultimately dies of exhaustion after fleeing over the rooftops from a mob of enraged townspeople. Or, to put it another way, the horror implicit in waking up from the dream, of trying to fit the various pieces of “real” life together, is so overwhelming that a tempting solution is simply to fall asleep again. And I think it’s that choice, with all its attendant fears and creeping anxieties, which Dean Smith would have been faced with.

Snapshot Of Invisible Monsters

astarloa — Thu, 14 Mar 2013 12:06:20 GMT

Title: Snapshot Of Invisible Monsters
Genre: Gen, pre-series
Characters: Dean, Sam, John
Rating: G
Words: 600
Summary: There’s no such thing as an ordinary life, only invisible monsters. And there’s no such thing as invisible monsters, only ordinary life.
Disclaimer: Not mine.

The town is small and easily forgotten. Dead and gone, just not quite buried.

Take a moment to blink and you’ll miss it.

Empty storefronts line the main street, buildings old in a way that have nothing to do with antique. Sagging wood presses tightly against faded red brick; a sprawling memorial to the never-glorious past held together by strips of peeling paint, metal bars, and graffiti.

Signs announce out-of-business sales that finished years ago, while a naked mannequin watches the world stumble by from behind dusty glass.

It’s a place where people live between the cracks and have done for so long that no one tries to claw their way out anymore. All they can do is build sandcastles in the dirt and issue whispered invitations for others to join them. There’ll always be someone who thinks it’s not so bad, who says yes, and yet others still with no choice in the matter. Creation myths about ragged fingernails and resignation would replace God and the gospels if anyone cared enough to tell stories.

And besides, what use are Jesus and his fish, if it comes to that? Belle’s Diner serves fried chicken on Sundays. That’s good enough.

Dean can still taste the grease against his teeth when the door swings shut behind him, the cracked ring of a bell marking his small family’s departure. Streetlights shine weakly. John scrubs a cheap, paper napkin over Sam’s mouth as they cross the road, hand comically large as it cradles the back of his brother’s head, trying to hold him in place.

At Sam‘s muffled, “Daaaad!” John surrenders with a wry smile, tossing it away onto the sidewalk.

They walk down the block towards the car.

It’s parked on the curb, hugging the shadows with a shiny black of its own. Dean flings himself inside the moment John unlocks the door. He can hear Sam climbing into the back, complaining when the seatbelt sticks from being pulled out too quickly.

Same old, same old.

Sam’s sitting on the left, directly behind the driver’s seat. If Dean turned his head he’d have an interrupted view of a frustrated frown and jeans patched at the knee, grubby fingers struggling with the catch.

That’s the rule, that’s how it works: driver does the driving and shotgun watches Sam. Or tosses stuff at him, depending on the mood and how much Dean feels like teasing.

There’s a short, sharp slam of the door and jangle of keys as John slides into the driver’s seat. The engine turns over with a familiar rumble, idling and discontent, insects dancing in the glow of the headlights.

They drift out onto the road without speaking.

On the outskirts they pass a building whose neon sign casts candy-coloured promises of booze and sex across the windscreen. Dean catches the faint sound of frantic laughter and smashing glass, ragged guitars whose music's fallen two steps behind the beat; fun trapped inside a desperate flirtation, slip sliding over the edge towards something bad. He understands it in the complicated way that children do. Strands of imagination and truth weave knots of meaning that his adult fingers will pick at but never completely untangle.

Then John stomps down on the gas, fingers tapping impatiently against the wheel, and it all disappears in a storm of loose gravel and exhaust fumes.

By the time they hit the highway the needle’s sitting pretty on ninety.

Bitten and Baudrillard

astarloa — Sat, 02 Feb 2013 03:30:23 GMT

Some musings about “Bitten” (8.04) and Baudrillard.

Just because.

General spoilers for s8 and more specific ones for 8.08 and 8.10.

One of the criticisms I've seen of “Bitten” (8.04) is of the artificiality implicit in the use of mocked-up video footage and concealed cameras as a storytelling device. Specifically, that no one would record the melodrama of their lives to the extent that Brian, Michael and Kate appear to and that their descent into supernatural ‘madness’ as a coherent narrative feels fake or unconvincing.

And in an empirical sense, that’s probably true.

But what if we approach the episode in terms of Baudrillard’s theory of simulation and hyperreality? I think we end up with something quite different and certainly more interesting. That there’s a tendency to read certain aspects of the episode as artificial raises questions about the reality we’re supposedly defining them against. And I’d suggest that what makes us uncomfortable about the episode isn’t its presentation of an unsatisfactory or flawed illusion, but rather the reminder that the reality we define illusion against may no longer exist.

So, as a starting point, let’s think about representation.

At a (really) basic level, representation in Western metaphysics is what allows us to speak of a thing by way of analogy or likeness. The Platonic system of representation is a hierarchy in which things (material representations / thoughts) are understood as a variation (copy) of an original or ultimate idea. Copies are characterised as either good or bad depending on their relationship to the original, which is in turn privileged over all of its copies. The question becomes how far you can travel down the chain of representation before the relationship between a copy and its original is lost and something becomes only a copy of yet another copy (a simulacrum) – a ‘false’ image that tries to disguise its essential difference.

In ’Simulacra and Simulations’ (1981) Baudrillard argues that there are four “successive stages of the image” or sign:

1. It is the reflection of a basic reality (the image is a good appearance).

2. It masks and perverts a basic reality (the image is an evil appearance).

3. It masks the absence of a basic reality (the image ‘plays’ at being an appearance).

4. It bears no relationship to any reality whatsoever: it is its own pure simulacrum (the image is no longer in the order of appearance at all).

Each stage of the image is in turn connected to a historical phase or mode of economic production. The fourth and final stage of the image is associated with the current, post-modern age of mass production and consumerism, in which reality no longer exists as such but only as a collection of signs of the real.

All is hyperreal.

Through the process of simulation images of reality become simulacra that erase its very existence.

A sign is only ever a reflection of another sign, a simulation of yet another simulation. Reference to an external model (an original) becomes impossible and the oppositional framework that structures Plato’s philosophy falls away. However simulation as Baudrillard uses the term shouldn’t be understood as a type of all-pervasive illusion or a world in which the proliferation of images has overtaken the real. Rather, simulation is at once both the death of reality and its realisation, what allow it to be. So, it’s not that we’ve succumbed to illusion but rather that the simulacrum is reality, something that at once both mirrors it object while functioning as the object of its own representation (Butler, The Defence Of The Real: 1999).

Unlike “The Matrix” or “The Truman Show”, therefore, it’s not a question of escaping the virtual world by means of swallowing a pill or opening a door in the wall, because there’s nowhere to go and nothing to find on the other side except what already is.

So, if hyperreality is somehow beyond representation – if the distance between the original and copy necessary for representation has been erased - what happens when you press “play”?

In “Bitten” we’re presented with a scenario in which Sam and Dean enter a room to discover two unidentified bodies, the blood of a possible third victim splattered on the wall. Characters to whom we’re yet to be introduced are either dead or absent, the lingering ambivalence over the fate of the third participant suggesting that death and absence have a certain type of equivalence or capacity for exchange with each other. Subjects are displaced and become objects, dead bodies laid out across for the screen for consumption by a hypothetical audience, whether it be the Winchesters in the first instance or a nominal viewer outside in the ‘real’ world turning in for an hour’s entertainment. And if we take that a step further, then we might say that the subject isn’t excluded from the narrative so much as murdered by its own image and reimagined as object:

Thus perhaps at stake has always been the murderous capacity of images, murderers of the real, murderers of their own model...To this murderous capacity is opposed the dialectical capacity of representations as a visible and intelligible mediation of the Real. All of Western faith and good faith was engaged on this wager of representation: that a sign could refer to the depth of meaning, that a sign could exchange for meaning and that something could guarantee this exchange - God, of course. But what if God himself can be simulated, that is to say, reduced to the signs which attest his existence? Then the whole system becomes weightless, it is no longer anything but a gigantic simulacrum - not unreal but a simulacrum, never again exchanging for what is real, but exchanging in itself, in an uninterrupted circuit without reference or circumference – Baudrillard, Simulations.

The “original” version of Michael, Kate and Brian to which we’ll compare all subsequent versions are already presented to us as signs – digital images captured on videotape, which in turn forms part of the movie that Sam and Dean are watching.

The classical progression from original to copy is immediately destabilised and what we’re left with is a world in which both real-Kate and video-Kate are nothing more than simulations, reflections caught in an endless and self-referential loop. For example, while it’s tempting to position video-Kate as artificial or illusionary, in order to do so we’d need an original with which to compare her. And it’s that reality which is denied (or conversely realised, if we accept Baudrillard upon his own terms) because everything that follows after is a narrative made up of footage reassembled by Kate for the purpose (we assume) of convincing Sam and Dean not to follow her.

What we read as real are instead images that have been deliberately edited, selected, omitted and created with the goal of presenting a particular version of events, and of Kate herself, most likely to appeal to the Winchesters. We’re faced with the possibility that sound and visuals from separate events have been combined to create actions that never occurred. For example, the story we’re given is that Kate was bitten by Brian in a fit of jealous rage and transformed into a werewolf. And yet that narrative may have been tweaked and manipulated, leaving us with just one of many potential versions. Implicit within the narrative is also the possibility that the characters are acting for the camera, that their behaviours are in some way exaggerated in response to the process of observation. The subject reproduces itself as an object of consumption. All that remains inside the vacuum is a spectacle of banality, a type of de-sexualised pornography, in which details of the characters’ daily lives are recorded in obsessive detail and reproduced as image. Going to class, sitting on a couch, sexual assault, listening to music, murder and supernatural transformation - everything receives the same level of attention and visual treatment. Every aspect of daily life must be recorded in order to disguise the fact that there’s no longer anything to watch.

It’s also worth noting that when Sam and Dean agree to give Kate a chance at the end of the episode, the only ‘person’ they’ve actually met is an image that’s already run its course and been turned off. There’s a sense in which it’s unnecessary – would be impossible – for them to hunt her; the image has killed its model and the real version of Kate is both every version of Kate – human and werewolf alike - and neither. For example, the closing credit sequence reminds us that the Kate we see walking along the train tracks is part of a television program, complete with soundtrack and the names of her creators scrolling across the screen. She’s no more or less real than the pixels trapped inside a computer. Or alternatively, we might say that Sam does in fact attempt to kill Kate when he unplugs the laptop and denies her image an audience.

Faced with that ambivalence, our tendency is to cling to those devices that offer a paradoxical form of reassurance: Dean removing the iPod from its dock at the beginning of the episode, signalling that the music used during the opening sequence is “real” rather than a formal technique. And yet the interactions between Sam and Dean are, of course, also mediated by the camera, which exists as an invisible third party in their relationship. That the audience is encouraged to read the actions of certain fictional characters as true, as against the artificial actions of different fictional characters, arguably points to the strategy at stake in simulation rather than providing us with an escape from it.

References to the characters in William Golding’s “Lord of the Flies” also hint at the peculiar strategy at stake in simulation. Kate’s statement “Did you know that Simon was a Christ figure?” is followed later in the episode by Michael’s assumption, after overhearing a conversation between the Winchesters, that his newfound abilities are those of a deity: “I am a golden God”.

The space between an icon (representation) of God as a mechanism of exchange for reality becomes the hyperreal in which an image of God is not only an object of devotion but evidence of His very existence. In a sense, the likeness of a fictional character’s appearance to God is reproduced in the episode as a system of exchange with itself. That Michael’s belief in his own divinity is ultimately shown to be mistaken perhaps matters less than the process by which he arrives there: by watching footage from a concealed video camera of Sam and Dean speculating on the type of supernatural creature responsible for the attacks. Similarly, Brian’s quest for transformation and the same abilities he’s witnessed in Michael is expressed as a desire not to become Piggy, the intelligent but disempowered victim in Golding’s novel. Self-identity exists only as simulated experience.

The melodrama of unrequited love, devotion, jealousy, anger and violence played out between Brian, Michael and Kate is caught and reproduced on a succession of mirrors and computer screens, to the extent that it can no longer be separated from them: reality is its image and the image reality.

Cowardice and courage are never without a measure of affectation. Nor is love. Feelings are never true. They play with their mirrors. Today it is events that are neither true nor false and play with their screens. You can no more isolate an event from its screen than in the past you could isolate love from its mirror - Baudrillard, Cool Memories.

And to position all of that within the wider themes of s8: reality is a series of flashbacks and flashbacks are reality. Memories are presented as a self-constructed representation, a mirror image of the past that both maps and precedes the now. We might say that the Dean and Sam of s8 consume their own lives as manufactured images, as a type of reality television. And in doing so they’re seduced by a connection to lived experience that still allows them to maintain an illusion of distance. For example, Dean spends the first half of the season believing that he failed to save Castiel from Purgatory. That memory is rendered neither more nor less true by Castiel revealing a different version of events in “A Little Slice Of Heaven” (8.07); not least because the fantasy (nightmare) world Dean has constructed is also the foundation of his behaviour and emotions in the “real” world. Illusion precedes the real and reality in turn becomes a sign of misremembered events that are merely a version of yet other events mediated by Castiel’s own memories.

Those remembered narratives echo the “story-within-a-story” structure used in “Bitten”, as does the cartoon world of “Hunteri Heroici” (8.08) or even Castiel’s interactions with Naomi. It’s interesting that in Act IV of “Torn and Frayed” (8.10) Naomi is presented as transparent, a holographic image projected against a wall of empty screens – a sign escaped from its frame and become real. And in that sense, the murderous capacity of images at stake in the process of simulation is realised when Naomi orders Castiel to kill Samandiriel.

So, it’s not necessarily a question of finding the truth in the lie, or exposing the real as artificial; all is illusion, all is real, all is hyperreal. Copies have erased the original and there's a reason God is absent from heaven.

Screencaps taken from Home of the Nutty.

Fade to Good

astarloa — Wed, 23 Jan 2013 15:40:13 GMT

Title: Fade To Good
Characters/pairing: Dean/OFC
Word count: 1,000
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: internalised asexual-phobia, mildly dubious consent
Summary: Dean’s asexual. John, believing that guys want sex all the time, buys him time with a prostitute for his eighteenth birthday. Not wanting to let his Dad down, Dean goes along with it.

Note: written for amor_remanet’s prompt (apparently I'm tech challenged tonight and can't work out how to link to the prompt) in geckoholic’s hurt!Dean comment fic meme

“Well, shoot,” a voice says, from behind him. “Must be loosin’ my touch.”

Dean feels the mattress shift as she crawls over to the edge of the bed and settles down beside him, long legs ending in red panties. She’s all warm, tanned skin with freckles forming random patterns over her chest and bare breasts.

Her name’s “Call Me Shelley” and he thinks she’s real pretty.

That’s not the problem.

“Look, don’t sweat it,” she continues, slipping a hand inside the waistband of his boxers. “You’re not the first guy whose engine stalled, if you know what I mean. Fortunately for you, I’m an excellent mechanic.”

And yeah, the words are cheesy as fuck but they also kind of work, calm him down a bit.

Her fingers tug gently on short, wiry hairs before running over the length of his cock. Dean leans back and closes his eyes, tries to concentrate on the sensation; pretends that he’s getting hard under her fingers and that he wants.

“No, don’t,” he chokes out, suddenly, eyes flying open. He sits up and pulls her hand away, stomach churning with frustration. This isn’t going to work. He curls into himself and stares down at his toes as they drag back and forth against the sticky carpet.

“You ever been with a woman before, Dean?” Shelley asks, sounding more curious than anything now.

He sneaks a look at her from the corner of his eye. She doesn’t seem pissed off, or like she’s about to start screaming for one of big guys from out front to come in and deal with the freak.

Dean shrugs, defensive. “I’ve done stuff. Kissing and shit. And, um, given hand jobs, sometimes.” He pauses and takes a deep breath, before adding defiantly, “Guys too.”

“So, what? You didn’t like it?”

“I dunno. Some of it was okay.”

He doesn’t know why he’s telling her any of this, only that he got an overwhelming need to tell someone. Someone who’s not Sam or his Dad or, god forbid, Bobby, which leaves the list kind of short.

“So, tell me what part you liked, then.”

“Dunno,” Dean repeats automatically, frowning when she slaps the back of a hand against his shoulder. His eyes flicker around the room: door, lamp, table, bed, Shelley. “Um, chicks. Girls, women, whatever. I like the way their skin feels and, um. You know, the way they’re sort of soft and, fuck. This is stupid.”

“S’not stupid. Keep going.”

“I don’t know! I like flirting and holding them. Sometimes it’s nice and kind of, shivery, I guess. But when I - “ Dean swallows hard, and waves his hand in the direction of his lap. “I just, I don’t feel anything. Not like I should.”

“Hey, listen. One thing this game teaches you is that “should” don’t get much of a look in when it comes to sex. You ever touch yourself?”

“What?”

“When you’re alone. You ever jerk off, make yourself come?”

Dean turns away, sure that his face is so hot that it’s going to melt right off and form a gooey mess on the floor. He opens his mouth, before closing it again and settling for a small nod.

“So, just not with other people then, right?”

“Maybe,” Dean whispers, fingers twisting into the sheets.

“Well, that don’t mean there’s anythin’ wrong with you." She runs a hand up and down his arm. “Some people just…everyone’s different, you know? S’not a bad thing.”

He nods, shoulders slumped in defeat. “Yeah. Sure.”

‘Cause “bad” is pretty much the definition of this whole, fucked up mess as far as Dean’s concerned. There’s no universe in which this is going to be okay. He’s broken and a freak and there’s nothing he can do to change any of it.

Happy birthday to him.

It was easier to ignore when Sam was younger and still thought that girls carried cooties. But he’s seen the way that his brother’s face flushes when this one girl from school waves hello. And it’s all “Tanya said this” and “Tanya said that” every afternoon, when they’re walking home. He’s pretty sure they make out when no one’s around.

Sometimes he hates Sam, just a little, for finding “normal” so easy and leaving him behind.

Shelley’s eyes are sad when they meet his, and then corner of her mouth quirks, breaking into a smile. “So, what are we gonna do now, huh? ‘Cause your Daddy’s paid for the full hour and I like my friends to have a good time. Especially the cute ones.”

Dean’s chest heaves in a convulsive breath, a small knot of panic unravelling inside him. God. She’s not going to kick him out early and make him watch his Dad’s face fall with disappointment. He doesn’t think it’s about the money; she’d probably get to keep it anyway. And yeah, maybe she’ll tell everyone later, after he’s gone, and they’ll all laugh at the pathetic kid who couldn’t get it up, but whatever.

Maybe she won’t.

Dean chews on his lip, torn between saying nothing and not giving a fuck. “Um. Maybe we could just-lie-here-and-I-could-hold-you,” he finally mumbles, in a rush.

His reward is a bright grin that transforms Shelley’s face from pretty to some kind of beautiful. “Hell yeah, we can do that. We can definitely do that.”

She takes his hand, twisting their fingers together and pulls him back onto the bed. There’s a moment of awkward shuffling as they untangle the sheets and find a way of fitting their bodies together. Then it’s quiet, apart from the whirl of a ceiling fan and the distant slam of a door.

Shelley’s head rests on his shoulder and her breasts are a warm, heavy weight against the side of his chest. He runs a hand down the smooth skin of her back. Her hair smells like shampoo, but it’s the floral kind that girls like and that Dean likes on girls.

“You good?” she asks, twisting her head back to look at him. Dean leans down, presses their mouths together, and replies, “Yeah, I’m good.”

SPN Remarriage Meta - Part 2 / 3

astarloa — Thu, 17 Jan 2013 07:45:49 GMT

Part 2 of some thoughts on "It's A Terrible Life" as remarriage comedy.

A quick word of warning: it's quite long, unlikely to make a great deal of sense unless you've read Part 1 and I <3 the over-analysts.

LET'S TALK ABOUT THINGS THAT GO BUMP IN THE NIGHT

‘It’s a Terrible Life’ finds the brothers re-cast as Dean Smith and Sam Wesson. Employees of Sandover Bridge and Iron Inc. whose slogan is “Build The Dream”, they have no apparent awareness of their previous lives or relationship, and have instead become part of the corporate machine with varying levels of dissatisfaction. Sam is bored and subtly resentful of his role as a Technical Support Assistant, ready to question the life he’s been given and troubled by dreams of the supernatural, for which he’s mocked by Ian, his friend and co-worker. The pull of a world that seems to offer more than the everyday existence Sam’s trapped in is established early on. While taking a caller through the intricacies of switching his or her computer on and off, Sam repeatedly plays with the bobble-headed vampire toy sitting on his desk, tapping its head with his pen.

It’s possible to read the image as referencing the interconnected – incestuous - conversation about hunting and the supernatural that develops between Sam and Dean throughout the episode and is central to their (re)unification. The toy’s costume of a black suit, red tie and stark white collar recalls the corporate attire of Dean Smith, while the curved mark on its cheek echoes the earpiece which is shown in the early parts of the episode as Dean’s preferred method of professional communication. It’s also worth noting the faintly yellow eyes of the vampire doll, yellow being one of the colours associated with the supernatural in the form of the Yellow Eyed Demon.

Sam Wesson dreams of the supernatural and he dreams of Dean Winchester.

The blue and white pen held by Sam recognises the potential for communication and with it, perhaps, provides us with an entry point for thinking about the type of acknowledgment at stake in the comedies of remarriage; it functions not only as a symbol of written language, but as a visual reference to the blue and white shirts worn by Dean throughout the episode.

Despite the use of formal elements such as colour coding and costuming to emphasise the brothers’ apparent separation – technical support versus sales and marketing, suit and tie versus polo shirt, blue and white versus yellow – both the introductory scenes and Act I are filled with visual references to communication that can be read as foreshadowing the narrative conversations between Sam and Dean that follow. For example, the computer graphics and departmental forms used by the company are also blue and white, while the uniforms worn by staff in the Technical Support Department are yellow, as is the notepad on which Sam sketches the monsters from his dreams. There’s a repeated montage of yellow pencils being sharpened and stationary being copied or faxed, while both Sam and Dean are introduced to the audience through a series of telephone conversations and discussions with their respective co-workers.

So, what conditions are necessary for Sam and Dean discover a shared means of communication, one that allows them to maintain a conversation with each other?

A close-up of the form on Sam’s computer shows data fields for “Technical Support Department” followed by “Inter-Departmental Communications”, with a yellow writing pad visible at the bottom of the screen. Of course, one of the plot points in the episode are the circumstances that allow Sam to meet and communicate with Dean, who occupies the elevated world of marketing and management.

A list of internal, company forms on the photocopier used for communicating and processing claims has entries for “Data Loss”, “Violation of Security”, “Structural Default”, “Causing Damage”, “Reclaiming Data”, “Loss of Records” and “Complaints”.

Some of the blue and white shirts worn by Dean throughout the episode.

Sam’s sketches of monsters in blue, ballpoint pen on yellow paper.

SHIFTING AFFECTIONS AND DIVORCE

Unlike Sam, Dean Smith seems entirely divorced from the supernatural world.

His commitment to family and intensely co-dependent relationship with Sam has been transferred to his role as director of the Sales and Marketing Department. Dean exhibits signs of being a workaholic and having a desire to please and impress his boss, Mr Adler. For all that the character reversal between the brothers is played for comedic effect – Dean Smith eats salad, dislikes rock music, is proficient at research and drives a Prius – many of the Winchesters’ personality traits remain unaltered. Sam is still dreaming of escape from the life he’s been given, while Dean’s loyalty lies with his new corporate family to the apparent exclusion of close friends or external social life. There’s a sense in which Dean’s personal interactions are presented as a marketing exercise and Dean his own product. His brief conversation with an anonymous colleague about Project Runway, for example, lacks much of the warmth and informality shown in Sam’s interactions with Ian. It’s perhaps not all that different from the respective approaches taken by Dean and Sam when interviewing a victim or grieving relative.

In thinking about the episode as an example of the remarriage genre, it’s possible to understand the company personified by Adler as occupying both the role of replacement love interest and the parental figure from which Sam will ultimately offer Dean a means of escape. We’re introduced to Adler when he enters Dean’s office during the opening sequence, one hand raised in greeting and a closed-mouth smile firmly in place. Dean promptly terminates his telephone call and emerges from behind his desk, shoulders slightly raised and head tilted enquiringly. It’s clear that Adler’s presence is unexpected and, if not unwelcome, a source of at least some anxiety. What follows is a brief conversation in which Adler offers cryptic praise and promises regarding Dean’s future:

Dean: Mr Adler.

Mr Adler: Dean.

Mr Adler: Good stuff.

Dean: Good stuff?

Mr Adler: Big things. Good stuff.

Dean: Good stuff.

The exchange picks up on the lyrics used during the opening montage to establish the persona of Dean Smith – “cause he’s oh, so good” – and which continues to play in the background. Music is used not only to evoke and maintain Dean Smith’s illusion, but combined with dialogue to express the character’s emotional need to please. It creates an auditory connection between the genuinely domestic space of Dean’s apartment and pre-work rituals, and his ordinary, everyday activities as an employee.

Another way of thinking about the relationship between Dean and Adler is to examine the visual construction of the scene. Immediately prior to Adler’s arrival we’re given a high angled shot of Dean pacing behind his desk, emphasising his dependence and comparative insignificance within the corporate machine. A similar approach is taken with the opening shot of the Technical Support Department, suggesting that, despite Dean’s professional appearance, he in fact has no greater agency than his brother.

Of course, we recognise Adler as the angel Zachariah and will learn at the conclusion of the episode that the alternative world in which Sam and Dean find themselves is the direct result of his manipulations. There’s a sense in which Heaven is looking down and keeping tabs; Adler in the form of Dean’s corporeal superior and Zachariah both as Heaven’s representative and Castiel’s boss. It also reinforces Zachariah’s message that Dean’s fate and purpose is ultimately a matter of perspective:

Zachariah:  You'll do everything you're destined to do. All of it. But I know, I know. You're not strong enough. You're scared. You got daddy issues. You can't do it. Right?

Dean: Angel or not, I will stab you in your face.

Zachariah I'm saying is it's how you look at it. Most folks live and die without moving anything more than the dirt it takes to bury them. You get to change things.

During their initial conversation both Dean and Adler are shown in medium close-up. The camera cuts from one to the other as alternating lines of dialogue are delivered, with the position of the camera and eye-lines of the characters altering very little. The similarity of each shot contributes to the sense of intimacy between them, which is in turn reinforced by the characters’ shared corporate attire, Adler’s approving slap on Dean’s shoulder as a gesture of physical ownership and echoed dialogue. Yet the subtle insertion of off-screen space destabilises that connection by emphasising not just the character’s individuality (separation) but encouraging the audience to follow their respective points of view.

The slight hesitancy or question in Dean’s final repetition of “good stuff” also raises doubt as to the apparent understanding that exists between him and Adler. There’s a feeling that, for all Dean’s evident pleasure at receiving praise, he remains uncomfortable in Adler’s presence and uncertain about the meaning behind his comments. It’s noticeable that while the camera lingers on a close-up of Sam’s hand tapping at the vampire toy – and similarly follows Dean’s fingers moving over the keyboard, turning off the alarm clock, changing radio stations and making coffee – the same basic action from Adler is treated as unimportant and occurs off-screen. If we think about Cavell’s understanding of marriage as a non-contractual form of acknowledgment, then the connection between Adler and Dean is challenged even further. Their relationship is ultimately limited to that of employer and employee, a legal bond that mimics the conventions of marriage but lacks the power to ratify a personal union. There’s a sense in which the new couple take no genuine enjoyment from each other’s company, or experience any pleasure separately and for different reasons.

Ultimately, the words exchanged between Dean and Adler amount to something less than a conversation.

THE BRIGHT WHITE LINE OF SEPARATION

If Dean’s relationship with Adler is open to question, however, then his connection to Sam is yet more tenuous still. The first meeting between them occurs in the confined space of an elevator at the end of the opening montage. Dean is shown waiting in the company’s empty foyer against a photographic display of bridges and the company’s dream building slogan. His attention remains firmly fixed on a cell phone and is only momentarily diverted by a chime announcing the elevator’s arrival. The camera follows Dean as he enters what appears to be an empty space, acting as a silent accomplice to the brothers’ separation by hiding Sam from our gaze. It’s only when Dean frowns and looks to the left that the camera echoes his movement and pans to reveal Sam’s presence on the other side of the elevator. Sam’s subsequent attempts to strike up a conversation are quickly dismissed:

Sam: Do I know you?

Dean: I don't think so.

Sam: I'm sorry, man. You just look really familiar.

Dean: Save it for the health club, pal.

We might say that the brother’s estrangement arises not from Dean’s failure to recognise Sam, but rather from their verbal miscommunication and inability – or unwillingness – to maintain a conversation. In a sense, they’ve succumbed to skepticism and been rendered unknown: they no longer speak the same language. And if the conversations between the central couple in the comedies of remarriage operate as a form of acknowledgment, then what’s at stake isn’t a question of familiarity so much as the conditions that allow two people to know each other. A knowledge that consists not of one person learning some special or intimate secret about the other, but rather the ongoing dialogue created between them in light of that knowledge; their shared reactions to it.

At no point will Smith and Wesson recognize each other as family or uncover the truth of their real lives together. By the time Zachariah’s machinations are revealed Dean’s memories have already been restored. What signifies the characters’ reconciliation is their willingness to engage in adventure together, whether through the physical act of hunting or the sexualized wordplay that develops between them during the episode. Taking that one step further, when Sam asks, “do I know you?” we might say that it’s because he must, that there’s no other option available to him. His knowledge of Dean can’t simply be claimed or presented as a fait accompli, but is only realised if Dean acknowledges the question and answers, “yes”.

The denial of intimacy implicit in the exchange is reflected in the white, vertical line that runs down the back wall of the elevator and forms a visual barrier between them. The characters are positioned firmly on either side of it, occupying two separate and distinct spaces.

While Dean was willing to turn off his headset during his earlier interactions with Adler, he now continues to tap at the cell phone and is openly uncomfortable with Sam’s questions. Similarly, for all that Sam is the one to initiate the conversation, his own hands grip tightly to the strap of his bag. Previously casual, physical gestures are subverted and played out as a strategy of avoidance. That the vertical division of the frame is repeated both in Dean’s red tie and striped shirt and Sam’s bag suggests that the threat of scepticism arises not only from the brothers’ failure to acknowledge each other, but also themselves. Within that context, it’s interesting to look at an image of Dean entering his office at the beginning of the episode.

The composition of the elevator scene also recalls the famous ‘Wall of Jericho’ scene in “It Happened One Night”. Ellie Andrews (Claudette Colbert) is a spoiled heiress who married against her father’s wishes. When threatened with annulment she runs away and finds herself sitting on bus next to newspaper reporter Peter Warne (Clark Gable). As the two prepare to spend a night in a motel room together Peter erects a clothesline between the twin beds and drapes a blanket over it to create separate spaces. For Cavell, the blanket symbolises a limitation on knowledge and intimacy. It not only prevents the couple from being able to physically see each other, but also represents a boundary between selves who are unwilling to be exposed or known.

Ellie: By the way, what’s your name?

Peter: What’s that?

Ellie: Who are you?

Peter: Who, me? I’m the whippoorwill that cries in the night. I’m the soft morning breeze that caresses your lovely face.

Ellie: You’ve got a name, don’t you?

Peter: Yeah, I’ve got a name. Peter Warne.

Ellie: I don’t like it.

That same visual devices are repeated – and reversed, a mirror image of the earlier sequence - when Sam and Dean meet for the second time in Act I. On this occasion Sam enters the elevator to find it already crowded with people, one of whom is Dean. The two are soon left alone, this time with Dean positioned on the left of the screen and Sam on the right.

The chime of the elevator again functions as an auditory cue of engagement, the moment at which Sam and Dean are isolated from the rest of the world. However it seems that the scene is destined to end in the same way - Dean avoids making eye contact with Sam and denies any knowledge of the supernatural:

Sam: Can I ask you a question?

Dean: Look, man, I told you, I’m not into the, uh –

Sam: Oh dude, come on, I’m not either. I just wanna ask you one question.

Sam: What do you think about ghosts?

Dean:  Ghosts?

Sam: Do you believe in them.

Dean: Uh, tell you the truth, I've never given it much thought.

Sam: Vampires?

Dean:  What? Why?

Sam: Because I've been having some weird dreams lately. You know what I mean?

Dean: No. Not really.

Sam: So you've never had any...weird dreams?

Dean:  All right, look, man, I don't know you, okay? But I'm gonna do a public service and, uh, let you know that—that you overshare.

The exchange ends when Dean presses the floor button and exits the elevator to the chime of the doors. Nothing is resolved and Sam is left staring after a man whose name he doesn’t know.

And yet…

It’s arguable that the scene marks a subtle shift in the characters’ relationship. This time, when Dean again interprets Sam’s attempt at conversation as a sexual advance, Sam interrupts him. The statement is left incomplete and the meaning behind it is intuitively understood. Moreover, Sam responds to Dean’s rejection – and in doing so, perhaps acknowledges their separation - by asserting the ways in which they’re similar: “Oh dude, come on, I’m not either”. There’s something playful in the brothers’ banter, a sense of each (re)learning about the other through wordplay and language. If we read Dean’s comments in the first elevator sequence against ourselves, then it’s also interesting that Dean responds to Sam’s question of knowledge with, “I don’t think so”. There’s something ambiguous in his reply, something less an absolute denial.

We might also think about the pattern of return that characterises the elevator scenes and the role of repetition in Cavell’s particular understanding of domesticity and remarriage. Central to the remarriage comedies is the couples’ shared commitment to living with the repetitions of ordinary, everyday life. It’s the acceptance of that repetition, the sense in which they will continue coming together over and over again, that allows the threat of skepticism to be postponed. It’s not that Sam and Dean’s lives are necessarily held together by an event – in this case, the mysterious deaths of the company employees – or the act of being married – an agreement to hunt together – but rather by their capacity for shared experience; reconciliation is a continuous and ongoing discovery of the ways in which they’re the same.

That impulse finds expression in Act III, in what will be the third and final scene between them inside the elevator. Sam and Dean, having now agreed to join forces in the hunt for the ghost of P.T. Sandover, enter the empty elevator together, with Dean instructing Sam to program his mobile phone to allow them to communicate in the event of separation:

Dean: Set your cell phone to walkie-talkie in case we get separated.

Dean is now the one to initiate the conversation and secure an ability to maintain it - and Sam complies by pulling out his own phone. The dividing line on the back wall of the elevator is interrupted by Dean’s arm, and no longer separates the characters. Their willingness to maintain a conversation about the supernatural and engage in adventure together functions as a form of acknowledgment.

A similar composition can be seen at the end of the episode, where the strict, vertical delineation of the frame is replaced by an image of the brothers sitting side-by-side on Dean’s desk. His arm and upper body now cross the white line of the window frame and intrude into the space occupied by Sam. It’s a direct contrast to an earlier scene set in Dean’s office, where Sam and Dean start a conversation about the supernatural while sitting on opposite sides of the desk.

Not only do the characters mimic each other’s posture, arm resting on an upraised knee, but Dean’s tie has been abandoned in favour of an open collar closer to Sam’s polo shirt. If we combine the last two images, then we’re also left with something reminiscent of a shot from ‘His Girl Friday’ which shows Hildy and Walter engaged in their own unique form of shared domesticity, being their daily lives together as newspaper reporters.

Untitled Sam Ficlet #1

astarloa — Tue, 27 Nov 2012 12:35:50 GMT

Title: Untitled Sam Ficlet #1
Characters: Sam-centric, Dean
Genre: Gen, angst
Word-count: 300
Summary: Dean never escaped from Purgatory, so Sam's breaking in.
Disclaimer: Not mine.
A/N: For my flu-stricken brother :)

It's the second of November: All Soul’s Day.

Sam only cares about one.

The date is circled in bright red, permanent marker on a calendar hung next to the fridge. Its motor rattles, loud and sullen, as Sam rubs the pad of his thumb over the ink. Forward for hope, back for what-was and then forward again.

Maybe this year will be different and the ritual will work.

He’s told himself that lie seven times, now.

The weeks of his life have bled into years, leaving him older than Dean was on the day that he vanished. There are grey strands at Sam’s temples and his right elbow aches when rains. The doctor says that it’s nothing to worry about, just a mild form of arthritis.

He’s safe, with a college degree and a two-bedroom apartment filled with mismatched crockery, tattered paperbacks and curtains he keeps meaning to wash but somehow doesn’t. He’s cold and alone, looking out from the wrong side of the glass, fists thudding dully against normal but unable to reach it.

Sometimes he talks to himself, leaving spaces for the words Dean would have said if he were there. One-sided arguments that spark and die as quickly as cellophane catching alight, leaving behind only silence. In those moments it’s easy to pretend nothing’s changed.

When a neighbour asks, Sam blames the noise on a television he doesn’t own.

The words he speaks now are quiet and steady.

They’re still lingering on his tongue; ephemeral and bitter, like daydreams of stale liquorice, when the world reimagines itself around him. There are dense trees bleached of colour and an overwhelming smell of heat, mud and blood. His breath stutters.

The spell he’s using is the same as the last, with one difference: this time he’s going to Dean, rather than trying to bring his brother back.

Apples and Mirrors and Bridges, Oh My

astarloa — Sun, 04 Nov 2012 14:05:15 GMT

Thoughts on 8.03 of Supernatural.

Christmas in October

The first part of the episode contains a strong colour coding of red and green, something traditionally associated with Christmas:

Paul Hayes, the transplant recipient who received Brick Holmes’ kidney, jogging on a tree-lined track before removing the heart of his victim.

Green and red apples at the farmer’s market.

Sam and Dean interviewing Paul Hayes in his home. Hayes is shown wearing the same red shirt, while Sam and Dean wear red and green striped ties respectively. Red weights on the floor behind Dean contrast against the green yoga ball behind Sam.

The presence of apples also brings to mind the “apple pie life” Sam wants for Dean at the end of season 5 and the normal life Sam found in the year that he stopped hunting.

Dean: So then what am I supposed to do?

Sam: You go find Lisa. You pray to God she’s dumb enough to take you in. You have barbecues, and go to football games. You go live some normal apple pie life Dean. Promise me!

- “Swan Song” (5.22)

Sam: Listen, I know this is gonna sound crazy to you. I don't even necessarily need you to understand. But...you need to know. I didn't just drop out, Dean. I found something. Something I've... never had all my life.

- “We Need To Talk About Kevin” (8.01)

The connection between apples and transitioning to a “new life” is referenced visually by the scene of Hayes removing the heart of the jogging victim, followed by Sam plucking a red apple from a stand at the farmer’s market. The later image of Rena eating a heart as she summons the Mayan god, Cacuo also echoes Sam biting into the apple.

Securing the life that you want, regardless of whether it’s the immortality offered by Cacoa or the lure of everyday domesticity, is something to be seized and taken. It’s a significant shift from Sam’s perspective at the end of season 5, which was characterised by a more fatalistic view of his destiny. Of course, from Dean’s perspective his brother’s exercise of free will leads to death as surely as the hearts removed by Cacao’s worshippers.

Dean: Uh, we just spent a week chasing our asses trying to lock Kevin down, okay? And look at us. We’re – where the hell are we?

Sam: Farmer’s market. [Holding up an apple] Organic. What? I had a year off. I took the time to enjoy the good things.

Dean: While avoiding what we actually do.

Sam:
Wow, Dean, does it make you feel that much better every time you say it?

Dean: All right, man, look, I get it. You took a year off to do yoga and play the lute, whatever, but I'm back. Okay, we're back, which means that we walk and kill monsters at the same time. We'll find Kevin. But in the meantime, do we ignore stuff like this? Or are innocent people supposed to die so that you can shop for produce?

- “Heartache” (8.03)

We might think about those themes and the use of colour in relation to “A Very Supernatural Christmas” (3.08), an episode that focuses on the brother’s relationship and the tensions created within it as the expiration date of Dean’s deal with the crossroads demon draws closer. Sam’s unwillingness to celebrate what he believes will be Dean’s last Christmas picks up and reverses some of the issues raised in “Heartache”: the underlying anxiety Dean has over Sam’s intention to stop hunting once Kevin is found, and his refusal to face or accept it.

The episode also explores Sam and Dean’s differing memories of childhood and perspectives on life and family. For example, while Dean recalls John’s beer can wreath with genuine fondness, for Sam it’s symbolic of the normal life he yearns for and resents not having. The use of flashbacks divides the narrative and destabilises reality by presenting the same events as subjective experience. Memories are both real and unreal, truth and lie. It’s something to keep in mind regarding Sam’s vision of Amelia at the end of the episode.

Mirror, Mirror

We’ve already seen reversed or mirror imagery in “We Need To Talk About Kevin” (8.01) with the hotel sign and Dean’s shadowed reflection in the vending machine.

That idea is also explored in “What’s Up, Tiger Mommy?” (8.02).

The convex reflection in Kevin’s binocular lens presents a distorted view of an apparently suburban idyll, whereby space is inverted. What’s absent from the representation is the camera itself, a spectral third party observing from a distance.

Sam’s shadow is visible behind a door at the auction shortly before he enters the room to find that Kevin and Mrs Tran have fled. The number 001 on the safety deposit box at the beginning of the episode is reconfigured as 101 on the door.

During the scene of Kevin and Mrs Tran being tattooed, we’re shown another reversed sign in the background as Dean questions Sam about the exorcism poor, possessed Eunice.

Dean: You smell it, Sammy?

Sam: Burning flesh?

Dean: Revenge. So close. Hey, how'd you do that reverse-exorcism thing?

Sam: Just said the verse backwards.

- “What's Up, Tiger Mommy?” (8.03)

One of more interesting sequences in the episode is of Dean at the County jail interrogating Clem Smedley, the man suspected of stealing the tablet. Sam and Smedley are shown sitting at the table while Dean paces restlessly on the other side. In the background is a large, one-way mirror. Sam’s offer to work out “something something” for Smedley if he reveals the tablet’s location results in Dean experiencing a series of flashbacks to Purgatory, which are constructed through a montage sequence of past and present. Memory is intercut with reality, each reinforcing and reflecting the dialogue and circumstances of the other in a way that manipulates us into accepting recollection as truth. That is, we read the scene in the jail as “real” and the similarity of those events to the torture of the Rugaru in Purgatory influences our understanding of the latter. Do different rules of mortality apply to monsters in Purgatory, allowing Dean to kill the Rugaru with a knife rather than fire? Quite possibly, and yet it creates a sense of ambivalence about just how accurate Dean’s memories are and which might be the original version of Dean masquerading as a copy.

While Sam and Smedley are reflected in the mirror throughout the interrogation, Dean only appears in its surface after the flashbacks to Purgatory have faded and he’s once again firmly established in the present. We might say that the mirror functions as an escape or doorway into an alternative dreamscape (nightmare). Although Sam and Smedley are trapped by the glass, Dean is already divided and stripped of his reflection. When it does reappear Dean’s shown with his back to the camera - our only access to him is through the mirrored double that’s literally divided by frame. There’s a sense in which the Dean present in the jail is already an uncanny version of himself, peeking out from the wrong side side of the glass.

So, let’s compare that scene to Sam and Dean trying to interview Arthur Swensen, the man who received a transplant of Brick Holmes’ eye and is suspected of removing the heart of a pizza deliveryman. The camera lingers on a close-up of Swensen’s hands to the sound of his repetitive, guttural chanting before panning up and pulling focus from the murder suspect to Dean’s reflection in a mirror. What follows is a series of alternating shots between Dean and his reflection, with the camera sometimes focusing on the reflection and at others moments reducing Dean to a blurred, ghostly presence in the background. The order of events in the previous episode is reversed, and Sam is now the one excluded from the mirror and act of representation: only Dean and Swensen are caught by its surface.

Opening shot of Dean reflected in the mirror.

Shift to Dean leaning against the bars of the room.

The camera is focused on Smedley, with Dean’s reflection visible in the background.

I Have A Feeling That It’s Two Against One

For all that the brothers appear increasingly distant from each other emotionally, throughout the episode they’re positioned as united against the threat posed by the murders. There’s a repeated composition of Sam and Dean sitting next to each other and on opposite sides of the table from the person they’re questioning. Sam may be reluctant to continue hunting but at this stage he’s still occupying the space designated for “us” and not “them”.

Picnics, Bridges and Pink

So. Sam’s memory of Amelia waiting for him on a picnic blanket with a birthday cake - real or make-believe? I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that Sam’s memory isn’t an accurate reflection of events, but neither do I think there’s a simple yes or no answer. I suspect it’s more complicated than that. While not necessarily a criticism, I think it’s fair to say that Sam has an idealised view of what it means to live a normal life. From what we’re shown, he positions “normal” as a safe space separate from the dangers of hunting and the loss it represents, where issues such as serious illness, unemployment or financial difficulties are either not mentioned or eternally postponed.

It’s a perspective demonstrated in the transition from Sam’s visible anxiety over Amelia’s whereabouts to a romantic and domestic idyll, complete with birthday cake, the pet dog he was unable to keep in “Dark Side of The Moon” (5.16) and a swell of sentimental music. Whether or not the memory of Amelia itself is real, I think there’s some argument to be had that Sam’s view of life outside of hunting isn’t objective either. As with the Winchester’s childhood, memories are unreliable and a matter of perspective. I also can’t help wondering about Sam’s repeated statement that a normal life was something he’d never known before.

Sam: Dean, listen, when this is over – when we close up shop on Kevin and the tablet – I'm done. I mean that.

Dean: No, you don't.

Sam: Dean, the year that I took off, I had something I've never had. A normal life. I mean, I got to see what that felt like. I want that. I had that.

Dean: I think that's just how you feel right now.

- “Heartache” (8.03)

It’s somewhat difficult to reconcile that against Sam’s years at Stanford, away from the supernatural and hunting. And although Dean’s refusal to accept his brother’s decision is a legitimate source of frustration, there’s also a sense in which Sam’s rediscovered passion for “normal” sounds not unlike a religious conversion.

The sequence starts with Sam and Dean in the Impala, before dissolving to a scene of Sam on a wooden bridge accompanied. The composition of the previous scene, Dean driving and Sam in the passenger seat, creates the impression that Sam is moving further and further away from his brother as he crosses the bridge. Quite a few people have already noted the similarity between the image of Lisa in “Dream A Little Dream Of Me” (3.08) and Amelia in “Heartache”. There are clear visual similarities between the two scenes, from the characters’ position on the picnic blanket to their dresses and the use of bright, saturated colours. In circumstances where we know Lisa existed as part of a dream in Dean’s subconscious, it’s tempting to characterise Amelia in the same way.

We might also think of the image of Lisa and Dean at a barbeque in “Exile On Main Street” (6.01).

I’ve previously argued that although Lisa seems to represent Dean’s yearning for a life outside of hunting, the scene in “Dream A Little Dream Of Me” is in fact very much about the brother’s emotional connection to each other. And that there’s a connection between that scene and the reunification of Sam and Dean in “It’s A Terrible Life” (4.17) as a type of comedy of remarriage:

While travelling inside Dean’s subconscious, he and Sam are shown a scene of Lisa wearing a yellow dress and sitting demurely on a blanket, next to an open picnic basket. Traditional domesticity is presented as a romantic and sexual invitation.

On its face, this appears to reference Dean’s unspoken desire for a wife and family, the possibility of a life outside of hunting and his brother. Yet the visual construction of the scene focuses on the emotional connection between Sam and Dean. The establishing shot is from over Dean’s shoulder, using the back of his head and body to frame Lisa’ image from a distance. The characters are placed in their setting from Sam’s perspective and the camera invites us to empathise with him. Sam is implicitly present and very much a third participant in the relationship. And of course, it will be at Sam’s direction that Dean goes to Lisa and Ben at the end of Season 5.

What follows are series of images where Sam is framed by Dean, the camera’s focus pulling from one to the other as their emotional reactions are highlighted. Lisa is excluded from the composition and, apart from the opening shot, is never shown in the same shot as Dean.

What the scene shows us is the brothers’ relationship to each other, reducing Lisa to little more than an intrusion or hyperreal doll. The dark, subdued colours of Sam and Dean provide a stark contrast to Lisa’s dress and the bright circle of light used to illuminate her - tones so extreme that they become almost grotesque. She remains at a distance and is firmly positioned as ‘other’. If the scene does, in fact, represent Dean’s unconscious desire then it’s telling that he makes no real attempt to interact with Lisa and remains firmly at Sam’s side as an observer, effectively declining her invitation and leaving to continue the hunt. Does Lisa flicker and disappear as a result of Dean's denial or because of Jeremy Frost?

Dean: I've never had this dream before.

Dean: Stop looking at me like that.

Sam: Sorry.
- “Dream A Little Dream Of Me” (3.10)
And it’s interesting to think about that scene, and the pattern of return at stake in Supernatural, in the shift from Lisa’s yellow dress to Sam’s yellow shirt in "Its A Terrible Life".

What that line of argument leads to is bridges and a version of Sam who's dissatisfied with his job as a technical support assistant, and actively seeks to engage with the supernatural. “It’s a Terrible Life” finds the brothers re-cast as Dean Smith and Sam Wesson, employees of Sandover Bridge and Iron Inc. whose slogan is “Build The Dream”. They have no apparent awareness of their previous lives or relationship, and have instead become part of the corporate machine with varying levels of dissatisfaction. In the course of the episode the brothers reconnect through the supernatural – hunting monsters forms the basis of their shared language and ability to communicate. That idea of reconnection is shown at a formal level in the numerous pictures of bridges in the episode, both on the walls of Dean Smith’s office and most noticeably, in the reception area where he and Sam overcome the murderous ghost of P. T. Sandover.

Sam and Dean standing on each side of the illustrated bridge in the background, with their weapons forming a continuous path through the center of the ghost.

On its face, the bridge in “Heartache” seems to symbolise Sam’s increasing disconnect from his brother and engagement with the normal life he yearns for. And in contrast to the scene with Lisa, Dean is entirely absent from Sam’s interactions with Amelia. Or is he? Despite Sam’s obvious discontent with Dean’s refusal to accept his decision to stop hunting, the sequence is still contained within the confines of their relationship. The vertical dissolve at the end of the episode returns us to exactly the same place that we started from: Sam and Dean in the Impala. For the moment at least, Amelia exists only as a memory within that space.

There’s also some sense of visual connection between Dean’s shirt in the farmer’s market, the tones of Sam’s shirt at the picnic and Amelia’s pink dress.

On the one hand it suggests that Sam can’t escape from Dean, but perhaps also that he doesn’t really want to. If we accept that Sam’s memories may be inaccurate or are at least ambiguous, then the experience of shopping at the farmer’s market is superimposed over his thoughts of Amelia. In some ways Dean continues to represent the safety that Sam won’t allow himself to need, for fear that it’ll disappear again. And just as Dean wants Sam to continue hunting, it’s arguable that Sam’s unspoken desire is for a normal life that involves barbeques, football games, apple pie, Amelia...and his brother.

Colour symbolism

astarloa — Sat, 27 Oct 2012 12:40:04 GMT

Some thoughts about the use of colour in "What's Up, Tiger Mommy" (8:02).

Yellow and grey: the episode starts with an external shot of the Chicago Board of Trade building. While clearly set in the human world, the monochrome building and sky hint at the desaturated tones of Purgatory, especially those featuring Castiel at the end of the episode. The shadowed buildings grow lighter as they ascend and the sky is bleached white, although there’s no visible sun. Vertical skyscrapers and the idea of falling – something that resonates with an angel trapped in Purgatory and Castiel’s story arc generally – are connected through tone and colour.

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The only means of illumination in the image of Chicago is artificial: the streetlights and yellow glow seen inside the lower level of the buildings. Yellow in the series is most commonly associated with the demonic, in the form of the Yellow Eyed Demon and sulphur. However in seasons 3 and 4 it also functions as a visual reference to the supernatural as a type of dream or unreality. We might think about Lisa’s yellow dress in “Dream A Little Dream Of Me” (3:10), where the characters are hunting Jeremy Frost in Dean’s subconscious, or Sam’s yellow shirt in “It’s A Terrible Life” (4:17) where he and Dean are trapped in the roles of Dean Smith and Sam Wesson by Zachariah.

Red and yellow: the neutral palette of the opening scene carries over into the interior of deposit vault, where Mr Vili has come to collect a bone stored there. The only colour notes in the slick, metallic room are the yellowish-brown tones of his tie and the woman’s red skirt. Red also being associated with danger and the demonic through the eyes of crossroads demons (something relevant to this episode) and blood.

The woman’s white shirt and grey jacket echo the industrial tones of the building, while her skirt foreshadows the blood that will shortly splatter across the wall.

Blue, white, red and yellow: in the next scene we’re shown Sam, Dean and Kevin sitting at an outdoor eating area. Touches of red and yellow are present, but downplayed in favour of a dominant blue and white colour scheme. Red takes the form of plastic sauce bottles, which we might read as referencing the violence of the previous scenes (we suspend our disbelief and accept the blood as real, even though we know it’s fake). Despite the apparent peacefulness of the image, we already know that yellow and red are visually connected to violence and the supernatural. Their presence in this scene reinforces the discussion between the characters about whether to or not to visit Kevin’s mother, given the possibility that it’s a trap.

It's the topic of an entirely different meta, but note the repetition between the doorway to the vault room (art deco squares and circles) and the circular tables inside the square fence. Thoughts occur about the use of geometric shapes, framing and their destabilisation as the episode progresses (also, the comparison between the rigid, geometric space of the human world compared to the organic Purgatory).

Blue, white and red: Kevin and the Winchesters watch Mrs Tran from inside the Impala. Kevin’s initial comment that his mother appears safe, if unhappy, is undercut by Dean’s recognition of the demonic gardener and postman. The combination of blue and white is again present in Carl’s uniform, however the fabric of normal, everyday life is now interwoven with red.

Blue, white and yellow: if blue and white are visually associated with the ordinary and non-supernatural, then we have a clear starting point for the journey Mrs Tran will go on. The colours of the tablecloth are incorporated into both her costume and the exterior of the house. Quite apart from Dean’s warning, we still have a visual prompt of the danger posed to her in the form of a yellow rose outside the window and Eunice’s yellow cardigan.

The circle of yellow light around the demon knife recalls the streetlights in the opening scene.

Red and blue: although it’s Sam who encourages Dean to check on Mrs Tran, his shirt is initially dark red while Dean’s remains blue. Of course, in subduing Eunice Sam uses a reverse exorcism that Dean is apparently unaware of. If Sam hasn’t been hunting for the last year, when did he discover a way to force a demon back into its host? Although Sam’s actions aren’t obviously suspicious, the colour coding of the episode might cause us to read them that way.

A red flower is also visible to the right of Sam.

Blue and yellow: the quest to find the tablet leads the characters to the Laramie bus station. The interior of the depot repeats the colour combination of blue and yellow, with Dean opening a locker supposed to hold the tablet and pulling out a pale blue and yellow bag. Upon the characters discovering that the tablet is still missing, we hear an announcement for Yellowstone National Park.

It’s not surprising that a yellow key leads to disappointment. Dean’s overshirt has also changed to a brownish, mustard yellow not dissimilar to the tones of Mr Vili’s tie. A warning, perhaps, about his mental state and actions in the scene that follows.

Red: we’re then shown Dean and Sam interrogating a man they believe knows the whereabouts of the tablet. Dean is wearing a red and white striped tie, which he removes and uses to choke the man while experiencing a flashback to Purgatory. Or more specifically, the tie consists of both dark and light shades of red, which becomes relevant when we look at the shifting costume of Mrs Tran.

And all of this happens under the glow of artificial light against a metal table not dissimilar to the one in the safe deposit vault.

I've already argued that, within the context of this episode, the combination of white and blue signifies a certain type of domesticity or life outside of the supernatural. So, does that meaning change when white is combined with red? I think it does. For example, the woman killed at the beginning of the episode was dressed in those same colours. We might also look more generally at the use of white in the series: the Woman in White, the white-eyed demon Lilith, Death’s white Cadillac, salt, Sam seeing Jess on the street in a white nightdress. And in thinking about the connection between the supernatural, death and white we're brought back to the scenes showing us Castiel. There's also the bright, white light that results from Sam's use of the hammer.

Pink and purple: we first see shades of pink and purple in the flowers being watered by a demon outside of Mrs Tran’s house. While different from the scarlet and burgundy shades seen in the rest of the episode, the colours still fall within the spectrum of red and are associated with malicious intent.

We see the same pinks and purples in the suit and paisley tie of Beau when he approaches Kevin in the parking lot, and in Mrs Tran’s costume. She’s now firmly on the path that will leave her catatonic at the end of the episode, and there’s a noticeable shift in her clothes from blue and white (ordinary life) to shades of pink and purple (inching closer to red).

Red: for the remainder of the episode red is the predominant colour. The threat of the supernatural is realised in the confrontation between Crowley and the Winchesters.

Red and yellow robes of the monk.

Mrs Tran possessed by Crowley.

Crowley dematerialising into red smoke.

What’s interesting is that there’s no longer a distinction drawn between angels, demons or other supernatural entities in terms of colour association. For example, Dean’s striped tie is repeated in Samandiriel’s red and yellow fast-food uniform.

Heaven is no different than Hell; all are contagious and defined by the supernatural world they inhabit, including Sam and Dean. And it’s that threat that Kevin and his mother ultimately try to escape from.