all the poetry, and the trunk you kept your life in

we felt nothing much at all but it felt great

2014-02-27T06:16:19Z

"Small Dark Movie," Greg Brown, Further In. 1996.

whereupon @ 2012-10-01T19:49:00

2012-10-01T23:49:25Z

It's been ages since I posted an actual story. And I'm not sure if this counts as such, but. It's a collection of words, anyway, and they're fiction-based, and they kind of came out of nowhere. And it turns out I miss writing, and would like to do it again soon.

Phosphor
by whereupon
Supernatural: preseries, gen, Sam&Dean, R, 5,900 words. It's not the landing that kills, it's the fall.

--

All he'd really meant to do was tell them how to hold the gun right. Jimmy looked stupid standing there like he was gonna shoot himself in the foot (with water, all right, but all the same, you practice the same whether it's live rounds or not), and, yeah, maybe Sam's pretending hard that he doesn't know any better either, that he isn't who he is, doesn't leave school every day and go back to the motel currently masquerading as home and do two hours of guerilla-survivalist-paranoiac training with his weirdo brother, but Jesus Christ, Jimmy looked so goddamn ridiculous and maybe this is what Dean meant when he called Sam a fuckin' know-it-all who can't keep his goddamn mouth shut, but that had been about Sam talking back to Dad and this is totally different.

Really. It is. It's not like Jimmy's gonna threaten to beat his ass, right? Or if he does, he'll mean it in that friendly macho-wannabe hey-we're-all-just-guys-here kind of way.

Which, okay, yeah, Dad's a guy too, and sometimes Dean says it that same way, but they're not, like. Macho wannabe.

Well, maybe Dean, a little. But they've actually done shit, they save lives and sure, Dean swaggers with it where Dad only looks really pissed off and tired, but at least Sam's family's actually been in a fight, you know? Not that Sam's proud of it. At all.

He isn't. He hates it. He hates people pretending that they have been when they haven't, that they're tougher than they are, because if they would fucking stop, maybe Dad and Dean would stop thinking that it's cool what they do, cool to risk their lives and come back bruised and battered and broken, believing they can live forever just 'cause everybody else says it's possible, just 'cause assholes like Jimmy think you can get punched in the face, knocked out hard, and just walk it off like nothing happened.

The last time it happened to Dean, he was out of commission for four whole days, during which he scared the hell out of Sam, what with losing track of his words mid-sentence and one time not even recognizing his own godddamn brother.

It is so fucking far from cool that the kids from school have no idea. And if they would stop saying that they did, if everybody would, then maybe Dean would stop, stop throwing himself into the line of fire like it's nothing, stop taking stupid unnecessary risks just because he can.

Dad, on the other hand -- he's pretty sure Dad has no idea whether or not it's cool and that he wouldn't care one goddamn way if he did, he'd just raise his eyebrows and take another drink and sigh in that way that's like somebody else racking the slide on his gun. Dad doesn't have to do that, it's implied. Which isn't right, either, and isn't fair in the least. Jimmy's dad sells auto insurance in an office downtown, and Joey's dad owns a restaurant, which is how Joey managed to swipe the booze, and James's dad . . . actually, Sam isn't sure about him. James doesn't talk about him much. Or at all. But not in the painful-awkward oh who me? My dad? No, he's totally normal I swear kind of way that Sam doesn't talk about John, it's more like the oh him he cheated on my mom and ran off with his secretary kind of shame.

Vanessa's mom, at least, is in the army, or was. If anybody else here knows what it's like to grow up as a hunter's kid, it's probably Vanessa, who grew up as a soldier's.

On the other hand, Vanessa's mom, like, gardens now, so maybe not. The idea of Dad gardening is enough to make Sam choke, his eyes watering as he bites his lip. Especially since Dean actually saw Vanessa's mom gardening and said she was hot as fuck, which is really not something Sam wants to think about in the context of Dad and which is how Sam knows she gardens in the first place, it's not like he was creeping around Vanessa's house himself, because he's not a creeper, who the fuck goes prowling around for chicks in that big black car like a fucking neon sign, Hi I'm Shady As Fuck, Ask Me How!

It doesn't count if you're just in the passenger seat, it doesn't count the same at all. Because it's not like you can just teleport out, right? Sam's tried. He knows. And it's not like you can reach over and grab the wheel, because then Dean starts shouting about how you're gonna screw with the alignment and wreck the bumper and what the hell are you doing why are you even touching his car except with your ass and if you keep it up it's not even gonna be that.

Not that Sam would complain. He'd wanted to walk home from school, maybe stop by the library on the way. That had been the plan, and then Dean showed up, and it's not like Sam could have just told him to go to hell, really. He's tried it. Dean gets all crestfallen for a second and then his eyes get all flinty and jaded and he spends the rest of the night sulking and stomping around and not talking to Sam. Which would make it a great tactic to use, the nights Sam's got homework to do, except for how, sue him, he still feels kind of guilty when he's the one to crush his brother's world.

It's different when Dad does it, when Dad tells Dean he's too slow or he handled the guns wrong or he doesn't need to play backup on a hunt, he can stay home with Sam, because neither of them should be hunting in the first place; Dean should still be in high school, for Christ's sake. Or college. Something. But when Dean's just being his usual obnoxious asshole self for reasons unrelated to hunting, it -- counts differently.

Somehow.

It does. There's probably a theorem to explain it, or at least some stupid social sciences evo-bio theory. Sam probably even knows it, possibly by heart, it's just that he's kind of having trouble a) remembering and b) focusing because 1) consumption of alcohol by minors, for which he can't remember the consequence here, but it's probably a fine, it's usually a fine, and 2) Jimmy's holding a gun.

Sam's gun.

Never go unarmed, Dad says. A knife's not gonna save your ass no matter how good you can throw it, Sammy, if the other guy pulls a gun on you. You know the one about bringin' a gun to a knife fight, Dean said. And smirked, like he was waiting for Sam to correct him because he had such a fucking brilliant response all planned out, which, knowing him, as Sam does, was probably in the form of a dirty joke, and so Sam had rolled his eyes and pushed his hair out of his face and gone back to studying for the AP History exam; there were some punchlines he was better off not knowing.

Really. There were. So much for never being able to stop asking questions like a fuckin' four-year-old, he thinks, except of course Dean isn't here and even if he were, it's not like he'd be able to tell what Sam's thinking, what with not having telepathy (at least most of the time) and all.

Still. If it hadn't been for Dean, Sam wouldn't have had the gun in the first place. He likes his knife. He knows how to use it. This never happens when he has his knife.

Dean's fault, he decides. When he has to explain this to somebody, he's going with that. Because it is, the way that most things are. All Sam had wanted was a nice quiet night, peace to finish the Chem paper that didn't get finished last week on account of the wendigo hunt and Dean coming back all bloody and unfocused and just lying there while Dad swore and applied pressure like he learned in Vietnam or whatever and Sam stitched and tried not to notice how pale either of them were, how scared Dad was as indicated by the lines around his eyes and how broken Dean'd gotten as indicated by his goddamn unnatural stillness, goddamn it Dean could never just duck, could never just shout a warning and risk the thing getting away, could never let Dad take one for a turn, no.

Everything, really. In Sam's whole life. Is Dean's fault. With a few things left over that fall on Dad. Like the whole hunting aspect. If not for that, Dean would be fine. Normal, like. And if not for Dean being so . . . Dean, all bravado and overconfidence and hey Sam Sam look up watch me gimme attention I'm bored hey Sam, Sam wouldn't have had to leave the motel room, since he wouldn't have otherwise been given the option of a front-row seat for what the theater across the street, the one with the busted windows, calls a triple-X-er.

Sure, Dean's latest girl's hot, but then, they all are. And Dean has a type, which is cheap and easy and just as desperate as Dean is. And Sam's not, like, blind, and he's not saying that easy is bad, because, yeah, he's a dude and he's seventeen and he knows how these things work, okay, he has personal experience, it's just that if he wanted porn, he'd have looked for it. And he didn't. Thus, no porn. And if he had, it wouldn't have starred Dean's pick of the week, it'd have starred somebody -- else.

Sits-three-seats-behind-him-in-Chemistry, glossy-haired, wears-white-librarian-blouses, laughs-like-a-blues-singer else.

Not that Vanessa's laughing now, exactly. She's more like staring at Jimmy and at the gun in his hand and then at the mustachioed guy behind the counter, the one who had the audacity to not sell Jimmy a pack of cigarettes and who thus became the target of Jimmy's little Pulp Fiction fantasy.

To be fair, of course, maybe Sam should have been keeping a better eye on his gun. He knew better, after all. Jimmy's a civilian, and it's Sam's fucking gun. But he told Jimmy how to hold it, and how not to blow his dick off, and, yeah, he let Jimmy hold it, after that little safety-lesson-cum-hey-Vanessa-look-I-know-cool-gun-stuff-speech, but so do those cops who come to elementary schools, right? Which should be a hell of a lot dangerous than handing a piece to somebody who's like three months away from being able to vote.

That the guns they pass around in elementary schools are usually unloaded is something that comes to mind belatedly, and, yeah, maybe he should have thought about it earlier, but there was the beer and there was Vanessa and then there was Jimmy saying hey guys let's go for a ride and Vanessa piling into the backseat next to Sam so that his elbow brushed her tits and when Jimmy took the curb the way Dean does to show off, she fell across his lap and he smelled jasmine and spilled beer and hot-close-girl and yeah, okay, maybe he was a little distracted. But it's not like this was expected, exactly. Jimmy's a jock, for god's sake. On the track team. Not one of those guys who hang out in the parking lot and who gave Sam shifty looks until he looked back at them and who now leave him the fuck alone.

Jimmy's a good guy, Sam thinks hopelessly, as though that might undo this scene, let them get out of this without somebody calling the cops. Let them get out of this without somebody getting blown away.

He had such a future planned, too. Colleges. Good colleges. Ivy League. California. Stanford, the letter at the bottom of his duffel. He was going to get out, and now he's gonna go down as another fuckin' deadbeat, one more screw-up good for nothing other than flipping burgers or getting himself torn to wet ribbons out in some forest moonlit like a Rorschach test. He was going to--

"You're kidding, right?" the guy behind the counter says, and raises an eyebrow. "Kid, you don't put the gun down now like your mama taught you, I'm gonna put it down for you."

Sam's breath catches. This is it, then. How it ends, his future derailed under the buzzing high-beam lights of a convenience store in Nowhere, Middle America. And he was going to avoid this, that was the whole point. Somebody touches his arm, fingernails gripping tight, and he looks over from the guy's face, guy who looks like he's been on every season of COPS, oh Jesus fuck Jimmy you have luck like Dean, to see Vanessa holding on to him, Vanessa's pearlescent-pink nail polish glinting under the convenience-store lights, and he is probably still going to be shot down like a punk by the Slushy machine, but at least he is going to be shot down like a punk by the Slushy machine along with the girl who he liked and who maybe he'd have gone out with if only he could have made himself ask and that was the whole point of tonight, that was the why of the hanging out and the beer; there was also the promise of dimly-lit corners and the potential of buttons being un-buttoned and Vanessa's tongue in his mouth and catching her eye across the classroom and having her wink at him.

Or, you know, maybe more than that. But he isn't Dean.

The newspapers will probably make up something Romeo and Juliet about it, if he's lucky. He'll be just as dead, but at least he'll look cool to his former peers. Which is what's gotten them here in the first place, because if Jimmy didn't have this idea about how cool it'd look to hold up a stupid second-thought gas-station add-on, and if Sam hadn't had this idea about how cool he would sound if he pointed out that Jimmy was holding his water-pistol like Miss Marple would hold an Uzi, which was to say way the fuck awkwardly and like he was gonna be squashed into old-lady-paste by the recoil, none of them would be here. They'd be back in the basement of Joey's house, listening to the shitty music that Sam has to like because everybody else does and Dean doesn't, and drinking bad beer to the point where it would be easy to do things like ask pretty girls if maybe they wanted to go see a movie sometime.

Or, at least, Sam would have been. The other guys, they could have done whatever the hell they wanted, as long as it didn't lead to this and it didn't involve Vanessa.

Jimmy's face screws up in confusion. Clearly this is not what years of television have taught him to expect. Sam rolls his eyes. "Put down the gun," he says, but quietly. More like a hiss. No way is he going to shout at Jimmy, who is now holding Sam's real live actual gun full of real live actual bullets capable of inflicting severe bodily harm exactly like Sam told him not to, and whose finger is very very tense on the trigger. Vanessa's grip on his arm tightens, her nails biting through the fabric of his shirt, and yes he would very much like to feel that again, but not right now. With witnesses. At least one of whom is armed. He glances down at her.

"What if they shoot him?" she mouths, eyes wide and mascara-smeared and slightly glazed, and from the look she is giving Jimmy, all terror and melting concern, Sam can tell, understanding just as sudden and sharp and way-too-real, sensation like the cold salt sea breaking through the daze of tonight at last, the same way it'll be when Jimmy finally does pull the trigger, that him is most indeed the moron waving around Sam's S&W.

Sam's going to be arrested as an accessory to armed robbery, best case scenario, and Dad's going to kill him for losing the gun, a gun which he can't even remember if it's registered and if it is, who the hell's name it's in, and the girl he's here for doesn't even care.

Dean's fault, he thinks morosely, and when the cops rush in, he raises his hands, Vanessa's hand falling away as somebody, maybe Joey, emits a manly squeak of fear and Jimmy says, all mouth-breathing gee-whiz-sir-no-I-don't-know-how-this-happened, fucking hell Sam hates them all, he is so fucking over the idea of friends, never again, he is gonna be a fucking monk, "I don't know, I think it was Sam's?"

They would have been leaving town anyway, Sam thinks, and at least he doesn't wince when the cuffs click cold around his wrists. He just helped -- expedite the process. He wonders if Dad will buy that, if Dean will buy that, and then he decides to hope that he'll be drunk for awhile longer, because when it stops, the hangover's not gonna compare to the fact that his life is gonna be fucking over.

--

Sam's been in jail before. He has been. He knows what it's like, and he knows that they're not gonna do anything to him, not until they give him a lawyer or until Dad shows up to get him out, in which case they're not going to do anything to him ever because he'll be long gone by the time they get around to it. That's what Dean's said, every single time.

Sam's been in jail before, but never alone. It's always been with Dean one cell over or, if they were out in the middle of nowhere and there was only one cell in the first place, Dean sprawling out on the gross hammocky cot and quoting lines from Patrick Swayze films. Which was annoying as hell, but it helped, because at least it took Sam's mind off of the fact that they were in jail which was one step away from prison which was jumpsuits and monitored showers and no way out ever, and it occurs to him now that maybe that was why Dean did it in the first place.

Whatever. This is still Dean's fault.

He's fairly certain, anyway.

Well, Dean's and Jimmy's. Dean's 'cause he was there in the first place and Jimmy's 'cause the fucking rat bastard motherfucker squealed (opines the voice in Sam's head that sounds like Dean, and he scowls at it out of principle) and told the cops that not only was it Sam's gun, Sam was the one who showed him how to use it, they'd just been playing with water guns until Sam pulled this gun outta nowhere, officer, he's new to the school and we were just trying to be nice.

If Sam ever gets out of here, the way everybody else got to after Officer Scary, who had nothing on Dad, lectured them all about gun safety and how drinking was bad until you turned twenty-one and then it was magically okay, and their parents showed up to get them, he's going to hunt Jimmy down.

He's sitting gingerly on the edge of the cot, mentally constructing a plan for a water gun that'll hold sulfuric acid, when he hears voices. Real voices. Genuine actual person voices, which is excellent, sort of, because he is fucking bored and sure, it's only been forty-five minutes since they locked the door on him and pocketed the key, but when he's had nothing to do but contemplate how fucked he is, contemplate the revenge he will probably never be able to exact due to how he'll be locked up forever, time's gone by like snails dipped in molasses.

God, he's going to suck at prison. Maybe he'll be able to get a job in the library, wheeling those little carts around from cell to cell.

"Yep, that's him," Dean says, draping himself artistically, effortlessly, against the bars and peering in at Sam, his expression all mock solemnity and sorrow. Sam's going to kill him. Once he gets Sam out. Once Sam figures out how he knew how to come here. "Ever since our, uh, grandma died, he's been acting out. He was real close to her, you know. She was teaching him how to knit. And the, uh, other thing with the needles."

"Crochet?" the officer says. Officer Scary, the one with the thick dark brows and the mean-cop sneer, except now he's looking at Dean like he's actually buying this and like he's gonna say a prayer tonight over his own knitting needles for poor old Grandma Winchester.

"That's the one," Dean says. He stares at Sam for a few more seconds, until Sam sees the grin playing at the edges of his mouth and Dean has to bite his lip before turning back to the cop. "If you're sure he's okay to go, officer, I can take him home. Once he, uh, gets through therapy, I'm sure he'll appreciate it. Probably send you some socks. He's real good at socks. Loves yarn. Used to love yarn, I mean. We're working up to that, as part of the therapy. Showed him some, uh, balls of it last week and he about burst into tears. 'Cause of the balls."

Sam glares. Harder.

"Like that, right there, that's what he does right before the waterworks start," Dean says helpfully.

The officer looks fucking chagrined. "I'll be right back with the key, and then you'll just need to sign a few forms," he says. His boots make squeaky sounds on the polished concrete as he speed-walks away, like he wants to be gone before the first tear shows up. Pussy.

"I hate you," Sam says, and gets to his feet. If he leans against the other side of the bars, he won't be touching Dean. Technically.

It shouldn't be comforting, the brush of leather, between the bars, against the faded-soft fabric his shirt. It's not anything like the way Vanessa gripped him, like for a second or for a minute, he doesn't know, not with the way time seemed to stop, she needed him, wanted him. He hardly even feels it.

It helps anyway.

"You're the one who ruined my date," Dean says, voice pitched for Sam alone, quiet like he knows. "And isn't it meant to be the other way around? Me hauled in for bein' drunk and disorderly? You going all self-righteous with the bail money?"

"It's not bail money, it's hustling money. You basically stole it." Sam is seventeen years old. He was, until tonight, going away in the fall, and maybe he still is. He is a hunter, and he is a Winchester. He is not going to reach out for Dean's jacket. They're past the point where that kind of talisman should have an effect.

"But I'm spending it on your bail, Sammy my boy. If you play your cards right. Though, I gotta tell you, just getting to see this's making one hell of a Christmas present."

"It's not even December," Sam says.

Dean grins. "I know."

"I was orderly," Sam says. "I was quiet."

"Yeah, see, that's not what, uh, Officer what's-his-face says. He says you got all surly and refused to talk. Though I guess that's kinda like quiet. He says he only got your name from the other kids, since you weren't carrying any ID, and he had to get some kid called Vanessa to tell him who to call for you. She's the one with the hot mom, right? She hot, too?"

"No," Sam says. "She looks like Dad."

"You always did go for the weird ones." Dean sighs. "You ready to get outta here or did you wanna hang out until Dad gets back?"

"You're an asshole," Sam says. He had a plan. He had his whole life worked out, and it made sense, and then Dean had to bring his girl over, bring some chick back to the room so that Sam had to leave, leave or watch his stupid shameless brother fuck some girl on the bed that they share when Dad's here, and this is what happened.

Luckily, before Sam can turn any of that into something he can say aloud, the cop chooses that moment to return. He very carefully doesn't look at Sam as he unlocks the door. They make a ragged trail out to the counter, where Sam tries hard not to sway or lean against his big brother, who would never let him live it down, especially if Sam let himself rest his head on Dean's shoulder like he did when they were younger, if he were to breathe in deep the leather and salt-sweat and bourbon, scent not at all like Vanessa's, a promise entirely different. The officer won't look at him at all, which is kind of awesome, and also kind of majorly fucked, since it's only 'cause the officer doesn't want to watch him cry, and he's not even close. He's just. Going to kill Dean. Is all. "I sincerely hope therapy goes well for you, Mr. Winchester," the officer says. "The owners aren't pressing charges, even for you, and I don't ever want to see you in here again."

Sam bares his teeth. It doesn't matter, the guy's not even looking, but Dean elbows him hard anyway.

"Thanks," Sam says. "That's great, 'cause I don't ever wanna be in here again."

"He gets cranky when he's up past his bedtime," Dean says smoothly like Sam's a little kid and he's Sam's dad, though not like Dad in the least, and steps on his foot. Bastard. Dean's wearing his boots, and Sam, not being a paranoid lunatic, is wearing sneakers.

Sam does feel kind of bad, though, watching Dean fork over his cash, money earned over hours spent at the pool table in smoky bars across the country, and yeah, Dean likes those places, but Sam knows what it takes to run a good con, and watching the officer count it back for them makes his stomach go leaden. Dean gets a receipt, sure, but he balls it up and tosses it into the trash can as soon as they get out to the parking lot. Perfect shot. Of course. There's a spike of something else in Sam's stomach, something dark as jealousy or guilt. The streetlights are turning the night amber, though it fades into unlit black soon beyond, out by the ragged silhouette-lattice of trees. It's an insomniac hour, the time of the night for hunters to be crouching down in the dark and holding their breath, silver-loaded gun at the ready. Sam's feet are dragging. His eyes hurt, and his head hurts, and he wants to go home.

Real home. An actual house, with an actual bed. Not yet another goddamn motel room, even if it's the same one he left this morning. And again this evening, before all of this happened. He wants to go somewhere he can stay, somewhere he won't have to pack up in a day or in a week and leave behind.

"All I did was teach Jimmy how to hold a gun right," he says. He sounds sullen, even to his own ears, but he doesn't particularly care. He watches his shoes scuff across the glittering macadam, broken up occasionally by painted yellow lines. Dean parked all the way across the lot, of course. Even though Dad switched out the plates last week, it won't do any good to get noticed.

Which he just did. In a kind of major way.

Dad's going to kill him.

"The fuck'd you even bother for?" Dean says. "Notice how I'm not even touching the fact that you lost one a' the guns. We're gonna have that talk in the morning, and it's gonna be fun, let me tell you."

"I hate you," Sam says again.

"Yeah, I know." Dean unlocks the door, halogen light glinting off the chrome as he swings it open. "C'mon, if you're coming."

Which Sam is. As though there was ever a question. He wonders how long it would have taken Dean to come for him, if Vanessa hadn't given him up. Would Dean have given him the night, been frantic by morning? Would Dean have noticed?

Dean is here now. Sam will not ask. Settling into the shotgun seat, he tries not to notice, not to appreciate, how familiar it is, how much it feels like the closest thing to home he has ever known. The other kids went back to their houses, the quasi-Victorian things Sam walks past every morning on the way to school, with yards and huge sprawling trees and their name on the mailbox. Sam gets to go back to a car, and even if it's driven by his older brother, even if he knows damn well that Dean would die for him, that Dean has in the past taken a blow for him, a bullet, claws, and would gladly do so again, it is not permanent.

Maybe because of that, it is not permanent.

He wills himself not to fall asleep, not to crash out against the window like he did when he was six, though he wonders if Dean would let him. If Dean would brush his hair out of his face, tender for a moment because it didn't count, it was liminal, unreal. If Dean would touch him the way he had the girl in their room, like he saw her, really truly saw her.

Dean would die for him, sure, but he looks at Sam like he did when Sam was twelve; he looks at Sam like nothing has changed and nothing ever will, and Sam's first bullet wound didn't hurt as much as that does.

"It was community service," Sam says. He closes his eyes, just for a second, and sees his gun in Jimmy's hand, Jimmy's broad good-natured face screwed up in honest deadly drunken confusion, Dad bursting in through the motel-room door with Dean draped over his shoulder, Dean's black t-shirt glistening crimson and sodden. "I didn't want him to shoot himself."

"Probably woulda done the gene pool a favor," Dean says. "Makin' sure he couldn't reproduce and all."

Sam snickers. It's late. He's tired, and possibly still drunk. He's allowed. He makes sure to glare at Dean when he's done, though, just in case Dean's looking.

"So I'm guessing she doesn't look like Dad," Dean says. He starts the car. The music starts immediately, another fucking ballad about life on the run, and he turns it down. It's kind of a huge fucking gesture, coming from him, at this time of night. Or it means that he's about to tear into Sam for being so incredibly stupid. Sam looks out the window. If it's the latter, he doesn't want to see it coming. Dean sighs again, and Sam wonders when he started sounding so tired, or if that too is just an artifact of the hour, the marrow-deep night chill. Or maybe he's just exhausted from fucking his girlfriend-of-the-hour. "Okay. Fine. Don't talk to me. It's just my hard-earned cash you blew on whatever you wanna call this clusterfuck. I was getting laid."

"I know," Sam says. "I saw. I was there."

"Oh," Dean says. Sam glances back over in time to see him swallow. "Right. You coulda closed the door. 's there for a reason."

"So could you." Sam wants to put his head down. He wants to not think of some girl's hands all over his brother. "You even know her name?"

"Mindy," Dean says. "Wait. Mandy?"

It's obvious, deliberate, but Sam smirks without thinking. Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Dean's crooked grin. He leans back against the seat, leather night-cool against the back of his neck. If he doesn't think about anything, if he doesn't think, it could just be him and Dean, him and his brother, hanging out like they used to. "I wanna go home," he says. Admits. Later, he might blame that on the alcohol in his blood. Or the time of night. The fact that it's been one hell of a long night, and he's tired. He had to get up at five-thirty for classes, and it's almost that time again already.

Dean revs the engine just because he can, slips his arm across the back of the seat as he pulls out. It is not around Sam, he is not pulling Sam close, not slinging his arm around his kid brother's shoulders like he used to, but for a moment, Sam can imagine. Can pretend. "Be there in ten," Dean says. "Or less." He turns the music back on, but keeps the volume low enough for it to be almost-background, not a direct assault. Truce. Peace offering, not that they're arguing, exactly. Maybe it's out of habit. Maybe he didn't even notice. He glances over at Sam, and Sam nods.

It's the least he can do, to not-argue, considering what he just got Dean to do for him. All those hours spent in all those bars, all those lies, blown on this, and Sam wonders if Mandy/Mindy was still there, when the cops called, wonders if Dean had to tell her to go, find her own ride home, he had to go help his brother out of a jam. It's not entirely altruistic, though; Sam doesn't want to have the discussion again, the argument again, either. Soon enough, it won't matter.

The streets are quiet. Small-town America. When he was a kid, he used to want to live here, in any one of these houses. Now, he just wants to get out, somewhere far away. The shorelines are full of ghosts, but the land in between is where the monsters roam. Somewhere out there in the black, down some road choked with scrub and brush, beneath that fucking moonless sky, their dad is hunting something sick and wrong and twisted. It might be hunting their dad right back. They won't know, not until later. Not for hours, until he calls or comes back, or until he doesn't.

If Sam closes his eyes, it might be like when he was a kid. When this was easy. When he didn't know anything else, and couldn't want anything else. When it was just him and Dean and he could trust their dad, wherever he was, to take care of himself and to take care of them, because he was Dad and along with Dean, he was the world.

If Sam closes his eyes, if he holds on to this moment tightly enough, maybe it will last. Maybe he'll get to keep it, get to take it with him. Have it forever, so he can remind himself what he lost. This future traded for that one, the way Dean cannot. The way Dean will not.

He wonders if Dean would wake him up like he used to, nice and gentle, a hand on Sam's shoulder and a word in Sam's ear, Sam's name in his mouth like a folktale between the two of them, or if Dean would smack the doorframe hard so that Sam jumps, startled out of sleep; if Dean would keep an arm around him all the way into the bedroom, let Sam lean against him, as though everything would be all right, as though sleep were safe, if only they were together, as though he could shelter Sam from everything even now, or if Dean would grin down at Sam and say chariot ride's over, princess, get your ass moving, and turn away, hands shoved into his pockets and shoulders hunched against the sky, without waiting for Sam to get out.

Sam stays awake the whole way back, his reflection strange and shadowed in the window like all the dark and unknowable and dirty things in him have been carved out into that form, hollow-eyed ghost of a twin. He stays awake and he doesn't say anything and when Dean parks in front of the two-story motel with the colored lights strung up around the eaves like the washed-out real-life version of a fairytale, like tattered hope, he makes himself move, step out into the night before Dean can say anything either. He doesn't want to know how much things have already changed, how too-late it is to take anything back, even if he could. How too-late it is for anything else, how the world has already shifted and how he's maybe the only one who knows that yet, and how unbelievably lonely that is.

--

end

whereupon @ 2011-08-25T09:15:00

2011-08-25T17:08:51Z

Gasoline
by whereupon
Supernatural: Gen, season three, PG-13, 4,234 words.
They're down a quarter of the year, Dean's giving up, and Sam's not sleeping.

Sam hadn't thought the room was close enough to the freeway to shake each time a semi passes by, but apparently he was wrong, as the room's been vibrating near-constantly for long enough that he's almost gotten used to it. Almost, but not quite, which is why he opens his eyes; that's preferable to the sensation that the motel room is undergoing a continuous mild earthquake and anything could be toppling towards him, and it's not like sleep is a real possibility anyway. He burned through the jittery, strung-out feeling of overtired a while ago; he can sleep when he's dead, or when they both are.

As soon as his hand touches the lamp, fumbling for the switch that will throw enough light across the room to at least allow him to make out the words in the pages of the books piled on the floor, and on the bedside table, and on the larger table in the kitchenette, Dean groans, rolling over in the other bed to mash his face into his pillow. He mumbles something that Sam's pretty sure translates to did you even sleep at all and which Sam opts to pretend to have misheard; that seems wiser than answering, especially as the answer would be negative and he doesn't have the energy for the thought of another argument about that when Dean's feeling better, intent once more on making sure that Sam eats three square meals a day, sleeps eight hours a night, like that can be a priority now that Dean will only have to bother him about it for another two-hundred-some days.

No. Do it right. Two hundred and eighty-three days (merciless exactitude is easy, now, because the other option will get Dean killed), and Dean has always been annoying about that. Making sure Sam had enough to eat even when he didn't, telling Sam to get some fucking sleep already even when part of the reason Sam couldn't was that Dean was still awake, twitching and turning and punching at pillows a few feet away. Getting between Sam and countless sharp or otherwise-deadly objects, even when it meant that instead of Sam maybe tearing his jacket as he ducked out of the way, Dean would spend whole days insensible (even more so than usual, ha-ha), feverish, unable to stand without wincing, to put any weight on the leg that had been torn open when he'd shoved Sam out of the way. He'd held onto Sam's jacket for an instant after that, for long enough to meet Sam's eyes, for Sam to realize exactly what was going to come next, and then the talons had sunk in and he'd dropped. He claimed later it was so that Sam would have a clear shot at the bird-thing, all wicked black eyes and feathers that might have been razors for how cleanly they sliced, but Sam had been looking at him when it struck, and had seen his eyes widen at first, automatic reaction, and the way he had relaxed after that.

Dean had looked as though he thought he was maybe going to bleed to death on the dusty dirt floor of a rotting barn with half its ceiling caved in, and as though that was something to be glad for. Sam has known for a long time that Dean has a death wish -- no way he could have spent all of his childhood and then all of these more recent years with his brother and somehow failed to notice that -- but it doesn't scare him any less, each time Dean tries to let himself get killed.

And he's going to succeed, this time, if Sam doesn't do something about it. It's that thought that pushes Sam out of bed at last, though he thinks it might have only been a few minutes since he lay down (a glance at his watch tells him it was closer to half an hour). If there's anything good about Dean being laid up, it's that he spends most of his time sleeping or staring off into space; when he remembers to tell Sam to sleep, or eat, or lay off the books for awhile, man, there're better ways to make yourself go blind, it's only out of habit, and there's no force behind the words. He's usually asleep again, or distracted, before he can press the issue. Sam thinks he should maybe feel bad about that, and he will, later, when he's saved Dean's soul. When he's saved his brother from hell. In the meantime, he's going to do what he has to do, which as of late translates to making sure that Dean takes his pills every eight hours and has enough water in the tumbler on the nightstand, and spending the rest of his time exhausting every possible lead he can find. Dean can bitch about it later, if he wants, when he has the time to waste, and when he's awake enough to care.

And when he does, Sam will bitch right back at him, ask about the fact that Dean spent so much of what will (not) be his last year asleep. He can't remember the last time Dean slept this long, or this often, even when ill, when healing; it's as though the idea that he doesn't have much longer to live has allowed his brother peace of mind at last, and if Sam thinks about that too long, he tends to want to either hit Dean or be sick, neither of which would be particularly useful right now.

So he doesn't think about it. So he refills the black plastic coffee machine next to the sink, and pushes the button to tell it to make another pot of coffee, and if his hands are shaking a little, he wills them to stop. So he sits down at the table and opens another book, and tells himself that this one will have the answer, and that if it does not, surely the next one will.

He's not sure what he'll do, if they don't, but books have always held the answers he needed (or close enough, or at least a distraction from what he doesn't want to think about, which is sometimes itself enough), so he will believe that they will not fail him now.

And the background to all of this is his brother breathing, breathing beneath blankets which have the sheen of old cigarette wrappers, breathing Sam's name, every so often. His brother alive, for now, and at peace, and even if Sam doesn't want to think about why that is, at least Dean is here, within view, within reach. Sam can look up from his book and see him, and even if Dean is pale and his eyes are shadowed in sleep, or glazed with fever; even if his hand on Sam's wrist when Sam wakes him is too slow, and too warm, at least he's here. At least he's not in a hospital, where maybe he would get better faster (if this is something that could be cured with an IV drip, a course of heavy antibiotics, if this isn't Dean taking advantage of the excuse to stop fighting, giving up the need for pretense now that he thinks he's got an expiration date -- but Sam's not going to think about that, can't afford to), but where Sam wouldn't be able to research, where he would lose that time, and would maybe lose Dean as a result. He'd spend hours in a plastic chair with his hand wrapped around Dean's, and in the end all it would get them is Dean hauling them back on the road, telling Sam to get his ass moving, time's a-wasting, hangman's coming down from the gallows, Sammy, and no point in trying to save a dead man, but spill something for me when the dust's settled, okay?

Which is selfish of Dean, Sam thinks, but maybe this is just as selfish of him. Putting what he wants, what he needs, before what's best for Dean. But Dean hates hospitals, anyway, hates the memories he has of them (all that blood-fear-death-loss), and hates the endless packets of paperwork, and the doctors who ask too goddamn many questions, and the stupid paper gowns that never tie right, never stay closed.

If Dean's not any better in a few days, he tells himself, they'll go to a hospital. Or a clinic, at least. Forty-eight hours, he reasons. If Dean's not any better in forty-eight hours, Sam will load him into the Impala and drive him somewhere a medical professional will look him over and make him better. Forty-eight hours, because then he'll have been sick for. For.

Sam blinks, knuckles at his eyes. The barn had been . . . Wednesday. Or Tuesday. Wednesday, he's pretty sure. And Dean had woken up with a fever the next morning and refused to let Sam check his stitches, had stared with red-rimmed eyes at his untouched pancakes and bacon until Sam asked if maybe he wanted to head back to the motel instead of hitting the road right away, had kicked Sam under the table and told him Dad didn't raise a coupl'a lazy assholes, and had, upon their return to the motel, taken off his boots and fallen asleep sitting up on his bed while watching Jerry Springer shout soundlessly on the muted television. Sam hasn't left the motel room since; maybe Dean would make fun of him for it, but he's more scared now than ever of leaving Dean alone. Of what might happen. Dean's fever hasn't been bad, not really, since the first night, not since Sam woke to him mumbling about wings and claws and fire, his eyes open but unseeing, sure as hell not seeing Sam (not until his fist had already collided with Sam's face, anyway, and then he'd mumbled an apology that Sam had only half-heard); it's just that Dean doesn't seem to want to get up. And he isn't getting any better. Instead of being bored and bitchy like he usually is when he's sick, he's just lying there, issuing only the most minor of death threats and then, only rarely, like he's perfectly content to spend the last year of his life in an uncomfortable bed in one more anonymous shitty motel room like any of the thousands that made up their childhood, while Sam hovers uselessly at him.

Sam had ordered pizza the next night, and Chinese the night after, each time making sure to get enough in case Dean wanted some, in case he felt like getting up, eating, watching some stupid action movie and arguing with Sam about whether it was too soon for him to have a beer. The empty, grease-slick boxes are still piled in the kitchenette; the thought of their former contents now makes Sam's stomach roil. And after that was . . . after that was books, and coffee, and sleeplessness, and the endless cycle of waking Dean and watching him sleep, listening in case he starts talking again. Dreaming again. It's ten o'clock, now, according to Sam's watch, but the curtains are drawn, as they have been since Sam and Dean checked in: habit, with the result that Sam can't sure whether it's ten in the morning or ten at night. Isn't sure what day it is, how long they've been here, how long Dean's been sick, and the words are blurring before him on the page. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.

When he moves, he moves too fast, jars the table and everything on it. Cold coffee splashes across the paper, across his lap. He swears reflexively, but under his breath, and pushes back, presses napkins from the pizza-place against the book to soak up the coffee and hopes to God that the text will still be legible, after. If he gets Dean killed (or doesn't save him, but that's the same thing because Dean made this deal for him, Dean's been making deals, making sacrifices, his whole life for him) because he spilled his fucking coffee--

His lungs are constricting, his breath coming too fast, his heart telegraphing a frenetic signal that he feels in his blood. Too much coffee, he tells himself, and then, no, this is a panic attack. He's distantly amused at the part of himself that remains remote enough to diagnose that, and then the part of him that is more concerned with not being able to breathe takes over. He makes his hands into fists, nails digging into his palms, and maybe he's drawing blood, but as long as he can fix this, as long as he can keep from fucking up something as simple as breathing, and as long as he doesn't wake Dean, that's okay. He's patched up so, so much worse; this won't even compare.

He's fine. He's fine, he tells himself. Dean made sure of that. Dean brought him back from the dead, and he's fine, now. He just needs some fresh air, is all. He hasn't been outside in days (two, maybe three, not a week, please, don't let it be a week), after all.

He takes a step towards the door, and when he doesn't go down, takes it as a good sign. All he has to do is keep walking, and if it feels like he's going to fall over at any second, as though he's made of glass or something more brittle, well, that'll get better. When he gets to the door. When he opens it. When he breathes something other than sweat and sour air and caffeine fumes.

It's a nice mantra, as mantras go. It allows him to get to the door, and to open it; it allows him to see that it's ten p.m., not a.m., the cool acid-green signs in the windows of the strip club glowing bright against the starless black. Not even the moon's out tonight, or if it is, it's been rendered obsolete by the mosquito buzz of a thousand neon lights. As Sam's watching, the R in G-I-R-L-S (prefaced by live, as though to dispel any thought that the club might have offered any other kind) goes deadbeat and blacks out. There are sirens in the distance, and the hush and slush of tires in fallen rain somewhere nearer by, and it's almost peaceful, almost like home. It's not until he tries to breathe again and it comes out like he's just been punched in the stomach that he staggers.

As far as falls go, he thinks as he feels his knees hit the ground, reaching out to catch himself on the doorframe and feeling it slide out of his grasp, his knuckles scraping bloody on the mortise, this isn't a bad one. Not like the last time. Not like there's a knife in his back or anything, and that might be funny, but he forgets to laugh just then, because the sky's bleeding black into everything and then--

His first thought upon regaining consciousness is that the asphalt is softer than he'd thought it would be. Maybe he got lucky, fell back inside the room. Maybe all he has to do is open his eyes, and get up, and close the door; he can limp into the bathroom, wash his hands, and get back to work. Maybe the book will have dried out by now. And maybe this will have counted as sleep as far as his body is concerned.

That's a good thought, too. It lasts until he opens his eyes and sees Dean looking down at him, and sees too that he is on the floor of the motel room, as opposed to having pitched forward out into the parking lot where somebody might have seen him and called the cops out of the goodness of their heart. It's just that there's something between his head and the floor, and that's Dean's leg. Which Dean isn't meant to put weight on, and Sam's pretty sure he qualifies as weight. He entertains, however, the notion that maybe everything that has happened since waking up in Cold Oak was a dream, a notion which lasts until Dean blinks at him with eyes that are still unfocused and sunset-shadowed, the shade of gloaming and grieving. "Sammy?"

Sam's mouth is dry as desert bones and it tastes like metal. Maybe he bit his tongue on the way down. No matter. He swallows. "Yeah," he says. "Hey, Dean."

"You okay?" It's kind of an absurd question to be asking, considering the position he imagines Dean found him in, but hey, he's not dead, so. Perspective and all that.

"Yeah," Sam says. "I just, uh. Fell." He thinks Dean might have noticed that, though.

"No shit," Dean says. "Not exactly gracefully, either." He shivers, once. Sam thinks he tries to hide it, but considering that Sam's head is resting on his leg, that doesn't work especially well.

"You shouldn't be out of bed," Sam says, and sits up. It's not quite as smooth an action as he'd have liked; the room is still trembling, tilting, faintly. It occurs to him belatedly that maybe that might not be the room. He keeps his hands flat on the floor, bracing himself. Resists the urge to draw his knees up to his chest like a child.

"When's the last time you ate?" Dean says, after a moment, and though his words begin slow and dust-covered, as though he has to piece them together one by one, they turn accusatory quickly enough. "Or slept, or fuck, even took a shower or anything? You look like shit that's been dragged through hell."

Sam licks his lips. "Yesterday," he says. It's not a lie; it might be true. He's just kind of hazy on the facts, right now. As well as on a lot of things. He'll get up, and get Dean back into bed, and then maybe he'll try again to sleep, himself. Just for a little while. An hour, maybe two, and then he can start reading again.

"And why the hell don't I believe you," Dean says. "Jesus fuck, Sam, what the fuck are you doing," and he sounds angry, his voice catching on a threat, barely-guarded violence. It occurs to Sam that this might be the first time he's heard Dean scared since Dean told him about the deal.

"I'm finding a way to save you." He looks at Dean as steadily as he can, wonders what the hell Dean thought he was doing. What the hell Dean thought he would do, upon finding out what about the deal. Wonders if maybe this is exactly what Dean thought he would do, and if maybe that's why Dean had tried to keep it from him. Dean knows him better than anybody else in the world ever has and ever will.

Dean looks back at him just as steadily and Sam swallows hard and sudden against the fact that they are two grown men who right now maybe don't have the strength to get to their feet, to get into bed, much less to fight any kind of war, but who would die trying to prove to each other that that's not true. Against the fact that this is, he knows, his fault: if he hadn't turned his back on Jake, none of this would have happened. Dean wouldn't be dying, slowly. Dean wouldn't be in the process of getting his worst, most heartfelt wish and leaving Sam behind. "You need to sleep," Dean says.

"So do you." It might not be the cleverest retort ever, but it is true. Dean should be in bed. Dean should be in a hospital; one of the cards has to still be good, or else maybe Bobby can pull some strings somewhere. Dean should not be on his ass on the cold thin-carpet-nailed-into-concrete floor of a motel room, his eyes fever-bright and scared for Sam.

"I will if you will," Dean says, and gets to his feet slowly, favoring his left leg. He leans against the wall next to the door and reaches to offer Sam a hand. Sam lets himself take it, but only because he knows Dean will take it personally if he doesn't. He lets his brother pull him to his feet, and together they lurch across the room, their arms tangled over each other's shoulders. Sam cannot recall ever being this tired before, though he knows that he must have been. If he ignores the way the room shivers around him, and the way his heart beats like he's dying once more, it's almost a pleasant feeling. All he has to do is close his eyes, and everything will be okay.

That's a lie, though. He'll close his eyes, and he'll sleep for hours, and when he wakes up, he'll have that much less time to save Dean. He doesn't get to rest, doesn't get to escape this gut-panic, crawling-dread sensation; all of this is because of him, is his own fucking fault, and if he doesn't fix it now, he's going to lose his brother forever--

He blinks. He's not sure how he got onto the bed, why he's lying down. This expanse of missing time that he thinks he should find disturbing, and then he rolls onto his side and Dean is there, standing between the beds, holding out his hand. Sam reaches out instinctively, habit worn bone-deep with years, and Dean drops two pills onto his palm, where they lie cool and dry and seemingly weightless. Sam stares at them. He can't for the life of him (and isn't that a joke) remember if this is how they've always looked, the pills he's been making sure Dean takes, if they look unfamiliar now only because he is at last so fucking tired. He's still looking at them when Dean says, "You need to sleep."

"So do you," Sam says automatically, frowns at the sense of déjà vu.

"I'm gonna," Dean says. "But not unless I know you are, too." He nods at Sam's hand. "Take 'em, Sammy. Don't make me make you." Pale above the ash-grey of his shirt, hair plastered flat against his forehead, breath rasping in his throat like there's a bullet in his chest, he might have never looked any less like a threat, and Sam's throat burns. He sits up enough to dry-swallow the pills without choking and rendering Dean's deal pointless, lowers himself back down onto the pillows. Lets his eyes drift closed to the rattle of pills in a bottle like branches against a windowpane and the thunk and clunk of a glass being set down heavily, and then forces them back open like drowning in reverse. He's not sure how much time he's lost, if he's slept at all, but the room is dark as cemetery hope once more, and he doesn't remember how that happened. His eyes won't focus; the room is smeared, blurry, and he cannot see Dean. A fragment of his dream, lingering, caught behind his eyes: spires like obsidian, laced with razorwire webs, and screams which are pleas which are nothing but the wind across fields of mud, shivering where once voices echoed. Has he slept that long, has he already lost--

His breath hitches, one-two-three like the scrape-strike of matches, and then Dean's voice comes out of the dark, from somewhere very close by. "'m right here, Sammy, go the fuck back to sleep."

Sam rolls over, nearly rolls into, onto, his brother, who's crammed into the other half of the bed which was nearly too small for Sam in the first place. It seems impossible that they both fit, Sam thinks, and then that they're both going to be terribly sore in the morning, whenever that will be. "For fuck's sake," Dean mumbles, but there's no heat in it. His breath, warm against the curve of Sam's cheek, smells of bourbon, and Sam thinks that there's something wrong about that, that he should protest or ask . . . something (pills and alcohol, the exponential curve of interaction, liver damage, fever, even as the scent is comforting in its familiarity, its association with home, Dad breathing steadily in the next bed and Dean with one arm around Sam and one hand on the gun beneath the pillow, still awake whenever Sam opened his eyes), but maybe that can wait until morning. Everything can wait until morning. He's got Dean, now, and that's enough, that should be enough, but--

His arms seem to weigh an inordinate amount (on one of his hands, his knuckles have been bandaged, wrapped white as surrender, though he doesn't recall how, or by whom), but he manages to move one of them anyway, underwater-slow, throws it over his brother. Feels the rise and fall of Dean's chest like it's a constant, something to take for granted. Three rises-and-falls later, Dean's hand brushes his, comes to rest on Sam's side, hot against his skin where his shirts are twisted up above his jeans. One finger wrapped around a belt loop like an afterthought, like that's not the most important thing, but Sam knows better. Anchored, Dean will hold to Sam, will let himself stay. It's enough of a promise, and Dean has always kept his promises to Sam, so Sam lets himself close his eyes once more.

--

end

whereupon @ 2011-08-17T07:24:00

2011-08-17T15:24:24Z

Untitled
by whereupon
Supernatural: Sam/Jessica, preseries, 970 words, R.
She loved him too much for something as slight as the dead to come between them.
for maerhys.

Jessica Moore stopped believing in ghosts when she was thirteen years old and she did not begin again until she met Sam Winchester. First, she saw them in his eyes, though those ghosts were merely those of grief, the sort that most do not know until they are much older than he was, but which no one does not know by the time that they are old. Second, she heard them in his voice as she lay beside him, the fingers of one hand twined around his wrist as he spoke in his sleep the words of a dead language, and she heard, beneath the drowse-slurred intonations, all that they conjured: she knew the scrape of the wind beneath a moonless sky down a street whose windows grew covered in frost as though foggy with the very breath of death itself, and she knew the splash of blood spilled quick and sorrowful as a sacrifice upon knotty floorboards while crows watched soundlessly from the other side of the glass, and she knew the cries of the cursed and of the dying, and how they mingled with the prayers of those left behind until no difference could be made between the two. Third, she ran her hand alongside the thin line of salt, so meager as to be nearly invisible, which he'd pushed against the window of their bedroom, and after doing so, she rested her palm against the cool pane and watched, half-frozen herself, as the shape of another palm bloomed into view, flared foxfire-bright for a moment before fading into the corona of the streetlight's glow and becoming indiscernible from the play of shadows which flickered there.

She had drawn the curtains, then, careful not to disturb the salt, but the curtains had needed to be drawn anyway, as they did every night; otherwise, the streetlight would have kept the both of them awake long past dawn. Her lover was a tall, kind boy with eyes like the first breath of fall, who was studying pre-law and who treated with ghosts upon occasion. She could have left him, she supposed sometime after she came to terms with that realization; or it was theoretically possible to have done so, anyway, but the thought stole the breath from her lungs and left her heart gasping, and so maybe it was never truly possible in the first place. She loved him too much for something as slight as the dead to come between them, so she made her excuses when it was necessary, overlooking the obvious when that too became necessary, and kissed him and slept beside him and walked to the market with him on Saturdays for fresh milk.

"I think we should go out of town," she said, the second year that she loved him. "For my birthday, I mean. We could go for the weekend, maybe be gone half of Friday, too." She knew by then that she shared a birthday with his brother, about whom he did not speak. On that date the year before he had been silent, so silent, though he'd smiled at her, when he'd felt her eyes upon him. That night she had tasted tequila upon both their tongues, and though it tasted of celebration, it tasted too of loss, and was tempered by it. She'd wanted to ask him why, what it had cost him to leave his brother behind, but she wasn't sure that he would answer her, and she didn't think that she had in her the words to lessen his grief, if he did. It was not hers to lessen.

"Where do you want to go?" he said. It was earliest January and the windows were splotched with rain, casting watercolor shadows across their bed. She closed her eyes for a moment and thought of sunlight; she opened them and said, "Somewhere cold. It always snowed on my birthday, when I was a kid." She had dreamed the night before of cruel weather, and of the sickle-silver moon; she had woken with the taste of gunpowder in her throat and had touched her lover's hair, tangled with sleep and salt-water, to wake him.

"I thought you liked the sun," he said, and pressed his mouth briefly to the bare curve of her shoulder.

"I do," she said. "But I want to watch the snow fall, I want to be cold and to feel the firelight warming me. I want," she said, "to see my breath in the air, and I want to feel the ice melt when you kiss me." She hadn't known she would say those things, not when she began to speak, but as she said them, she knew that they were true, and she could not explain the urgency she felt when she thought of them.

"Okay," he said after a moment, breath like the memory of summer across her skin, and she shivered. "Whatever you want, Jessie, babe," and she closed her eyes and saw red and fire-gold, the trees burning with sunlight as her autumn boy took her down deep, narrow hips working until she caught the back of his neck and dragged him in close, her breath skittering, ratcheting, as she came, his arms around her like the promise of shelter all through the chilblain days of winter. It was a lie, but she did not know it then; neither of them did. She opened her mouth against his skin, she opened her mouth to his, and it's forever, this moment as they breathe in each other, and it's only an instant; she turns her mind to the future, days unspooling, unwinding as thread, and already the first leaf is falling, November-fallow, coin-tossed, as pale and bright and brief as the press of a palm against a darkened window one night on a winding California street.

--

end

whereupon @ 2011-07-17T15:06:00

2011-07-17T23:06:52Z

Surface
by whereupon
Supernatural: Dean/ofc, preseries, R, 3,940 words.
In truth, it was pretty clear how the whole thing was going to end when he walked ragged and rainsoaked into her bar and asked for a whiskey, double, thanks babe, with a smile that turned into slightly murderous when somebody shoved a quarter into the jukebox and overrode Johnny Thunders with something twenty years and a Clapton's worth of guitar genius away from being classic.

Lucy could tell herself that she should have known better, but in truth, it was pretty clear how the whole thing was going to end when he walked ragged and rainsoaked into her bar and asked for a whiskey, double, thanks babe, with a smile that turned into slightly murderous when some asshole shoved a quarter into the jukebox and overrode Johnny Thunders with something twenty years and a Clapton's worth of guitar genius away from being classic.

He looked like he hadn't slept in a week and when he leaned in over the counter, she saw that his black shirt was dark with something redder than rain. "If that's yours, you need an ambulance, not whiskey," she said. "Or else you need a whole hell of a lot more than a double."

"Double's a good place to start, though, right?" he said. His breath smelled like beer, but then, the scent tended to permeate the bar. "Only the human part's mine."

"Yeah, and what's the rest?" She didn't need to look away as she reached for a glass; the glasses were in the same place they'd been for the past ten years.

Flash of his tongue between his teeth as though in thought and then his mouth quirked. "Dunno. Fucker had fangs, though, and a real bad attitude. Guess it wasn't used to visitors."

She poured, set the glass down in front of him. "You get bit?"

"Nah, fucker had claws, too." He lifted the glass, savored the mouthful for a moment before swallowing. "I'm Dean."

"Lucy," she said.

"I love Lucy," he said, taking another swallow. "The show, I mean. I love 'I Love Lucy.'"

"Would you believe that's the first time I ever heard that one?" she said, cocking an eyebrow.

He grinned crookedly. "Pretty girl like you, I'd believe every word outta your mouth."

"Honey, I might not be old enough to be your mother, but I can guaran-damn-tee you that I've heard a lot more lines than've ever been spoken by your pretty mouth, and believe me, that one don't impress."

He pursed his lips, drained his glass. "You know, I think you're the first bartender who's ever called me pretty who I haven't punched in the nuts."

"Should I take that as a compliment or just be glad I don't have nuts for you to punch?"

"The first," he said. "Definitely the first. Though I'm glad we got the nuts thing outta the way, 'cause if you did, it would'a been one mindfuck of a revelation in bed."

She poured again without asking; he nodded his thanks. "Are you always this forward or is tonight special?"

"Hey, I might be dying of whatever the fuck tried to tear my ribs out," he said. "Could be my last night, I wanna make every moment count."

"Oh, they're counting," she said. "Believe me, they're counting. Guy comes into my bar, bleeds all over the place and then assumes I'm gonna do anything more than eighty-six his ass and call the cops? Counts for a hell of a lot."

"'Bleeding all over the place?'" he echoed. "Are you always this much of a drama queen or is tonight special?"

"'It's just a flesh wound,' right? Last hunter who went with that one near dropped dead half an hour later, fucked up my nice clean floor."

"So you're used to hunters, then."

"Eighty percent of my business, kiddo. You're telling me outta all the bars in the world, you happen to walk into mine with a story about something with fangs without knowing that?"

He lifted one shoulder in a half-hearted shrug, winced like the gesture hurt more than he'd expected. "Okay, so maybe I heard a thing or two."

"Yeah, maybe you did," she said, just as blandly. He shrugged again, more restrained this time, and looked down at his whiskey. She bit her lip for a moment, went back to polishing the bar. Not that it really needed as much, but it wasn't like there was much else to do, being fully stocked already and what with it being past two on a Tuesday morning. Even the asshole who'd turned off the Johnny Thunders was shrugging into his coat, staggering for the door. It was good to know there were still some people in the world who had to get up at a decent hour. She hadn't been one for a long time. "So you come to town to hunt something you don't even know what it was and you nearly get yourself killed in the process."

"Looks like," he said. "Except for the nearly getting killed part. Like I said, flesh wound."

"Uh-huh," she said. "And you end up here looking for what, exactly?"

"Hey, sign above the door said 'bar,' I thought maybe it'd be a good place to have a drink. You get a lotta people looking for something else?"

"You'd be surprised," she said. Glanced at his empty glass. "Last call." Pitched for his ears only; there wasn't anybody else in the room anymore.

He nodded. "The thing is," she said as she poured, "most hunters, they patch themselves up before they go out looking for a victory drink."

He swallowed, licked his lips and downed half of his glass before answering. She waited. She was used to waiting. "So I, uh. Thing is, it's kinda my, uh. My birthday. 'm twenty-five as of, uh, about two hours ago."

"And you're celebrating by getting drunk with your new chest wound."

He scratched the back of his neck. "Looks like, huh? I mean, unless you're offering."

"Nah, I only drink with bruised extremities," she said. She wondered for a moment, when he didn't react, if he'd lost more blood than she'd thought or if maybe it was that terribly unfunny of a joke, and then he grinned.

"Funny," he said. "That's funny."

She shrugged. "So why's it a sweet kid like you can't find somebody to drink with him on his birthday, huh?"

He lifted his glass again and she tried not to watch him swallow. She was nobody's mother and maybe it'd be legal, but that wouldn't make it right; the kid looked like he needed a hell of a lot more than she could give. "That's a hell of a long story," he said. "And one I'd have to be a hell of a lot drunker to tell." He raised an eyebrow as though in invitation, or in challenge. He probably thought it was cute, and he was right. She sighed.

"Lemme lock up," she said. "Do me a favor, put something else on the jukebox in the meantime."

"You got it," he said. She pretended not to watch as he pushed himself up from the bar with more effort than she thought it ought to have taken, pretended not to notice his limp as he maneuvered around tables toward the jukebox. Don't, she told herself. She turned away.

He was back at the bar by the time she was done. He'd helped himself to the bottle and it sat next to his glass on the scarred wood. "Didn't figure you for a Janis fan," she said.

He shrugged. The movement looked less painful, this time, and she glanced at the decreased level of amber in the bottle, thought again that this was a bad idea. Sure, because the alternative, letting him die of exposure and blood loss in some alleyway on the way back to his motel room or car or wherever the fuck he was staying would have been so much better, she told herself, and told herself too that the thought was motivated almost entirely by compassion, humanity, kindness. Not at all because dangerous, pretty boys with tragic stories and heartbreaking smiles were a weakness she'd never managed to outgrow.

She had a whole collection of scars testifying to that, not all of which were mental.

Aly had had eyes like his, huge and green and haunted.

She slid onto the stool beside his, reached over the counter for a glass of her own and poured a few fingers neatly. "So you were gonna tell me a story."

"Sure you don't want a better one?" he said. "I got lots'a stories."

"I'm sure you do," she said. "And if I wanted bullshit, all I'd have to do is listen to any of the assholes in here every night of the week, and they'd be paying me to do it."

"Hey, I'm paying you," he said.

"You haven't yet," she said.

"I haven't finished drinking yet," he said. "It's all on my tab."

"You don't have a tab," she said. "I'm waiting until I hear your story to decide whether to make you one or just to take your ass to the E.R."

He bit his lip. "E.R's not so much an option. There's gonna be cops there and I'm kinda . . . wanted."

There was a pistol below the cash register and she was carrying four knives on her person. She reminded herself that a rational person would be afraid and would be comforted by remembering their presence. "For?"

"You know what it's like, you said you know hunters."

"Point taken. So tell me your story. Twenty-five years old and you're out hunting monsters instead of in some pretty girl's -- boy's?" His eyes widened, narrowed quickly. "Girl's, then, bed."

He drained his glass, refilled it with less than steady hands. "Monsters don't take the night off, why should I, you know?" She raised an eyebrow and he shrugged again. "So normally I would, right, I'd be all over the pretty girl's bed. And all over her."

"But tonight's different."

"Yeah," he said. He drained his glass, slammed it back down on the bar with enough force that it spun out of his grip and he had to reach hastily, clumsily, to keep it from rolling away. "Tonight, tonight I figure, what's the fucking point? Like it's gonna be any different from last year. And there's a job to do, so I go and I, I do it, and this whole time I'm thinking maybe this year's the year he's gonna call, and I'm waiting for my phone to ring, and I'm hoping so fucking hard that maybe he's gonna, maybe not even say anything, you know? Just that his name's gonna show up on my fuckin' caller ID, that I don't even notice when this fucking, like, snake demon with claws comes up behind me and it nearly slices me open before I can even reach my gun."

She took a sip of her own whiskey. Swallowed. "I thought it was just a flesh wound."

"My flesh's wounded," he said. "Works out to about the same thing."

She nodded. Fair enough. "Who's 'he?'"

Dean blinked. "'He?'"

"You said you were hoping that 'he' was gonna call."

"Oh. My, uh. My kid brother, he's at college."

"And you don't talk?"

"Not since he told me to get the fuck outta his life." His smile was bitter. It made him look old. Much older than twenty-five. "But I keep hoping, you know? This stupid, pathetic, fucked-up hope. And fuck, I think I'm kinda wasted, I don't know why I'm telling you this shit. I never told anybody this shit, not even Dad."

She hummed in her throat. "You got someplace to stay?"

"You're kicking me out?" Surprise in his voice, though not as much as she'd have expected a little while ago, and not as much hurt as she'd have expected, either.

"From the bar, yeah, but I was gonna suggest going to my place upstairs." She paused. "Unless there's someplace I can give you a ride to, 'cause no way you're driving like this."

"Well, okay then." His grin was brighter now than it had been, less bitter, but she thought that was mostly to do with the whiskey.

She hadn't even known him two hours, and already he was breaking her heart. Well, she had seen it coming.

He kissed her like manslaughter on the stairs, got his hands under her ass and lifted her against the wall, his tongue slipping into her mouth. She reached for the banister with one hand and kissed him back, eased away when her other hand touched the dampness of his shirt. "Let's get you cleaned up first," she said, willing her heart to slow. His eyes were hooded, unreadable in the poor light of the stairwell, but after a moment, he nodded, his head lolling forward for a second until she took him by the arm.

In the bright light of her bathroom, he shrugged out of his jacket and she helped him lift his shirt over his head. Half-naked, he sank down to the floor, his back to the wall like a cornered punch-drunk prizefighter or a caged animal. Blood slicked all down his chest, and when she touched his ribs, close to what she thought was the source of the blood, he flinched. "You should really be seeing a doctor," she said. She already knew that he wouldn't.

"'m fine," he said, his words slurred, his head tilted back against the wall and his eyes closed. Maybe he'd pass out, then, and make this easier. She ran water in the sink, soaked a towel, pressed it to his chest. This time, he didn't react.

By the time his chest was clean and the wound visible, the towel was permanently ruined and he was asleep, breathing heavily.

Claws, he'd said. Sure, some claws looked like knives, but.

Lucy had patched up more than one knife wound in her life, and that was exactly what this looked like.

She wondered what he was wanted for, exactly. "Being a hunter" covered a lot of things.

He didn't wake, not while she bandaged him, not trusting herself to do stitches at the moment, at that angle, and even when she had finished, when she shook his shoulder and spoke his name, he woke only enough to be guided into the bedroom, guided down onto the bed, his head on the pillows. She told herself that it was because he was passed out drunk, and not a little exhausted, too, or that maybe it was because he trusted her for some fucking stupid reason.

She knew herself better than that, though. She knew what it was like not to care anymore.

She shrugged off her t-shirt, stepped out of her jeans, slid beneath the blankets on the other side of the bed. She could hear the garbage trucks beginning their routes long before she fell asleep.

He was still there in the morning, still breathing, still alive, still asleep. She pulled on one of the t-shirts Brian had left behind. It was large enough on her to provide at least a modicum of decency, or at least the illusion thereof. She was making coffee in the kitchen when she heard a small noise behind her. She turned sharply out of reflex and he was leaning in the doorway of her bedroom, barefoot, in the jeans he'd slept in, the white of the bandages somehow startling on his chest despite the fact that she'd been the one to put them there. He blinked red-rimmed eyes at her, flushed. "Lucy," he said, cleared his throat. "I was, uh. Thanks for, for fixing me up. Sorry I was so fucked up."

"The snake demon you said attacked you," she said. "It have a knife?"

His smile hurt to look at, self-deprecating as it was, and it didn't reach his eyes. "You know the world's fucked up when even snake demons gotta go around armed."

She poured him a cup of coffee and he shuffled forward to take it. Their hands brushed briefly. His jaw worked, but he didn't say anything.

"I'm sorry your brother didn't call you," she said.

His shoulder twitched. "I should be used to it, it's been years."

"Doesn't make it any easier," she said mildly.

"I guess," he said. "Look, I'll get going, get outta your hair, okay?"

"You could stay for breakfast," she said. "I'm not a great cook, but there's cereal, or toast."

"Thanks, but I'm not really hungry. And I should hit the road, there's a place I gotta be by tonight."

"Coffee, then."

He inclined his head ever so slightly. "Coffee, okay." She reached out to take his cup from him; she refilled it along with her own and then they sat side by side on her sofa, looking out the window. It had been light for hours, but the air still looked cold, and the rooftops across the way looked glossy with rain. She drew her knees up to her chest like a child. She would be thirty-nine in the spring and she was sitting in her underwear and a band t-shirt next to a beautiful broken boy, just like she had nineteen years ago, a month before Aly had killed himself. She felt older than she had then, felt every one of those nineteen years, but she didn't feel any smarter. She still didn't have the words that would make anything okay.

She looked over at him, at Dean. He was studying his hands. They looked like boxer's hands, fighter's hands. They were. "It wasn't a snake demon," he said suddenly. "I was hustling." He didn't look up.

She set her cup down on the coffee table and reached over to take his from him. He let it go easily and she set it alongside her own. She placed her hands on his face, on his jaw, and he let her. Stubble rasped against her palms, making them itch. "Sweetheart," she said. His eyes were lowered; he still wouldn't meet hers. She leaned in, kneeling on the cushion. She wanted to say something else, something more, but she couldn't think of what. "Sweetheart," she repeated. It was repetitive, but at least it wasn't asinine.

"You don't gotta say anything," he said. Her hands were still on his face and she could feel his mouth moving as he spoke. "I just wanted, I thought you should know the truth."

"The truth is that you got hurt," she said. "The way it happened doesn't make it better or worse."

"Yeah," he said. He looked up at her at last, eyes like the broken bottle glass lining the alley two stories below. His hands found their places on her face, a mirror of her own on his, and when he kissed her this time she thought, or remembered, that sometimes sorrow and grief tasted like nothing more than coffee; sometimes they were intangible and indefinable and that made them easy to cover up, but so much harder to drive away.

He fucked her slow and easy on the couch; she mouthed at his neck, bit at his shoulders, but was careful not to touch his chest any more than she had to, any more than he demanded. She knew that hurt helped, sometimes, so she didn't tell him not to aggravate the wound, didn't tell him to be careful. The clouds came over the sun again and darkened the room and she heard a siren pass by somewhere far off. His jeans were caught around his calves and she was still wearing Brian's t-shirt. He palmed her tits through the fabric, slipped one hand down her belly to stroke her between the thighs. When he came he buried his face against her neck, in the tangle of her unbraided hair, and what started as a curse ended rough and raw. She didn't come, but she hadn't expected to, and she didn't need to.

They lay together for a little while, his head resting on her shoulder. She wondered, not at all for the first time, how it would have been with Aly, but that was a dangerous thing to think about, and nothing good ever came of it. She wanted a cigarette, but that was such a fucking cliché and she didn't even know where she'd left her pack. Dean kissed her neck and eased himself up, standing so that he could do up his jeans. She sat up, too, and tugged up her panties, adjusted the neckline of her shirt so that it wasn't hanging off of one shoulder.

Dean licked his lips. "Do you, uh. My shirt, the one I was wearing yesterday, was it salvageable?"

"Only as crime scene evidence, kid," she said. "Bedroom closet, shelf all the way on the left, there's some shirts my, a friend left, should fit you if you wanna try one of 'em."

He nodded. "Thanks." She smiled, ducked her head and reached for her coffee. It had gone cold, but it was drinkable. He was wearing one of Brian's shirts beneath his jacket when he came back, and he was wearing his boots, too. He ran a hand through his hair, shifted as he stood before her. "I should, uh."

"The place you gotta be by tonight," she said. "Right."

"Right." He slid a hand into the pocket of his jacket, came out with a wallet. "The tab from last night, did you, uh, get a chance to calculate it, or--" He'd flipped the wallet open as he spoke and he paled abruptly when he caught a glimpse of its contents. She couldn't see much, from where she was sitting, but she could see enough to know that it didn't contain any cash. She wondered how much he'd lost, if it had been money at all.

"On the house," she said. That, at least, she could do. It wasn't much, in the scheme of things, but it was better than nothing. "Happy twenty-fifth."

His breath, when he exhaled, was shaky. He looked shaky. She looked at him and saw a scared kid in army boots and a leather jacket, battle-weary and pretending to be tougher than he thought he was, she looked at him and saw the pretty girl she'd seen and fallen in love with the day that she met Aly, she looked at him and saw the way Aly had wanted to see himself. She wondered if that would have been enough to save him.

She looked at Dean and she wanted to save him, too, but in the end, she'd only ever been able to save herself, and not very well, either.

"Get your chest checked out," she said. "Once you're across state lines or . . . wherever."

"Yeah," he said. He sounded like he was lying, but she had no choice but to believe him, if she wanted to be able to sleep at night.

She hadn't been good at sleeping at night for a long time. One more thing to keep her up wouldn't matter, not in the long run.

"Okay then," she said. "Take care a' yourself, Dean."

He smiled crookedly at that, and he raised a hand in something that was half-wave and half-salute, and then he left.

She had known better, she told herself, sitting cross-legged on her couch and listening as his footsteps faded away, down the hall and down the stairs, going somewhere she didn't know. He hadn't lied to her when he'd left. He hadn't made a promise that he didn't know he'd be able to keep. She wondered if it would have been easier if he had.

She carried both mugs to the kitchen and set his in the sink. She ran hot water over it, and she turned off the tap. She refilled her cup with hot coffee, hot enough that she could barely taste it over the way it burned her mouth.

--

end

whereupon @ 2011-06-21T12:30:00

2011-06-21T20:30:35Z

escherzo has done a brilliant reading of "And Back Again" and has posted it here, where it might be downloaded and listened to. :)

whereupon @ 2011-05-24T10:29:00

2011-05-24T18:29:30Z

And Back Again
by whereupon
Supernatural: Sam/Dean, early-ish seasons, nc-17, 2,900 words.
They both know the danger of ritual.
lavinialavender made this much better than it was, once more.

They both know the danger of ritual, inherent in it, how maybe the first couple of times it seems like nothing, but power's gathering all the same, exponential-like, weaving something deep and dark and dangerous that sometimes can't be stopped until it's lit on fire, bones crackling, bleeding unholy light against the sides of a fresh-dug grave. S'mores, Dean says sometimes, shoulda brought marshmallows, Sammy, but they both know, too, better than to eat something forged from that kind of power, tempered with the last breaths of a spirit wrenched broken and wrong. They might've been raised rough, their Latin a tool of war rather than something mumbled on bended knees before the grace of the Lord and all that shit (though sometimes, sure, it's that, too, though it might not be the same grace-of-the-Lord you hear about in church; it's a matter of interpretation. Perspective, maybe.), but that's not to say their skills with that particular deceased language don't rival those of the most pious altarboy ever lay awake dreaming about the particular brand of salvation not found in the onionskin pages of some old leatherbound book but in the soft hips, curves and swell of a pretty girl's flesh.

That's the way you learn the best, you know. When you're atoning for something you know you did wrong, that's when you're sure to pay attention. Line the ruined places -- wounds whether on body, soul, or the dirt of the earth -- with salt, whether it be diluted in tears or sprinkled fresh from a battered canvas sack kept in the trunk between the box of ammo and the box of paperback novels; make it hurt, and whatever it was won't come back. It's just as true of mistakes -- words said at the wrong time, words said to the wrong person, and things which weren't mistakes but which hurt all the same -- as it is of the things they hunt.

They know, thirdly, their myths. Maybe they don't know where they came from, the origins per se -- though you might not want to be sure of that, underestimating them wouldn't be wise -- but they know as well as any classicist that you don't go around making claims against the gods (not unless you got a full set of weaponry, at least, and even then, hubris'll get you every damn time), as well as any folklorist that when you hear something out in the woods at night, you don't go wandering off to see what it is; ghosts have ways of blinding you, but if your lady love truly does need you, she won't be hiding out amongst the demonblack shadows of pine; they know as well as any storyteller than just because somebody slaps the words "the end" on something and shoves it six feet closer to Charon doesn't mean it's over.

They're not dumb, those boys, no matter that they were born the non-song version of just about a mile from Texarkana, middle of nowhere, middle of the whole fucking world, god-damned and god-blessed America with its prairie-gold heart that turns to ice and wind that'll scour your bones, come midwinter. No matter the way their daddy made sure they'll never forget where they came from, Midwest in their voices and dirt under their fingernails, the way sometimes late at night (or very early in the morning, they're two sides of the same coin anyway), when there's not enough sleep and no chance of rest for miles, their words start to sound like Texas, riding cattle dawn 'til dusk, drawls like anything in their lives has ever been slow and easy.

Yeah, I know, get to the point; all this poetry is nice, but it's not story, no rise and fall of action, no tension, no dénouement, as they say. That's what I'm telling you, though. This is the goddamn point, you want me to be precise about it. They know what they're doing; they don't do this kind of thing by accident. Sure, there's been times they got on the wrong side of a witch, maybe pissed off somebody selling spells, maybe Dean couldn't keep his smart mouth shut or Sammy asked the wrong question at the right time, tipped somebody off as to who they were, but that's different; that's work. They get cursed, they figure it out, they break the spell. Maybe they break a few fingers in the process along the way, and none their own. (Maybe they break a few hearts, too, but that's the way this kind of thing goes. There's girls and boys alike who can only ever fall in love with somebody they know's leaving, who can only ever whisper sweetheart when they're looking at the prospect of fading into the rearview, and that's not the fault of the somebody-in-question. It's not necessarily the girl-or-boy's, either, when you come down to it--)

Which isn't to say because that's work, this is play; it's not. Just because Sam shows his dimples, sweep of hair falling across his eyes in a decent approximation of innocence, or Dean smirks all prizefighter bravado doesn't mean it's anything but dead serious, and considering the possibilities, the possible, all-too-likely consequences, dead serious is just about as perfect a description you or anybody else could ask for.

They're courting death, those boys. Courting worse things, too; death isn't ever the worst thing there is. There's being left behind, for one. That particular scenario, however, is one that they'll be avoiding, the way they're going. And anyway, they've been courting death all their life; it's something they're used to, something they know how to do, razor's edge and they walk it like it's nothing, grin like there's a net strung below to catch them when they fall and they've never once needed it. It's all illusion, of course, and they know that; they've been reminded of it every day of their lives, they remind each other still, every goddamn day. (Unless they don't, unless they keep going forever, they've got all they need, right? They've got each other, they've got that car black as the underworld, maybe they don't need an end. Like I said, endings are only ever lies, anyway: turn the page, keep going. There's always a story there, even if it hasn't been written yet.)

Yeah, that is the point. They know full fucking well what they're doing, and they do it anyway. It looks a bit different every time, different lighting, different background, different soundtrack, but it's the same damn story, maybe a myth itself. Peel back the details, the skin, boil it down and you get this: Sam and Dean laying themselves bare for each other, before each other, giving each other their hearts, their souls, their names, their honor, the whole goddamn thing.

And you say, yeah, what else is new? And you got a smart mouth on you, too, but I see your point. They've been doing that ever since day one, right? All that shit about where they came from, about fire, about how this began, raised like warriors. Codependence, you could call it, blind love, absolute faith, whatever. Devotion.

But this is different, you say. This is wrong, this is something else entirely. And maybe it looks that way, but that's an illusion, too. Because this is true: there's never been somebody else for either of them, no matter how many times they tried, how close it seemed. I'll die for you never sounded the same from anybody else's mouth -- as if anybody else ever had occasion to say it, which they didn't.

So what is this, you say, sex? Fucking? Making love? And I say yes, pick any of the above, or make up a new one, choose your favorite verb. It's one hell of a line to cross, but they've been crossing lines all their damn lives; they live outside of lines. Without boundaries, where it comes to each other, which is every damn second of every damn minute of every damn hour, and so on, you get the point.

It looks a bit different, every time, but it's always the same, at the heart of it. Same ritual, same meaning. Damning themselves for each other, promising themselves to each other, and a score of other things, an array of other things, a thousand other things, some of which there aren't even words for; words don't even come close.

(For skin hospital-pale or summer-burned, freckled shoulders, muscle-plane and a map of scars; a kiss like a gut-punch, trigger-finger pull, love like you've been gutshot, like a knife between the ribs, the whole crushing weight of it and how you can learn to live like that, can get so you can't imagine living without it--)

And this, now and at last, is how it looks this time, if you're still here after all of that. I know; nobody likes a didactic. Forgive me, but it's context, and necessary; without it, this doesn't mean a thing. It's just two boys, after all. Two boys fumbling for each other, pushing against each other, hearts beating hard. Could be anybody, almost.

But it's not. It's them.

Side of the road, so far north they might well be into Canada, but it's summer, or at least not winter, no snow on the ground yet, so latitude's not as much of an issue as it would be (will be) another time. A backroad, of course, trees on either side, several shades of green, yellow, it's summer after all on this road that's named with a number, might as well be any other spoke in a great big wheel, sure, you know the song. It's not Seger on the tape deck, though; it's Page and Plant, Bonham and JPJ himself. Bring it on home, indeed, and there's weeds the color of wheat growing up from the ditch and a black-winged bird or two wheeling high overhead, and the sky's that huge wide-open blue like somebody blew a hole through this universe and into the next one, the kind of sky you only get when you're miles from anywhere in particular, too far out even for telephone lines, sky like it could swallow you up, drink you down.

This is background, you understand, details to set the scene; they don't register any of this, aside from maybe the music, guitar burn like a baseline, hardly more than white noise They're busy, see, distracted, because Sam's got Dean backed against the side of the car, one leg between Dean's own, but Dean's not going to go easy; he's got a hand in Sam's hair, is dragging his brother's face down so he doesn't have to stretch when he kisses Sam, not rough, but not soft, either.

Why'd they stop, you want to know, what are they doing here, other than the obvious? You want the truth? Listen. Listen close.

For the glory of it. Because they could. For this.

That's it, that's the whole reason, that's the truth, cross my heart and -- you know the rest.

Dean's kissing Sam, but Sam's kissing him, too, so it's really more that they're kissing each other. One-hundred-percent mutual. Dean's hand's still in Sam's hair, tangled there (Sam ought to cut his damn hair, make himself less of a target, but then they couldn't do things like this, or not exactly like this, anyway--), tight and hot on the back of Sam's neck, but Sam's got his hands on Dean, now, palm on the side of Dean's jaw, tilting Dean's face up -- he doesn't want to have to do all the work around here -- but don't get any ideas about one of them or the other being the girl in this relationship. That's not how it works, it's not even close, and if that's how you want to look at it, you can take your assumptions right back to 19-fucking-50, don't let the door smack your ass on the way out.

So they're kissing, right, Dean's got his tongue in Sam's mouth or maybe Sam's got his tongue in Dean's, both happen, the whole situation is, let's just say, shall we, fluid, in flux. Schrödinger's makeout session. Mouths, jaws, necks: they're both going to be sporting a couple of new bruises tomorrow, but blood's rising to the surface all over, you get my meaning, and this is far from either of their first time at the -- let's go with rodeo, the cowboy motif's nice. Got a kind of ring to it, don't you think?

So neither of them is rushing, exactly; it's kind of a contest in that way, seeing who can hold out the longest, the delay not at all from lack of knowledge. If either of them wanted, they could have the other out and gasping, sputtering, swearing, in less than a minute, maybe two; it's been like that, before, maybe not often, but often enough for it not to be a new thing. Sometimes it has to happen like that. Sometimes they're desperate, terrified, swear to me you're not going anywhere/I swear, I'm right here, except neither one of them would ever say something quite so pansy-ass, they claim, at least not at times like that, so they make do. Actions speak louder than words, after all, just like your momma or whoever, Otis Redding, maybe, if you grew up on music, told you.

But foreplay's only fun for so long, less so if you're not the one getting the attention, you know what I mean, and, look, neither of them's much for social niceties --

What? Yeah, he'll fool you every time. You gotta look past the skin; it's in the eyes.

So where was I, right, it's mutual, then, still, when they go for belt buckles, belts, zipper-flies. Opening each other's jeans, breathing like there's only one set of lungs, one heart, one body between them, though it's very clearly two, when Sam pauses for a second, just for a second, and Dean whines. Later he might claim it was a growl, or a mutter, a threat, gonna kill you you don't-- but we know the score. We know the story.

Trust me, I'm the one telling it.

And maybe you've heard that all writers are liars, that's what you say. That, however, is neither here nor there. You probably heard it from a writer, anyway; they like to talk big, you know, like to make themselves sound tougher than they are. But there's a difference between a writer and a story: you can tell lies about the one, but if you try to do the same with the other, it falls flat. Rings hollow, dead. You know, when it happens.

This is not a lie. This is a story.

Sam's the one who comes first, Dean's hand on his cock and his hips jerking, everything kicking into overdrive, into burnout, that long perfect slide of a ten-point landing, and he's not saying much of anything right now, not doing much of anything, not thinking much of anything, either, and that leaves Dean to do the work for both of them, just then; luckily it doesn't take much before he's following his brother right over that same cliff and oh, all the way down. The two of them slumped together, carrying each other's weight, heart-to-heart, let's say, because Sam's maybe slumping a little more, all that height to carry, you know, it's gotta get old. Tiresome. And both of their jeans are ruined, but it's temporary, nothing a cycle at the laundromat won't fix; a little salt isn't anything, is nothing new.

That's the other thing about salt, the thing I didn't say before. Sure as you can use it to mark a mistake, you can use it to mark other kinds of choices, too. Death, and life -- it's the intent that matters. Ritual, you know.

It's all just gestures, just words, unless you believe.

Unless you believe in the two of them, breathing hard, and how it's like nobody else in the world ever existed, at that moment. Like the world itself might not exist, might end on the other side of the car at Dean's back, and maybe just behind Sam's shoulder. In a couple of minutes, sure, maybe Dean will reach into the backseat for a rag, maybe it'll trade hands, maybe they'll straighten, meet each other's eyes, nod (if that, if that's even necessary; it's not, of course, but sometimes they do it anyway, affirming), turn away. Get back in the car and drive.

That's it, see. That's the ritual. That's everything. And sure, you can say, rituals are holy things, sacred, have to be done in the right place, on the right date, to count, in nomine patris, forgive me father, that's your own right.

But those aren't the only holy things, things done in churches, not the only promises, confessions, that count. And maybe it's a dangerous path they've chosen to go down -- rituals are never things to be taken lightly, you remember that -- but they do it willingly, and they do it for each other, and they do it over, and over, and over again. No matter the cost. Sometime's blood's nothing, compared to the cost of not bleeding.

They do it without blinking, too. Without hesitation. And they never, ever look back.

Let's call that an end, shall we?

--

whereupon @ 2011-05-01T09:54:00

2011-05-01T17:55:13Z

Wire
by whereupon
Supernatural: Sam/Dean, preseries, R, 1,813 words.
Dean isn't meant to be here.
lavinialavender made this much better than it was.
For maerhys.

Dean isn't meant to be here. That's part of what it means to have dropped out, to have decided three years ago that he doesn't believe he can ever be anything more than good aim and a quick finger on the trigger. If he wants to fuck up his future, throw it away on what Dad wants for them -- or what Dad wants for himself, really, because there's no way Dad can think a life spent hungry and broke, bloody and exhausted and always ashamed, always, is what's best for his kids -- that's his own choice, much as Sam might hate Dean for making it (or at least hate Dad for forcing him into it, and it's always been easier for Sam to take his anger out on Dean, no matter the real target. Dean makes it easy. Dean asks for it), but it means that school's off-limits, now. He can't show up like this, saunter into the library like he actually belongs here and grin at the librarian when she looks like she might ask him for his hall pass; this is Sam's, and Sam's alone. Just like Dad's smiles are for Dean alone, and so when they drag into the kitchen after yet another hunt that lasted all night, Sam pretends not to have worried, and pretends not to notice the way Dad claps his hand on Dean's shoulder and slides him a cup of coffee before asking whether Sam finished his training.

"What'cha reading?" Dean says, sliding into the chair across the table from Sam. His boot nudges up against Sam's sneaker and Sam glares at him. It's May and already summer; sunlight filters in through the huge windows overlooking the track, scuffed and drought-dry, and illuminates the particles of dust floating through the air. It cuts through Dean's hair, too, turns the spikes into a mess of shadows and light-shards, pinfeathers of gold. Sam refuses to notice; he has a history paper due tomorrow.

"It's not like you'd know it," Sam says. A little meanly, but Dean's the one intruding, here. "Aren't you meant to be somewhere else?"

Dean leans forward, rests his elbows on the table and his head in his hands. A bruise is blossoming on his jawline. The girl at the next table is staring. No one else knows that the bruises continue down Dean's chest, though, no one but Sam, just as Sam is the only one who shouted at him for risking his life on something as stupid as a barfight in the first place, and who brought him pills and water afterward and sat up with him until eventually Dean fell asleep on the couch with the ghost-light of the television flickering across his face.

Twenty bucks, Dean, yeah, that was totally worth it. That woulda bought, what, not even your fucking coffin?

Told you before, Sammy, I don't want a damn coffin, I'm'a go out in flames. He'd turned his head, then, spat blood. 'Sides, you're welcome for the goddamn lunch money.

"Why, am I interrupting something? 'Cause, Sammy, I gotta tell you, I'm pretty sure everybody in that book's been dead for like a couple hundred years. Sorry, dude. Looks like you got stood up." Dean lowers one hand to the table, drums a quick beat, one-two-three and pause. The punctuation to a joke Sam refuses to acknowledge, but it's wrong; he's moving too slowly, moving like maybe it hurts to breathe. He should be at the motel they're calling home for now, not dragging himself across town to shadow Sam.

"Did Dad send you?" Sam asks. "He said we're not leaving for another week. He promised." And maybe it's stupid to be seventeen years old and still believe it when his dad makes a promise, especially considering how many his dad's broken in the past, but. Dad swore, this time. And Cameron Roitfield smiled at him in class yesterday, and Mr. Greer said he'd have a letter of recommendation ready by Monday, and.

Sam is so fucking sick of leaving people behind. Of leaving chances behind. One of these days, there won't be any left.

"Uh, yeah, I was there," Dean says, raising his eyebrows, the words textured with amusement as though he thinks Sam might have forgotten, might have forgotten him standing in the corner of the room, shoulders slumped and this look on his face like he wished he were anywhere else. Like Sam might have forgotten the chipped-glass hurt in his eyes when Dad had stormed out and Dean had looked up at last. "Don't get your panties in a twist, okay. Dad's still in Reno, last I heard, I just came by to check on you, see how you were doin'. And I gotta say, Sam, the girls here? Ten times hotter than the last place."

"Jesus Christ, Dean, I'm going to be going here for another week, can you maybe try not to humiliate me?" It was the wrong thing to say; he knows it as soon as he says it. Asking Dean not to embarrass him is tantamount to daring Dean to do as much.

"Sure, okay," Dean says. "I meant, they're ten times hotter than the last place, but not a patch on you, Miss America." Sam rolls his eyes. "And by the way, is this jealousy thing gonna last as long as your drama club obsession?"

"I don't know, how long's your tendency to stalk me gonna last?"

Dean's grin is crooked, sharp-edged, and for a half-second it looks like a wince. "All your life, buddy boy," he says. "Consider yourself lucky."

"Dean," Sam says. "Look. It's really very nice of you to come stalk me -- and by nice I mean creepy, and next time, you can just say that you're bored and ran out of sharp things to play with, I won't mind -- but I do have work to do. It's called getting an education."

Dean reaches across the table at last, nudges Sam's stack of books with one finger. "Hey, all work and no play makes Sam a dull boy." The stack threatens to topple and Sam steadies it. "Also makes people go psycho and kill their families. See, this is called watching my own back."

"No, it's called mistaking fiction for reality," Sam says. "But if you wanna test that theory, sure, stay there for another five minutes and see whether or not you end up with a pencil in your eye. Maybe I'll write a paper on that, instead."

"Dude, whoa, vicious," Dean says, eyebrows raised in mock surprise even as he's smirking in victory. "Somebody needs to take a break from the studying. Is it past your naptime or what?"

"Dean." Whole worlds in that word, sometimes, but right now, he only means leave me alone, this isn't yours, I love you but you're only making this harder.

"C'mon, take a walk with me," Dean says. His boot nudges up against Sam's sneaker again. Insistent. Unquestioning. Sam does not jump; he grits his teeth, instead. Feels a muscle twitch in his jaw. "Five minutes," Dean says. "Then I'll get outta your hair."

Not like there's any chance of that happening, ever, but Sam shrugs. It's a good day for believing in forever, and for believing in endings which do not hurt. "Fine," he says, and gathers his books, his papers, his pencils, the ephemera of hastily-scrawled notes. Dean doesn't help. Sam doesn't look at him, not wanting to see what might be on his face. Whether he'd merely be looking out the windows, or have his eyes closed, content for a moment to be still, or whether he would be watching Sam with that strange unsettling expression that is not quite resentment, nor loss, nor sadness alone, and which would vanish as soon as he sensed Sam looking, the way it always does.

Dean spends his whole life remaking himself into who other people think he should be. Into who Dad thinks he should be, and who Sam thinks he should be, mostly, because everything else is just a cover story, discarded as soon as they leave town. It's heartbreaking and kind of pathetic, and sometimes Sam hates him for it.

He finishes shoving things into his backpack and gets to his feet. Dean shoves his own chair back, slings an arm around Sam's shoulders as soon as they're close enough to touch. Warm press of his body all down Sam's side even as he's glancing back at the girl who was watching them. A freshman, somebody whose name Sam doesn't know, and who probably doesn't know his.

No one knows them, here, and for once, just for a second, maybe that's okay. For the best, as the heavy wooden doors close behind them and his hand settles on the back of Dean's neck, fingers brushing the ends of short hair. In a week he will remember this and he might hate it, might hate himself for getting distracted, for letting Dean do this to him.

(For letting himself do this to Dean--)

But right now they are walking together down the hallways, empty now as classes are in session; right now they are bursting through the front doors of the school, nothing can hold them, there are no rules, not for them; right now Sam is dropping his backpack onto dirt and gravel and Dean is pushing him up against the sun-scorched brick, out of view of the parking lot, and Sam is closing his eyes against the pinwheels of light, against his brother's hands beneath his shirt, Dean's breath exhaled as a hiss, as a curse, when Sam skims the pads of his fingers across Dean's chest, across the marks like maps which only hint at that which his brother will do for him. When Sam moves his hands lower, undoing, unraveling, blood rising.

Five minutes will become ten, fifteen. Dean will step back. Sam will straighten his collar and run his hands through his hair and Dean will turn away, his expression unreadable. Sam will go back into the school, and will try to remember how to be normal, to be someone whose edges have not yet been defined, whose boundaries are unfamiliar, as of yet uncrossed. Who will not dream of this years later and will be unable, for a moment, to meet the eyes of the girl he loves. Someone he does not know will call his name and it will take him a second to turn around in recognition; it will not sound right, will not sound like his, when it is not Dean who speaks it, when it's not rough, choked, tarnished and pressed like a secret against the soft spot just below his ear, told to bone and skin, the sound of love and grief and the inevitability of growing up, of letting go.

--

end

whereupon @ 2011-04-01T11:33:00

2011-04-01T19:34:05Z

Down
by whereupon
Something I wrote for lavinialavender a few days ago. Supernatural, preseries, Sam/Dean, R. 2,600 words.
There's always going to be something else to hunt.

Fires some forty miles inland, but even out here, between the craggy rocks and the coniferous trees, the air tastes like smoke. Burning forests, though, not bones, and that at least is something new. The fires are too far off for their flames to be audible to Dean, but his mind supplies the deadwood crackle all the same, to match the way the smoke unfurls across the sky, turning blue to bruised orange.

The peak of summer, and the town before last, there were girls in cutoffs and shirts so small they barely counted, July-tan skin and smiles that hinted at things they'd never do with the boys they'd have to see the next day. Here, though, there's hardly anybody. He saw fire crews on the way in, helicopter way up high. The kind of thing he'd wanted to do, once, though he'd dreamed not of wildfire but of the suburban variety. Happy little families he could save, put back together the way his own can never be.

What he's doing now is closer to fighting wildfires, huge, sweeping forces of nature that can never be beaten, that only lie dormant for a day or for a season, waiting for lightning, or for carelessness, or luck.

He gets it, now. There's always going to be something else to hunt. There's no point in thinking about anything else, because there's never going to be anything else. This morning he sat across from Dad in the back-corner booth of a diner named after somebody else's mother, drinking black coffee despite the heat because he needed the caffeine fix, and he didn't once think about stopping, about some other life, even though he's tired past the point of reason, like the ashes from the fires that have been burning all his life have accumulated on his skin, weighing him down more with every step.

He takes showers, trying to scrub it off, to no avail. It's burned down deep, maybe engrained in his soul. Not enough water in the world to scrub that out, and after five minutes, Sam's banging on the bathroom door, telling him to stop being an asshole and save some hot water for somebody else.

Not that he uses what meager hot water there is, though he won't tell Sam that. It'd be one more reason for Sam to give him that look, the one that catches him first and instantly like a slap and second, minutes or hours later, like a splinter, something nagging and insistent, poisoning his blood, leaving him wrecked, vertiginous. It makes him want to hit things, maybe hit Sam, split his knuckles on something.

Sharp, physical pain, because he can tolerate that better than the other.

It's hard to be awake, these days, which is one reason, the safest reason, for the cold water. This constant pervasive heat, smoke in his lungs all the time, always the smell of things burning, half nightmare and half memory. The way one day blends into night blends into the next. They're all the same, and there's never enough sleep to divide them.

His eyes threaten to slip closed, any minute, every minute. His movements are sluggish. This morning he almost knocked the salt shaker across the table, reaching for his coffee mug, but Dad didn't say anything, his eyes on the newspaper, tracking connections, looking for clues, and Sammy too had his head in a book, massive hardbound volume he stole from a library on the other side of the country.

Each time Dean's reminded him about that, he's flushed, glared. Like he's ashamed of it. It was funny the first couple of times, but it got old after that, and Dean's since stopped asking about it, stopped taunting. He doesn't like the look Sam gets on his face, stubborn set of his mouth, defiant cut of his eyes, like he can afford to be ashamed because this isn't going to be his life much longer.

He's planning to run, Dean knows. Sam's not gonna be here for long. He's got his exit route planned, he's only waiting for the day, the right moment.

As soon as he turns eighteen, he'll be out of here, and Dean tries not to think about that, too. About what it'll be like when he's gone. If Dad knows, he hasn't said anything, which Dean's pretty sure means he doesn't know.

If Dad had any idea, he wouldn't be quiet about it. He'd rage, and Sam would yell back, and neither of them would notice when Dean left the room, scuffed down the sidewalk to drink cheap, watery beer in a bar grimy with cigarette smoke and a miasma of desperation. He'd return a few hours later, tasting waxy lipstick and stale hops or maybe tequila, and even if he'd drunk enough for the paranoiac tingling at the back of his neck, this constant feeling like he's being watched, like any minute the trigger's going to be pulled, to loosen, he'd still notice the blood-orange tint of the sun, still taste smoke beneath everything.

He's not sure if there's a point at which he wouldn't. In the split-second before unconsciousness, maybe, or if he were very drunk. He doesn't dare find out; he's not suicidal.

He's not suicidal, which is why he knows that's exactly what would happen, were Dad to have even a hint. It happens every other time there's a fight, every time Dad gives an order without explanation or Sam rolls his eyes and Dad happens to notice. Dean's given up trying to break them apart, once they start shouting, because it never works. These days, he just takes shelter when it happens, heads out so that he can't be used as collateral by either side.

Maybe that makes him a coward. Sometimes, he really doesn't care.

And right now it doesn't matter, because right now, he's got a gun in his hand and dirt on his knees, the thin patches in his jeans having finally given away, and he thinks his nose is bleeding, because he's starting to taste copper, on top of everything else. His ears are ringing, too, and it's kind of hard to focus, his thoughts moving like rainwater or dissipating breath. He blinks and the world seems to skip, jump. He's missed a frame, like the movie of his life has somehow continued on without him.

Threadbare towel in the bathroom this morning; the motel only gave them two, and one of them's Dad's, so Dean's sharing this one with Sam, the way they share absolutely everything, or at least the way they used to. The backseat, when they were little, the same bed, when the only room available's a double. Their scent. Except even though rationally Dean knows that it's the same, that they share it, that there's no difference, that they're using the same soap, the same goddamn cheap shampoo and everything else is skin, he'd swear all the same--

He used that fucking towel this morning, and ever since then, beneath the smell of smoke and his own sweat, he's been breathing Sam.

But none of that's going to matter in a second, not if he doesn't get his ass moving, or more accurately, his arm, so he lifts the gun. The trees look black, beneath the burning sky, as though they've been charred by its proximity. He's going to die on his knees, and he's still not sure how he got there.

Something skeletal, with a carapace like stone, across the clearing and closing the distance fast. He remembers now, in clips, fragments: one of its arms colliding with his chest, and the resulting supernova of white, blossoming galaxy of something just this side of pain, as he hit the ground. Dad telling him to watch his back, and to watch Sam's. Sam rolling his eyes, turning away, I'm not a little kid anymore, Dean, just because Dad still thinks I am doesn't mean it's true. I don't need you.

Anybody'd be off his game, if somebody'd just told him his whole world had ended without his noticing. Not that it wasn't anything Dean hadn't seen coming, or really anything Sam hadn't said before, but this made it official, somehow.

He'd wanted to shout at Sam, maybe knock him down into the dirt and keep him there until both of them were breathless and bruised, make him swear it wasn't true, that he'd been lying, but no way that was an option and Dad was already heading for the other trail, so Dean did what he always does. He followed orders, and he's not sure where Sam went, after that. Maybe he stalked back to the car; wherever he went, Dean hopes he's safe. He hopes this thing, this skittering, chittering thing with eyes that aren't human in the least and far too many joints, doesn't get Sam, too. The gun in his hand weighs a ton, no way he'll be able to pull the trigger, and his head's starting to spin.

He's not going to be sick, though. God, spare him that one final indignity.

And then there's a burst, a gunshot, and he's not sure how he managed to pull that off, thinks maybe he blacked out again, because all of a sudden the creature is on the ground, leaking blood dark enough to be the opposite of stars.

"Dean," Sam says, and of course it was Sam. His brother emerging from the trees, pistol in hand and hair a swath of dark across his eyes, and Dean lets himself pitch forward a little because he knows Sam will catch him. Even though Sam shouldn't have to, Dean's meant to be the one to carry him, carry him home, and maybe this is one of the reasons Sam is leaving; Dean has never been good enough, not for him. "Hey, stay with me," and his hands are clean, sliding across Dean's skin, but Dean imagines them leaving sticky prints all over his forearms, all over his neck, all over his scalp, invisible tattoos. Sam's on his knees beside him and Dean lets himself lean into Sam's grasp, rest his head against Sam's chest. He remembers belatedly the blood on his face, thinks it's going to stain Sam's shirt, Rorschach the soft-worn grey, but Sam doesn't say anything about it.

Sam is lifting Dean's face, is making Dean meet his eyes. Huge, frightened eyes, like a kid again, like when he used to rely on Dean for everything, except he couldn't shoot like that when he was eight, and he wasn't nearly strong enough, big enough, to support Dean's weight the way he is now. "Are you okay?" Sam says.

"I'm fine," Dean says, or tries to say. He doesn't think it comes out quite right, because Sam's forehead furrows and then his head shakes and then he's shifting, adjusting his grip, his palm resting this time on Dean's cheek. Dean resists the urge to lean into it like a cat, tries instead to get to his feet. Sam has to help him more than he'd like to admit. More than he'll admit, later.

He feels jittery, like a caffeine overdose or an adrenaline aftermath, and that's certainly a possibility. "You're concussed," Sam says, ever the speaker of reason and cold harsh reality, but his voice hitches. Hope, Dean thinks, and the thought's enough to start conflagrations of its own. Sam's got his shoulder against Dean's, one arm tight around Dean's back, and the sky is whirling, full of meteors and fireworks. It's the end of the world, but Sam isn't saying anything; maybe he hasn't noticed yet. Dean gets his own arm around Sam, pulls him close, hooks his hand around Sam's belt for balance. He pushes his face into the hair curling against the side of Sam's neck, opens his mouth.

Salt, and smoke, and once-twice the beat of Sam's heart; Dean's going to bruise him all over, make sure no matter where he goes, he does not forget his brother, and then Dean is staggering, falling, and this time, Sam doesn't catch him.

He goes to his knees again beside him, though. Crouches for a second, rocking back on his sneakers, before kneeling onto the dirt. They go to their knees for each other time and again, Dean thinks, and this is maybe the first time it's ever been new. Sam's eyes are still huge, but his cheeks are flushed, and it isn't just the heat. There's a second, fraction of a second in which it might be, but then Sam's got his hands under Dean's shirt, one knee between Dean's legs as he bites at Dean's mouth, heedless, demanding, fierce as any wild thing, and there's no other possibility.

Sam makes the most beautiful sounds, though half of them might be Dean's own. Choked, gasping things, and Dean's hands slip below the waistband of Sam's jeans. Sam's mouth on his and they breathe together, or maybe Sam's doing the breathing for both of them as Dean fumbles with Sam's belt like it's his first time, as though he's never once known the crush and thunder of someone against him. Rough edges of the zipper against the pads of his fingers, and then Sam is saying his name, over and over again, louder than the crackle of the forest fire, louder than the white noise hum of Dean's own thoughts.

All it takes is Sam's hand on him, later, and he thinks he might never come down. His fingers caught in his brother's hair and Sam watching him the whole time, Sam's face inches from his own, Sam kissing him and when he closes his eyes, all he senses is Sam, nothing else left in the world.

He comes back to himself sometime later, on his back, fire-hazed and drifting. He could spend the rest of his life there, maybe, curl up beneath the trees, burrow into the pine needles and sleep with Sam at his back, but Sam tugs him to his feet. He tucks one hand in Sam's back pocket in revenge, and Sam lets him, doesn't say anything about it.

He has to lean on Sam, the whole way back to the car, and Dad is waiting for them there. "I heard a shot," he says. "You boys get it?"

"Yes, sir," Sam says, and Dean blinks woozily. There's something off about the moment, about talking to Dad this soon after getting Sam off, to having Sam's hand in his boxers, and he thinks he should blush, maybe. Apologize. He tries to pull away from Sam and nearly goes down onto his ass. He can't tell whether it's the sun or the moon, smoke-blinded in that apocalypse sky, and has the sudden sick desire for a cigarette. That might be irony, his subconscious fucking with him.

"Dean okay?" Dad says, his voice like something dredged up from the bottom of the ocean, rusty and old and echoing.

"Just concussed," Sam says. "Not like it's the first time." His hands on Dean's shoulders, guiding him into the back seat, sliding in after him so that they fit against the leather, together, the way they used to. From the front seat, Dad's congratulating them on a job well done, but his eyes are fixed on the road ahead, and Dean slumps against Sam's shoulder, the friction of Sam's t-shirt against his face at once an unbearable thing and necessary for his continued survival.

All that night, he wakes coughing and choking on smoke. He could roll over, rest his hand on Sam's hip, kiss him dizzy and illicit, Dad in the next bed. All these dirty things they can do together, and the smoke makes it unreal, the smoke makes it safe. Sam's hands all over him and nobody will see, and Dean's not going to think about what will happen after that, when all that's left are ashes and it's time to wake up.

--

end

whereupon @ 2011-03-03T09:54:00

2011-03-03T18:55:02Z

Rebound
by whereupon
Supernatural: Sam/Dean, season one, PG-13, 4,890 words.
It's the landing that kills you.
For lavinialavender.

Waking up is a lot like falling: ultimately, it's the landing that kills you. Or, in this case, it's the look his brother's giving him, which isn't actually so much a look as it is a full-on death glare. But just as Sam's learned to fall (he's had to, during the course of so many years spent getting tossed into walls and down staircases and at whatever else happened to be nearby, like headstones or bookcases that broke with his weight or the Impala's rear bumper, which, thankfully, remained perfectly intact or both Dean and Dad might have killed him. Once they were done patching him up, of course.), he's learned to pretend not to notice the looks Dean bestows upon him each time he wakes with Dean's hand on his shoulder or chest or knee, or with a shout or a scream that he only sometimes manages to stifle; the dirty looks Dean gives him as though he thinks Sam might be having nightmares just to piss him off or to remind him that he hasn't been able to control Sam's life since they were maybe fourteen and ten, respectively.

The looks might be more effective if Dean didn't look just this side of zombification, himself. Just because he tends to wake not with a shout but with a hand on his knife and an intake of breath that he does not release until he's confirmed that he and Sam are alone in the room doesn't mean that his own nightmares are any less vivid or cruel than Sam's own, nor does it mean that he's getting any more rest than Sam is.

Not sleeping gets you killed, Dean says. Chastises, really, as he leans over the table in any number (Sam's lost count) of diners, or as he sits up in order to glare more directly at Sam from the other bed. Sometimes he changes things up, says, Eat more, that shit's not gonna give you the energy to kick anybody's ass, but the message is the same. Take care of yourself, coming from somebody who's never once taken his own advice.

Sometimes that's funny, when the sun's out and they're driving (because they're always driving, not-driving means stasis means somebody else getting killed) and Dean's caffeinated enough that Sam's fairly certain he's not going to run them off the road, which means that Sam can put on his sunglasses and maybe sleep for a few hours, lulled into what passes for peace of mind by the motion of transit and the sun filtering through the window. Other times, when they're sniping at each other, dream-rattled and eyes burning and glass beneath skin already aching with too many hours awake, because Dean nearly got his throat ripped open or Sam almost didn't duck in time, it really, really isn't.

Maybe neither of them really sleeps, but they've both got damned good reasons for it, and Sam's willing not to ask, as long as Dean won't, either.

Dean, however, appears to be unaware of any such agreement, unspoken or otherwise, and it's that more than anything that is driving Sam crazy (crazier, whatever, anybody who sees things before they happen, who has visions, is probably nuts, but that version of crazy's nothing compared to the brand of insanity that is devoting one's life to hunting). Sam can't do anything about the nightmares, no matter what Dean thinks, and it would be nice if Dean didn't have to remind him of that fact at least once an hour. After all, Sam doesn't go around reminding him of all the horrible, fucked-up things he's seen, or caused, or been.

Chill, dude, I'm great, I sleep like a baby, you're the only thing keeping me up, Dean says, slouched across from Sam in the vinyl-cushioned booth, one arm draped along its back like he's getting ready to make a move on a girl who happens to be invisible, the body language of someone completely at ease and in control, lying to Sam out of habit the way he lies to everybody else, but it doesn't count because Sam's always been able to see through it and Dean knows as much.

They're both papered over with lies and mirrors; they're collages of contradictions. Dean takes over the booth like he owns the place, but the shadows beneath his eyes echo the faded grey of his t-shirt. The hand not on the back of the booth is toying with the paper wrapper of his straw, crinkling it and uncrinkling it; he might not even know he's doing it.

And that's Sam's cue to shake his head or roll his eyes or heave a dramatic sigh, depending on the time of day and how many bodies they've burned or buried in the past twenty-four hours, but this time, he lets it go. This time, instead of any of those years-practiced gestures, he says, "You're lying," because Dean's boots keep accidentally colliding with his shins beneath the table and because the constant paper-crinkling noise is getting on his nerves and yeah, maybe he was already on edge to begin with because he hasn't slept well in weeks. Months, even.

Dean's mouth opens slightly either in genuine shock, because they each might know the other's lying, but they're not meant to call each other on it, or because he's thinking of what will undoubtedly be a stunning retort. Sam's betting on the first one, and not only because Dean hasn't come up with a stunning retort, even by Dean-standards, in the last week, which says enough about how great he is.

"You know, silence is tacit approval," he says when thirty seconds have passed and Dean has yet to do anything other than stare at him, though the stare is rapidly taking on decidedly glare-like qualities.

"I'm gonna tacitly approve your ass," Dean says immediately, and then pauses, tilting his head fractionally as though only just now thinking about what he said.

"Uh, thanks?" Sam says. "But if you're planning to use that line to pick people up, you might wanna sound like you're not using 'tacitly approve' as a synonym for 'kick.' Might get you further."

"Oh, fuck you, you know what I meant," Dean says, dropping the straw wrapper and picking up his fork instead. That wouldn't be particularly ominous if not for the way he's leaning in towards Sam, and how he doesn't actually have any food left on his plate.

Sam raises his eyebrows. "That you couldn't think of a decent counterargument? Or any counterargument?"

This time, there's absolutely nothing accidental about Dean's boot connecting with Sam's shin. Sam manages not to curse aloud; it would attract the other diners' attention, but mostly, he doesn't want to give Dean the satisfaction. Dean settles serenely back into place. "There's more than one kind of counterargument, Sammy. Thought you were meant to be all educated and shit."

"Don't change the subject," Sam says. Dean's eyebrows quirk into an exaggerated expression of surprise and offended innocence.

"We didn't have a subject. You had a delusion and because I'm an awesome big brother, I'm not gonna enable it. It's for your own good, dude."

"Right." Sam rests an elbow on the table, chin in hand. "Which is why my leg is probably broken now."

"I'd tell you not to be a bitch, but I know you can't help it." Dean slurps melted chocolate sludge from the bottom of his fluted milkshake glass and then looks back up at Sam. "It's not broken, it's bruised, and maybe you'll think twice about disrespecting your elders next time."

"Yeah, and I'll be sure to keep it in mind when you need somebody to push your wheelchair for you, too," Sam says. "It's funny how you're only ever my elder when you know I've got a point and you want me to shut up about it."

"Dude, me in a wheelchair? Never gonna happen. My car's the only wheels I'm ever gonna need." He pauses. "Seriously. Hey, you think I'll make it to thirty?"

"That's not funny," Sam says. It's especially not funny when Dean's tone doesn't change at all from the previous sentence, as though the concept of his death within the next four years is as certain as his insanely unhealthy devotion to a car, something to be spoken plainly in a diner with ketchup-smeared plates between them, over which previously they'd talked about the waitress's ass (or, really, Dean had talked about the waitress's ass and Sam had pointed out that she had a lot of other attributes, too, due to how she was a human being, at which point Dean had agreed and started talking about her tits, and Sam should have seen that coming, probably). The insignificance of the setting makes Sam's chest hurt a little.

He has dreams about Dean dying, sometimes. Nightmares, not (yet) tinged with the sick migraine-clarity of visions, images warped like a darkroom accident.

"I wasn't joking," Dean says. He smirks but his eyes are calm, accepting. Passive, and maybe it's that more than anything that bothers Sam. Dean will run into burning buildings for others, or send a hundred thousand volts twisting towards his heart, a slow-burning curse after all: leaving him to die ashen and hollow in a hospital named for a saint. He does not once stop to think of himself, or of who he'll leave behind. "That was an actual, valid question. We could bet on it."

"Dean, did you seriously just suggest that we make bets on your life? That's a whole new level of twisted, even for you."

Dean's eyes widen. "Jesus, don't get your panties in a twist. I wasn't ordering a goddamn Mafia hit, man, I was making a suggestion. Trying to liven up your life a little. You don't gotta take everything so damn seriously."

"Whatever, dude, I'm not enabling your little gambling problem. And to answer your stupid question, no, I don't, not if you don't get some fucking sleep."

"Coming from you--"

"If you finish that sentence, the next time you are actually asleep, I'm taking the car," Sam says flatly.

"Not if I sleep with the keys in my--" And every single way Sam can think for Dean to end that sentence is either disturbing or way too descriptive, or both, so he interrupts before Dean can give him with another horrifying mental image he'll have for the rest of his life. It's funny how many of the ones he already has came from Dean and not from the immensely fucked-up shit they see practically every day of their lives.

"Don't. Finish that one, either. I don't wanna know. You put the keys wherever you want, I'll break a window and hotwire her--it if I have to."

"Yeah, and then I'll break your fingers," Dean says, the threat as casual as the act of drawing a breath. "And I'm gonna finish whatever damn sentences I wanna finish. You don't wanna hear what I gotta say, why'd you ask me in the first place?"

"I didn't ask you anything," Sam says. "You just . . . started talking. The way that you do. All the time." Not that he minds, sometimes -- not that he'd ever tell Dean that. Of course, Dean already knows, anyway.

"Uh, yeah, that's called having a conversation, Sam. See, one person, and that's you, here, says something, and then the other person, that's me, points out how what you just said's bordering on criminally stupid, and then you get all pissy and defensive 'cause I pointed out what shoulda been obvious, and--"

"Actually, you're doing pretty good at having a conversation all by yourself," Sam points out mildly.

Dean shrugs. "One of my many gifts. You should be so lucky."

"I don't think having voices in your head is lucky, exactly," Sam says. "I think there's actually an entry in the DSM-IV for that."

"What the fuck ever, man," Dean says. "See, that right there, that thing we just did? A conversation. Pretty sure I taught you that back when you were, like, three, but hey, you got the whole sleep-deprived amnesia thing going on, I got your back."

"Dean," Sam says, and then pauses, because his voice is starting to hit that weird note that it does whenever Dean's being especially childish, which isn't fair because it makes him sound like he's maybe thirteen again, which makes Dean even less likely to actually listen to what he's saying. "Okay," he tries again, calmly and rationally enough for the both of them, as usual. "We are going to finish eating -- or at least, I'm going to finish eating, and you're going to stop slurping at your milkshake because the glass is empty, okay--"

"And that's gonna take you all of thirty seconds," Dean says immediately. "You eat like one a' those chicks that go on Oprah. You got some control issues you wanna talk about? No way I'm gonna hug you, but if you wanna, like, cry or whatever, I guess that wouldn't be anything new."

"I'm not the one who has to drive absolutely everywhere, and who freaks out if somebody else touches the radio," Sam says.

"I don't freak out if somebody touches the radio," Dean says. "I get justifiably annoyed if somebody turns the radio to, like, Whiny Manboys FM, though. Which you'd know all about, seeing's how it's your favorite station."

"As I was saying," Sam says, and Dean raises his hands in mock surrender and mutters something about PMS. Sam considers kicking him again, but he's not sure that at this point, that would end in anything other than Dean punching him as soon as they got out to the parking lot, if not sooner, and he's not sure he has the energy for a full-scale fistfight right now. Especially not with the way Dean fights dirty, and they're both just this side of too-tired to make real the possibility of not pulling their punches, of the fight turning into something serious and scary. He tasted blood for days, the last time that happened, and Dean's swollen-dark eyes had caught at him, the sight of them an ache like a badly-healed bone until he found himself trying to avoid looking at Dean, which only made him ache in a different way, one he remembered from the days directly before leaving for California. "I am going to finish eating, and you are going to stop playing with what's left of your food, and then we are going to go to a motel, and we are going to see who falls asleep first."

Dean blinks at him. "First, that thing about me being the boss of you? Hasn't changed. Just thought I'd clear that up for you. Second, dude, we get a free afternoon and you wanna spend it having a staring contest in a motel room? Tell you what, we'll get a room and you can stare at yourself in the damn mirror while I go out and have some actual fun."

"Because you know you'd fall asleep first," Sam says. "Because you're exhausted, and then I would win."

"No, you wouldn't," Dean says. "You would not win. Because we're not doing that."

"Because you're afraid to," Sam says. It's convenient how that tone of voice is perfect for both talking to scared witnesses and irritating his brother, who absolutely hates to be condescended to, a.k.a. talked to as though he's an eighty-year-old woman who just saw her husband dragged out of the bedroom window by what looked like a praying mantis on steroids.

"I'm not afraid," Dean says, a little too loudly, and Sam doesn't quite manage to hide his smirk. Some of the other patrons turn to look at them, and Dean leans in, says, quieter this time, but with just as much venom, "I am not afraid, goddamnit. It's just a really stupid idea."

"If I win, I get to drive next week," Sam says, mostly because he's curious as to whether Dean will put his own honor or that of his car first. "The whole week."

Dean's eyes widen so much that it looks like it might actually be painful. "In your dreams," he says. "Which you'll be having, when you lose."

"So we're on," Sam says.

"We are so on," Dean says. "When I win, it's gonna be awesome."

Sam raises his eyebrows, because the things Dean finds awesome have an alarming tendency to involve explosions and/or nearly being caught by the cops. "What do you want?"

"Haven't decided yet," Dean says. "But it's gonna be great." And very probably Sam should have made him come up with something before agreeing to this -- deal, or bet, or whatever it is, but whatever, it's not like Dean's going to win, so it's all theoretical, anyway.

He finishes what's left of his salad, faded-dull lettuce and tomatoes that taste more of being in a refrigerator than of anything grown beneath the sun, and Dean pays the check. On the way out to the parking lot, Dean's elbow jostles him twice, but not hard enough to bruise: not so much a challenge, then, as Dean reminding him that he's there, perpetually annoying and challenging and willing to take a bullet for Sam, or a curse, or to mark out the rest of his life in days spent bloody and alone, in order to give Sam what he thinks Sam wants, as though they cannot both be happy, cannot both get what they want.

Dean wants hardly anything for himself, so maybe it's all right that Sam wants everything for the both of them.

There's a motel on the other side of the parking lot, which Sam says is fate and Dean says is nothing new, people want beds and they want food, Sam, that's not exactly Oracle a' Delphi shit, to which Sam only stares at him wonderingly. Dean says these things sometimes and it's like unearthing some new secret, something that would have been Sam's if he'd stayed but to which he has no right now, the way he has no right to ask about the things Dean dreams of, those terrible unending nights when they both wake haunted. The Sea Cove Inn, the sign reads, creaking slightly with the breeze rising from the east, and the key to their room dangles from a blue plastic keychain in the form of a sailboat. They're hundreds of miles from the ocean, but as Dean unlocks their room and Sam sees the large-breasted mermaid painted on the opposite wall, he wonders if he might be seasick anyway.

"No, you were totally right," Dean says. "This is fate. Clearly. We're destined to live in Larry Flynt's The Little Mermaid. Only I guess it's more like the not-so-little mermaid, you think?"

"Dude," Sam says, and then draws a blank, as though the sight of a bed upon which he could collapse and hope for an hour or two of sleep before waking panicked has cancelled out the effects of the coffee he's been mainlining since waking in the cool dark to the noise of a horn blasting out on the freeway like a scream, a souvenir brought with him out of his nightmare like a token from the underworld.

Dean snickers. "Yeah, you might as well forfeit while you still got some dignity."

"Take off your damn boots and get in bed," Sam says, fighting back the urge to yawn.

"Shoulda figured you'd be a control freak in bed, too," Dean says, but he lowers himself, carefully as a man thirty years his senior, onto the side of his bed and begins undoing his laces. The fact that he's complying at all is worrying, Sam thinks, because if he's this tired, there's no way he should have been even thinking about driving cross-country again tonight, and all of a sudden Sam doesn't care at all about winning, because the fact is Dean was going to maybe get both of them killed because he didn't want to admit to Sam that he's just as burnt out as his brother is, either because he believes it doesn't matter or because he doesn't want Sam to know, and there's something awful, something stomach-dropping and skin-chilling and vaguely world-ending about that idea, because they used to know everything about each other and Sam can't remember how that began to change, though he remembers feeling grateful for it at the time, and the thought sickens him now. He can remember all too clearly what it was like to be young and casually cruel.

Sam drops down onto his own bed, toes off his sneakers. Dean's already lying down, but he's staring at the ceiling, his eyes open wide; Sam figures he'll close them maybe five seconds after reassuring himself that Sam's not looking anymore. Which Sam won't be, but only because he'll be waiting for Dean to give in; once Dean does, he'll open his own eyes, and poke Dean to tell him that he lost, and then go to sleep for real.

It's a good plan, except for the part where it doesn't happen.

Blood spatters across Sam's face, and even before the ceiling bursts into flame bright as the birth of stars, he can smell her singed hair, that sickeningly familiar char. He opens his mouth to speak her name, as though doing so this time might somehow bring her back, make her stay, and is suddenly awake, staring at a ceiling that has never once been burned, a ceiling unmarred by even a single water stain. He rubs a hand across his gritty eyes and glances at his watch: it's been three hours. They didn't draw the curtains before lying down, and there's more traffic on the street than there was before.

"I won," Dean says scratchily, and Sam pushes himself up, looks over at him. He's still sprawled out on top of the blankets, but he's rolled over to look at Sam. If his eyes weren't still red-rimmed, his expression, which Sam thinks is probably meant to be a smirk of victory, might actually work; instead, he just looks sort of deranged, though not especially more than usual.

"No way," Sam says. His throat burns; he wants a glass of water, or a beer, something to erase the taste of smoke from his tongue. He wants to take a shower, as though that might remove the feeling that a layer of ash has formed just beneath his skin. "You were out."

"Prove it," Dean says. He sits up and his hair is matted on one side, his flannel twisted. One of its buttons is missing and Sam isn't sure when that happened, or how.

"You prove it," Sam says, and they stare at each other.

"Fuck," Dean says eventually. He pushes a hand through his hair, making it stand up in crazy spikes. "You shoulda thought of this."

"Me?" Sam says, and Dean nods, once.

"It was your stupid idea."

"You're the one who agreed to it," Sam says. He doesn't want to be arguing about this. He doesn't want to be arguing about anything at all. He feels bruised, all over.

"Because it was the only way you were gonna take a nap!"

"Right," Sam says. "I'm sure that's it."

"Yeah," Dean says. "Me, I was just resting my eyes, waiting for you to wake up."

Sam rolls his eyes and gets out of bed. He closes the curtains and runs the tap in the bathroom for a minute before filling one of the plastic cups next to the sink with water. It's lukewarm, still, but he drinks it anyway and then goes back out to the main room, where Dean has shifted to sit with his legs outstretched, crossed at the ankles, on his bed, his flannel crumpled beside him. The lights are still off and Dean's eyes glint in the faint late afternoon haze that seeps through the curtains; Sam has the thought, not for the first time, that it's in the darkness that they are truly at home, the darkness in which they are as close to safe as they ever get.

"Truce?" Dean says.

"Truce," Sam says.

Dean nods, the movement barely perceptible in the dim. Sam's heart is still beating too quickly, his veins flooded with dream-adrenaline. He thinks he might not be fully awake yet; the heavy shadows in the corners of the room pool like water, and he feels watched.

Which he is, he reminds himself; Dean's gaze is on him, sharp and somehow expectant, like he's waiting for Sam to say something, or to make a move. Sam feels off-cue, like he's missed a line or like Dean's asked him a question that he didn't hear.

"What?" he says dumbly, shifting his weight from one foot to the other. The whole world feels off-balance and he thinks that it was a stupid idea to have tried to sleep at all. He should sit down, he thinks, except the only place to sit down is on his bed, which will put him that much closer to his nightmare, because while there is a chair in front of the window, he's not yet ready to put his back to the glass, to the rest of the world in which so many wicked, clawed things move, some of them wearing human faces. It's not an entirely justifiable fear, but at the moment, he feels it keenly.

"Nothing," Dean says. "Sit down already."

"No, I'm up," Sam says. "I think I might go take a shower or something. You should get some more sleep, though. I mean, since we've got the room for the night."

"No, I'm up," Dean echoes. "Bad nightmare?"

Sam lifts one shoulder, half a shrug and half mere acknowledgement of the question. It's not an answer, really, because all of them are bad; this one was just more of the same. Which is funny, sort of; had he thought about it before, he might have expected them to get better as they went on, he might have expected that he'd get used to them, eventually.

It turns out that feeling your girlfriend's blood on your skin, that watching her burn alive and knowing that you could have stopped it, isn't something you get used to at all.

"C'mere," Dean says, tilts his head slightly. When Sam doesn't move, he frowns. "Jesus, Sam, you look like you're gonna fall over. Sit the hell down already."

Sam sits down beside him gracelessly, the mattress shifting beneath his weight. There's not much room between them, Dean's knee pressing against his own, and he's absurdly grateful for that, though he'll never admit it, and though he's slightly ashamed that he needs it and that Dean knows it. Of course, Dean's been seeing through him ever since he was born, so maybe he should be used to that.

Dean doesn't say anything, though, and for that, Sam's even more grateful. There's something comforting about being this close to his brother in the cramped motel room, the way he spent so many years of his life, as though the past four years didn't happen, or at least weren't spent apart, as though this is something they can pick up, one thing in Sam's world that has not been redefined, or lost.

It helps, just being close to somebody, this tangible, physical reminder that he isn't alone, that he is awake. It helps even more that this is the intimate, just-for-them version of Dean's elbow digging into his ribs, and when Dean touches the underside of his wrist, neither gently nor roughly, and reaches with his other hand for Sam's chin, his thumb on Sam's jawline, Sam feels his breath hitch, but he doesn't look away. He meets Dean's eyes, and when Dean kisses him, when they kiss, because in this as in everything they've ever done, it's mutual, it is at once new, this adrenaline sparking through his veins having nothing to do with fear, now, and not-new, because this is Dean, after all, and with Dean, Sam trusts his life, as he has so many times in the past.

The mattress gives and Sam's mouth is open on Dean's throat; Dean has his hands beneath Sam's shirt, his palms on the bones of Sam's hips. This is nothing new. This is only a different version of everything that has come before. This is Dean breathing in Sam's ear, this is Dean saying, Sammy, you aren't dreaming anymore, Sammy, Sammy, Sam, like he thinks Sam doesn't know. This is them breathing the same breath, and this is the way they fit together now overlain upon all of the times they have fit together in the past, all of the times they've split each other's lips or thrown an arm over the other's shoulder or carried each other out of burning buildings, crumpling buildings, back alleys and barfights. This is the way they fall, and the way they break each other's fall as they break each other, over and over again, with their bodies and with the weight of each other's names and with everything they do not say, and this is the way they come back to each other, every time.

--

end

whereupon @ 2011-01-17T18:36:00

2011-01-18T03:36:41Z

Runaway
by whereupon
Dexter: Lumen, post 5.12, PG. 590 words.
The Bride of Frankenstein is on her own.

When Lumen Pierce was four years old, she was afraid of the dark. When she was sixteen, she was afraid that Max Gibson would tell the whole school, and when she was twenty-nine, she was afraid that she would die bound to that filthy bed, and that she would have to spend years there before it happened.

Lumen Pierce isn't afraid anymore. Not of anything. She should be, she thinks, because now, after everything, surely she knows the worst things people are capable of, the kinds of terrible things they can do to each other out of love or lust or something as simple as the need for control. Now she knows what kind of monsters live in the world.

She should be afraid, but she isn't. Because now she's one of them. It is this thought that occurs to her when she has been driving for three hours down the 75 in the grey Taurus rented in her own name, and it is this thought that makes her pull into the breakdown lane, slowly and methodically, checking in the rearview to make sure that she won't be cutting anyone off. Only when the car is stopped do her hands begin to shake, and then only for a moment, because it is sunny and hot the way it always seems to be in Florida, and she has survived so much; she will not be undone now, on the side of a freeway beneath that blue sky like eternal summer, with every trace of blood scrubbed from her hands.

She has taken lives. She's a killer; reminders of that are burned into her body, maybe into her soul. She's taken lives -- that will not change, even if she never does it again -- and she's destroyed them, but for the first of these, she does not need to be forgiven, and for the second, Dexter will forgive her.

He did forgive her, she tells herself. With his back to the wall, crouched in the corner of his kitchen, she knelt before him on shards of broken stoneware, and he gave her permission to forget; she pressed her face against his neck and he held her as though she was the one whose heart was breaking.

He saved her then, just as he saved her in Boyd Fowler's house, in the attic that became the room in which part of her died and another part was born, and in the hotel, and so many times, every day. She thinks that she would have left anyway, even if he hadn't understood, but she would have looked back, always, and this way, she won't have to.

Instead she meets the eyes of her reflection in the rearview mirror, and she recognizes the person she sees there, and though she is not afraid, she tells herself too that she will be brave, that she is brave, that whoever she turns out to be, she will make him proud.

She will never be able to save him the way he saved her, but that isn't the only way to save someone, and this she will do for him: she will have the life he can never have, and she will never once look down, never once look back.

She is a monster, like him, but if there is one thing she has learned from the last few months, it's that monsters are people, too. For both of them, she will remember that; for both of them, she will live, as brightly as he cannot.

--

end

whereupon @ 2011-01-17T12:29:00

2011-01-17T21:29:42Z

I ought to begin with a disclaimer -- and so I am -- regarding how I'm betaing A Monster By Any Other Name by brosedshield and lavinialavender and so I might be biased in recommending this story -- but guys, I totally recommend this story. It's a Supernatural AU, and in progress (though the ending has not been reached, much of the story has been written), and it is both beautiful and heartbreaking. Gritty, and realistic, and cruel where narrative demands, it isn't easy in the least (definitely read the warnings prior to beginning the story) -- which is as it should be, given the subjects it deals with. Though much of the content is dark, the deftness and compassion with which it's written make those aspects endurable, and readable, even as they hurt.

This story is not for everyone -- a facile statement, that, because what story is? -- but if you're looking for a gorgeous, insightful, nuanced story that deals with, among other things, what it is to be human and what it is to be a monster and what it is to be neither, or both; if you're looking for a story about resilience, weariness, grace, and survival and living (and the difference between the two), and you don't mind darkness, don't miss this.

whereupon @ 2010-12-23T18:07:00

2010-12-24T03:07:36Z

Patchwork
by whereupon
Supernatural: Gen, early season six, R. 3,430 words. A slightly weird, not-very-nice little story.
They're meant to save each other. That's how this goes. If he doesn't have that, what's the point?
In very belated response to a prompt by roque_clasique.

The wind's picking up, an ominous sweep like breath coming down from the mountains, those jagged peaks like the age-worn teeth of some great monster buried deep within the earth. It's a stupid thought, but then, it's hard not to be on edge these days, with the constant report of gunshots from the canyon and the way the oppressive pewter clouds hang low over the range. It's hunting season and the far end of the parking lot is full of battered pickups, around which swarm men in dull orange jackets, and their dogs, who won't fucking stop barking. The goddamn air rings with the noise and it's wearing even on Dean's nerves.

He leans back against the side of his car and crosses his arms over his chest like a sullen kid, which is stupid because he's thirty and an honest-to-god real hunter and if any of those assholes came up against the kind of things he sees on a goddamn daily basis, they'd be in straitjackets for the rest of their lives, if the thing didn't cut them down on sight. So he shouldn't be letting them get to him, but they are anyway and as a result, his hands keep fucking shaking like he's some newbie kid about to take his first shot, but fuck, even when he was that kid, lifetimes ago, his hands didn't shake this badly.

He wonders what the odds are that he'll actually be able to aim for the revenant at all, much less manage a headshot, when they find it. Though on the bright side, or what passes for it these days, there's the chance that if he misses, the bullet might hit one of these swaggering assholes who need to wear fucking orange just so they don't shoot each other's nuts off.

If it doesn't hit Sam. Or ricochet off some goddamn strategically placed tree and hit him, which is pretty much how his luck has been going these days.

Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.

It's amazing how much that particular mental litany doesn't help at all, but he keeps at it anyway, because it's not like he's got anything better to think about.

At long last Sam emerges from the ranger's station, wearing that ridiculous knitted cap he picked up at some gas station on the way in, the one he agonized over choosing for five minutes, like he was making it into a goddamn show. He's even wearing gloves, for Christ's sake. It's going to snow any fucking day now, sure, but it's not snowing yet, so if Sam could maybe try not to be so much of a pussy, that'd be, like, fucking great.

But whatever, Sam can knock himself out, maybe literally, for all Dean cares. He just wants to go back to Lisa's, because, fine, maybe he's gone soft, but he's gotten used to sleeping in an actual bed with actual goddamn lumbar support as opposed to the bed he slept in last night, which barely had a mattress, though it sure as fuck had springs, which he felt digging into his back all goddamn night long, and maybe that means he's getting old, but right now, he does. Not. Care.

Sam, on the other hand, apparently had no problem sleeping, because he was up before Dean this morning, showered and hair combed and twitching like he'd just downed a pot of coffee, and though he didn't actually tell Dean to hurry up, Dean got the message loud and clear.

Sam thinks Dean's slowing them down. Which is funny, considering he's the one who wanted Dean to get back into this.

"Are you sure you don't want some gloves?" Sam says, drawing close. "Or at least some coffee? There's coffee in there, if you want."

"What I want is for you to shut the hell up," Dean says, even though coffee sounds great, sounds like it would at least warm his hands and maybe take the edge off of the ache forming behind his temples. Goddamn barometric pressure, goddamn fucking gunshots, goddamn fucking dogs. "Do I look like I want some damn gloves?"

Sam pauses like he's actually thinking about the question and Dean grits his teeth. Sam does that a lot these days, like he's forgotten how to act with Dean around, like he's forgotten how they used to be brothers, Jesus fucking Christ. For all that Sam claims being in hell didn't affect him one fucking bit, he's sure as hell -- ha-damn-ha -- not acting like it. A year ago, Sam would have told him to stop being such a fucking jerk and put his goddamn gloves on already unless Dean was trying to give Sam a chance to practice in-the-field amputation. A year ago, Sam would have brought him a damn cup of coffee and it would have been burnt and tasted like shit, but it would have been hot and it would have been caffeine and it would have been Sam making a goddamn effort without even thinking about it. As opposed to the way he is now, where every fucking thing is, like, calculated, because apparently Sam forgot how to be a fucking human being while he was down under.

Or maybe he just forgot how to be Dean's brother. That's actually worse, by a magnitude of, like, infinity. Which Dean knows is stupid, and means maybe he has a fucking problem, but whatever. That's how it's always been with them, except for how apparently it's not anymore, now it's just Dean, and Sam's perfectly fine without him.

So fuck coffee and fuck gloves and maybe most of all fuck Sam, even though that's tantamount to saying fuck everything Dean's ever lived for. What he actually wants is a goddamn drink, but he's trying not to think about how he's afraid to say as much. Because there's a chance that Sam would give him a look, the look, like he used to, but Dean's fairly certain that he wouldn't. Dean's fairly certain that Sam would just shrug and say okay and go about his own goddamn business, which Dean would appreciate, except for how it would be so fucking Twilight Zone, so fucking wrong.

They're meant to save each other. That's how this goes. If he doesn't have that, what's the point of any of it, of any of this?

And the thing, the insult to the injury is his life and all that shit, is, before, Sam would have never let a silence drag on like this. Not that it's silence, really. It's not anything like silence, with those fucking yipping dogs and the gunshots echoing, not one right after another, but every time he thinks it might be safe to breathe again. But before, Sam would have asked what was wrong, and he wouldn't have shut up until Dean could come up with some lie that sounded at least vaguely plausible.

"Come on," Dean says, when Sam only looks at him blankly, because every second he waits for Sam to say something is another second of this fucking purgatory. He shoves his hands, the knuckles chapped red by the wind and okay, maybe gloves would have been a good idea after all, into his pockets, and shrugs deeper into his jacket, and somehow, even though he's the one who gave the order, he ends up following Sam across the dusty lot to the trailhead.

Even in the woods, even following the trail carved out between the trees and battered by the tramping of thousands of footsteps during the previous summer months, he can't get away from that flat grey sky. It's bounded by trees, sure, but he feels it on the back of his neck, could look up and try stare it down, if he wanted to.

It's fucking heavy, that sky. Whole worlds, full of demons and terrible angels, waiting to break through.

And even in the woods, he can't escape the noise of the gunshots. At least the dogs are quieter, though.

He's not sure how it happens, because one minute he's walking, trying to keep up with Sam's gigantor pace and at least that's something that hasn't changed, and the next he's vaguely aware that his knees hurt, because he's always been shit at falling properly, and then he's on all fours, gasping for breath and noticing distantly that his hands are clutching at the earth like that might ground him, though it's never once worked before. The earth only ever opens up and swallows things whole.

He thinks he might black out for a little while after that, because then his ears are ringing and he's on his ass in the dirt, leaning against something that he works out is a tree from the way the bark rubs against the back of his neck and also from the fact that trees are the only goddamn things around, and staring at the hole torn in the left knee of his brother's jeans, and then staring at his brother's face when Sam crouches down beside him.

Sam rests his hand on Dean's forehead like it's something he learned to do from a book, like it's something he's never done before, and Dean, god help him (and isn't that a fucking joke), doesn't pull away, doesn't jerk out of Sam's grasp and tell him not to get handsy, because he knows that Sam would listen. And what the fuck does that say about his mental state at this precise moment, that he'd rather have this, would rather pretend, just for a second, than face up to the truth, which is that Sam doesn't fucking care.

Sam -- if it is Sam, and it has to be, because even goddamn Lucifer himself wasn't this cruel, though maybe he picked up a few tricks down under, combing through Dean's little brother's subconscious for the sharpest pieces, the ones that cut now like razors -- doesn't care about him at all.

"You're running a fever," Sam says, looking away, reaching for his discarded glove, and Dean shivers, wanting so badly for Sam to put his hand back and to tell him that this is all a dream, that it will get better. Wanting so badly to believe that Sam would be right.

"Fuck you," Dean says, and maybe it's not the most eloquent he's ever been, but it's worth it for the way Sam furrows his forehead. The reaction comes a moment too late, like Sam had to think about it, but Dean will take what he can get.

"You should go back to the car," Sam says, which is probably true, but Dean will be damned -- and that would make, what, the millionth time? -- if he lets Sam do this alone. Sam dragged him out here, and he made it this far; there's no way he's going to be left behind for the rest of it.

"No," Dean says, and grits his teeth, hauling himself back to his feet through sheer strength of will. He's fairly certain he shouldn't be sweating as a result of that exertion, so he decides that's probably the fever.

"I'll come with you," Sam says, resting a hand on Dean's shoulder, heat bleeding through Dean's jacket, through the thin fabric of his shirt. Dean pulls away, but after his first step, his first misstep, the ground tilting beneath him so that he stumbles and has to catch his balance on the nearest tree, tearing his palm open on the rough bark, he gives in. He lets Sam put a hand on his back and guide him back down the trail, because he doesn't have another choice.

The way he keeps stumbling over exposed roots, he wouldn't trust himself with a gun.

He tells himself that's the reason why he's shaking, that it's only because he's sick. He tells himself he is not afraid of his own brother, because if that's true, there is absolutely nothing left for him.

Jesus, he is so fucking tired. Tired of trying to keep it together, trying to pretend things are okay between him and Sam, so fucking tired of everything.

In the car, he fishes his flask out of the glove compartment and unscrews the cap as Sam starts the engine. "It's okay," Sam says, but his voice is hollow, and if he touches Dean right now, Dean's not going to be able to hide his flinch. "You'll feel better soon," he adds, and Dean glances down, because he can't look at the sky any longer and he sure as fuck can't look at Sam.

Smeared across his palm, his blood is so bright, the brightest thing he's seen all day. He's transfixed by it, this vivid hot thing that seems to burn brighter than his own heart, and he wonders if this is anything like what it was for Sam, that year he spent with Ruby, that year he spent lying to Dean. It would be, he tells himself, a very bad idea to ask Sam that right now, though he's having trouble remembering why, exactly. He's having trouble remembering a lot of things, and he thinks that if he gives it just another minute or two, he might be lulled into sleep by the familiarity of his car, the rumble of her engine, but then Sam speaks and the chance is gone.

"We'll go to the motel and you can get some sleep," Sam says, oblivious, and Dean lifts the flask to his mouth against everything he isn't saying, and everything Sam isn't telling him, and after a little while, the whiskey doesn't burn his throat anymore and he can lean back, breathe easier, and if he still can't bring himself to look out the window at that awful gaping sky, that sky like a wound, at least he can't hear those goddamned guns over the engine noise.

He even manages to fall asleep eventually, and he wakes cold and sudden to find the car stopped and the keys gone, along with his brother. He blinks, momentarily confused, until recognition begins to filter in and he realizes that he's at the motel, that the thin green light spilling across the hood comes from the neon motel sign.

He thinks he remembers Sam saying something about going to the motel. He hadn't thought Sam would just leave him there, but when he thinks about it, it's not really a surprise.

And then the trunk slams shut and he jumps despite himself and Sam raps at the window, their bags slung over his shoulder. Dean swallows and nods, opens the door. It hurts to stand, but the cold air feels good, now, cutting across his palm, cutting through his body.

He doesn't bother turning on the lights in the room, and Sam doesn't either, though Dean's not sure whether that's out of consideration for him or because Sam can see in the dark. He sinks down onto the side of his bed and presses the heels of his hands into his burning eyes, tells himself he's fucking raving. He's practically delusional; he would have to be, in order to think something like that.

Sam is watching him from the little table by the door when he lowers his hands, lifts his head. He wishes he could stop shaking, he needs to stop shaking, because there's no way he's going to be able to get the bottle out of the nightstand drawer and opened and poured, not with his hands, with his whole body, shaking like this, and there's no fucking way he's going to ask Sam for help.

He knows, though, and that's what makes it worse, as if this situation needed to be any more twisted, any more of a mindfuck -- he knows that Sam would help, would do it for him, and it's one thing for Dean to be fucked up, but it would be something else entirely for his little brother, for his whole world, to tell him that's okay. There are words for that. Enabling is one of them.

But he's taking too long and even this new not-right Sam has figured out that something's wrong, has run the fucking process through whatever passes for his brain these days and figured out what's meant to come next, because it always comes next, and oh Jesus, now he's getting up, now he's walking to Dean, and reaching past him, and pulling out the bottle, and Dean stares at it, because he can't make himself look at Sam. He won't. He hears Sam moving around again, and when Sam returns with one of the plastic-wrapped tumblers, now de-plasticked, from the counter and pours a drink, and hands it to him, Dean cannot fucking breathe.

Because Sam is fucking smiling. Like he thinks this is what Dean wants. Which it is, but even more than that, even now, Dean wants his brother back, because Sam shouldn't do this. Sam wouldn't.

Dean lifts the glass against the horrible significance of the observation, and swallows the contents, and puts it back down. The room is spinning slightly, and he's not sure whether that's the fever or the alcohol or the sheer wrongness of the situation, the dread, the surety, that this is not Sam.

This is not his brother.

He licks his lips. "Sam," he says, and Sam pours him another without saying anything, and Dean swears that's not what he was asking. But Sam is only looking, isn't judging, and Dean wants it so fucking badly; his mouth is so goddamn dry, and Sam should know better than anyone, almost. Sam should know what this is like, because Sam was the same fucking way, before, and he almost ended the world because of it, and now he's dead, now he's in hell and this fucking thing that only looks like him is here in his place, and Dean tells himself that's why he takes the glass. Because he cannot do this without it. He can't.

Sam, on the other hand, Sam could; in the end, Sam said no, but he always was stronger than Dean. And Dean isn't going to cry, not because he has any fucking illusions about not being weak, but because he doesn't think he could stand to find out how this version of Sam would react. What he -- what it -- would do. If Sam would try to make it better. So he chokes back something that might have been words and might have been a sob borne of fear and exhaustion and this fucking fever, and he lifts the glass.

When it falls, empty again, from his grasp, he thinks hazily that he'd meant to throw it. To shatter something, break something, since he can't get his hands around Sam's neck and shake this thing out of him, this demon that is masquerading as his little brother. But it is so dark now, and the shivering isn't as bad as it was before, and Sam has him by the shoulders, is guiding him back, down on to the bed, and the pillow is so soft and cool at the nape of his neck.

"It'll be okay," Sam says, and Dean closes his eyes at the carnival twist of the ceiling, and so that he doesn't have to look at Sam. Sam rests his hand on Dean's forehead again and Dean bites his lip to keep from screaming, to keep from being sick. "Trust me, I'm your brother," Sam says, his palm callused and dry and his tone a parody of reassuring, and Dean keeps his eyes closed tightly, and waits to pass out.

Maybe the snow will fall and it will be Ragnarok and he will not have to wake up. This is the thought to which he clings as he falls asleep; this is the prayer of the damned which he recites long after Sam has moved from his side, though his eyes are still closed because he's terrified of what he might see if he opened them. He's terrified that he might find Sam gone, terrified that Sam would not come back, terrified that he would be left alone again, alone this final time.

He's terrified, and he has never once in his whole life been brave, so there's no reason he should start now. There's no reason to break a perfect record, after all. He swallows past the shredded glass in his throat, and he keeps his eyes closed, and outside, something that is not the wind begins to howl.

He waits, as quietly as he can, for morning.

--

end

whereupon @ 2010-12-20T18:06:00

2010-12-21T03:06:14Z

Compass
by whereupon
Supernatural: Sam/ofc, season four, R. 3,160 words.
It is the first week of November, and he is walking, and he cannot remember why.
In very belated response to a prompt by santacarlagypsy.

The leaves rustling in the wind, caught against the curbs and trapped in the gutters all along this road down which darkness waits expectant and so patient at the edge of each streetlight's golden haze, sound like breath, the breath of something vast and predatory and impossibly old. It's not wise to be out tonight no matter how much silver a person has on him, how heavy his pockets are with iron or how quickly he might be able to draw the gun from where it's tucked like a talisman in his waistband, safe at the small of his back.

It's not wise, but he's here all the same, because that's how these things work -- curses, spells, enchantments, hexes. They're not fate, but if you get caught up in them, you're trapped all the same; all you can do, most of the time, is ride them out, play along and hope you make it through to the end. Sometimes, of course, you can't even do that: sometimes, you fall where you're standing, spindle-pricked or snake-bitten or what have you, and if there's a part of you left able to recognize your place in a fairy tale for what it is at that point, all you can do is wonder how long it will take until your hero, or your heroine, shows up.

Sometimes it takes a fortnight. Other times, you're left waiting for hundreds of years. On rare occasions, no one ever shows and the sleeper is thus never awakened, though those stories, due to their messier-than-preferable nature, are not often retold, or even written down at all.

This is not that kind of spell.

It is the first week of November, and he is walking, and he cannot remember why. If he were to think about that, he would be concerned, but he hasn't yet, and he won't. He is walking, drawn towards something without knowing why, or how, or even what it is to which he walks. He is focusing instead on the sound of his own breath, of his heartbeat, of the blood thrumming through his veins, hot copper against the year's chill. There are stories about that, too, about blood spilled onto fallowed fields and the life granted by such an act, but this isn't one of them.

As he walks, he sees, at the far end of the road, set back from the glow of the streetlights, that there is a light on in someone's home, the only one on down this road tonight. It's not the cool blue of a television left to play as someone sleeps uncomfortably on a couch, dreaming to a soundtrack of canned laughter; warped by the windowpane as he approaches, it reminds him of candles, and he thinks, without any sense of irony, that there are spells for summoning that work only at this time of year. There are others for winter and spring and for summer solstice; each date has its own, but it's this one, balanced at the precipice of the underworld, that has always seemed most relevant to him. It's easy to tell himself it's because of what happened on that night so many years ago, when the whole world burned and he was too young to know it. Sometimes, he even believes that.

But what he does or doesn't believe doesn't matter right now. What matters is that he sees this light like a candle, and as he does, he knows where he's going, where he'll end up. He recognizes it because he's been there before, not in a dream or in a vision, but a few hours ago when the sun had been high and bright in the cold autumn sky and his brother had progressed from telling him to get his oversized legs moving to kicking him in the ankle whenever he trailed behind. His brother isn't with him now, because that, too, is how this spell works, how this story goes. That his brother is absent not because he's playing his role by suffering hypersomnia but because he passed out in their motel room after finishing a bottle of cheap whiskey might be a matter of semantics: the result is the same, after all.

He doesn't need to knock on the door, when he reaches the porch upon which he'd stood that afternoon; being called here has granted him all the permission he needs to enter. The latch catches behind him and he sees for a moment his reflection in the mirror mounted on the wall. He does not linger. Warm light, darker than honey, spills from the kitchen at the end of the hall where hours before he'd sipped coffee laced with cinnamon and tried to be attentive enough to the witness for both himself and his brother, because once they'd stopped moving, once they'd gotten where they next needed to be, Dean had appeared to stop paying attention to much of anything at all.

Not that Sam could blame him, really. This time of year has rarely been anything but cruel to them, and this year in particular, though his brother is returned from hell, they are both red-eyed, weary with the weight of the secrets they keep from each other. Which is why neither of them gave it any thought when, after serving them both coffee heavy with spices, the witness, who by then they knew as Catherine Jeffries and who had hair the color of the fallen leaves wind-strewn across her yard and who said she was sorry she couldn't help them further, touched Sam's wrist where the white fabric of his shirt had ridden up, nor when, as they stood to leave, she recited to him the first seven words of a spell.

How were they supposed to know it was a spell, you want to know? After all, the words didn't rhyme and it wasn't in any of the languages that would have tipped them off immediately. She didn't hiss the words, nor dig her nails into his fragile skin to draw blood to seal the deal when she was done. In short, she didn't act, or look, in the least like she was sent over from central casting to play the Wicked Witch of New Haven County.

That's the thing about spells. That's why they work, over and over again, and that's why we tell these stories about them, so that you'll know. So that when you find yourself in a story, maybe you'll remember enough to make it to the end. Not all spells involve eye of newt and horn of toad, nor baby's blood or an innocent man's tears, just like not all witches live deep in the forest, tucked away from the world in cabins made of gingerbread or built up high on chicken legs.

Sometimes all it takes is a cup of coffee, and a few kind words, from which hang the dual, invisible weights of history and intent, and a pretty woman's smile.

Sometimes, spells aren't even bad, aren't cast for vengeance or out of greed or jealousy, out of the craving to make someone pay or to gain something that it is not one's right to claim. Knowing a little magic doesn't make somebody evil, and if sometimes they use that magic, is that really any different than somebody who knows cars finding work in a garage? You use the gifts that God, or the gods, or the contents of your chromosome pairs, gave you, or the ones you spend years bruising yourself, working yourself bloody, to learn. But that's not the point of our story right now, and where were we?

Sam takes one step into the kitchen, and then another, and the room smells like cardamom and baked pumpkin. Catherine smiles at him from her seat at the kitchen table, where she is reading an old paperback novel with spaceships on the cover, and rises to her feet. "You came," she says. "I was wondering if you would," and in truth she was, because enchantments are never a certain thing. They're not an exact science, you could say, and maybe find a kind of droll amusement in it. Some spells are broken just as soon as they're cast, through pure luck or through chance -- a tossed coin, salt spilled backwards, a kiss from one's beloved just as one's eyes begin to grow weary, to slip closed -- and while you could say it's pure luck that Sam and Dean have made it this far to begin with, well, not only are there stories about that, but there's a song about it, too. If it weren't for bad luck, and you know the rest.

Sam nods. He doesn't speak. "I'm not going to hurt you," Catherine says. "I just want to know why you're here. Not now, but before. What you think I did. I know you and that guy aren't really FBI agents." Three of her sentences are lies, two are truth. Sam does not yet know this, but he shifts uncomfortably on his feet all the same.

He is uncomfortable, with her watching him like she knows something that he doesn't, but he doesn't have to give her anything; that's not part of the spell. Summoning something doesn't give you power over it, not the power to make it speak truth. Just as you can make sure that a girl wanders down the right hallway, the one that will lead her to the boy with hair like thatched gold whom she will kiss as the clock chimes midnight, but you cannot make her love him, that he has been brought here means exactly that: he has been brought here. They could stand there all night, if he wanted, until the sun began to rise and he turned on his heel to walk through the wakening streets back to his brother.

"I know what you did," he says, and grits his teeth at the truth of that. He can't believe how foolish he's been, cannot believe that he let himself get this far, that he let himself get cursed like some --

He almost manages to keep himself from thinking human, but not quite. He tells himself it's part of the spell, but he knows it isn't; he swallows past the sense of dread that has welled like bitterness at the back of his throat and continues, "You're a witch." He means it as an accusation.

"Yeah," she says. "That doesn't mean I'm the one who killed her, though. You have to know that."

"No, I don't," he says. "You brought me here, didn't you? That's pretty black magic."

She lifts her eyebrows. "Black magic?" she says. "Seriously? It was a summoning spell." She shrugs. "You want it lifted, fine. There you go." She doesn't move, and neither does he. He tells himself it's because he's hesitant to try it; he knows what happens if you try to force your way out of a fairytale, throw yourself at the edge of the spell that binds you. The magical equivalent of an electric fence isn't kind.

"I'm not the one keeping you here," she says a moment later. "I'm not the one forcing you to do . . . what you're doing." She swallows and her throat works and he wonders how much she knows. She'd touched his wrist, after all, and all sorts of secrets can be transmitted that way. "I'm not the one writing your story like this, Sam. Some things, you can change."

He draws the gun from his waistband. Her breath catches at the sight of it, but she doesn't flinch. She meets his eyes, her gaze as steady as his own has become, and he can almost overlook the fact that her hands are trembling. She is telling the truth.

He sets the gun down on the counter. The barrel is black as his lover's eyes next to the bowl of fruit that he expects to contain apples, or maybe pomegranates, but that he sees holds three oranges, instead. No matter: they have their own mythology.

Catherine waits for him to come to her, and then she tilts her head up as he tilts his down. She's taller than he'd thought; he doesn't have to bend down nearly as far as he'd expected.

Not that he'd expected anything, he tells himself, and her mouth opens beneath his. Her mouth is gentle, she is gentle, and he had almost forgotten what that was like, to be kissed by a girl who smells not of gunpowder or sulfur or blood-iron but of pumpkin bread and the last lingering traces of an unfamiliar perfume, who does not dress in black as though spending each day in mourning. Her arms circle his neck, catch at the nape as she sighs against him. They are both breathing heavily by the time he lifts her onto the table. Her palm rests for a moment against the side of his face, her eyes meeting his intently and as deeply as though she is searching for something lost at the bottom of the sea. He blinks and she moves her hand to the collar of his shirt, quick fingers working all down the buttons.

Her breath is hot on his collarbone as he unzips her jeans; he rests his head against the curve of her neck, listening to the rhythm of her heart, pounding fragile and desperate as wings beneath her skin, and trails a hand across the soft skin of her thigh. He kisses her stomach and she tilts her head back; she makes a small cry when he enters her and her hands, gripping his shoulders, tighten. He stops listening to her heartbeat then, intent instead on the sounds she makes like just this side of a pleasure/pain dichotomy, until she moans low in her throat and he stops thinking about much of anything at all.

Later, more than minutes but less than hours, they part. She ducks her head, reaching behind herself for her bra, and he blushes faintly, looking away as he does up his belt. Spells can only take you so far, after all. What you do when you get to that point -- and how you deal with the aftermath -- is up to you. Draw the knife, turn back from the house, pretend not to hear the man who calls up to your tower, or the woman who beckons to you from the edge of that fog-wrapped river.

He knows what she has given him, and he wonders what he has given her in exchange, but he will not ask. He will not let himself hear the answers, because it's easier to pretend that things aren't true if they are not spoken aloud.

"I hope you find the ending you're looking for," she says, buttoning up her shirt. You can only do so much with the opportunities offered to you. Not all connections are instantaneous; only rarely does one fall in love at first sight. Rarer still are the times at which it is indeed true love as opposed to a combination of smoke and light and pheromones. If the confusion is not sorted out, if the correct identification isn't made before the exchanging of vows, the results might break your heart, and one thing that is true across almost every story is that your heart is the most valuable thing that you can ever fully own.

"Thank you," he says without thinking, force of habit, and the formality hangs in the air, weirdly polite. He turns to go; she doesn't move. She doesn't watch him leave, and she doesn't say anything else.

When he gets back to the motel room, he will find that his brother is still asleep, that his absence was not noticed. He will sit on the edge of his own bed and he will think of women offering him their bloody hands, of his brother offering his own bright and bloody heart in place of Sam's, so that Sam might have what Dean could not. He will think of temptresses and trades and bargains, and he will tell himself that he is not in a story; he will tell himself he does not know how this will end, that he cannot, because its ending has not yet been written. He will tell himself he does not believe in fate, and he will close his eyes, and as the sun begins at long last to rise, to spill harvest light down these cold November streets, he will tell himself that it was only a spell, that in real life one is never made aware of his or her role quite so easily, that one never sees behind the curtain. He will sleep.

And Catherine will lower her paperback novel, and she will measure grounds into the machine next to the sink, and as she waits for the coffee to brew, she will lean against the counter and watch the frost glitter on the fallen leaves, and she will wonder if she could have tried harder, if she could have said something else, could have somehow found the right combination of words to make him believe her. She knows better, though; she knows, even if he doesn't, her role in this story. She can warn, she can foretell and remind and plea, but her words will fall on deaf ears. It is not her role to intervene. When her story is told, she will serve as Madame Foreshadowing, though she might too play that femme fatale Irony with stilettos like daggers and a knife-glint smirk. It depends on the narrator. It always does.

She also knows that knowing as much won't make what happens next any easier. It never does.

The coffee machine burbles to a stop. She pours herself a cup, steaming and rich and smelling like places she has never seen and that she never will, and settles back onto the couch beside the window that looks out onto the street. There's work to be done. It is still autumn and so there is still power crackling amongst the shed leaves and the shadows on these last woodsmoke nights, and she has only until winter to finish. While her own ending cannot be changed, her story is still unraveling, and she would not have it any other way.

Still, even as she bends to her work, knowing that she has her own troubles to think about, she says a prayer on his behalf to whatever gods of story might exist.

She knows better than to expect it to be answered, to have any effect at all, but she says it anyway.

She's caught in this story, just like Sam is and just like his brother is, but for as long as she can, she's going to tell it like it's her own, just like they will. There's a chance, always, until at last it's written down--

--

end

whereupon @ 2010-11-21T16:44:00

2010-11-22T01:44:19Z

Tinder
by whereupon
Supernatural: Sam/Dean, season-one-ish, PG, 1,560 words.
In response to a prompt by de_nugis.
The sky is bright as razors, and just as sharp.

The sky is bright as razors, and just as sharp; it's not a sky you could drown in, but one that would slice your palms to trail bright red ribbons of blood down onto the dulled crisp of autumn-fallowed leaves that rattle like old newspapers when the wind catches them just right. It won't snow today, it's still too early for that, at least at this latitude, but there was frost on the Impala this morning, and on the scrubby grass someone had planted next to the parking lot in a sad attempt at making it look like something other than a smear of gravel and shattered bottles over which the motel sign towered. Sam won't draw his hands up into the over-long sleeves of his jacket, tugging them down over his knuckles like a child trying to hide from a storm, or from the dark; he straightens his shoulders instead, as though the chill is something that can be warded off with focus and determination. It doesn't work. The cold is a seeping thing, inescapable, and out here, with nothing but these newly-bare trees and the predatory sweep of sky, he feels it all the more keenly.

It had been easy to be warm when they were still in town, kicking each other beneath the table in the diner with the Halloween decorations that Dean made fun of and Sam tried to ignore, cupping his hands around a mug of coffee that tasted bitter no matter how much milk and sugar he added, but that was three hours ago and the caffeine has long since worn off. His eyes burn. He will not let himself yawn. He will not, for what would be the fourth time in the last forty minutes, ask Dean if he's sure he knows where he's going, because the last time Sam did that, Dean had said yes, goddamnit, and that if he asked again, Dean would hit him over the head with a shovel and leave his unconscious ass there until spring, or at least Dean had finished what they'd come here for, which, by the way, would go a hell of a lot faster if he didn't have to put up with Sam asking so many damned stupid questions.

Sam's pretty sure that means Dean has no idea where they're going, but he's too tired to argue the point, and also, though he's fairly certain Dean wouldn't actually hit him with the shovel, Dean had looked kind of crazed when he'd made the threat, which means that he might pretend that he's going to try, at which point Sam would have to lunge out of the way and inevitably trip over his own feet, because it's hard to be graceful when you're dodging the blows of a shovel-wielding maniac, thus causing Dean to laugh himself sick and swear never to let Sam live it down. Which he wouldn't, Sam knows from experience.

Dean drives him crazy. Dean gets beneath his skin, is the threat of arson, the promise of a bottle-edge to his throat at the worst of times and a presence at his back, armed and dangerous and ready to kill the first person who even so much looks at Sam funny, at the best. His brother is turning back to look at him, now, eyes narrowed, knuckles wind-reddened and still swollen from last night's fight, ostensibly started because somebody didn't like the way Dean was looking at their girlfriend or because they didn't like the songs Dean kept choosing from the jukebox's meager selection. Sam knows better, though. The bruises are today like reminders of the season, of the approaching date. This time of year, they both go a little bit crazy. Dean picks fights. As far as Sam's concerned, there are worse ways to deal with -- things.

There are things they do not talk about, things that they've lost. That they do not speak of them is its own way of mourning. The holiest things are those not spoken aloud.

"You getting any freaky ghost vibes?" Dean asks. His boots crunch on the dead leaves, on the brittle twigs buried beneath them. He lowers the shovels from his shoulder, resting the blades on the ground. Sam takes advantage of the opportunity, even if only for a moment, to slide the pack from his own shoulders. It's heavy with salt and kerosene and the half-melted Hershey's bar Dean had tossed in like an afterthought. He'd claimed that if they got lost, they could live on that and the contents of his flask until they regained their bearings, to which Sam had said that he seemed to recall Dean saying, like, five minutes ago that Winchesters were genetically incapable of getting lost. Dean had ignored him, choosing that moment to go temporarily deaf as he usually did whenever he couldn't think of a good comeback to something Sam said.

"I thought you knew where we were going," Sam says now, a little accusatorily, but he thinks that's fair. After all, Dean had said that.

"I do," Dean says. "We're there. Here. Whatever. Start digging, the bones ain't gonna unbury themselves."

"I didn't say they would," Sam says, but only under his breath. It's not Dean's fault that they're out here. He knows Dean wishes just as badly as he does that today of all days they could stay somewhere warm, pretend that theirs is a life not etched with gravedirt and marked with the promise of bullets and shed blood.

He wishes he couldn't imagine dying out here, in the middle of nowhere, black-barked trees on all sides, a thin shroud offered by the faded gilt of leaves going crimson and gold and brown as earth. He can imagine it all too well. The man who'd taken Elisa Ness out here had stabbed her only once, because he wanted her to die slowly or because he was surprised after all at what it felt like, the immediacy of someone's blood on his hands. Sam and Dean hadn't been able to ask him; he'd died in his sleep, probably peacefully, some ten years ago. Elisa, dead thirty years before that, still walks. But this is something they can fix, something that, though they cannot make it right, they can at least bring to an end.

He stops noticing the temperature, warmed by the work of exhuming her grave. He doesn't shiver again until they've stopped, until he's poured kerosene over the small pyre they've built over her bones and Dean, having likewise shed his jacket, is crouching over the leather, rifling through a pocket for his lighter.

"Put your damn coat back on," Dean says absently, without looking at him, and then rises to his feet, lighter in hand. Sam rolls his eyes; it's not like he needs Dean to tell him these things, despite what Dean says to the contrary.

The fire catches, and instinct older than memory catches too at his heart for a split-second, hisses like breath across the back of his neck before disappearing under years of conditioning. The air smells of woodsmoke, the autumning of the world. It's a bad idea for people like them to be out after dark, this night of all nights, and so by nightfall they will be as safe as they will let themselves believe, behind a locked door, barred by salt, and warded. Tomorrow the world will be grey as ash, and subdued; against it they will tell each other bright lies that will flicker like candles against exhaustion, against the season, against the urge to lie down and sleep through the coming year, to lie down and maybe never get up again. Tomorrow they will find a diner that serves apple pie hot and rich with cinnamon and sugar. Dean will smile like it's the best thing he's ever seen, and Sam will pretend to be exasperated, and things will go unsaid.

Now, though, beneath the broken-glass sky that is the promise of winter, of bleak sunrises and murderous nights so cold that they will sleep close together in the backseat of the car, the cut of Dean's eyes is itself a blade, a danger, a promise. When Dean offers him the flask, against the temperature and the weight of what they've done here, he accepts, and the whiskey burns his throat. The flask trades hands; Dean's shoulder bumps his and he turns into the motion, turning to face his brother, Dean's face already canted towards his own. They scuffle and scuff through the leaves; the bony trunk of a tree presses at his back, rough bark scraping at the cloth of his coat. The skin just above the waist of Dean's jeans is hot to his touch.

This should be blasphemy, this close to the pyre still burning, but this place is already marked. He smells freshly-turned earth and his brother's aftershave; he knows that they will make it back to the car. They will not be here when winter comes, not here. They will be miles down the road, some road unknowable until that moment, maybe any back road or side street, unlit save for the glow of headlights, where they will take what warmth they can find, what little warmth is theirs to claim, in each other, perhaps the only thing that has ever been rightfully theirs.

--

end

whereupon @ 2010-10-18T23:35:00

2010-10-19T07:35:55Z

Redefinition
by whereupon
Supernatural: Sam/Dean, PG-13, first season, 7,900 words.
It's a good thing Sam's the only one he ever does this for.

It's a hell of a town, Las Vegas, all flash and glitz, blacklight oasis in the middle of the goddamn desert. At least, that's the way it's meant to be, and any other day, maybe it'd even be true. Today, though, it mostly just seems like hell, miles and miles of sunblasted spiderwebbed bullet-blasted nothing, just like the backstreets of any other major American city. It's not like he expects a freaking snowstorm, he knows what the fuck a desert is, but he also knows what the fuck winter is, and they're in the middle of that, too, so it would be nice to at least feel less like he's stuck in a goddamn oven. His head's pounding with it, this sick heat, this hangover ache except for how he doesn't have a hangover because Sam, who still doesn't get the concept of a well-deserved post-job victory celebration, claims that casinos are places where dreams go to get taken out back by statistics, and moreover, that he's allergic to bad décor, which, considering the places they usually stay, is the most obvious lie he's told all week, right up there with I'm fine and no, that wasn't a nightmare and dude, it wasn't a sex dream either and I hate you. If Sam were allergic to bad décor, he'd have asphyxiated some twenty years ago, but his forehead had been pinched and his eyes shadowed with colors like bruises or sunset, and Dean really is a good brother. Because of that, instead of doing anything remotely resembling fun, he'd spent the rest of the night eating bad Chinese takeout and watching worse television and then listening to Sam pretend to sleep, only to be jarred awake scant hours later after Sam actually fell asleep and woke shouting, as is becoming tradition.

Not being a heartless bastard really sucks sometimes. It's a good thing Sam's the only one he ever does this for.

He takes a sip of coffee bitter as ashes, cold wind and a fuel gauge running towards empty. Old things stalk the streets of Vegas, just like they do every city, in the alleyways and the glittering tourist facades alike. Las Vegas is a theogony of gangster-gods and coins that clink and rattle like shotgun shells or bullet casings, and the blood of the skeletal thing he and Sam killed last night is still dark beneath his fingernails. Its hands had locked around his throat, bruising deep, his reward for shoving Sammy out of its reach, and when Sam had slid the knife into its neck, ichor had spattered hot and crimson across Dean's skin and shirtfront as the thing slumped like a great bony insect against him. Still, he would have been fine after a shower and a couple of drinks, and he would have proved as much if he hadn't been worried about what Sam would do if left on his own for a few hours, if no one were there to tell him that it was only a dream, to wait until his breathing evened out, to pretend to believe him when he said he didn't want to go back to sleep because he wasn't tired, not because he was afraid of what he would see if he did, and to be awake with him through what should have been the chill hours of dawn but were instead already tinged with the coming day's heat. The lights of the Strip, candy-pink, electric orange, green as absinthe, had been visible through the thin curtains like a premonition or a threat until Dean gave up and got out of bed, took a shower that did nothing to ease the press of gravity bearing hard upon his bones, and came back out to find all of the lights on and Sam watching the news red-eyed and wan.

This diner is the closest one to their motel, and that's all it has going for it; its walls are sun-scalded and grimy with years of cigarette smoke the color of misery and desperation, of waiting for something that never comes in time, or maybe never comes at all. There's a couple of chicks he thinks might be strippers or casino waitresses hunched over cups of coffee at the counter, but even they look tired, all smudged makeup and jackets shrugged over the spangle of their costumes. If he went over to them now, they'd give him maybe thirty seconds before shutting him down, and maybe only out of pity; he knows exactly how bad he looks, because he sees it whenever he looks at Sam, sees it mirrored beneath Sam's own skin.

Of course, this being Vegas and all, the chicks probably see worse every day, and if they took pity on everybody who looked like they needed it, they probably wouldn't have made it this far. Pity's a bitch, leaves you running on empty or less, and kindness will bleed you dry. Ten seconds, he amends, they'd give him ten seconds, and that's not worth the effort, even if he had energy to spare.

New York, he remembers, an epiphany sudden and obvious in hindsight, lyric bright as admonishment in the back of his mind. It's New York that's a hell of a town. What the fuck ever, you've seen one big city, you've seen them all; this one just happens to have more giant-scale models of monuments than most. There's even a New York one, which means at least that part of Vegas is technically a hell of a town, and if one part qualifies, so do the rest. He's pretty sure that's a rule, like all Cretans being liars, except that's not so much a rule as a paradox, and fuck, his head hurts. He wonders if Sam would bring him his sunglasses, if he asked nicely, and he glares across the table at his brother, both waiting for Sam to get the hint and because Sam has the audacity to be wearing at least three layers despite the heat, like a taunt or a dare or hubris, an invitation for the sun to burn just a little bit hotter to teach him a lesson. Which would be fine, or at least justifiable, if Dean wouldn't have to suffer right along with him.

It takes a little while, but eventually Sam looks up from the breakfast he's not eating but appears to find fascinating all the same. "Why're you staring at me?"

"I'm not," Dean says. "I'm glaring. There's a difference."

"You're squinting," Sam says. "Not exactly menacing, man. It just makes you look like you need glasses." Which isn't exactly what Dean was going for, but he can work with it.

"You wanna get my shades, be my guest."

"If you want 'em, get off your ass and get them yourself," Sam says. "And you know that's not the kind of glasses I meant, Grandpa."

"So be more specific next time," Dean says. "Didn't you just spend like four years learning how to do that? I mean, what the hell else do they teach you at lawyer college?"

Sam blinks. "Lawyer college?"

"College. Where you were learning how to be a lawyer. Dude, not a tough concept."

Sam raises his eyebrows. "Uh, yeah, I know what you meant, I've just never heard an Ivy League university referred to as 'lawyer college' before.'"

"And that's your problem," Dean says. "Well, one of 'em. You want the whole list or the just the top ten?"

"You know, I'm good, actually," Sam says.

Dean shrugs. "Your loss."

"Yeah, I'll be sure to regret it on my deathbed," Sam says. "Except you're not gonna to listen to me and you're gonna tell me anyway, aren't you?"

"Hey, I listen to you," Dean says. "I just know better than you do most of the time. Or, wait, all of the time. It's called being the oldest."

"And that would be why you dropped out of high school and I went off to lawyer college," Sam says. "Which I did not just say."

"Told you it sounds better than Ivy League university whatever," Dean says, because that's safer than telling Sam to fuck off. He doesn't think he'd have the energy to track Sam down if Sam stormed off, and he thinks his head might actually crack open, heat wearing his skull thin as eggshells, if Sam started shouting, which is so not how he plans on going out. And Sam would only end up apologizing for being a selfish bastard with fucked-up priorities, anyway, though he wouldn't use those exact words, and then he'd demand that they, like, fucking hug or something, which there's no way in hell Dean would agree to, and that would start the whole thing all over again. "What the hell's Ivy League, anyway? It sounds like a botanist bowling team."

"I'm not going to laugh at that," Sam says, like he thinks Dean might actually think he grew a sense of humor sometime in the last thirty seconds and he's seriously concerned about the effect that might have on his reputation.

"Yeah, 'cause you might dislodge the stick up your ass if you did."

"No, because I'm not going to encourage you," Sam says. "Besides, it wasn't funny. If you had a day job, I'd tell you not to quit it."

"I do have a day job," Dean says. "It just don't pay cash, that's all, and a guy can't survive on badass points alone. That's where the second job comes in."

"Badass points aren't a real thing, Dean, kind of like how credit card fraud isn't a real job, okay? It's a crime." Sam's voice goes up on the last word, like he's so incredulously patronizing that it can't be expressed by mere eyebrow-raising-forehead-flinch alone. It's nothing new, and it would be kind of funny, if he weren't insulting Dean's, and Dad's, and, really, his own entire way of life. Dean's half-tempted to tell him he can use his stupid moral high ground to pay for his breakfast, if that's what he wants, but the day's going to be miserable enough already without Sam sulking self-righteously in the passenger seat for the next six hours.

"Are you done pushing your pancakes around your plate already? And what is that, anyway, like, an anorexic cry for help? Filling in another square on your I'm-a-Teenage-Girl bingo card?"

"I think you won at that a long time ago, actually," Sam says.

Dean narrows his eyes. "Tell that to all the boy band CDs you got shoved in your duffel, Tiger Beat."

"Dude, coming from somebody who only listens to music by a bunch of old guys in leather pants, that doesn't exactly sting. I mean, Metallica's, what, a really pissed off version of Duran Duran?"

"That's it, you're dead to me," Dean says. He leans forward, slumping onto his elbows, and thinks he manages to make it look like a gesture of exasperation. Mostly. "Catch your own ride, I'm leaving you here. Maybe you can ride with one a' those truckers if you hitch up your skirt and flutter your eyelashes."

"Real mature, Dean," Sam says. "Look, I'm sorry I called Metallica a boy band. They're clearly a man band, full of manly long-haired men who wear lots of jewelry, just like everybody else you listen to."

"If you want me to punch you in the face, Sam, you could just ask. You don't gotta try so hard, you're gonna embarrass yourself."

"Thanks, I'll keep that in mind," Sam says.

"Good," Dean says.

"Great," Sam says.

"Awesome," Dean counters.

Sam rolls his eyes. "Jesus Christ," he says, his chair scraping across the linoleum as he stands. He reaches into his pocket for his wallet; he tosses a battered twenty, shiny with tape, down onto the table and heads for the door without checking to see if Dean's following him. He takes a lot on faith, that kid, like he believes Dean's always going to take his shit, always going to follow him and have his back and let him ride in the Impala no matter what he does or how much his taste in music means that if this were any kind of a just universe, he would be riding in the freaking trunk.

Which is just as Dean wants it to be, and needs it to be, so he gets up from the table, too, and he grits his teeth at the way the new angle of sunlight slices into his eyes, and he hurries to catch up with Sam. Sam won't look back, because he never does, but there's always the chance, and Dean's always going to be there.

Sam might be a whiny little bitch sometimes, but this is a role Dean's been playing his whole life, the only one he's ever known, and it's been truth for as long as he can remember. He'll be damned if he'll falter now just because it's fucking hot out. Sam gave in first and had to pay for breakfast, which means Dean won, but if Sam has to come back inside to check on him, that victory's not going to count for anything. It'll be even worse if Sam then apologizes for leaving Dean behind or for bitching at him when he's already got this thundering traincrossing noise in his head, at once dizzying late nights and railroad-car rumble and the way he's seeing spots like those damned flashing signal lights that strobe against the vast black spaces between midwestern towns, echoing in the corners of his eyes like the birth of stars, long after the lights themselves have faded from his vision.

Sam's leaning against the glossy black of the car by the time Dean gets outside. He's slumped against the shotgun-side door as though heedless of the temperature, of how the metal must scorch. Dean kicks his ankle halfheartedly in passing and unlocks the doors. The steering wheel's sticky-hot against his palms and he unrolls his window. He's halfway across the seat, reaching to unroll the one on Sam's side, when Sam gets this weirdly pissy expression on his face and presses himself back against the seat like he thinks Dean's contagious, though with what, Dean's not sure. Maybe Sam's afraid of turning cool.

"Dude, what the hell," he says, because if that's what Sam's worried about, the thing about fucked-up priorities? Even more true than he'd originally thought.

"Uh, you're the one who's in my lap," Sam says. "Personal space much?"

"Yeah, well, your lap's taking up half the goddamn front seat of my car," Dean says. "I'm guessing maybe you haven't noticed, since you're wearing a freaking parka, but it's like a thousand degrees."

"Which explains why you're clinging to me for body heat," Sam says, and Dean instantly regrets ever having taught him sarcasm. He probably would have learned it somewhere else, but he wouldn't be nearly this good at it.

"I'm trying to unroll the damn window," Dean says, giving up and retreating to the safety of the driver's side, which, despite the window being open, isn't any colder than anywhere else. If Sam would stop complaining, he could start driving and get a good breeze going, not to mention get the hell out of the city and find some nice empty stretches of highway to let his girl make up for the past three days of stoplights and gridlock traffic. "Fine, you wanna bitch, do it yourself."

Sam shrugs. "I'm cold," he says.

"You're kidding."

"Do I look like I'm kidding?" Sam asks, which Dean assumes is rhetorical, since Sam never, ever looks like he's kidding. It's a good thing Dean's the one who taught him how to play poker, or else he'd kick Dean's ass every damn time.

"You look like you're--" And Dean pauses, because Sam looks even less like he's kidding than usual, and he should know better than to give Dean an opening like that. He does know better, most of the time. "What are you, sick?"

"No," Sam says, crossing his arms like the question offends him. "Why, are you?"

" No," Dean says, possibly more disgustedly than is strictly necessary, but it turns out that it actually is kind of an offensive question, at least when Sam's asking it of him. He doesn't get sick. It's part of the whole being Dean Winchester thing, like driving an awesome car and being too rock and roll for words.

"You shouldn't drive if you're sick," Sam says, like he thinks Dean doesn't know better just because Dean chose to, like, save people's lives instead of going to some stupid college, like he thinks maybe Dean's got a secret desire to wreck his car on the side of the road, gasoline flames licking across scarred and shredded metal. Not that she doesn't deserve one hell of an exit, but not yet. Not yet.

Besides, he's more for dramatic last stands and heroically suicidal gestures than carelessness and stupid accidents. Despite what Sam says, there's totally a difference between the two.

"Like I said, I'm not," Dean says. "Now who's the one who's not listening?"

"Whatever," Sam says, which is a lame retort even considering that it's coming from the guy who thinks that giving somebody the silent treatment is a good way to win an argument, and slumps back against the seat, his face turned towards the sunlight spilling through the window like he's a damn plant instead of just the only person Dean knows who could possibly be cold at a time like this. Dean considers elbowing him or slapping the back of his head, because the kid knows better than to turn his back on a threat, the ultimate definition of which might be "Dean motherfucking Winchester", but he looks kind of miserable, so Dean settles for flipping him off, and doesn't even turn on the music.

Sam passes out before they even get out of town; one minute Dean's concentrating on not rear-ending the car in front of him, whose driver appears to have interpreted the whole thing about having the right to life and liberty as meaning having the right to do twenty in a fifty-mile-per-hour zone and is somehow failing to notice the big, intimidatingly-badass, black-as-hell car edging dangerously close to their bumper, and the next he hears this noise like a fucking black dog's materialized in the backseat, and maybe he jumps a little at that, but who the fuck wouldn't, really? And then he looks over and realizes that it's goddamn Sam, snoring even though his mouth's a little open and he could get perfectly good oxygen that way. So when Dean notices his own hand shaking a minute later when he reaches to knuckle sweat from his upper lip, he's fairly confident that it can be explained away as adrenaline. Who wouldn't be a little on edge if they'd just thought they were about to get their jugular ripped out?

After all, he's fine. He's not like Sam, who apparently gets bizarre mutant colds that turn him into some freakish were-Doberman thing intent on giving people heart attacks and causing them to crash their cars, which might be the lamest curse ever.

Actually, he's pretty sure Sam's the only person in the whole world who does that. He's special, Dean's brother is. And the noise of his snoring fills the car all the way across the state line, until the sky begins to darken mercifully and the road is obscured by a scrim of rain. By then, it's past lunchtime anyway, so Dean pulls into the parking lot of the next truckstop he sees, which is already half-full of crooked semis, and reaches across the seat to shake Sam awake. He's not particularly hungry, but the rain's making it hard to see, and Sam's snoring is making it hard to concentrate on the road.

Plus, his back kind of hurts from this many hours spent in the car, but that's Sam's fault, since he let Sam drive yesterday and Sam fucked with the seat, and all of the mirrors, too.

Sam knocks his hand away and blinks blearily at him. "You look like crap," he says flatly, and Dean has to give him points for irony.

"You should look in the damn mirror," he says. "Do you want lunch or what?"

"Not really," Sam says, wrinkling his nose, but he gets out of the car anyway. The rain's fucking colder than it has any right to be, even for somewhere that's not a desert, and Dean flips up his collar. All the same, he's shivering by the time they cross the sharp, shifting gravel of the unpaved parking lot to the truckstop itself, where the scent of grease and mustard and coffee should be enticing but instead nearly turns his stomach.

He fucking hates the desert. He fucking hates this state. He fucking hates this entire multi-state region. And he especially hates the way Sam's looking at him, because Dean's pretty sure that's his concerned expression, the same one he uses on people they've just saved from being eviscerated by giant demonic scarecrows or set on fire by freaking flame monsters that even Sam couldn't find a name for. "Stop looking at me like that," he says.

"Like what?" Sam says, as though he doesn't know.

"Like you think I'm," but there's really no way to finish that that won't immediately have Sam saying things like I wasn't and you're imagining things, maybe you're running a fever, here, let me feel your forehead or some other pussy thing, so he concludes with, "never mind. Nothing." Which at least gets Sam to stop giving him that concerned look and give him the one Dean thinks mean's something like "you're the weirdest person I know," but that's progress. Even if it isn't true. After all, Sam went to a freaking hippie university; compared to a bunch of long-haired, moccasin-wearing, patchouli-scented Grateful Dead fans, Dean's normal.

Or at least weird in a cool way. Whatever. Normal's boring, anyway.

He settles into the booth across from Sam, forgoing his usual habit of kicking Sam a couple of times underneath the table as is necessary to make the points that a, Sam's legs are freakishly long, and b, just because Sam's legs are freakishly long doesn't mean he can start shoving them under Dean's side of the table, especially when doing so means that he's kicking Dean in an attempt to showcase his superior grasp of not knowing when to stop growing. Sam, however, doesn't appear to be grateful for the temporary lack of steel-toed-boot imprints on his shins; he mostly just looks like he wishes he were somewhere else. Dean can empathize.

"So, I was thinking," Dean says, at the same time Sam says, "Do you think--"

"You go first," Dean says.

"No, it's fine," Sam says.

"Sam," Dean says, and either he's really menacing or Sam just feels bad for him, because Sam rolls his eyes and sighs and shrugs, which means he's going to give in but wants to make Dean think it's painful.

"We don't have to be anywhere right away, right? We don't have a hunt?"

"Are you asking me 'cause you forgot or are you just telling me shit I already know?" It might have come out bitchier than he'd intended, because Sam stops talking and raises an eyebrow. Dean sighs. "Sorry, fine, you were saying?"

"Maybe we could take today off, you know, find a motel, hole up there for tonight, at least wait out the storm."

"And you couldn't'a had this plan when we were still in Vegas?"

"You didn't look like you were going to pass out when we were still in Vegas," Sam says. "I mean, you did, a little, but not like you do right now."

"I will kick your ass," Dean says warningly, and then, "You're the one who freaking snored the whole way here. If I look like I'm gonna pass out, it's 'cause you infected me with your weirdo mutant germs."

"Is that a yes?" Sam asks.

"Whatever," Dean says. He avoids the urge to put his head down on the table, mostly because he's not sure he'd be able to get back up. "You see a motel, you let me know. Until then, keep your bitching to yourself." He gets up, and Sam does the same, except for how he's so busy glaring at Dean that he nearly trips over the waitress who's finally come to take their orders. That's kind of funny, at least, and when Sam's done apologizing for nearly trampling her, he gets her to give him directions to the nearest motel, which she writes on one of the pages of her order pad. Dean's pretty sure she adds her phone number at the bottom, but he can't be certain because Sam refuses to show him the page. Which, actually, makes him even more sure. If Sam doesn't want him to see it, it has to be good.

"You gonna call her?" Dean asks when they get back out to the car.

"No," Sam says, and then scrunches up his face, which Deans assumes means he hadn't meant to confirm the phone number theory.

"Why not? She was hot. And clearly she's got good taste in movies, since she liked your Godzilla routine."

"Turn left," Sam says, which counts as ignoring him. Dean shrugs.

As far as motels go, they've stayed in worse. Dean manages to step in like every single one of the puddles in the parking lot, so that by the time they get to their room, his jeans are soaked and icy, which wouldn't have happened if Sam had stayed the fuck out of his way, but the motel is fine. It's just that the company sucks, and it's raining like misery personified, and he didn't see one fucking bar on the whole drive from the diner, which means that he's going to spend what's meant to be an awesome day off listening to the rain, and more immediately, to Sam choking and wheezing and dying, because there's absolutely nothing fucking else to do.

"Great," Dean says, tossing his duffel onto what he's just decided is going to be his bed and surveying the small television on the dresser. "We can spend the day watching freaking I Love Lucy. That's gonna be awesome, Sam. Great plan."

"Hey, we coulda kept going," Sam says. He's already got his laptop and shit spread out across the room's single table. He used to do that when he was a kid, too: he'd be the first one to unpack anything, like every time, every motel, he believed they were really going to stay. By the time he was fourteen, he didn't bother anymore, and Dean's not sure what it means that he's doing it again. Probably nothing. "I only suggested we stop 'cause I didn't want you to crash us on the side of the road. I coulda driven, if you wanted."

"Like hell," Dean says. He holds out his hand. "Dude, gimme the waitress's number."

Sam stares at him over the screen of his laptop. "You're serious."

"Uh, yeah," Dean says. "'Cause, no offense, but she's a hell of a lot hotter than you are, and if this is my day off, I'm gonna spend it doing something fun."

"So you remember how we were both there when she gave it to me?" Sam says. "Sure you do, because you were laughing your ass off at the time. Yeah. Well. She gave it to me, Dean, not to you. I think maybe that's a hint."

"But you're not gonna call her," Dean says.

"So?"

"So . . . what's your problem?"

"Uh, I don't think it's my problem so much as it is the fact that if she'd been interested in you, she probably would have given her number to you. Not to me." Sam purses his lips. "Can't you go hit on the motel manager or something?"

"The motel manager's like ninety, Sam. Also, a dude."

"So just keep it in your pants for a day," Sam says. "It's not gonna kill you. Maybe you could, you know, take a nap."

"A nap?"

"Yeah, Dean, the reason we're here? Because you're sick?"

"I am not," Dean says. " You are."

"Right," Sam says. "Okay, yeah, that's why I'm the one doing something functional like finding us a hunt and you're the one shivering over there on the bed."

"If I'm shivering, it's because you shoved me into every fucking puddle between here and the car," Dean says. "Not to mention not all of us dress like we're going fucking . . . spelunking, okay? Some of us have actual pride."

"Spelunking?" Sam says. "Do you even know what that means?"

"Yes," Dean says. "That's generally why people say things, Sam, because they know what they mean and they're trying to fucking say that."

"Uh, right, Chomsky," Sam says. "Are you seriously blaming me because you didn't bother to wear a jacket even though it's raining? Seriously? Because if that's all you got, I think I might have to give you this one out of pity."

"Oh, you take that pity and shove it right up your ass," Dean says. "This is what I get for giving into your little 'let's stop for the day' routine? I feel bad for you and you give me this crap? Pack your shit, we're hitting the road."

Sam stares at him. "You realize that it's almost literally raining buckets out there."

"And this is me calling your bluff." Dean shoulders his duffel. "You wanna get going, c'mon, we'll get going."

Sam holds up his hands in what's probably meant to be a placating gesture. "Look," he says, and would it kill him to sound just a little less patronizing? "We paid for the room, okay? I don't think the guy's gonna give us our money back, even if you do hit on him, so we might as well stay here, right? I mean, unless you can think of somewhere better?"

"Vegas was better," Dean says, but he lets his bag fall back onto the bed. "Buttfuck, Ohio is better. Iceland would be better. Probably there're fucking Amish villages that're better."

"Dean, you got a mouthful of," Sam pauses, his gesture shifting from placating to a sort of windmilling thing that Dean thinks might indicate a loss of words, though could just as easily be an attempt at flight, "whatever the hell it was we killed's blood in Vegas. Which is probably why . . . someone in your situation could be feeling less than one hundred percent. Not to mention you bit-- commented on the heat almost the entire time. How is that better?"

Dean stares at him. "Three words, Sam. Strippers. Liquor. Gambling."

"You gamble all the time."

"That's different."

Sam raises his eyebrows. "Yeah, it requires skill."

Dean tilts his head. "Was that a compliment?"

Sam pauses again, this time with his mouth open, and then narrows his eyes. "It was an observation."

He's going to have to think about that one. "Huh."

Sam shakes his head. "So we're staying here, right?"

"Yeah," Dean says. "Sure. Why not." He settles back onto his bed and after a minute of pretending not to watch Dean while actually really obviously watching him like he thinks Dean might make a break for the parking lot, Sam hunches down behind his computer. After an hour of shitty black and white reruns -- comedy in the fifties was fucking weird, though that might be true of all comedy ever -- Dean gives up and digs the bottle of whiskey out of his duffel. "It's medicinal," he says when Sam raises an eyebrow.

"Told you you were sick," Sam mutters like he thinks maybe Dean's gone deaf, too, and the only reason Dean doesn't throw anything at him is that there actually isn't anything to throw, short of a pillow, which is out since this isn't the beginning of some lesbian sorority porn flick, and a lamp, which would kind of be overkill. Possibly funny, but overkill, and he'd feel bad if Sam didn't duck in time.

It turns out that fifties comedy isn't any less weird when accompanied by alcohol, but it is more entertaining. Sam even gives up on his computer after awhile and comes to sit beside him on the bed, and eventually he even takes the bottle when Dean offers it to him, though at first he makes a big show out of wiping off the mouth with his shirt, like there's actually a chance that he hasn't already caught anything Dean might have. Dean realizes then that he can't hear the rain anymore, and in fact he's not actually sure that it's still raining, since at some point Sam got up to draw the curtains like he's worried that somebody's going to come stare in their window or something. Maybe he was onto something about the motel manager.

"I fucking hate the desert," Dean says sometime later, when there's a lull in the televised laugh track, because his jeans are still soggy and his head still hurts, though not as badly as it did before, and now that he thinks about it, this kind of thing only ever happens in the desert. In Maine or Iowa or Tennessee, he might get shot or stabbed or thrown into a fucking wall, sure, but he sure as hell doesn't get sick.

"Yeah," Sam says from somewhere very close by, pitch of his voice like his mouth is right next to Dean's ear, and Dean sits up a little, because "fall asleep leaning against his brother's shoulder" would quite possibly be the first entry on a theoretical list of things Dean Winchester would never do. "Me, too."

"So why the fuck did you go live in one?" Dean says, because it seems like that's a really fucking huge flaw in Sam's logic, though Sam does have a history of doing things that make him unhappy, like he thinks the world might come to an end if he ever does something to make himself smile.

Sam blinks down at him. He's slightly blurrier than Dean remembered, which could either be a result of a fever or of the whiskey. Dean hopes it's the latter. "Stanford -- that part of California's not the desert, Dean."

"I fucking knew that," Dean says.

"Right," Sam says. "Hey, gimme the bottle, okay?"

"It's empty," Dean says. "You finished it."

"Yeah, I know," Sam says. "I just don't want you to fall asleep on it, because you'll wake up with a backache and spend tomorrow blaming me."

"Whatever," Dean says. He closes his eyes against the flickering black and white images and feels Sam's hand press against his side, his knuckles against Dean's hip where Dean's t-shirt has ridden up. It's a solid, grounding feeling and Dean almost misses it when Sam finishes whatever he's doing and moves his hand. Dean opens his eyes. "Hey, Sam."

"Yeah?" Sam sounds like he's half-asleep himself and Dean wonders suddenly what time it is. He can't remember how long he's been here, how long they've been here, how long they've been fitting together on the bed like this.

"I'm glad you came back."

Sam's blurry, but he's definitely smiling, Dean can tell that much. "Go to sleep, man," he says, which is fucking beyond words, really. Dean forces himself to open his eyes further, grits his teeth and pushes himself upright.

"I told you I don't fuckin' nap," he says, as much menace as he can manage in those words, but he doesn't think it's near enough. Still, Sam pulls back a little, his smile fading, and Dean immediately feels like the biggest asshole on the planet. What the fuck, he was just telling himself that Sam doesn't smile enough and then he goes and wipes the smile right off his brother's face. Yeah, Sam was smiling because he was kind of laughing at Dean, Dean's pretty sure, but that wasn't so bad, because usually Sam doesn't even give him that much. "Sorry," he adds lamely, mumbled and under his breath and he doesn't think Sam even hears him, because Sam's busy reaching for the remote and turning off the television and standing up. The room is suddenly very dark and very quiet; all Dean can hear is his own breath, and his own ragged heartbeat, and he can't for the life of him make out Sam's face, or even his silhouette. "Sam?"

"Yeah, right here," Sam says, switching on the lamp between the beds, and Dean throws a hand up to cover his face.

"Jesus, warn a guy next time."

"Sorry," Sam says, but he doesn't sound very apologetic. "How you feeling?"

"Like a million bucks," Dean says. "You?"

"Great," Sam says. Dean keeps his hand over his face, but he can hear Sam moving around, running water in the bathroom, and then he's back, shoving something at Dean so that Dean has to move his hand and sit up and take the glass before Sam spills it all over him. "You should drink some water."

"You should mind your own damn business," Dean says, but he drinks the water anyway, because his mouth is kind of dry and Sam's a real bitch when things don't go his way. Sam takes the glass away, his hand brushing briefly against Dean's own, and sets it on the nightstand, but he's still there, up in Dean's space, sitting on the edge of the bed so that the mattress dips and Dean has to make a conscious effort not to be drawn in, to be dragged down by his gravity. And this is pretty close to being the very definition of a chick flick moment, because he thinks Sam might be about to move his hand and if he does, it's going to end up on Dean's shoulder, and Dean's trying to think of a good way to make things happen in a way that he can actually live with when Sam, as he's done only a few times in his life and always the consequences have left Dean ash-cold, uses his initiative and does something that Dean doesn't expect in the least.

The thing about being kissed by your brother, a part of Dean reflects distantly, is that it neatly saves any situation from being even remotely chick-flick in nature, as it instead becomes something that he's fairly certain is illegal in every single fucking state. He might congratulate Sam for that maneuver, which at least gets points for originality, if he were insane and also if he could fucking breathe, which he's currently having trouble with due to the fact that he is being kissed by his fucking brother, what the hell.

"Oh god," Sam says, drawing back, and in the paltry light spilling from the bathroom, his face has taken on a fever sheen. "Oh god, I didn't."

"Didn't what?" Dean says, because sometimes his mouth has a habit of moving before he can actually think about what he's saying. It's called living dangerously, he figures, which is funny considering how much danger his actual life contains. "Kiss me? 'Cause I was there for that part, and yeah, I'm pretty sure you did."

Sam narrows his eyes. "No, I didn't. You have a fever. And you're drunk." Stating the obvious is one of his skills and also his passions, along with telling Dean things that Dean already knows and telling Dean things that nobody other than Sam would ever think were interesting or relevant to, like, anything ever.

"Uh, no, I don't, and you killed the bottle, man. I'm not the only one." He pauses, because he thinks he might have just had the best idea ever, though he thinks he might easily live to regret it, if it doesn't kill him outright. "C'mere."

"What?"

"What are you, deaf all of a sudden?" Dean says, reaching for Sam, and apparently Sam wasn't expecting that, because he gives in more easily than Dean had anticipated, sprawl of sharp angles and elbows against Dean's chest. "Remember, you started this."

"Started what," Sam says, and then he doesn't say anything much at all. For somebody who gets his kicks going around surprise-kissing people, Dean thinks, he should be better at being on the receiving end, because as it is, he's kind of flailing, which is ridiculous. Not that the whole situation isn't ridiculous, but Jesus, that's not generally the kind of reaction Dean hopes to get.

"What the fuck," Sam says when he finally gets his hands on either side of Dean's neck and pushes back. "What the fuck?"

"Dude, that's what I was thinking."

Sam's eyes get huge and wide and indignant, like Dean's just insulted his stupid haircut again, or one of the those stupid whiny singers he loves so much who happen to have the same stupid haircut as he does, which Dean thinks has to be more than just coincidence. If it were 1964, Sam would so have a Beatles haircut. "So why the hell'd you do it?"

"Like I said, you started it."

"You're an asshole," Sam says flatly, like it's a fact as opposed to his own misinformed opinion.

"Finish it," Dean says, shifting his weight a little and cracking his neck, and hoping he sounds like he actually knows what he's doing. Which he does, mostly, but his hands are starting to shake in a way that he hopes is only obvious to him, and it might be fear, crackling live-wire electric in the pit of his stomach, because if he's wrong about this, he's just made the biggest fucking mistake in the history of, like, ever. And there's absolutely no way to undo it.

"What?"

"You started it," Dean says. "Finish it. You can't leave a guy hanging like that."

"You're not." Sam stares at him. "You're serious."

"Uh, yeah," Dean says. "Why the hell not?"

"Because we're," and Sam does that flailing thing again. "Us. Related. It's not normal."

"Uh, what about our lives is?" Dean says. "I mean, you don't want to, fine, but--"

"You're insane," Sam says.

"Right back at you," Dean says, and maybe Sam takes that as a dare, or maybe he just decides to do something that will make him happy for once, but neither of them notice when the glass on the nightstand is knocked to the floor, and if at some point, in the middle of the night, if Sam wakes shouting and Dean happens to be right there to tell him that it was only a dream, and if maybe he then kisses Sam a little and some other, non-traditionally-brotherly things happen before they both go back to sleep, it's not like anybody else is going to find out, right? And like he said, normal's boring, anyway. Normal's for people who don't kill demons every day, people who don't spend every day basically being an outlaw and a hero at the same time, who were raised to believe that like the absolute point of life is a corner office and two point five children, and sure, some parts of that suck, like being wanted in -- he's actually lost count of how many states it is these days, but other parts?

Other parts are pretty damn cool. And he can live like this, with this, because the thing is, he's always loved Sam. That's never been a question. And sure, maybe this isn't exactly what he meant, but he's also always been willing to do anything for Sam. And if this is what Sam wants, if this is what will make Sam happy?

Love, as far as he's concerned, has nothing to do with marriages and mortgages and those stupid songs about growing old together. He gets the songs about hanging out with some girl, about thinking she's hot and wanting to sleep with her and then sleeping with her and wishing that could last forever, he really does, but that isn't love, not the way he understands it. Love is staying up all night and pretending not to look at the clock the whole time, waiting for somebody to get home, like keeping vigil ever made a damn bit of difference; love is pulling the trigger again and again until it feels like your arm is going to break, so that when it isn't practice, when it's real, you won't miss. Love is going hungry so that somebody else can eat, and love is telling lies so that somebody else can sleep, and love is wanting a better life for somebody else. Love is the ashes-and-whiskey, gut-punched feeling when they finally get it, and love is not asking them to turn it down, and love is feeling like a fucking asshole for being even just a little happy when they come back.

Love is being willing to die for somebody, and while he's liked the girls he's slept with, at least while he was sleeping with them, there's not a damn one of them he'd die for, the way he would for Sammy, or for Dad. Get killed trying to save, yeah, but not kill himself for, not bleed out the way he would if it would save Sam's life, or if it would save Dad, if Dad needed him to, wherever Dad is these days.

So, yeah. He'd sell his soul for Sam, if it came to that, and compared to that, this is nothing, and in a weird, immensely fucked up kind of way, it's also pretty awesome. Sex is awesome, and Sam is awesome, though Dean would never tell him that to his face, or maybe even say it aloud, and combining the two is weird, admittedly, but not un-awesome. Sure, he's probably going to hell for it, but that's always been pretty much a given. There's no way his story ends happily, but it's not like there's ever been anybody for him other than Sam, so this?

This might be one of the first things that has ever made sense to him, in its own twisted, Sam-based-logic kind of way. And he's actually kind of okay with that.

It won't last forever, he knows, because Sam's more than he deserves and this way of living ends in tragedy more often than anything else, but he's always planned on dying before he gets old anyway, and if, in the meantime, he gets to wake up to Sam grinning at him bright as April, and if sometimes now they stop along the side of the road not just to take a leak but because Sam wants to fuck around, his neck already bruised by the slick heat of Dean's own mouth, and if sometimes when they stop for breakfast or lunch or dinner or coffee, Dean flirts with the waitress even though he knows it won't go anywhere, just because it'll make it that much sharper, that much better when he and Sam finally get outside?

That might actually be the definition of everything he's ever wanted. He's just not going to tell Sam that. And if sometimes he gets the feeling that Sam already knows, that's okay, because it doesn't count as long as he doesn't say it out loud.

--

end

whereupon @ 2010-10-08T18:00:00

2010-10-09T02:00:33Z

Drowning
by whereupon
Supernatural: Lisa/Dean, spoilers through 6.02, PG, 750 words.
On fairy tales for girls.

As a girl she imagined herself a sea-witch, a temptress on the shoreline, powerful and half-mad. She had a kind of lover in those days, men and not a few women, sheathed in leather and scarred with battles she'd never seen and could only imagine. She told herself stories about who she would become, and all of the sunsets and sunrises she would watch from distant shores, and then one day she woke up and she was someone who taught yoga at the women's health center on the corner of 27th and Hawthorne and was raising a son all by herself and who no longer had time for mythology and legend. She woke sometimes with a few fragments of Greek smudged like red clay and the tear-scent of salt behind her eyes, but they were forgotten quickly, washed away by the thin grey pre-dawn light and her son crying in the next room.

One day a man she'd loved many years before, when she was still just a girl, appeared again on her doorstep. He'd come to say goodbye, she learned, and he would do it again a year later. The third time he returned to her, he was wrecked with grief, and he told her that he had come to stay, to live with her if she would have him, for he had nowhere else to go. Her illusions about the glamour of battle had long since fallen away; she, too, had tasted sacrifice and had been scarred by it, but she let him in, because she loved him still and because she knew that there was a right thing to do, and a wrong, and though she no longer really believed that she was living in a story, she wanted to believe that she was the kind of person who would do what was right. She took care of the man, and she took care of her son, and eventually she began to tell herself a new kind of story, one in which her son would have a father and she would sleep curled beside someone warm and strong, who loved her, who would shelter her body with his every night for the rest of her life, if she wanted.

But the man was distant, and sometimes dreamed about terrible things, though he would never tell her what they were. One day he came to her and he asked her for her blessing, and for a gift; he asked her to tie him to her, so that he would not have to leave, and so that he could always keep her safe. The chain he held out for her approval was of the finest filigreed silver, so thin that she almost could not see it, and she wanted with all her heart to say yes, to keep him with her always, but she had been wise for a long time by then, and she knew that the chain that looked light as ashes now would not always be so; it would tighten like a noose around him, and as it did, the love that the man felt for her would begin to die and he would grow colder, until one day he would wake up and there would be nothing of him left.

She knew this, though he didn't yet, and she made the decision that he could not. She rested her hand against his cheek, and she told him that she could not be his jailer, that he was not hers to bind. For a moment his shoulders slumped, and then he smiled, and she knew, as her heart broke once more along a fracture she'd thought healed for good long ago, that though she'd broken the spell and granted his freedom, in this story, she was not the hero, for this story was not hers. Still, she asked the man to return, if he could, and she told him that she would wait for him, because she knew how these sorts of things were meant to go, and because, though she was used to a bed unshared by another, her dreams for her son were harder to discard. The man promised her that he would, and then he went away to war, and she went to wake her son for school and wondered if Penelope had been a sea-witch once, and if so, if she had ever once stopped dreaming of the ocean; if she too had known this feeling like cool, dry tiles beneath her feet and her throat stoppered with dust.

whereupon @ 2010-09-14T11:10:00

2010-09-14T19:10:46Z

How to Live Through the Epilogue
by whereupon
Supernatural: Gen, R, post-5.22, 3,670 words.
So the thing about endings is that they don't really exist.

So the thing about endings is that, like unicorns and (you used to believe, until one laid his hand upon you and spoke the word of God, thus hauling you out of the hell you'd come to call home) angels, they don't really exist. Sure, there's death, but in your experience, that doesn't mean a damn thing other than that you get torn to shreds and wake up with a new address and a new set of rules, or you get shot or beaten or stabbed (if you're lucky, maybe you just pass out, choking on your own blood), and then you open your eyes and get to do it all over again. Maybe other people get the whole pearly gates experience, but after actually meeting the guys in charge of that, you suspect that what passes for their immigration policy means that almost everybody you've ever met is going to be bunking in hell.

So maybe, also like unicorns, endings only come to the virtuous and virginal. You haven't been either of those since the day you hid the box of Lucky Charms from your brother because you were sick of giving him everything and the day you ditched class to fuck Mitzi Klemmer in the back of her dad's Chevrolet, respectively. (You would have ditched class anyway; Mitzi was just one of the best coincidences that ever happened to you.) So you're screwed, but then, most people are; it's just that most people don't have to pay for it again and again and again. Most people die once and get it over with. You, on the other hand, you die, and then you come back, and you lose track of how many times you do it, until that last time, the time that you really didn't expect to survive, the time that should have really killed you, if you were living in any kind of just universe (which you've always known you aren't, but you'd kind of hoped you were wrong about that), when you don't. You don't come back, because you don't die.

It turns out that if you save the world for everybody else, losing your own in the process, and if, because the fates are three seriously sadistic bitches and God doesn't care either way, you live through it, emerging victorious from the rubble that doesn't even contain the body of everything you've ever loved, because that's gone somewhere you will never be able to follow, no matter how many deals you make -- well, then you've got nothing. You get to live, that last time, but at the cost of everything that ever mattered. That's it, kid, game over. Take your prize, which is small enough that you can close your hand around it and not even notice, the way it weighs less even than the wind, your tattered little soul, and get the hell out. And that's one motherfucking gutpunch hell of a truth, the kind that you can't forget even when you're drunk enough that you've almost forgotten your own name, because the fact that you're there to get drunk in the first place means that even though your heart's been ripped out and torn to shreds, you're terribly, inexorably, still alive.

And the fact that you're still alive means that you have to keep going. The fact that you're still alive, and that you remember what the price of that was, means that eventually you put down the gun you've been holding for the last hour and a half as you tried to work up the necessary courage and you crawl beneath the cold, clammy sheets of the bed in the room you've rented for the night, because your brother didn't die to save the world only so that you could blow your brains out in the kind of motel room you spent your whole life up until now in and that you will probably spend the rest of your life in, because it turned out that you can surround yourself with the things that you think maybe you've always wanted, but you can't forget what they cost you. You can't forget the reasons you wanted those things so badly, and those reasons? They haven't gone away.

The world's still a fucking awful place, filled with things that will hunt and torture and murder for the sheer fucking glee of it, and some of those things aren't even human, and that makes them something you can take care of. If you can't kill yourself because one of the last things you swore to him was that you would live, you can at least kill something else that deserves it.

Not to mention that if you've spent almost all your life moving, staying in one place for more than a month will do a lot more than set your teeth on edge. It'll have you slamming doors and looking over your shoulder even more than usual and reaching for your gun at shadows, only to remember that you had to swear you'd keep your guns out of the house, if you were going to stay there. And it's boring. You wake up sometimes and beneath the fucking agony that is being alive, you crave greasy truckstop food and the certainty with which you hefted the weight of your favorite sawed-off and the way the air smells when you've got the windows down and you're doing ninety down some back-country road with fields going sunlit-gold on all sides and all you have to do is keep driving and everything will be okay.

So you do what you have to do. You kiss your girl (who was never really your girl, but you like to think of her like that, like all those girls in your songs, worldshaking and endlessly beautiful girls with gentle hands and soft smiles and tight jeans, dirty and sweet just like the song says), and you say goodbye to the kid who isn't your son (who doesn't think of you as a father, who doesn't understand why you started hanging around again and who asks his mom about you when he thinks you can't hear, who says things like why does he cry so much and Trevor says your new boyfriend's a drunk and when you get married, my daddy's gonna hit me the way his does and looks at you with something like fear when you come back that night with a black eye from the only punch Trevor's asshole of a dad landed, and if the son of a bitch wants to go to the ER and report you to the fucking cops, you'll be glad to explain to them exactly why you did it), and you get back in the car.

You get back in the car, and you drive, and some mornings you wake up beside someone whose name you don't remember and who doesn't offer breakfast, and other mornings you wake up screaming from nightmares you remember all too well, and every night, you go to sleep hoping that the next morning you will not wake up, because you might able to do this by yourself, but that doesn't mean you want to. You don't ever tell yourself that this, that you, will stop hurting, because after this long, you know that you won't; wounds merely scar, and you learn to walk with their weight.

Some days, you limp more than others. Some days, you can't bear to leave the room, can't do anything more than drink yourself into a quieter place and hope that tomorrow it will be easier, or that at least you will be stronger.

You don't sleep with guys, you're not gay or anything, which makes it that much worse when, outside of Reno, you let somebody blow you because when you're drunk he looks like your brother did when he was twenty-two, all defiance and innocence and that stupid hair you threatened to cut a thousand times over, and because you're wrecked enough not to care about the consequences, to care about what it will mean that you've done what you're doing. In the morning, you can't meet your eyes, reflected in the grimy mirror in the restroom of that truckstop off the long black line of I-80. You would have never. You tell yourself it was a moment of weakness and that it won't happen again. You were desperate and lost and would have done anything to let yourself pretend for a moment that he's still here with you in any form, that you haven't been left alone this final time, and if you can't believe that, that at least the fact that you are alone now isn't evidence of your failure, of how you will inevitably fail every person foolish enough to put their faith in you. The next night, you fuck a girl with a porn-star mouth and big blue eyes. That doesn't erase anything. You can't begin to think of a way to apologize to him. You've never been good at apologizing to the dead, or to the living, for that matter.

You begin to break down, because it's that or begin to forget him. You'd have sworn that you were already broken, that things couldn't get any worse, but in truth you know that they always can. The world will gladly kill you, if you let it, but you can never let yourself fall that far. Like a stay of execution, you always remember what you promised him, and at the last minute, before the knife can break your skin or the gun can fire or you can open your mouth to speak the words that in this bar will have you beaten and left for dead, you turn away and stumble back to your motel room or to the car. You lie there in the dark, waiting to fall asleep or pass out, and hate yourself for being too stubborn to die. You hate him for doing this to you. You hate yourself for still loving him enough to keep your word.

You talk to yourself, and to him. Sometimes you think you hear him answer, and you're never sure whether it's because you're being haunted or because you want to hear him so badly that you convince yourself you can. A third possibility is that you've snapped, but that's not so much a possibility as an essential truth, and it happened a long time ago, before any of this, and by now you can't remember being any other way. You get weird looks from the people at the next table, the chick at the cash register, the guy in the oilstained blue work shirt who stops to ask if you need help. Sometimes you stare back at them until they look away, frightened or shamed, and sometimes you blush and look down at your coffee or your French fries or your beer, and sometimes you grab bills from your wallet without bothering to check their denomination and crumple them on the table and walk as fast as you can out to your car, because one of the first things your dad ever taught you is that soldiers don't cry, and they sure as hell don't cry in front of other people; other people would only ever use that weakness against you.

You talk to angels, sometimes, if cursing may be said to be talking, but only one of them ever answers you. What he tells you doesn't help, though he might mean for it to. He tells you of other brothers, other sons and other fathers and the sacrifices they made; he tells you, as though he thinks you might have forgotten, that this is what you wanted, and he tells you that you only hurt because you're alive, which you already knew. Were you stone or clay, you would be glad for it, if only flesh and breath and bone could be exchanged without taking with them the memory of love.

Some days, you think you should have traded the lives of everyone else on this planet for him, for his, because they, like you, don't deserve to be alive in a world in which he isn't, especially if they continue to go about their existence as though something terrible has not happened, as though something has not been lost. You'd take it back, if you could, all you've bled for them and all you've given up; you'd give them up instead, you tell yourself, and then you are ashamed, because he wouldn't have, and he's the one in hell now for it, for them, for you.

He was always a better person than you are, and you've always been proud of him for that, and this is where that's gotten the both of you.

You heard once that as long as there's someone alive who remembers you, you're not really dead. You've buried and burned and mourned too many people to believe that, but sometimes you tell yourself that you're living out of something more than debt, that you're living so that someone who knew him, who knew all of him, who knew how good he was and how blind that made him and that he didn't cry the first time he got shot, though he did the first time you were, and that he listened resolutely to Melissa Etheridge even after you laughed to the point of crying when you found out and you told him that meant he was officially a lesbian, will exist to counter of all of the people who never knew him or who dumped him the day before prom or who thought he was the serial killer son of a survivalist, the way the newspapers said. This doesn't bring you any comfort, but you keep living anyway. You're not very good at it, but it's the only thing left for you to do.

Sometimes you think about all of the other ways things could have happened. He could have been a lawyer, like he wanted, and you could have bled out years ago, stars growing dim as you lay sprawled on your back in a field of unharvested corn, your shotgun just out of reach of your numbed fingers. You both could have died in the first fire, or in the second; you could have failed to pull him from the flames, and you would have died trying. Your dad could have chosen his life over yours. You could have accepted your brother's fate, and yours, after he died on his knees, slumping into your arms in that forgotten graveyard town (no, you couldn't have). He could have given up on you, after you were taken to hell. You could have listened to each other, when you came back.

Maybe there is a reality in which these things happened. Maybe there is a reality in which you both live happily ever after, though you don't think that was ever a possibility. Maybe there is a reality in which one of you does, though you don't think that's possible, either; how could you be happy if he weren't (and vice versa, a small and selfish part of you would like to think). Maybe there's at least a reality in which you're dead, in which you're not in hell or anywhere at all, where you won't be dragged back into daylight, where you can be at peace at last.

But this is the reality you've got, and in this reality you breathe and you sleep and you ache, and always it feels like you are bleeding, as though your heart has been cut out by your own hand and in its place is a void, a black hole, a world collapsing in upon itself, and though you never get used to that, you learn to live with it. You do not look down to see if your shirt is stained red, and the taste at the back of your throat which is copper which is sorrow can be diluted with any number of things, though it never truly goes away.

And though you don't believe in miracles (just because God exists doesn't mean he's worth asking for a damn thing), one day, you get one.

One day, you're coming out of a diner, hungover and holding a hand up to shield your eyes from the sun even though you're wearing sunglasses, and wincing at the pull of the haphazard stitches you put in your chest the night before (because it doesn't count as giving up if you die in the line of duty). One day, you're coming out of a diner and as you step into the sunlight, you feel at once, like waking up or dying or what you remember the word of God sounded like when it was spoken to you in hell, every one of your scars and your bruises and the places in which you are worn thin as light. You cannot move, for the weight of it, and when you lift your head to see how much farther you have to walk before reaching your car, you see instead this guy getting out of, unfolding out of, a really hideous Civic, and his expression is dazed and his hair is tangled and you know him before you can remind yourself that there's no fucking way. You say, "Sammy" without thinking about it, ready to add Sorry, I thought you were somebody else the way you have all of the times before this, but this time--

This time, he turns. This time he turns. This time, you stare at him, and he's there to stare back, and it occurs to you that maybe you should draw your gun, that just because it looks like him doesn't mean that it is him, but you don't move, because if it isn't, you don't really care.

Cut down on the job or left bloody on your back outside some sunburnt diner with a neon sign in the shape of a clock in its front window, death is death is death, and this time, today, at last, you're too goddamn tired to talk yourself out of it. (I'm sorry, you tell him in your head, and he only shrugs and looks away like he knew this was coming; he's psychic, after all.) You smile because that's the way Dean Winchester dies, in the story you've been telling yourself since you were a kid, the way you never have yet -- with your boots on and a grin on your face, and if the bastard comes near enough, you'll spit bloody at his feet with the last strength you've got.

"Dean," he says, and his voice cracks when he speaks, one word like that's all he can manage, one word fractured by the hope it contains.

He tells you that you look like shit, and you tell him that the feeling's mutual. There's an awkward silence. His face is slick with tears, and you realize that yours is, too, but both of you are soundless. If you speak now, the film will warp, the record will scratch; this will not be real, this will never have happened. You cannot risk that.

Neither of you move, until you both do.

He tells you he doesn't remember how it happened, or why, or how he got here. You tell yourself that nothing is free, that you will have to pay for this, that God and the universe demand a sacrifice paid in grief and sorrow for everything that you are given, but after awhile, you begin to hope, and then even to believe, that you're wrong. You begin to think that this is what you get, after everything -- not a happy ending, because they don't exist, but maybe another chance, maybe a chance for real this time, something true and yours, not already inked with somebody else's fate, the destiny somebody else chose for the both of you.

This doesn't take away any of it, anything that happened, the way your bones ache or the fear that keeps you awake or the parts of you that, once abandoned, once killed, will never again be anything other than crooked and bent. It doesn't stop your nightmares, or his, and at a gas station outside of Tulsa, he loses it, and he doesn't speak for a whole week after that.

But at night, when you're not sleeping and he isn't, either, you can hear him breathing, and he's there beside you in the car; he answers your questions and speaks to fill the silences and spills Mountain Dew across his jeans and the front seat, and you slap his freakishly large hand with their knuckles as scarred as your own have become again away from the tape deck over and over.

There are bad days, more than you can count, and you learn not to count them. You don't count anything at all. On the bad days, you think that any minute you'll stop breathing, or he will; you'll open your eyes and one of you will be gone and you'll both be in hell. On the good days, it doesn't hurt to breathe, and you don't tell yourself that those days will end, or that they won't. You're here, as is he. You have both harrowed hell, and you are returned.

One day it will be too much. One day you'll go down, or he will, and neither of you will come back up, swinging or otherwise. You're vulnerable: you can die, now that he's back. You're human. Your heart is bloody and fragile and beating. You can give up. One day, you will, and maybe it will be accidental or maybe it won't, but it will be forever, and on that day it'll also be together, because that's the way this legend goes. The two of you, always and forever, against everything that stands in your way.

It's not really an ending, but you don't mind.

--

end

whereupon @ 2010-09-07T15:00:00

2010-09-07T23:01:04Z

Homesick
by whereupon
Sam/Dean, pre-series, PG-13, 4,700 words.
For iwrotethissong.
Sam is leaving, and taking with him the long hot summer of their lives.

An hour or maybe only minutes, though it seems like it could have just as easily been days, before and he had been flat on his back in the bedroom he shares with Sam in that dingy apartment, watching the clouds shifting like the wings of owls outside of the window. The air had been heavy with the promise of storms and what remained of the light had had a numinous quality, a cathedral reverence, hushed and quiet as his thoughts had become. He hadn't remembered, until he'd gone out to the kitchen and seen Sam's note, that he'd promised to be here, and as he'd stood at the kitchen counter, notepaper clutched in one hand though he'd long since stopped seeing the words, he'd wanted nothing more than to go back to bed, to lose the rest of the afternoon to a haze of grey and smoke soft as cotton; he hadn't been so stoned as to not remember that their father will be back the next day and will bring with him the storms the clouds portended, will bring with him blood, slammed doors and raised voices, an ache in Dean's stomach as he tries not to hear John fighting with Sam, as he tries to pretend that everything is okay, though he knows that nothing is, and that nothing will be. It's a dead-end road down which he walks, empty stretches of dead grass and the burnt skeletons of cars beneath a cold sunless sky, but this momentum has never been his to break; this is the only path that has ever been his to take.

There's never any way but forward, and there's nothing left for him in the past but promises that were never spoken aloud and that do not matter any longer: Sam is leaving, and taking with him the long hot summer of their lives until now, those dry days that left Dean wordless, his throat choked with dust as he listened to Sam fight with their father, days which will grow forgotten and be covered over with frost.

Sam is leaving, which is why, though Dean had wanted nothing more than the promised quiet, he'd looked at the clock and then fumbled for his shoes; had locked the door carefully behind himself and checked it twice before making his way down the scarred metal stairs to the street, and then down street after street after street, his gaze towards the ground lest he lose his way or forget where he was going, towards the field where long-legged kids like his brother gathered beneath that smudged, obliterated sky for what's nothing more than one more game this season, a few hours bruised and sweated that will be forgotten by sundown the next day. Sam had said once that these games don't even count, they're not official, just some neighborhood thing, kids in t-shirts and jeans meeting in the park; you'd have looked stupid in a uniform anyway, Dean had replied, trusting that Sam knew what he meant, that neither of them needed to say it aloud.

It hurts to breathe, beneath the barometric pressure of that sky, and Dean's once-broken ribs ache as he settles cross-legged onto the green Kodachrome grass, far enough away from the gathered families, smiling happy mothers and fathers and others who cross their arms and mutter about the weather, that they won't try to talk to him, won't be able to tell how fucked up he is, so that Sam won't have reason look at him the way he does more and more often these days, like Dean's someone he's ashamed to know, someone with whom he's ashamed to share blood, a bedroom, seventeen years and that dangerous gunslinger surname; like he knows how he gets under Dean's skin these days, how he looks at Dean sometimes and it cuts right to Dean's heart, leaves him flayed and open and raw, and Dean has to look away to catch his breath, look away before Sam can tell what he's thinking.

Sam knows all the same, he thinks; Sam's always known more than he should, more than Dean and their father put together, and that's why he's leaving, and that's why it's so important that Dean make it here today, make it here in time. If Sam sees that he's here, that Dean came all the way here for him, maybe he'll shred the letter he keeps beneath his pillow like salvation the way Dean keeps a knife beneath his. It's a thin and fragile hope, but Dean can believe it, maybe now more than ever; he breathes in and tastes rain and chlorophyll, thinks that he'll remember this forever, that this might encapsulate their whole lives, Dean caught in Sam's wake and any minute now, Sam will look over at him, Sam will see him here and their eyes will meet and Sam will know that he could never be happy anywhere else, that he needs Dean the way Dean needs him, that there is nothing for him within the dull hallowed walls of a university when he has, just as he's always had, a brother who would die for him, a brother who would kill for him if that's what he wanted, who would spend the rest of his life trying to make Sam happy if only he could.

For no one but Sam would he have done this, would he have traded the perfect peace of an afternoon spent drifting and light; for no one but his brother, for whom, willing or otherwise, he has always given everything, would he have tripped down these streets empty with weather, the last breaths of summer and the first of autumn, wandering sneakered and jacketless through the translucent onionskin light without even the protection of a knife tucked beneath his shirt as he made his way to Sam, and Sam has to understand what that means, Dean thinks; he'll only have to look at Dean and he'll know.

The game breaks with a spattering of applause from the onlookers and Dean blinks as the players stream from the field, shouting goodbyes to each other and greetings to their parents. Straggling behind the rest, Sam pushes hair from his eyes, glances at Dean and then looks down, though not before Dean sees the flash of his grin. His hair falls across his eyes once more when he ducks his head, and he bites his lip as though he's afraid that he'll smile at his brother, delighted that Dean made it, that Dean kept his word.

"Hey," he says, drawing near, and Dean bites back his own grin, far too bright for this grey day, with Sam so close, close enough that Dean can see with dizzying clarity the faded scar across his forehead, barely visible that morning beneath his summer tan. "You made it."

"Like I got anywhere else to be," Dean says. He's not sure whether Sam's team won or whether it was the others who were victorious, so he says, "You kicked ass out there, huh?", which he thinks is safe enough.

Sam snorts, a dry, ridiculous noise that could mean either yes or no, or both; Dean blinks, unsure, and then Sam says, "Yeah. It doesn't even count, though, it's like the other team didn't even practice."

"You're just too awesome for 'em," Dean says.

Sam shakes his head. "Right," he says, but he colors faintly. "C'mon, you gonna sit here all day or what?"

"No," Dean says, and Sam gives him an odd look, all narrowed eyes and wrinkled forehead, which makes him look much older than he actually is. It's disconcerting, and Dean wants to tell him to knock it off, but he doesn't have to; Sam holds out a hand as if to help Dean up, like he's worked out what Dean was waiting for, and Dean takes it, lets his brother haul him to his feet. Sam's thumb pushes against the pulse of his wrist as though he's trying to count Dean's heartbeats, to make sure he's still alive, and for a moment it seems as though Dean's heart is pounding loudly enough that it will surely bruise Sam's skin, leave a blue-grey mark the color of the sky in the shape of Dean's life, of his treason and his love for Sam, which might very well be one and the same.

"Dude," Sam says, letting go of Dean's wrist at last, and Dean shrugs.

"Yeah?"

There's a puzzled furrow between Sam's eyebrows, but he shakes his head. "Nothing." And then he's talking, rambling about the game, about someone called Brian who Dean thinks might be on his team, but the threads of his narrative split and curl around each other, twisting like roots or like snakes or the seaweed around Dean's ankle the summer he was sixteen and almost drowned, tangled at the edge of the lake that was home to the kelpie they were hunting. It's too much effort to keep up with what Sam's saying, so Dean gives up, content to let himself drift, nodding instead at what he thinks might be the right spots, the spots where Sam slows down for a second, though that might only be to catch his breath. His brother thinks a million words per second, faster than anybody Dean's ever known. Sam's the only genius he knows, the smartest person in Dean's world. Sometimes Sam makes up Dean's whole world all by himself, even more than the yellowing grass growing untempered at the roadside along which they're walking, even more than the air that fills Dean's lungs with every breath and the silver sky beginning to spill cold rain, soft drops that slip down the back of Dean's neck and make him shiver.

Dean's not sure how they end up at home; it seems that he only blinks and they're walking down the street he recognizes as the one on which they live, past the convenience store with the shot-out window and the diner that sells stale donuts for half price after three p.m. and then up the stairs that only minutes before he was walking down, heading for Sam, Sam who has led them home as though following something Dean cannot see, red string wrapped 'round his heart or magnetized particles in his bloodstream, drawing him onwards. "You got the key?" Sam says, and it takes Dean a moment to realize that Sam's talking to him; it takes another moment for him to find the key in the pocket of his jeans. There is the click of pins falling into place when Sam inserts the key, and then the door opens and Sam pushes inside. "Are you coming or what?" he says, turning back to look at Dean.

"Don't get your panties in a twist," Dean says, remembering at last what he's meant to be doing, coming in out of the rain as Sam rolls his eyes. With the door closed, the apartment is small and musty and cut off from the rest of the world; Dean wants to go back outside. He wants to sit on the fire escape and smoke until he can corral his thoughts. Sam's sneakers have left damp footprints across the linoleum of the kitchen and the rainwater glistens distractingly. He blinks and Sam is closer, almost within arm's reach, squinting down at Dean, intent as though trying to see clear through his soul, and for a moment Dean is disoriented, cannot fathom how Sam managed to so quickly become taller than him; it doesn't seem right that Sam towers over him these days like an omen, a destiny, a fortune. The Tower, he thinks, and he feels his mouth curving into a grin at what might be a pun. He'd once gone out with a girl who'd professed the ability to read Tarot, but he cannot recall what she'd said the Tower meant.

Sam's saying something, "Hey, what's up with you, man," but by the time Dean's figured out what he's asking, he's already asking something else. "Are you high?" he says, the pitch of his voice creeping up to match his eyebrows, raised in incredulity.

"No," Dean says, and then, because there's never been any point in lying to Sam, "yes."

Sam's eyebrows pinch together and he shakes his head, his face storm-clouded like the sky, and angry. "Jesus," he says, and there's something that Dean thinks might be disgust in his voice, in the way he's looking at Dean. Sam has a sense of self-righteousness and an innate need to believe that if only he tries hard enough, he can will himself above the way that sorrow looks like dirt, like grime and oil, in this light, in this way of living; he believes that there are things he does not have in common with Dean. Dean knows this and loves him anyway. "Dad would kill you."

"Dad's not gonna know," Dean says, because that at least is an argument that he knows how to win, an argument he's had enough times to know that Sam will never tell. Sam doesn't tell their father anything more than is absolutely necessary, just as their father is reluctant to give Sam anything that might allow him to question. Dean alone knows their secrets. This is only another refrain of that same song, maybe begun that day years and years ago when he'd stumbled in late and drunk and, woken by the noise of his entry, Sam had frowned at him from the doorway to their bedroom, looking far too old for his eleven years; that song that was reworked every time Dean snuck out past their father, sleeping in the living room, and came back to Sam keeping vigil in the still-dark hours of early morning, the only one who would have known if something would have happened to Dean.

Sam keeps some of Dean's secrets, too. That's about the way it ought to be, Dean thinks. They're brothers, after all; brothers and that's everything. Their bones are weighted with knowledge of the other's breath and blood.

"Fuck you," Sam says, and if his voice is the weary rumble of thunder, he slams the door to their bedroom like the crack of lightning. Dean is left blinking in the aftermath. The lights flicker and he thinks for a moment that the lightning was real, that Sam's anger has perhaps summoned this black weather, and then he remembers that it had begun to rain long before, that the rain clattering at the windows now as though begging for entrance began as something soft and clean.

"Sam," he says, finding himself outside of the bedroom; he tips his head against the cool scarred wood of the door and waits for Sam to answer. When he doesn't, Dean tries the doorknob; the door is unlocked, and swings open easily.

"What do you want," Sam says; sprawled on his bed, he barely looks up from the book he's reading, or maybe only pretending to read.

"What the hell's your problem?" Dean's fairly certain that's not what he meant to ask, but the question seems fair enough. If not for Sam, his afternoon would have been perfect; Sam's the one who wanted him to be there, who wanted him to come to that stupid game. It wasn't Dean's idea at all; it wasn't even something he wanted to do. If not for Sam, he'd be fucking blissful right about now.

"You're the one who's on drugs, man, I think you're the one with the problem here," Sam says. He bites his lip and when he swallows, it looks like he's swallowing gravel or glass, it looks like it hurts. "Look, I don't care okay? Just . . . leave me alone. I'm trying to study."

But it's summer vacation, Dean thinks, and Sam shouldn't be studying, nobody should be studying, and then he remembers the letters Sam keeps beneath his pillow. "Right," he says. "For college."

He'd only wanted Sam to know that he knows, that he knows that Sam wants more than this, more than dingy apartments and mattresses that squeak and two-week-old bread in the refrigerator, and he's not sure why Sam freezes at that, why he looks at Dean with huge dark eyes and that stricken, pale expression as though he's scared or hurt or ashamed or all three at once. "Dean," he says. "I was going to tell you."

"I figured it out," Dean says. "It's cool. It's not cool, but I get it. Which one're you going to?"

"Stanford," Sam says, and his voice sounds snagged, roughened like he's been sneaking their father's cigarettes again the way he did once when he was twelve and thought Dean was the coolest person in the world.

"That's California, right?" Dean says. "Beaches and shit?"

"Yeah," Sam says. "California. No beaches, though."

"Sounds perfect for you," Dean says. "California without the fun."

Sam should laugh at that, should smirk, at least, but he only swallows again, and sits up, all angles and long limbs and that hair perpetually in his eyes. "You could come with me," he says, and he keeps looking at Dean, even though it looks like that, too, hurts.

"What?" Dean says.

"You could come," Sam says. "You could get an apartment, or you just -- you don't have to stay here. With him."

"With Dad?" Dean says. He's not sure where the conversation derailed, what he's missing, what Sam is suggesting that he do. He's never run away from anything his whole life, and he's not going to start now. He has the sickening feeling that this conversation is going to loop around itself, through itself, that it will turn into last week or last month or last year, Sam shouting at Dad and both of them taking the aftermath out on Dean.

"You can have your own life," Sam says, and there's color high across his cheeks when he says it, but he keeps going. "Do something else, something you want to do. So you don't have to do . . . this."

"Something I want to do?" Dean echoes. The words are strange in his mouth, like an incantation or a language unheard for ages; they hang like ritual in the air. "Man, this is my life. No way I'm running out on Dad. He needs me."

"Right," Sam says, but his voice sounds bitter, sounds broken, sounds tired. Dean can't remember a time when Sam didn't sound tired, and there's something very wrong with that. Sam shouldn't ever have to be tired like Dean is, like Dad is. "Forget I said anything. It's not like you're gonna care, anyway."

"Sam, dude," he says, because there's something he's meant to say, he remembers that much. There's something he should say that will make this better, will make this better for Sam, but he can't for the life of him remember what it is, and he's having a difficult time remembering why it even matters. "Whatever," he says, because his own cigarettes are wrapped in the pocket of his leather jacket, and he's done dealing with this, with Sam, with everything.

It's not until he's leaning against the railing of the fire escape that he remembers it's raining, and even then, he only turns his face up to the sky, drops like quicksilver splattering against his skin. He thinks this might be the worst day ever. He's trying not to think very much at all, taking hits from the cigarette sheltered by his half-turned shoulder whenever reality threatens to tear through the smoke and haze of the rain. It's getting easier with every time.

"Dean," Sam says, voice out of nowhere, looking down at Dean like an apparition, and Dean can only blink at him. He has no idea what Sam's doing out here, on a fire escape in the rain; it's the setting for a thousand stupid scenes in a thousand stupid movies, a setting for losers and fuck-ups and people who aren't going anywhere, people without the sense to be somewhere else. Sam's hand closes around Dean's wrist, tugging him back inside, and Dean has the strangest sense of déjà vu. The noise of the rain fades when Sam slides the door closed behind them. Sam looks as tired as Dean had remembered.

"You look like hell," Dean says. He's never seen hell, but he thinks he's seen something close on those nights when Dad doesn't come home, when he's trying to keep Sam alive through force of will and pressure on his chest, Sam's blood seeping out like water between his fingers.

"Dean," Sam says again, like it's the only thing he knows how to say anymore, the only word left in his vocabulary, and that's wrong, Dean thinks. It's Sam who's the only thing left in Dean's. "I'm sorry."

Sam shouldn't be sorry for anything, Dean thinks, and he's going to tell Sam as much, going to tell him that it's going to be okay, just as soon as he can remember how to speak, once the concept of words doesn't seem quite so impossible, so difficult to grasp. Sam's still holding onto his arm, so Dean covers Sam's hand with his own, Sam's knuckles bony beneath his palm. He's vaguely aware of Sam's other hand moving; when Sam plucks the cigarette from his fingers, he thinks he should react. Sam shouldn't smoke, shouldn't get high; Sam shouldn't even drink. Sam's better than this, better than he is.

"No, I'm not," Sam says, and his voice is the sound, or maybe the color, of heartbreak; Dean feels his own heart breaking in response. Sam's always been able to call up the most ruinous things in him, oceans and storms and murder. "Dean, listen to me."

"No," Dean says, finding his words at last. "Get off me, Sam," he says, or maybe just thinks he says, because Sam doesn't move, Sam doesn't let him go.

"What do I need to do?" Sam says. "Anything, man, tell me, c'mon, what's wrong," words like he's talking to a child, like he thinks Dean needs his pity, and Dean closes his eyes. This whole day is fucked up. He should have stayed home, shouldn't have gone to Sam's game, even though it was worth it to see the way Sam's face lit up when he saw Dean, though there's something bothering Dean about that, like maybe Sam was so happy only because he was surprised.

"Dean," Sam says again, and when Dean opens his eyes, Sam's way too close, his breath warm against Dean's face, and his eyes are dark and hot. Dean's mouth is dry; he wants something to drink. He wants to go back out to the rain, to go to sleep beneath it and wake up somewhere else. Somewhere over the rainbow, he thinks, and then, we're sure as hell not in Kansas anymore, and when he laughs, it sounds dangerously like a sob. He has the feeling that he's going to regret this, that in the morning or maybe in a few hours, he's never going to live this down, the way Sam's looking at him. The way Sam's starting to laugh, too, and Dean wonders if he's contagious, or if maybe he's finally broken his brother in the same way that he himself is broken; if this twisted, wrecked thing beneath his skin, buzzing hot in his blood, is now beneath Sam's, as well.

When Sam touches his face, he leans into it, grounded by the touch. The heel of Sam's hand is callused, rough with countless gunshots, years of violence and death. The red string leads to the minotaur, Dean remembers dazedly and too late, and perhaps he's the monster after all, leading Sam home, leading Sam astray. All Sam has to do is kill him and this will all be put right. Sam has his hands on the side of Dean's throat and he's stealing Dean's breath from his mouth; death seems a very real possibility.

He tries to keep breathing all the same, for Sam's sake, even when Sam's tongue slips across the hollow of his throat, as Sam undoes him on the dirty floor of that dingy apartment, as he lets Sam take whatever he wants. He's always been Sam's for the taking, he thinks, and his fingers slip through Sam's hair when Sam leans in to say, low in his ear, as though someone might overhear, as though the shadows are alive and might be listening, "Are you sure? Dean, are you sure this is--"

"Sam," Dean says, the only thing he has left, the only thing that has always been his to claim, and which he understands now has never been his at all. Sam's hands are hot against him, trembling with a fear he hasn't shown for a very long time, and some part of Dean thinks that he'll never let himself be forgiven for this, but he opens his mouth against Sam's anyway, and breathes in, and lets himself fall, given over to his brother on this the last day of what might be everything, but is at once only one more repetition of the litany of nothing that his life has maybe always been and that it will certainly become, for Sam is leaving and he is nothing without Sam. He'll remember this forever, he tells himself, trying to force urgency into the thought, as though that might make it true. He thinks that the lightning is real now, these flashes that rattle the windows, burn bright across the backs of his eyes as he shivers and tastes the saltlines of his brother's skin.

When he comes back to himself, he's lying on the floor next to the couch and the ceiling wavers storm-dappled above him. He thinks the windows must be open, because he can taste rain, still. His jeans are undone, and gradually he realizes that the shower is running; he does not remember the last thing that Sam said to him. His knuckles ache and his mouth feels swollen. He zips up his jeans. He drifts.

By the time Sam is done in the shower, Dean is sitting on the couch, a bottle of beer sweating coolly in his hand. He doesn't dare meet Sam's eyes, afraid of what might be revealed in his own, until Sam sits beside him, drawing his knees up to his chest the way he hasn't in so long. His hair is damp and the knees of his jeans are white and torn ragged. Neither of them speaks. Eventually Sam leans against him, his shoulder hot against Dean's, his hair curling and scratching at the side of Dean's face. "You could come with me," he says again. "I'm not leaving for awhile, we could get out of here. Just think about it, okay?"

Dean doesn't answer, and Sam doesn't seem to expect him to. He lets out a deep breath, one that Dean feels in his own chest as though Sam is breathing for both of them, keeping them both alive, safe, because Dean cannot any longer, and maybe he never truly could. Sam pushes over so that his feet are resting across Dean's lap, his head cushioned against the other side of the couch; he closes his eyes and Dean, watching his brother sleep, remembers at last what the Tower means.

He's been waiting for this his whole life, he tells himself. This should not come as a surprise. It should not feel like the world is ending, and it won't, once he wakes up, when he sobers up, when he comes down. But he's never been good at fooling himself, only at fooling others; he tells himself he's only waiting to wake up, but he closes his eyes and he waits for the storm to end, for the bleak, blasted landscape of the aftermath, this the direction in which he has been walking his entire life, a breath taken and held since he was four years old and released only now, as the ghosts of futures that were never his to claim, to the slow and lonely sound of the rain.

--

end

whereupon @ 2010-09-05T12:38:00

2010-09-05T20:23:40Z

Anabiosis
by whereupon
Supernatural: Gen, post 2.13, PG-13, 25,800 words.
Nightmares move more quickly in the dark, but they do not require the dark in order to move.

Beneath the cloud-heavy sky, the shifting sea is bleak and cold as obsidian; the waves look snow-crested when they break against the hull and Sam tightens his grip on the railing as the ferry rocks beneath him. He closes his eyes and tells himself resolutely that the tremors are merely the reverberations of the Impala's engine and that if he opens his eyes, he'll find himself in the car, on dry land, somewhere warm and miles from the ocean.

"If you're gonna puke, you should probably get closer to the edge," Dean says. Sam grits his teeth and opens his eyes; Dean smirks. His hands are shoved into his pockets against the chill, but the wind's stung color into his cheeks. "And if you're not, you should wait inside like everybody else instead of freezing your ass off out here."

"I'm not gonna puke, and it's too crowded in there," Sam says. The heat that came from the press of bodies in such close quarters hadn't helped with the sense of nausea that had risen as the ferry departed from the dock. The briny cut of wind helps with that, at least, slipping through the holes in his jeans and beneath his jacket, though the shirts he's layered against the season, to leave him shivering, pared down to bone.

"Right." Dean gives him a look of disgust. "Man, I can't believe you get seasick."

"I don't get seasick." The denial's piteously weak; he can tell by the fact that Dean only raises an eyebrow. "It's probably food poisoning, which makes it your fault. I told you we should've found somewhere else to eat."

"Hey, you're the one who kept bitching about how hungry you were," Dean says. "Don't blame me for that."

Sam sighs. "Look, I don't make fun of you for being scared of planes."

"I'm not scared of planes," Dean says. "I don't like flying. Totally different, and yeah, you do."

"I thought you said you were gonna wait inside where it was warm."

Dean shrugs. "Got tired of people elbowing me."

"You could wait in the car," Sam says.

"And stare at the back of somebody else's car for the next half an hour? Why the hell would I wanna pretend to be stuck in traffic? Besides, somebody's gotta keep you from falling off the boat."

Sam grimaces as the deck shifts beneath them and his stomach protests the motion. "I'm not gonna fall off the boat, Dean."

"Yeah, if they'd made that railing outta anything else, I'm pretty sure you'd've broken it in half by now," Dean says. Sam looks down and deliberately loosens his grasp on the metal. "Seriously, you don't look so good."

"Thanks for the insight," Sam says raggedly. He tells himself to think about why they're doing this, about the missing child and the ghost who might be responsible for her disappearance; whatever misery he feels now will pass as soon as they disembark, and it's nothing compared to the misery of the child, or her family, or the ghost itself.

Of course, knowing as much intellectually does nothing to convince his stomach to settle, nor does it make it any easier to deal with the fact that that's the ocean down there, fathoms upon fathoms of dark water in which to founder, and it's funny how many shipwreck statistics he can recall when he's trying his damndest not to.

Dean looks at him, forehead furrowed faintly with worry, and then leans against the railing, dangerously casual and fooling no one. Sam swallows and tries to keep his eyes fixed on the clouded sky, tries not to think about the threat of water swirling below.

It's almost nightfall by the time the ferry docks and the vehicles onboard are allowed to drive one by one down the ramp. As the Impala inches out into fresh air, Sam glances out of the window at the deep red of sunset; the color's dimmed slightly by the clouds, the promise of frost and further chill, but that only makes the danger seem muted, and more ominous for it.

"You wanna get something to eat before we get a room?" Dean asks, solicitous enough that Sam regrets not having told him to wait inside, after all. "It might make you feel better." The heaters rattle, pushing warm air out at them, and Sam knows that if he's still cold, so is Dean. He bites his lip and looks away, wishing he'd spent the ride over locked in the men's room, though he knows Dean would have found him there, too.

"I'm good. Unless you're hungry."

"Coffee," Dean says. "You want coffee, at least? Something warm?"

"Dean, I'm fine, okay." The annoyance in his voice isn't directed at Dean, and he winces when he hears it; he's merely exhausted in the wake of the ride over. The chill, the wind shear, the nausea, what he refuses to acknowledge might have been fear -- in receding, they've taken with them something crucial of himself. He's not going to think about having to go back across when they're finished here; nobody ever said anything about bringing coin enough for the return passage.

He rubs his eyes, unsure of how that thought came about and not really caring to find out. Dean's probably right about the benefits of food, but Sam's not going to ask that of him now. It's such a small thing compared to what he's asked of late, but he's not going to ask anything more of his brother than is absolutely necessary.

He's not going to spend the rest of his life watching his brother wear away just because Dean still doesn't know how to say no.

Dean's expression hardens almost imperceptibly, turns a shade more remote. "Fine. But it's gonna be too late to get anywhere tonight with research."

"So we'll find a motel," Sam says. "Get started first thing in the morning."

"Who the hell put you in charge," Dean says, but it's muttered and half-hearted and he's already looking back at the windshield when he says it. Sam slumps down in his seat; he knows he probably looks ridiculous, like an overgrown petulant teenager, but he doesn't care, and he knows that Dean's used to it. He remembers being fifteen, Dean picking him up from school and telling him that they were going to be moving again, but hey, maybe this next place would be better, maybe it'd get HBO, and the look he'd given Sam when Sam had said in that flat, dead tone, fuck off.

That had been Sam's intent, of course; he'd wanted to make Dean understand exactly how much he'd despised everything about their life, but even though he'd gotten what he'd wanted, the look on Dean's face had made him think that whatever he'd just won, he didn't want it, after all.

The neon orange-red of the motel vacancy sign illuminates the weft of latticed crystals sifting slowly through the air, and Sam shivers when he gets out of the car.

That the snow shouldn't feel like an omen doesn't make it seem like any less of one.

--

Even in the motel room, the air smells of salt, and Sam wonders if he'll get used to that, if when they return to the mainland, he'll think that something's been left behind. The springs of his bed cry shrilly when he lowers himself onto the mattress, the faded blue quilt smells like cheap fabric softener, and the curtains have been drawn across the window; if not for the persistence of brine, he could imagine they were anywhere, somewhere safe on the roads tracing across the country.

No longer being grounded by those highways and nameless dirt roads shouldn't feel this strange; they're only separated from the mainland by a small stretch of water, but it seems almost a different country. The sensation will pass, he knows; it's the dizzying result of the post-ferry flatline and the late hour.

"I'm gonna take a shower," Dean says, addressing the room at large instead of looking at Sam.

"Knock yourself out," Sam says anyway and Dean turns to glower at him.

"You'd better still be here when I get out," he says, like he thinks Sam's likely to pack a bag, steal a car, and be gone as soon as he can. Which is fair, though it stings to admit as much; Dean has good reason to think that it's a possibility, even though Sam said he wouldn't do it again.

Still, even if he'd been lying about that, he'd be stuck on the island; the ferry won't run again until morning.

"Uh, where else would I be?" he asks.

"Who knows with you," Dean says. "One of these days I'm gonna get you microchipped, I swear," and Sam rolls his eyes.

"Yeah, I'll be here." His tone is patronizing enough that Dean should glare, but Dean only looks at him and then disappears into the bathroom. The latch clicks into the mortise and a moment later Sam hears the dull thrash of water, the white noise of the shower. He should really get up, he knows, and unpack; he should take off his boots, at least, but now that there's no need for pretense, sleep pulls at him like a riptide, dragging him down deep.

He opens his eyes sometime later with the sense of time lost and for a moment he doesn't know where he is; the room is dark and quiet and steeped cold with night. The lack of knowledge, of anything grounding, is terrifying, paralyzing, and then out of the silence Dean asks, "Nightmare?" and he can breathe again. Dean flicks on the lights and Sam throws a defensive hand over his eyes.

"Why'd you let me fall asleep here?" he asks, ignoring the question because he's not sure that he wouldn't be lying if he said no; he doesn't recall what woke him.

He rolls over and blinks at his brother. Dean's standing just inside the door and he's holding a paper bag and a cardboard tray of drinks; Sam realizes that it wasn't a nightmare that woke him, but the noise of Dean returning, and he's surprised to find that the realization is accompanied by a sense of relief. He wonders what he was so afraid of dreaming, but only for a moment; he doesn't want to know the answer any sooner than he has to.

He knows that he'll remember soon enough.

"It's not like you haven't slept worse places," Dean says. The shoulders of his jacket glisten with melted snow as he unloads their dinner onto the table. "I tried to wake you up. You coulda passed for dead, except for how you were snoring."

"Ha," Sam says mirthlessly, sitting up. He unties his boots, toes them off. "How long was I out?"

"An hour?" Dean says as Sam gets to his feet. "Figured I'd take advantage of the peace and quiet and you not telling me to slow the fuck down."

"It's not like you ever listen, anyway." Sam slumps into one of the dinette chairs and reaches for the paper bag. He's hungrier than he'd thought; the smell of salt and grease is enticing instead of merely tolerable.

"Yeah, you'd think you'd get the hint," Dean says, pulling out the chair across from him.

The burgers and fries are lukewarm, but good all the same; it's been a long time since lunch. They eat mostly in silence since Sam's still muzzy with sleep and there's nothing they can do about the hunt at this time of night, not without having done any research. The blog post Sam had found had mentioned Lacey Brady's disappearance in conjunction with a female ghost who had been glimpsed several times on the island, but it was woefully lacking in details, and the source was anonymous.

Sam crumples the thin paper in which his cheeseburger had been wrapped. "My turn for the shower."

Dean takes a swallow of soda and says, "About time," but only out of habit, Sam thinks; there's no heat to it at all.

In the bathroom Sam takes care to avoid catching his reflection in the mirror; he's afraid, with the remnants of dream-logic and the true dread it allows, of glimpsing for an instant brass-colored irises before the color fades to that with which he was born.

When he comes back out, he's surprised to find that the table's been cleared, the lights are off, and Dean's asleep, but it makes sense, he tells himself; he'd taken a nap, and Dean hadn't, and neither of them had slept well the night before. We're both fine, he tells himself.

We're both fine.

Dean's breathing is something steady and familiar as Sam makes his way back to bed, hoping that he'll be able to fall asleep quickly, that he won't lie awake for hours listening to the snow-tamped world grow ever more still and thinking about the unquiet things that might be the only movement within it. Most of all, he hopes that he won't dream -- of hot blood, of things lost to decay, of the scrape of wind like iron, of anything at all.

He doesn't bury his face in the pillow for fear of leaving his back exposed, but he pulls the blankets up to his neck, and eventually, he sleeps.

--

In the morning the carpet is cold and vaguely gritty against his bare feet. He shudders, thinking of bodily fluids and vectors of contagion, and reaches into his duffel for socks. His back is to Dean, but he hears the bedsprings creak as his brother rolls over, sits up. "Why the hell are you awake already," Dean says, and when Sam turns around, he's squinting in the grey light that seeps through the half-open curtains. The sky had been the color of ash when Sam went to the window upon waking, and it had done nothing to smooth away the sense of panic left behind by whatever he'd dreamed.

Every day it seems like he's -- like they're, he reminds himself; he's not alone in this -- running out of time, but he knows that's not true. Every day is merely hell, disguised with words like special and destiny, averted for a few more hours. Sooner or later, they'll break, or fall, or fail for just a moment, and that will be all it takes.

Really, it might be a minor miracle that he's able to sleep at all.

"I thought we wanted to get an early start." It's part of the truth, and easier than telling Dean everything.

"The crack of dawn's not early, it's uncivilized," Dean says, but he pushes the blankets back and gets out of bed anyway. "How long you been up?"

Sam shrugs defensively, his shoulders going rigid, and immediately hopes that Dean will misinterpret the gesture. "A little while," he says. "I didn't look at the clock."

"Even when you were a kid, you could never sleep through the night," Dean says.

"What's your point?"

Dean blinks. "Nothing." He scrubs a hand through his hair. "I was just -- forget it. Hurry up and get dressed, I want breakfast."

The snow in the parking lot has melted away to slush; by the time they get to the diner around the corner, the dragging hems of Sam's jeans are soaked. The diner's warmth is welcome, as is the cup of coffee Sam holds between his palms a few moments later. The air doesn't seem to be quite as heavy with salt today as it was last night; either he's getting used to it or the storm washed the air clean, and it's much easier to believe in adaptation than inexplicable meteorological occurrences.

"By the time we finish eating, it might be late enough that we can talk to the parents," he says.

Dean raises his eyebrows. "Not that I'm complaining, but any particular reason you're so gung-ho about this one?"

"Lacey's missing," Sam says. "She might still be alive."

"Sam," Dean says, his voice pitched low against the background noise, people chattering too brightly for the hour about their kids, their jobs, the diurnal dramas that compose their lives.

Sam speaks over him, not wanting to hear what he's going to say. "And if she's not, her parents need closure."

"Telling 'em a ghost took their kid's not gonna bring much closure. You know that. It might get them to call the cops on us, or ask if we're insane, but closure? Not so much."

"And if the ghost is the reason she's missing, I don't think it's gonna stop with her," Sam counters. "The longer we take to put it to rest, the more time it's gonna have to hurt somebody else."

"Can't argue with that," Dean says. "But, man, whatever this is, whatever happens? It's not, you know. It's just what happens and that's all we can do, okay?"

Sam swallows and takes a sip of coffee instead of answering. It's an obvious stalling tactic, but he knows that Dean won't like his answer, and it's too early in the day for them to fight about this; there's still too much work to do. It occurs to him that not answering might be answer enough, but Dean only looks at him, and though it hurts to see the slump of Dean's shoulders and the worry he never manages to hide, Sam's not going to let himself take the easy way out. He's not going to let himself believe his brother, much as he wants to, because he knows that Dean's wrong.

If they lose here, if they lose again, it's because they weren't good enough. Because he wasn't good enough. It's not Dean who has to weigh his best intentions against all of the people he didn't save, not Dean whose soul's been marked since birth, and it's not Dean's responsibility to try to make Sam believe otherwise.

If they lose here, that's one more step in the direction of whatever might be planned for him, one more step towards hell, and it can never be taken back.

The waitress arrives, bearing their food and saving him from answering further and making the situation worse. When he looks up, Dean doesn't meet his eyes, apparently intent on cutting his pancakes into neat little squares with a ferocity Sam associates with somebody's life being at stake.

Sam watches his brother massacre the number three special instead of punching Sam in the face or whatever it is he really wants to do, and he wants to laugh at what their lives have become. Instead, he drinks his orange juice and savors the way it stings his throat like swallowing past heartbreak.

--

Sam's suit is wrinkled and there's a red stain on his favorite tie. He's narrowed the source down to either ink or ketchup, which is a relief, as he's not sure he could stomach the blood-stained noose metaphor at the moment. He stares at the tie, trying to remember when he last wore it.

"Wash it in the sink," Dean says, adjusting his collar in front of the mirror that hangs over the dresser. He sounds bored, and slightly disgusted, like he can't believe he has to give Sam laundry advice. Which he probably is, though that doesn't change the fact that he's also been watching Sam for the past two minutes with a worried crease between his eyes as though he's trying to figure out what Sam's apparent enthrallment with a necktie has to do with what he thinks Sam isn't telling him.

"It's silk, Dean," Sam says patiently.

"So?"

Sam opens his mouth to explain and decides against it. "Never mind."

"It's just a goddamn tie, Sam, it's not like you're running for homecoming queen. And hey, this way you'll look more like a real cop and less like you're playing dress-up."

Real cops don't have to ask about ghosts, Sam thinks. Are you familiar with the legend of La Llorona, he'll have to ask, and Dean will add, the ghost who's meant to take kids, and the mother or maybe the father will gasp, and they will be asked to leave. He's not sure he wouldn't be undone by that right now, undone by his own weakness in the face of somebody else's loss, his own inability to compartmentalize and distance himself these days. Sometimes he's able to convince himself that it's a good thing, that it's human, that caring about people will keep him human.

Other times, it just makes him tired, and makes it a whole hell of a lot easier to understand the nights their father passed out on the couch with an empty bottle beside him. Lately, on the really bad days, he's taken to thinking once more that he wants to have turned Dean down, when Dean came to him at Stanford; he should have stayed behind in the apartment with Jessica. Smiling, or at least gritting his teeth, and carrying on in the face of a countless, endless, really fucking powerful enemy is hard enough on the good days; adding to that the fact that the enemy was able to convince his own father that he's going to fail is more than depressing, it's almost enough to make him want to give up while he'll still be able to make the choice for himself.

Almost, but never enough.

He hasn't told that to Dean, of course, but he thinks that Dean knows, or at least suspects as much. Dean looks at him differently these days, and Sam would rather believe it's out of concern than out of fear.

"Maybe we should go to the library first," he says, and Dean's reflection stares at him, hearing the question and waiting for an explanation. "Before we bother them, we should find out more about the ghost. Maybe it's not even real. This has gotta be hard enough for them without us showing up and making it worse."

Dean turns around to look at him directly. He looks tired, Sam thinks; the skin beneath his eyes is the color of dusk and he looks like he's going to say no, he looks like he's going to say you rushed me through breakfast for this?, and then he nods. "Yeah, okay."

Sam swallows in relief; he should thank Dean, probably, but that would be new, and weird, and awkward. He's never before thanked Dean for these things, and there would be something terrible about starting to do so now. It would feel kind of like acceptance, like the prelude to goodbye, and he's not going to do that to Dean, not yet. Not ever, if he can help it.

Besides, Dean probably already knows.

He crumples up his tie and lets it fall into the trash can. It would have been stupid to pretend he's someone he's not, anyway. Who, and what, he is would have been visible in his eyes, in the lines of his face, in every movement he made.

Maybe that's why Dean so often turns away; maybe he's afraid that one of these times, he'll look at Sam and see that something's changed.

Sam discards the Oxford in favor of the flannel he tossed onto the bed a few minutes ago. Behind him, voice muffled, Dean says, "Like you even had to ask. You know I hate wearing a suit."

"You hate doing research, too," Sam says without turning around. "You hate every part of the hunt that doesn't involve shooting something or setting it on fire."

"You forgot the credit card fraud," Dean says.

"You're not helping your case."

"Dude, the number of warrants out on us, I'm already screwed."

Sam laughs despite himself because there's nothing else he can do. "Yeah, that's cheery."

"Nah, cheery's the part where I'm already damned, so it's not like I gotta worry about the rules," Dean says, and if Sam tries, he can ignore the edge to Dean's voice that betrays the levity. "I mean, the worst's already happened, right?"

The question has nothing to do with what he's really asking, and there's only one answer; it doesn't matter if it's true. What matters is that Sam will say it, and Dean will hear it, and maybe neither of them will believe it, but they'll be able to pretend. "Right," he says, tugging his shirt into place as he turns back.

Dean nods, once. "C'mon, let's go dig up some dirt on your ghost."

"Since when is she mine?"

"She's a weepy dead chick," Dean says, keys to the Impala in hand. "That's pretty much the definition of yours."

"I hate you," Sam says dispassionately, stepping past him into the parking lot. The clouds hang deadly still, torn lace against the scraping, ancient blue, and he draws his hands up into his sleeves against the temperature.

"Yeah, I know you do," Dean says. The door clicks shut behind them and the Impala is glossy with snowmelt; the seats will be frozen, unyielding. Sam checks the urge to hunch his shoulders; Dean is watching.

--

The road to the library curves along the edge of the island, taking them out past the water. One side of the road is lined with shops, battered storefronts with weathered clapboard signs, and the other is separated from a rocky dropoff by a scarred metal guardrail.

Beyond it, in the distance, the sea is a splintered mirror of the sky. It looks very deep, and very cold. Ahead the road glints with melting ice and Sam imagines for an instant that the tires will lose their grip on the road, Dean will turn the wheel too sharply; the car will slide doomed into the guardrail, which, worn by having saved so many over the years, will finally crumple and give way and they will fall, a flash of metal like burning wings of wax, to be extinguished like a match upon submersion.

The moment passes. The road winds inland. Sam's knuckles ache with the force of having remained still.

"So we're gonna be looking for a scorned woman," Dean says. He's not looking at Sam; that could be deliberate. Sam swallows.

He'd thought he was getting used to this. He'd thought that he had gotten used to this, he doesn't even sleep with a knife or a gun or sometimes both under his pillow the way Dean does, but then there was Dad, then there was Dad and the thing he'd told Dean about Sam, the weight of that secret like claws on Sam's shoulder these days, this constant paranoia at the back of his mind, examining each spark of synapses seconds too late and wondering if he'll notice, if it happens.

Most people don't notice when they go crazy; they think they're being completely rational, reacting to the world in the only way that makes sense. Maybe one day he'll wake up and it will seem perfectly logical to shoot Dean in the head while he's still asleep in the other bed, breathing deeply and trusting that Sam will have his back.

The thing is, Sam knows he wouldn't do that. He knows himself well enough, knows well enough what he's capable of, to know that if it happened, he wouldn't give Dean that mercy.

Dean would die only when he couldn't scream anymore, and he would die looking at Sam. He would die knowing that he'd failed the ones who trusted him the most. Sam would do that to him, and it would seem right. To both of them, because Dean would probably convince himself that it was what he deserved for letting that happen to Sam.

Dean needs to know that's a risk. He needs to know, for both of them, and he needs to believe it. He only made that promise to get Sam to shut up, and while it will break Sam's heart to make him promise for real, it will kill both of them if he doesn't. One of these days, maybe Sam will run out of time and he can only hope that Dean will be paying attention when that happens; he can only hope that Dean will draw first and pull the trigger and end it before it begins, even though Sam's fairly certain he knows what his brother will do after that.

He might force Dean into killing them both because even as Sam knows the risks he's taking, he's still too stubborn, too scared, and maybe too stupidly optimistic to do anything about it. Instead he hopes, and he prays, and he tells himself that it's okay to believe that that might be enough.

But prayers are so small, compared to everything they're fighting against, and hope can so easily be born of denial. Dean's version of faith is a gun and a silver flask of whiskey, and on days like this, Sam's seems so fragile in comparison, so desperate and unreal.

"Sam," Dean says, and from his tone Sam thinks it's not the first time he's said it. "Am I working this by myself or what? 'Cause I can, you know, but if you're gonna get to ride around in my car, you can at least do something to make yourself useful."

"What?" Sam says, and closes his eyes, though only for a second, against the razor of sea. If he's lucky, the gesture will look like recollection. "Uh. Yeah, a scorned woman. With kids."

Dean raises his eyebrows. "So I was thinking, maybe we should have a code word or something, you know, so that way you'll know when I'm actually asking you a question and you won't have to interrupt your staring out the window for anything that might not be relevant to whatever the hell you're worrying about this time."

"Sure," Sam says. "How about 'shut the hell up'? I think that would be a good one."

"Jesus, you're pissy when you're brooding. What is it?"

"It's nothing." He wonders how many more times he'll have to say that before Dean gives in and agrees to pretend to believe him. "Like you said, I didn't sleep well."

"Okay, just for the hell of it, let's pretend we just went through the whole routine where you make up some bullshit excuse, and I see right through it and you say 'seriously, Dean, I'm fine,' and I say 'okay' and don't mention the fact that you haven't slept for like a week now and when you do, you wake up screaming, and thirty seconds ago you had a freakin' panic attack, and now we're at the part where you tell me what the hell's going on." Dean pauses for breath. "Is it about Ava again?"

Sam's deep breath is an echo of Dean's own. "First, my voice doesn't sound like that. Second, I am fine. Third, remember that thing I was yesterday when you got back from getting dinner? Yeah, that was called 'asleep,' and you remember how I didn't wake up screaming? Fourth, I only panicked because I know how you drive. And no, it isn't, because it's nothing."

"If that's what you call 'convincing,' you'd'a made a lousy lawyer," Dean says. "But hey, at least you can count up to four. I'm real proud of you, Sammy, maybe next week you'll be up to ten."

"Way to completely miss the point," Sam says.

"Look who's talking," Dean says.

"Dude, you sound like a ten year old. I'm not justifying that with a response."

"You just did."

Sam blinks at him and Dean smirks victoriously. "You didn't win," Sam says. "You just proved that you really are mentally ten years old. I refuse to continue this conversation on the grounds that you are literally incapable of reason."

"You're just a sore loser. And you can't refuse to continue a conversation because of that. I mean, what the hell kind of lame excuse is that?"

"I'm gonna stop talking now," Sam says.

"Thank fucking Christ," Dean says. Sam rolls his eyes and tells himself that he's not amused at all and he's certainly not going to give Dean the satisfaction of showing any kind of reaction. When he looks back out the window, both sides of the road are tangled and dense with pine. He's never been afraid of the ocean like this before, but today he breathes easier with it out of sight.

--

The buzzing fluorescence of the library lights hurts Sam's eyes and someone has carved the initials ELS into the wooden table. Across the table, his knees bumping Sam's whenever either one of them moves, Dean is glaring at a newspaper article from -- Sam squints to make out the date on the masthead -- 1954. Judging from the headline, it's about a child who wandered away during a storm, and it's probably not relevant to the ghost they're looking for. Dean probably knows that, too, but Sam knows that won't make it any easier for him to overlook the child's disappearance.

Hunts involving missing or stolen children, lost childhood, are the ones Dean takes the hardest, the same way Sam is worn thin by hunts involving people who were only trying to make a life for themselves, when through poor luck or coincidence or some forgotten bloodline, the supernatural intervened.

It's far too late for either of them to save themselves, but maybe they can still save the ones who might otherwise end up like them.

Sam recalls how hard Dean fought to keep the reality of their father's work, now their own, from him, and the look Dean had given him at the diner when he'd interrupted before Dean could say something like you know the odds, you know we're probably too late. If Dean can deal with this hunt, Sam should be able to, too; he certainly shouldn't be making it even harder for Dean. He remembers his vow to not ask anything more of Dean than he has to, and he wonders how many more times he'll break it before they get back to the mainland.

He remembers Dean on his deathbed, making jokes as weak as his heart had become, and he remembers Dean bloody and broken in the backseat.

Dean presses his thumb against the pressure point on the side of his skull like he's trying to push away a headache and Sam makes a decision. "Finding anything?" he asks.

"No," Dean says, and sighs like someone who's seen much more than he wants to and knows the worst is always yet to come, like the old man neither of them will ever be. "You?"

Sam shrugs. "There're mothers who were divorced or whose husbands cheated on them, and mothers who drowned, but none who fall into both categories. If we're gonna track down the ghost, we're gonna need to find somebody who's heard the ghost story."

"Or seen the ghost," Dean says. He stands, pushing back his chair. He looks better, brighter, already and Sam wishes he'd thought to say something sooner, that he'd noticed sooner. "The librarian looks like she knows somebody who knows things."

"That's the lamest excuse you've made up to hit on somebody this month." Sam pauses. "Or least this week. Since the blonde in Tulsa, anyway."

"Hey, you saw the way she looked at us when we came in. You telling me you don't think she knows everything about everybody who lives here?"

Dean has a point. "Just don't give her your number."

"Why, you planning to give her yours?" Dean glances back to wink at him. "Don't worry, I won't steal your girlfriend. I know you got a thing for older women."

"Remember, librarians do it by the book," Sam mutters, pitched low enough for Dean alone to hear, and Dean whips his head around to look at Sam in equal parts delight and disbelief, nearly tripping over his own feet in the process. Sam smirks and pretends to be checking something on his phone. It's a pretty bad cover, considering that reception's been poor when present at all ever since they boarded the ferry, but that's not the point.

"So, I was right," Dean says a few minutes later, sliding back into his chair.

"You got something?"

"I told her you thought she was hot, but she wasn't interested. Sorry, man." Sam stares at him unblinkingly and he shrugs. "She said we might wanna talk to somebody called Denise. She's a waitress at some bar in what passes for downtown and a couple years ago she was going around telling everybody the ghost almost killed her. The librarian says she's crazy, but . . ."

"People say that about us, too." Sam nods. "You get an address?"

"I know how to do my job," Dean says, and Sam thinks that most of the offense is feigned. "C'mon, it's past time for lunch, anyway. I'll buy you a beer."

"I'm twenty-three, Dean," Sam says mildly. "I can buy my own damn beer." Dean looks at him as though waiting for Sam to say something else, and when Sam doesn't, he only shrugs.

"Whatever. Your loss." He turns away, towards the door, and it's not until Sam's following him down the stoneworked stairs to the asphalt where the Impala waits that he realizes that Dean was probably waiting for him to add and it's only lunchtime, the way he would have a year or six months ago.

Acting normal is so much damned work; it would be really nice if Dean could just take his word that things are okay, since they clearly aren't.

Dean's only had four more years than he has to master this, to get so good at it that Sam only catches the edges of his grief, and only ever when Dean's too tired or too badly hurt to care or to notice that for one awful moment, Sam understands everything he's not saying, everything he's hiding, everything he's trying to keep to himself.

That Sam forgets it during the times between is something for which he's not sure he's able to forgive himself. Not that that keeps him from doing it almost every single time.

When he was sixteen, his hands had been slippery with Dean's blood, Dean's eyes half-closed as Sam tried to keep pressure on his chest and shouted at their father to drive faster, faster, faster. At the hospital, waiting to find out whether his brother would make it through surgery, Sam had told himself that if Dean lived, Sam was going to get the hell out of this life the first chance he got. Dean could stay if he wanted, but Sam wasn't going to stick around to watch him die.

Seven years later and it's going to be Sam who gets Dean killed. Even Dean goes willingly, even if Dean goes out smiling, even if he grins as he carves out his own heart for Sam, it still counts as getting his brother killed.

It doesn't matter how many people Sam saves if he loses Dean in the process.

The sky is silver and unmappable, one great dull expanse; against it the branches of the trees are silhouettes snarled with thorns. Sam's four years and a lifetime behind and he wonders if he'll ever catch up before it's too late, if he'll get this right while there's still time enough for it to matter.

They're pulling out of the parking lot when the first drops of rain hit the windshield.

--

It turns out that the bar in which Denise works is called Harry's Place and has the same cigarette smoke miasma, wood-panelled walls, and dim corners illuminated by grimy neon signs advertising brands of liquor and beer as all of the other bars in which they've ended up over the last year and a half. Though it couldn't have opened more than an hour ago, there are already at least a few patrons hunched over drinks at the bar. It feels familiar, dangerously so, and for a moment Sam thinks wistfully of the first time he'd dined out with Jessica; each of the entrees had cost at least double what he'd been able to afford and he'd wondered what Jess had seen on his face that had caused her to say this one was on her, because that way he'd feel like they had to go out at least one more time so that they'd be even.

He hadn't met her parents until her funeral, and they'd stared at him there like they couldn't hate him for getting their daughter killed merely because they couldn't fathom what their daughter would have been doing with this rough-handed man in a badly-fitting suit. After that, he'd gone back to the motel room, taken off his jacket and tie, and he doesn't remember much of the rest of the day, except for Dean pushing his hair back from his forehead as he was sick and the way the linoleum of the bathroom floor was cold against his knees even through the wool of his pants.

Any day now he could be responsible for some of the worst things possible, humanly and otherwise, and in the meantime they're trying to find out what happened to the nine year old girl who disappeared from her front yard last week, and he's thinking not about that but about how tired he is of cheap drinks and the same deep-fried food the whole country over and the fact that he was meant to get out of this life and it turns out that he was born with it knit inescapable and deep into his bones.

They get a booth in one of the corners, with a good view of the door, and Dean toys with the salt and pepper shakers while Sam pretends to study the menu without actually seeing it.

"You don't have to memorize the damn thing," Dean says eventually and Sam shrugs. He wants soup and a salad. He wants to be a thousand miles from here, even though he's the one who found the case.

"Get me whatever," he says, sliding the menu aside. It'll all taste the same, anyway.

"Do I look like a freakin' waitress," Dean mutters, but he pushes out of the booth and slouches off towards the bar. Sam rests his elbows on the table and listens to the clack of pool balls and the scratchy blur of guitar from the jukebox.

The waitress brings their food and drinks a couple of songs after he returns; she sets bottles of beer damp with condensation alongside Dean's sandwich and Sam's bowl of soup and says, leaning in towards Dean, "Denise says to tell you she'll be over in a few."

"Thanks, sweetheart," Dean says and she nods, grins.

"You got me clam chowder," Sam says a little wonderingly, once she's gone.

"It's New England, Sam, these people practically breathe it. I'd'a gotten you fish, but it probably woulda turned out to be somebody's relative."

"Thanks, that's incredibly disturbing." Sam pokes gingerly at his soup.

"Hey, you're the one with the Lovecraft obsession."

"I was thirteen," Sam says.

Dean takes a bite of his sandwich and says without swallowing, "What's your point?"

Sam shrugs. "You used to love the Spice Girls."

"I did not," Dean says, low and scandalized as though he thinks someone might have overheard; he emphasizes his outrage by kicking Sam just below the knee. "There's a difference between thinking somebody's hot and liking them, Jesus."

"Sure, whatever you need to tell yourself," Sam says, moving his leg out of the way before Dean can kick him again.

"You guys the grad students?" Sam glances over at the blonde woman standing beside their table; she appears to be in her mid-thirties and her nametag reads, predictably, Denise.

"Uh, yeah?" he says, and winces at the question in his voice. It would have been too much for Dean to tell him what cover story they were going with, of course.

"He means yes," Dean says. "We are. Sorry, he's shy."

Sam glares at him and doesn't quite manage to turn the expression into something friendly by the time Denise looks in his direction again. Denise gives him a strange, and completely justifiable, look and says, "Lise said you wanted to hear about ghosts."

"Angeline over at the library said you might be willing to talk with us," Dean says. "We're looking for, uh, stories. About ghosts."

Sam rolls his eyes. "We're interested in the folklore of New England. Specifically, stories in, or deriving from, the gothic tradition."

"Look, I don't know about stories," Denise says. "What I saw wasn't any story."

"Of course," Sam says. "We just meant -- narratives. We'd really appreciate it if you could tell us what happened to you."

"You gonna use my name?" Denise asks.

"Only with your permission," Dean says.

Denise stares at them for a moment and says, "'Just 'Denise' will be fine. Do you need to take notes?"

Sam glances at Dean; after all, it was Dean's idea to go with the grad student story, and Dean blinks. "No," he says. "I, uh, I have a really good memory."

She raises her eyebrows. "Okay." Sam catches Dean's eye, tilts his head, and Dean frowns. He gets it a few seconds later and gets up out of the booth, shoves in next to Sam. Denise takes his seat. "It was a few years ago," she says. "September, Christ, musta been oh-three. I got off work pretty late, and my car was in the shop, so I was walking home. I live out past Tillman Road, and there's that place where you get real close to the beach? And I hear this noise, like, somebody crying, but I don't see anybody, so I keep walking. And when I get to the place where you can see down to the water, I look over and there's this woman out there, and she's wearing this dress, like this long, white dress, and I thought she had to be, you know, drunk or something, there's no reason anybody in their right mind would be out there, that time of year, dressed like that. So I call to her, but she doesn't turn around, and I thought about going home and calling the cops from there, but I thought, what if she's gone by the time I get back? What if she, she wanders away or freezes or something, you know?"

"So what did you do?" Sam asks.

She shrugs. "I go down the hill, and it's icy as fucking hell, pardon my language, and this whole time I'm calling to her, like, 'miss, miss, do you need help,' and when I get to the bottom of the hill, I realize she's not crying anymore. And she's still got her back to me. And I got the sense that something was really wrong, you know, like I couldn't hear anything other than the water? And I shouldn't've been able to, 'cause like I said I was heading out of town, but all of a sudden it just seemed real weird, like there shoulda been something else, but I was, I told myself it was nothing, and I kept walking, and I musta been ten feet away from her when she turned around."

Denise takes a breath, crosses her arms over her chest. Her hands are shaking. "She looked at me and I saw her eyes, and I swear to God, she was not human. She wasn't right. And she opened her mouth, and that's when I turned around, 'cause I knew anything she coulda said was gonna be worse even than the way she was looking at me." She swallows. "I turned around, and I ran, and I didn't stop 'til I was home with the lights on and the door locked behind me."

Sam licks his lips. "And you never saw her again?"

Denise smiles thinly. "Oh, honey, I see her every damn night when I close my eyes. That's not something you forget."

"Yeah," Sam says. "I know. I mean, I know what you mean. I can imagine," he amends clumsily. Dean gives him a look, but Denise doesn't seem to have noticed.

"You got any idea who she coulda been?" Dean asks. "Angeline said you thought she was a ghost."

"I don't know what else she . . . it, I can't think of anything else it coulda been," Denise says. "I didn't look back the whole way home 'cause I knew if I did, she'd be there." She pauses. "That sounds stupid, I know."

"No," Sam says. "No, it doesn't."

"Anybody else ever see her, or anything like her?" Dean asks.

"Not that I know of," Denise says. "Not that they'll say, anyway. Not that I can blame them. I only told a couple of people and, well, Angeline told you where to find me, didn't she?"

"Well, for what it's worth, we believe you," Dean says.

"Thank you for talking to us," Sam says. "Really. You've been a big help."

Denise shrugs again. "I hope you got a good story out of it, anyway." Her smile is as tired as her eyes are haunted, and her back when she gets out of the booth is rigid, her shoulders held tight and straight as she disappears back into the kitchen.

"Did you mean it?" Sam asks quietly as the sounds of the bar begin to filter back in. "Do you believe her?"

"She saw something," Dean says. "That's for damn sure. Whether or not it's gonna help us at all, I got no idea." He tips his head back against the naugahyde, eyes closed, for a second and then pushes to his feet. "Why the hell'd I have to be the one to move, anyway," he says, settling in across from Sam once more.

Sam tastes a spoonful of his soup. It's gone cold, which isn't surprising, but whatever appetite he'd had has faded, anyway. He pushes the bowl away and works his bottle of beer back and forth between his palms, waiting for Dean to finish eating. "We should head over to the Bradys' house," he says. He's not looking forward to it any more than he was a few hours before, but he's not sure there's anything he can do to delay it further.

Even if there is, he knows he can't justify it. Whatever's out there, delaying will only give it more time to hunt.

"You sure?" Dean asks.

"Yeah," he says. "It'll be good to get it over with, anyway. And if there is something out there, if we can find it before night, or at least get some idea of what we're looking for . . ."

"Maybe we can save somebody else," Dean says, sounding more resigned than he should. "Yeah." He pulls cash out of his wallet to cover the bill. Sam drains the last of his beer and gets to his feet, follows Dean back out to the street.

The rain's intensified since they entered the bar; it's only midafternoon, but the streetlights are already on, small pools of light against the gloaming, the gathering dusk. The air smells no longer of salt, but of iron. Sam ducks his head, hunches his shoulders against the storm; Dean turns up the collar of his jacket and they hurry down the wet street, past the rippling puddles reflecting the streetlight glow, towards the black gleam of the Impala half a block away.

Part Two
Part Three

whereupon @ 2010-07-17T14:45:00

2010-07-17T22:45:43Z

Cartography
by whereupon
Dean/ofc, no spoilers, PG-13, 980 words.
She led him through a twist of trees, and gladly, unquestioningly, he followed.

He smelled autumn, woodsmoke and rain when her hair fell over her shoulder to brush against his cheek, and the scent was stronger still when she took him by the hand; she wore a length of faded leather twined around her wrist, kin to his own, though at the time he didn't recognize the symbols etched into the black, and still he doesn't, though sometimes he sees them in his dreams. They slipped out from the crowded room, unseen because no one cared to look, their eyes on each other or their glasses or the screens high above the bar, playing old games from a world that all of them swore existed, though none of them had ever seen. Tell me about it, she'd said, her eyes dark as she sat across from him in the smooth-polished booth carved from knotty pine, and he'd never been one to turn down the opportunity to tell a story, so he did.

He'd told her first of the road, of the places he'd been. He'd told her of the way the light cuts through snowy New York City air, and he'd told her of kudzu, of swamp lights and alligator teeth. He'd told her of highways, of blacktop and asphalt; he'd told her of adventure. He'd told her stories, and when the cigarette smoke wafting over from the bar had made raw his throat, she'd brought him another glass and sat beside him, her body small and warm. He'd told her of his brother, and his father, when she pulled her legs up onto the bench and crossed them; she'd slipped off her shoes and her feet were bare. He'd traced slow circles above her right talus as he told her of the truest things he knew, the things he'd always wanted and the things he kept safe 'round his heart and didn't let himself think about, the things he took out only on the worst days, and the very best, and when at last his voice had broken, she'd laid a finger across his mouth and leaned close to whisper in his ear. The soft rustle of her skirt across the wood should have been inaudible, but he'd heard it as clearly as he had the thrum of his blood, or the pulse of his heart.

She led him through a twist of trees, and gladly, unquestioningly, he followed; she led him to the edge of the lake, where the rushes grew tall and there were glints like stars in the thick of the forest on the opposite side. He was dizzy when she kissed him, and he cupped her face in his palms, supping at the heat of her mouth. He knelt and touched the soft skin behind her knees. Slung between the shelter of land and the quiet water, she lay on her back and his thumbs slid across the hollows of her shoulders as she drew him into her. Behind closed eyes he saw the road unravelled before him; when he opened his eyes, he saw her own, and the lake within them, and the stars, and their voices when they cried out were one.

He smelled autumn, when he awoke in the chill of his bed, in the motel room he'd rented, the walls of which, once-white, had gone dingy and dull with age. He tasted smoke, when he swallowed, and the thick dark taste of the beer he'd drunk the night before, and so faintly he thought he might have imagined it, he tasted her, but only for an instant. He got out of bed and looked at his reflection in the mirror over the sink, and brushed broken pieces of grass from his hair. The sky was still dawn-silvery when he packed his bags, and the neon of the motel sign was the faded pink of sunset in the rearview mirror as he pulled out of the parking lot.

He couldn't tell you the name of the town, if you were to ask him now. It hadn't seemed to matter at the time; after all, he had only been passing through. He had needed only a place to sleep, something to eat, somewhere to stop, for a few hours, to be grounded, to be something other than on the road, on the run. He couldn't tell you her name, either, and in truth, she might have never given it to him. That, too, hadn't seemed to matter.

But sometimes in his dreams he sees the lake, and the stars, and the shadows of all of the things that were not stars; in his dreams sometimes he sees the sprawl of wild wood, and the ragged spires of trees, and the fog that clings to them at earliest light. He sees all of these, and he knows what it is to run free among them, and to smell of woodsmoke and rain. He knows, then, with the logic of dreams, and sometimes still for an instant upon waking, that at times now she sees the unbroken curve of road, the fatal grace of metal and chrome, the ragged map of a world in which she has never walked, and never will.

He remembers her, as she does him, though he does not speak of her -- as, he knows without really knowing how, she does not of him. When the headlights of his car cut through the tangled woods beside the highway in blackest night, his brother is asleep against the window and so does not ask why, for a moment, the car seems to slow, as though its driver is looking for something, or searching for a place that he has not once been before, a place that calls to him like home, though he has never breathed its air, nor have its branches ever once drawn blood from his arms as he slipped amongst them.

--

end

all will be forgiven, it'll be just like before.

2010-07-01T20:50:41Z

Music, because the songs have been stuck in my head very often as of late.

Phil Ochs -- There and Now: Live in Vancouver 1968

1. "There But For Fortune"
2. "Outside of a Small Circle of Friends"
3. "Where Were You In Chicago?/William Butler Yeats Visits Lincoln Park And Escapes Unscathed"
4. "The Scorpion Departs But Never Returns"
5. "Pleasures Of The Harbor"
6. "The World Began in Eden and Ended in Los Angeles"
7. "The Bells" (with Allen Ginsberg)
8. "The Highwayman"
9. "I Kill Therefore I Am"
10. "The Doll House"
11. "Another Age"
12. "Changes"
13. "Crucifixion"
14. "I Ain't Marching Anymore"

whereupon @ 2010-06-16T15:22:00

2010-06-16T23:22:28Z

Noir
by whereupon
Sam/Dean. PG, no spoilers, 5,208 words.
The boundaries of Sam's universe have begun to blur.

For as long as Sam can remember, Dean has been fascinated by what Sam considers to be some of the most mundane objects in the entire world. Okay, yes, the bear in Colorado had been notably massive, but the ducks in the pond next to the motel were ducks and nothing more, and Sam hadn't actually needed to be jostled awake miles from their destination yesterday just because Dean had seen a bumper sticker proclaiming the existence of a museum of alien history, and check it out, Sam, they got a whole museum dedicated to that shit, can you believe it. Dean's only ever quiet when he's sleeping or hungover or in one of those dark moods that come over without warning and leave Sam terrified for his brother's safety, sure that Dean's going to get himself killed because he's decided once more that he's expendable.

Sam is all for appreciating the beauty of life, but there is something disturbing about the fact that his twenty-six-year-old brother finds it necessary to comment almost every time they pass a field full of cows. (And, seriously? They pass a lot of fields full of cows.)

They're on their way out of Nevada, having just finished a hunt that left Dean with what's probably a cracked rib and Sam with one hell of a headache from being flung into the side of a mausoleum, and Sam's fairly certain that the cops didn't get a good look at their license plate, but he could be wrong. Dean, on the other hand, is at once trying (Sam thinks) to reassure Sam as far as how they're totally not going to be hauled into prison within the next hour, at least, and managing to make them sound like a combination of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and the FBI's most wanted. Sam is not entirely sure Dean's aware that these positions are kind of irreconcilable.

"No, they're not," Dean says, turning from the steering wheel to glance at him beneath the heavy black of the unlit desert night. There are taillights miles away, flickering red dwarf stars, but other than that, they're all alone out here, without even the moon for company. "It's not like they ever catch the FBI's most wanted, is it? All those fucked-up serial killers are still out there."

"That's comforting," Sam says. "Thank you."

"Hey, we see worse things than serial killers every day."

Sam blinks at him. "Uh, yeah, that makes it much better."

"I'm just sayin', Ted Bundy's got nothing on a pack of rabid werewolves, okay," Dean says. "And since you did fine with that, you don't gotta worry about the other thing."

"And the FBI catches serial killers all the time," Sam says. "I mean, considering the estimated number of killers currently working."

"No, they don't," Dean says.

"Yes, they do," Sam says.

"You watch too much TV," Dean says. "Real people don't solve mysteries in an hour minus commercial breaks, dude."

"Dean, you're the one who watches soap operas," Sam says irritably. "I'm not sure you're exactly an expert on reality."

"I don't watch soap operas," Dean says. "I watch dramas. Sometimes. And you wouldn't know quality TV if it bit you on the ass."

"And you're such a connoisseur." It's a lame retort, but the way the headlight beams spin and flare across the road is making Sam dizzy. And kind of nauseated.

"Using college words doesn't make you right," Dean says. "It just means you can't think of anything to say."

"What do you expect, I'm concussed," Sam says, which is probably true. He doesn't have the authority to have an official medical opinion, but his field-medic skills have to count for something, a foxhole diagnosis. If he survives the war, he won't need a professional opinion; he'll have all the proof he needs in the lines of healed bones, phantom aches, the faint scars left behind from all the times Dean's had to stitch him back together. Nobody should have to lead this graceless kind of life, but he and Dean were born into it; outlaw's bred deep into the both of them.

"Yeah, good thing you got me to watch your back," Dean says. "Hey, think you actually dented the wall? Sure as hell sounded like it." Sam considers telling him to fuck off, but remembers waking up to Dean's hands on his face, remembers Dean's blurry but recognizably panic-stricken expression, and decides against it.

"I'm going to go to sleep now," Sam informs him, hoping that will deter him from continuing the conversation.

"No, you're not," Dean says. "It's not like I'd be able to tell if you died, you sleep like a dead person, and I'm not gonna spend the rest of the night driving around a freakin' corpse."

"If you couldn't tell, why the hell would it matter?" Sam asks, letting his head fall back against the seat and closing his eyes. "If you're so worried about it, you can wake me in an hour."

"What do I look like, an alarm clock?" Dean says, shoving Sam's shoulder. Sam grits his teeth against the way the motion jars his head, and keeps his eyes resolutely closed. "Sam," Dean says. Sam ignores him. Dean lets go of his shoulder and falls silent, but Sam knows better than to let his guard down; a moment later, Dean says, "Whatever. You wanna die from a concussion, knock yourself out. I'm gonna leave you on the side of the road, you know. I'm gonna open the door and push you out, I'm not even gonna slow down."

Sam thinks Dean mutters else something after that, but he's already too far asleep to care.

He's having this dream that he's following Dean through a cornfield, pushing through stalks that shouldn't be taller than him but that, with dream-logic, are; the sky is that strange religious blue and the ground is littered with dry husks that rustle beneath his boots. Dean is walking ahead of him, getting farther and farther away, and he doesn't want Dean to think he's fallen behind, so he walks faster, but it doesn't help. It occurs to him then that the rustling isn't just coming from beneath his feet, but from somewhere to the side, as though something is following him, hidden by the tassels and stalks and leaves, and he knows, with a flash of dread insight, that he is not armed. He looks ahead; Dean is no longer visible, and he does not dare look behind him, nor to either side, in case he might glimpse whatever's after him. He smells smoke and realizes suddenly that the field is burning, someone has set it alight, and then without warning he's not dreaming anymore, he's awakened by Dean's hand on his chest, his name in Dean's voice, the way he used to be, all through those weeks after the fire.

"What," he manages. Dean's palm is pressing his sweat-sticky shirt against his chest and he feels strung out. He straightens and Dean's hand falls away.

"You were havin' a nightmare," Dean says. Sam doesn't ask how he knew. "You want breakfast?"

Sam blinks at him. "What time's it?"

"Morning," Dean says. It's still dark out, but Sam's having trouble making out the numbers on the dashboard clock; he'll have to trust his brother, as he always does. He scrubs his hands across his eyes and realizes that the car is stopped, that they're parked and there's a truckstop lit bright as an operating room across the lot. "I could use the caffeine."

"Yeah, okay," Sam says, fumbling for the door handle. The morning (night, his brain corrects; Dean's always trying to pull one over on him, always making up the most ridiculous stories) air smells like spilled gasoline and the ocean, and he shivers.

"Hey, you with me?" Dean asks, coming around the front of the car, and Sam shrugs as easily as he can.

"Yeah," he says. "Sorry, I'm just, uh. Still not really awake."

"That was a hell of a whack on the head you got," Dean says, reaching for Sam's face. Before Sam can pull away, Dean's trapped him, is smoothing his hands across Sam's jaw and frowning up at him. Sam wonders what he's looking for, if he's found it, and then Dean lets him go. "C'mon," he says, turning away towards the oasis of light, and Sam follows, caught in his wake and trying desperately not to think of cornfields and fire, trying desperately not to feel like he should be looking over his shoulder.

When they're safely inside the diner, the door closed between them and the ragged dark, Dean looks up at him again, narrows his eyes. "You look like crap," he says.

"Right back at you," Sam says, because beneath the rough stubble there's a bruise blossoming faintly purple on the side of Dean's chin and the shadows beneath Dean's eyes make it look almost like he's wearing smudged eyeliner. The thought makes him want to laugh and he tips his head back against that punch-drunk desperation, cracking his neck and letting the halogen light filter through his eyelids. Jesus, he's exhausted.

"There's blood in your hair," Dean says, sudden and low as though it's for Sam alone to hear, and Sam opens his eyes. "Excuse me, miss, can you tell me where the men's room is," Dean says, bright and loud this time, and the waitress coming towards them smiles the way waitresses always smile at him.

"Sure," she says. "Right down that hall and to your left. Let me know when you're ready and I'll get you a table."

"Believe me, I'll look forward to that," Dean says, and the waitress blushes, her smile widening as Sam thinks she fights back the urge to giggle. She can't be more than eighteen, he thinks, and he hopes to God Dean knows as much and actually cares enough to respect it. Dean catches the sleeve of his shirt, fingers warm against his wrist, and says, "Move your ass," pulling Sam in the direction the waitress indicated. Sam lets Dean guide him down the hall and into the men's room; it's easier than resisting the force of nature that is his brother.

He leans against the wall while Dean grabs a wad of paper towels from the dispenser and soaks them beneath the single faucet. In the mirror both he and Dean look pale, bleached and tinged faintly green by the dingy light fixtures. It takes more effort than it should to push off of the wall when Dean turns to look expectantly at him. "Thought you said you got all of it before," he says when Dean reaches up to dab at him with the towels.

"I was working by flashlight, okay," Dean says. The water's cold, makes Sam's skin prickle, but he forces himself not to move until Dean steps back and tosses the towels at the trash can by the door. He makes the shot, barely, and sighs.

"How're your ribs holding up?" Sam asks, leaning back against the sink. The porcelain's cool, steadying.

"It's probably just a bruise," Dean says. "I'll live."

Sam shakes his head as gingerly as he can. "Lemme see," he says. Dean shrugs, peels up his t-shirt. The smash of what had been vibrant red across his chest is beginning to darken and he grits his teeth when Sam skims his fingers across it.

"That doesn't mean you gotta go around poking it," he says, stepping out of Sam's reach and tugging his shirt down. He opens the door and glances back at Sam, tilts his head towards the hallway. He waits until Sam starts towards him before moving and Sam is somewhat relieved to know that even though Dean might be pissed at him, he won't leave his little brother to fall asleep in some forgettable truckstop bathroom.

They tramp wearily after the waitress towards a booth in the corner. Sam puts his elbows on the table and rests his head on his hand while Dean flirts perfunctorily, his voice scratchy and rough. After the waitress has poured them coffee and promised to come back in a few minutes to take their orders, Dean's shoulders slump, the crows' feet around his eyes deepening. He looks as though he's aged ten years in the space of seconds as he wraps his hands around the coffee mug and lifts it to his mouth without flinching, even though the steam rising from Sam's own means the coffee has to be painfully hot. He blinks at Sam, who wonders if he should apologize for staring and decides that probably being concussed is a good enough excuse.

He does get the hint, though, and the green vinyl creaks beneath him as he looks away, looks at something that isn't his brother. He wonders if Dean ever finds it exhausting to be the complete and total focus of Sam's life, but the question seems sort of analogous to wondering if gravity ever gets tired, so he discards it. The lights on the distant highway leave behind tracers and Sam is momentarily transfixed; he wonders if this is what it's like to be Dean, fascinated by everything.

It takes an inexcusably long time, but eventually he realizes that he's shivering, and he takes another sip of coffee against the way his teeth are going to start chattering at any moment. It occurs to him that maybe caffeine wasn't such a good idea; he feels jittery with it, like he might break apart at any moment, and he's still cold despite the heat of the mug between his palms. He makes a silent vow that he's not going to worry Dean with this, but of course Dean's on to him, eternally outmaneuvering him, in possession of a four-year advantage.

"You're pretty fucked up, huh," Dean says, which seems like such an accurate analysis of Sam's life and outlook in general that Sam can only nod. Dean knuckles at his eyes, sighs. "Yeah. Don't fall asleep on me, okay?"

"Okay," Sam agrees, because Dean spends most of his life pulling Sam from fires both literal and figurative; surely Sam can do this one thing for him.

"I mean it," Dean says. "You even think about shutting your eyes, I'll kick your ass."

Sam's saved from having to respond to that threat by the return of the waitress. "Did you figure out what you'd like?" she asks, entirely too perky and awake for this time of whatever the hell time of day it is. Sam would like to hate her on general principle, especially because of the way she's eying his brother, but he's too good of a person to do that, or at least to let it show.

"I think so, but I'd love to hear what you'd recommend," Dean says. He delivers the line like he thinks he's half Bogie, half Bond, and Sam can only stare at him, amazed once more at his audacity.

The waitress (Sam refuses to look at her name tag, because if he does, he'll have to start thinking of her as a person with a name and a family and a life and then he'll have to feel bad for hating her) blushes harder. "The number one special's pretty good," she says.

"In that case, I'll take that," Dean says, giving her that bandit's smirk that's usually reserved for Sam alone. Sam's justifiably annoyed; the waitress has never once stood beside Dean in a firefight or had Dean's back in a bar brawl. "Sam?"

"I'll have the same," Sam says automatically, even though he has no idea what the number one special even is. He's just realized that he's forgotten to look at the menu at all. The waitress promises to be back with their food just as soon as she can, which Sam doesn't doubt considering the parting look she gives Dean, and then Dean kicks him under the table. Sam blinks at him, because that's usually his own move, and what the hell kind of alternate universe has this just become?

"Drink your coffee before I have to worry about you," Dean says.

Sam stares at him uncomprehendingly. It hadn't ever occurred to him that Dean does anything but worry about him, even though most of the time Dean tries to pretend otherwise.

Dean points at Sam's coffee as though Sam's forgotten what it is, and Sam's annoyed at the assumption. "Before you pass out," Dean says. "You're not looking so hot."

Sam's fairly certain that caffeine's not actually the best remedy for a concussion (though at the moment he's having trouble remembering what that remedy is, or if it even exists; maybe he should go for a rosary, just in case), but Dean seems certain enough for the both of them, so Sam obeys. Dean's the closest thing Sam knows to an expert on concussions, anyway, considering how many times Dean's been hit in the head with a blunt object; Sam can't remember how many times he's listened to Dean's nonsensical mumblings, Dean's accidental revelations, all of the things Dean had meant to keep to himself. Sam's glad that he hasn't managed to tell Dean any of his own secrets yet tonight, but he doesn't want to dwell on the thought, doesn't want to jinx it.

"You're a magnet for trouble," he observes, setting his cup back down. The table drifts at the edge of his vision and he feels vaguely seasick.

Dean raises an eyebrow. "Talk about the freakishly huge kettle callin' the pot black," he says. Sam's not entirely sure what he means by that, but from the look on Dean's face, he's fairly certain Dean's making fun of him.

"Whatever, jerk," Sam says. The words feel loose and half-formed in his mouth. He suddenly wants nothing more than to put his head down on the table and go to sleep, but he promised Dean, he reminds himself.

"Yeah, I totally see how you got into Stanford," Dean says. "I'm surprised they didn't just give you the freakin' Nobel already."

"What," Sam says, blinking at him; he thinks he might have only heard half of what Dean said. He wonders if Dean would notice if he drifted off for a few minutes. Probably not; Dean can keep himself entertained forever. His soliloquies would put Hamlet to shame.

"Sam," Dean says, scary and dangerous, whole worlds of violence in that voice, and Sam forces his eyes open. "I'm this close to taking you to the hospital, man," Dean says. He looks even paler than he did in the men's room mirror, Sam thinks, but that could just be the head injury talking.

"I'm fine," Sam says, sitting up straighter, because Dean and hospitals are a bad combination; Sam has years of memories to support that conclusion. "Really, Dean, I'm okay." He's not entirely sure that's true, but he's used to lying for his brother's sake. Whatever he can do to make Dean's life easier, because both of their lives are hard enough as it is.

"You can't lie to save your damn life," Dean says, and Sam wants to point out that he can, actually, and has even done so in the past; he's lied to save his life and lied to save Dean's, and he lied so much once that he was able to begin an entirely new life, but deals with the devil always end badly and now he's tasting smoke once more as though he never stopped, so he washes it away with a mouthful of coffee, instead. Dean would have only argued, anyway. It's effort enough to remain upright, to keep his thoughts corralled, to keep himself from drifting when things start to go blurry. (That last one takes a lot of blinking, mostly.)

The number one special turns out to be a stack of pancakes with bacon on the side, which Sam thinks might win the prize for most unimaginative special ever. He stares at his plate and is overwhelmed by the thought of the amount of hand-eye coordination it will take to lift a knife and fork, not to mention to cut the pancakes, or to try to eat them. He might as well just forfeit now; he's not even hungry.

Across the table, Dean's shoving food into his mouth like he's starving, like he thinks somebody's going to take it away from him, and the night's shipwrecked outside of the window, current-dragged and full of ghosts. If Sam looks hard enough, he can almost see phantoms, faces in the smudges across the glass, in the way the streetlights filter into shadows, and then the frame skips, redshift as the universe realigns: Dean's pulling cash out of his wallet, biting his lip as he counts off bills. "You ready?" he asks, to which Sam nods; he doesn't know what he's meant to be ready for, but he was born ready for Dean, for anything Dean might throw at him.

Navigating back out to the car is much easier after Dean turns around in time to see Sam stumble and decides that Sam's incapable of walking without being guided. That's more true than Sam would have liked, but he'll be damned if he's going to tell Dean as much. He's probably damned anyway, of course, but what the hell, he'll play it safe.

"Where're we going," Sam says when Dean stops them in front of the Impala, the one place they always manage to end up. Dean's scowling with his hands in his front pockets; he doesn't look up, doesn't respond to Sam at all. "Dean," Sam says, suddenly terrified that he's managed to lose his voice on top of everything else. He can't imagine a world in which Dean couldn't hear him; who would tell Dean to keep his head down, to keep the volume down, to stop trying to get himself killed?

"Where'd I put the damn keys," Dean says, still not looking at Sam. He's still got his hands in his pockets like he thinks the keys might materialize, like he thinks maybe he just missed them. They're pockets, not the freaking Tardis, but there's no way Sam's going to make that reference in front of Dean. "Fuck, I coulda sworn I had 'em a minute ago."

"Hey," Sam says, and it takes all of his concentration, all of his finesse, but he manages to get a hand beneath Dean's jacket and work the keyring out from the inside pocket. The leather's so much a part of Dean that Sam thinks in another frame of mind he'd feel invasive, that he has no right to do this. Dean twists away, straightening his shoulders, and scowls again, this time at Sam.

"Not cool," he says, like he thinks Sam's become a master of prestidigitation in the past hour. Sam's always been good with his hands, but Dean's got their dad's eyes and a pistolero's trigger finger; Sam knows better than to try anything where the car is concerned.

"You put them there yourself," Sam says. "Even I remember that."

Dean narrows his eyes. "Yeah, and if I wasn't busy worrying about your ass, I would have, too. Gimme the keys, Sam."

Sam's hand closes around the metal. "No way you're driving anywhere, you can't even remember where you put the thing that starts the car."

"So, what," Dean says. "You wanna spend the rest of the night sleeping here?" Sam feels distantly vindicated; he'd known it couldn't have been morning.

"If the other choice's sleeping on the side of the road when you run us off it," he says, and maybe he should have phrased that better, because Dean's always been oversensitive as far as his driving skills are concerned. Dean lunges for the keys and Sam steps back, instinctively holding them out of Dean's reach, and then he overbalances and Dean has to grab him to keep him from falling. He ends up leaning against his brother, Dean's arms around him and the edges of the keys digging into his palm just in case Dean goes for them again.

"Gimme the keys," Dean says, and this time he doesn't sound pissed, he just sounds tired.

"You're not driving," Sam says into Dean's shoulder. One of them is swaying, and that means that both of them are, or maybe it's the night moving around them.

"I'm just gonna open the door, Sammy, you're a hell of a heavy bastard," Dean says. "I liked you better when you were smaller than me."

"No, you didn't," Sam says, though he can well believe it. And that must come through in his voice, because Dean smoothes Sam's hair back from his face, lifts Sam's head so that he can look Sam in the eye.

"Yeah, okay," he says. "You were a lot easier to carry, though, you gotta admit that."

"I don't hafta admit anything," Sam says, turning his face into the anodyne heat of Dean's palm. Dean's other hand snakes down to steal the keyring and Sam passes it over easily. "You can't make me."

"Tough words coming from the concussed guy," Dean says. "Right now I bet I could make you do anything."

"You wouldn't," Sam says, because Dean's his brother and even though Dean's a bitch when he's tired, impossible to reason with, he still cares about Sam's welfare.

"Try me," Dean says, and there's that reckless righteous grin; the sight of it beneath the streetlight haze makes Sam's heart catch and he wants nothing more than for Dean to keep looking at him like that, like it's the two of them against the world, always has and always will be, and even exhausted, Dean's eyes are flint to Sam's tinder, at once a promise and a dare, sending out a signal that Sam would have to be blind and deaf and senseless to miss, and even then, he'd hear it in the pulse of his heart, in the echo and answer of Dean's. His mouth is up against Dean's before he really knows what he's doing, his body acting without his permission, and he can only look on, dazed, as he kisses his brother. It seems only right, the way the night's gone, to be skidding out like this, wrecking himself against Dean even as his brother's the only thing keeping him alive. Which, hello melodrama, but maybe considering the cowboy bent of their lives, there's no other language for it but this one, all drama and pyrotechnics and immense terrifying epiphanies, Wile E. Coyote realizing that he's stepped off the cliff and hanging in midair, waiting to plunge; maybe that's Sam, breathing against Dean and waiting for the ground to rush up and smash him into a thousand unrecognizable pieces.

Dean's lips are chapped; his mouth tastes like coffee. His stubble scratches at Sam's skin, just as Sam's must burn him, and he does not kiss Sam back.

This is an impossible turn of events.

Sam's mind reels at the implications, at the devastating scale of what he's done, as Dean turns his head and gets hold of Sam's shoulders, taking a step back and still so goddamn careful with him, still unwilling to let Sam go crashing down to the asphalt where he belongs.

Dean licks his lips and Sam cannot look away. "Sam," Dean says, and he sounds as brittle now as he did in the diner, ground down to bone, to nothing. His hands are seeping heat into Sam's skin, branding him forever a traitor. Sam feels joyridden; whatever possessed him a moment ago has abruptly vacated the premises, leaving behind nothing but scratched metal and broken glass. He feels hollow, and weirdly sober, suddenly aware of the weight of all of his bones and how very badly his head hurts.

He thinks he liked it better when he was delirious.

"You're concussed," Dean says, his voice breaking halfway through the sentence.

Sam's mouth is dry. "Yeah," he says. He wants to step back, wants to get into the car and leave all of this behind, but he doesn't want Dean to take it the wrong way, doesn't want to lose Dean's hands on him. Selfishly, he wants to have this for as long as he can, because it'll probably never happen again.

"I just, I can't," Dean says. "We can't, Sam, please don't do this to me, man," and his jaw is tight, locked like he's afraid to say anything else. It occurs to Sam that Dean's finally got nothing to say; Sam's finally done the one thing that will get Dean to shut up, and he thinks he's going to be sick. Dean only ever says please when one or both of them are dying.

"I'm concussed," he says. "It was a, I don't know, it was."

"Yeah," Dean says. He lets go of Sam and gets into the car, stretching across the seat to pop the lock on the door closest to Sam, which Sam takes to mean that at least Dean isn't going to leave him here. As soon as Sam trusts his legs to work again, he reaches blindly for the car, the familiar curve of the metal against his hand as he opens the door, half-crawls into the back seat.

"I'll wake you in an hour," Dean says, and Sam doesn't dare look up at the rearview mirror. He's not sure whether he could live with the fact that maybe Dean can't even look at him. "Make sure you're not, you know."

"Yeah," Sam says. "Okay." He hears Dean shifting around, cranking the seat back so that he can stretch out. His throat burns. He tells himself that he'll have forgotten this by the time Dean wakes him, that he'll never remember it again. He tells himself Dean will think nothing of it; Dean knows his little brother's crazy, fucked up in all the worst ways, and maybe he saw this one coming miles off. He tells himself that in an hour, Dean will have had time to think it over, Dean will have decided Sam's right, that there's no other inevitability, no other possibility, no other life worth living, and will wake him up with his hand on Sam's chest once more, Sam's name in his voice and he'll say yes, yes, yes, his mouth hot on Sam's throat.

Sam squeezes his eyes shut and tells himself that he will not cry. Of all the terrible things he's done, this is probably the worst, but Dean will forgive him. Dean has to forgive him, Dean always forgives him. Dean has to forgive him, because Sam cannot comprehend a world in which this does not occur, but Sam's not a kid anymore, can't let himself think that just because he believes something, it has to be true, and right; even Dean doesn't try to tell him that anymore. He's killed people and he's broken his brother more times than he can remember, and maybe this time was the last.

He cannot trust that the world will still be there when he next opens his eyes, but he can't bear waiting to find out. He lets himself fall.

--

end

whereupon @ 2010-06-10T17:40:00

2010-06-11T01:40:02Z

Something new, in that I have never written Dean/Castiel before, and something borrowed, in that it is a remix of iwrotethissong's "Clean."

Orison
by whereupon
Dean/Castiel. Season four, PG, 2,213 words.
Freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose.

It no longer matters whether it was Dean who came to him, in penance or in search of salvation, or whether it was he who touched a hand to Dean's face as though to erase and Dean merely did not flinch away. If it was Dean who came to him, it does not matter the intent; perhaps he thought it would be only once, a temporary grace, or perhaps he intended to give himself over fully, mystic or saint, holy devotee. Intent on its own does not matter. The intent is the act. This is the nature of prayer.

It does not matter why these things happened, nor how; it matters simply that they did, that they have become. This is the nature of his father's word. This is the nature of his father's world.

In the beginning, there was nothing. In the beginning, there was the dark. The Morningstar has fled heaven, stealing with him the secrets of fire. The Morningstar has fallen, taking with him his unholy light. It is not dark that he has left behind; he's no rock n' roll Prometheus, free will champion, rebel martyr spitting in the face of destiny, daddy be damned. He's merely disobedient, a spoiled child who threw a tantrum when he could not have his way.

Castiel was disobedient, once. He learned from his mistake; he saw that he had been wrong, and he asked his father for forgiveness, and in turn he was loved once more. He hopes, if angels may be said to hope, that in time, he will be able to convince Dean to do the same. This hope does not matter. What will be, will be, and it will be as his father wishes. Elohim, I am, amen.

--

The hem of the long coat once worn by a man called Jimmy Novak is spattered with blood. This is nothing new, and Castiel is not disturbed by it, but he has spent enough time in this host, observing the ways of humans, to know that some will find it alarming. He leaves the sullied coat in the motel room in which Dean and his brother are staying; when he returns, he sees that Dean has found it, as Castiel had expected he would, but that instead of returning the garment to its original state, Dean has decided to wear it. The coat does not fit him well; the sleeves are almost too short and he pulls at the collar as though he can't get the cloth to fold properly. This is not Dean's role to play, but Castiel is not sure if Dean understands this: Dean's expression as he stands in front of the mirror is inscrutable.

"You are wearing my host's coat," Castiel says. Dean's shoulders stiffen; he pulls at the sleeves as though to make them cover his wrists, and he turns to face Castiel. He does not shed the coat, and he lifts his chin as though he wishes Castiel to believe that he is not embarrassed to have been caught.

"Glad to see your angel-vision's intact," he says.

Castiel inclines his head. "I was blind, but now I see."

Dean blinks at him. "Will you stop looking at me like that," he says after a moment. His tone makes it something other than a question.

"I can't help it," Castiel says. He does not know of any other way to look at Dean; as far as he knows, there might be no other way. In this, as in all things, he trusts his father.

"Goddamn it, would you learn to take responsibility for yourself already?" Dean snaps, and from the look on his face, the way his eyes are narrowed and his cheeks are flushed, Castiel understands that the words were meant to harm. They have not. Castiel is remotely glad for this; Dean already has more than enough for which to atone.

Dean swallows; his hands, clenched into fists at his sides, loosen. "I think you're beginning to grow on me," he says, a confession within the sanctuary of this forsaken room as he turns back to the mirror. A battered cardboard placard atop the television offers an array of adult films for nine dollars and ninety-nine cents each. "I was really hoping that wouldn't happen."

"Dean," Castiel says, perhaps too kindly, for Dean's jaw clenches. He sheds the coat, then, and turns on his heel. The confession is over: Dean leaves the room, and Castiel does not follow. Instead, he reaches for the coat crumpled on the floor and shrugs into it the way a monk might have donned his robes, three hundred years ago, or the way a priest would have hefted the knife in his hand, raising it high above the girl's stomach, three hundred years before that.

--

"Don' care if you're a m'therfuckin' angel," Dean says. His breath reeks of liquor and he sways as he speaks. "I don't, it don' fuckin' matter, okay? You're not gonna get b'tween me an' him, he's my goddamn brother, so you can, you can take your holier-th'n-me bullshit an' go right the fuck back where you came from."

Castiel waits until he's sure Dean has finished speaking, and then he reaches out, slowly, gently, as though to smooth wings that Dean does not have, and touches two fingers to Dean's forehead. Dean stumbles, and blinks; when he opens his eyes, they are clear.

"Fuck you," he says, pushing Castiel's hand away. In another world, he's jumped as he staggers drunkenly back to the motel; his wallet, containing three dollars and a creased photograph, is stolen, and he is stabbed and left to bleed to death in an alleyway. Lucifer rises and the world in his wake is burnt and left for ash. In this one, Dean walks with his shoulders hunched and his head down, soldier-wary, soldier-weary. In this one, Castiel watches him go. Apocalypse hovers tenuously on the horizon.

--

Ah, until the day break, and the shadows flee away, turn, my beloved, and be thou like a roe, rogue, young hart, young heart: it's a prayer as good as any, and he is young, for though the shadows beneath Dean's eyes darken every day, though his hands shake and more and more he moves like someone twice his age, he has not lived to see even a fraction of that which Castiel has, of that which Castiel understands. Horrors upon horrors; hells upon hells. Even angels have boogeymen. Thou should not use a brother thus, little Jael angel in a class all your own, but Castiel has no brothers, merely brothers in arms, and Dean has hardly even begun to comprehend the war in which he is fighting. Dean never begs, never once says please, but "God," he says, "God," as he is made clean once more by Castiel's touch, and oh, Dean might swear that he never prays, but there, in that rush of breath beneath the blood-scythe moon, Castiel understands that Dean is a liar.

But one can repent for one's lies. Forgiveness, once asked, can be granted. Dean will not be barred from heaven for this small sin; when weighed against what he is doing for them, fulfilling his role, turning away, it will be nothing, will crumble like dust, forgotten.

Beside him Dean wakes, choking on a scream, and Castiel thinks that if he could, if he were human, he might offer words of reassurance. It will be all right, he might say. In the end, you will be granted peace. The end is coming. You have done good work, and you are almost done.

"You know what has to be done," he says instead. It bothers him that he is able to imagine being human; that's what led to his fall in the first place.

"I know that I'm tired," Dean says. His voice is raspy, grinding.

Castiel is very good at misinterpretation; he reaches out and rests a hand on Dean's shoulder, and for a little while, Dean's sleep is untroubled.

Upon waking, Dean does not ask for anything; he doesn't speak at all.

--

The war of heaven was never meant to be fought by men, after all, and when the time is right, Castiel brings Dean to the river. Dean does not ask why and that's just as well; Castiel isn't sure whether it is because Dean trusts him or because Dean can no longer bring himself to care, but he is relieved that he won't have to decide whether or not he should lie to Dean, and if so, which lie to use.

Dean stands on the rocky shoreline and though the sky is dulled silver, he raises a hand as if to shield his eyes from the sun. "It's time," Castiel says. "You need to be absolved of your sins." He pushes Dean into the water; even for a human, he thinks, it wouldn't have taken very much force at all, and he has commanded armies across the sky. He watches dispassionately as Dean plunges under and comes sputtering back to the surface a moment later. When Dean nears the shoreline, Castiel bends down; Dean's hands brush futilely at the collar of his coat as he pushes Dean under water once more. He lets go, then, and takes a step back. The sky's reflection has turned the river to ash.

Dean breaks the surface once more, blinking water from his eyes. "Wait," he says, his teeth chattering. "Wait, hold on, wait," and when Castiel doesn't move to stop him, he hauls himself up out of the water. He gets to his feet slowly; shivers wrack his body, but there is a strange brightness to his eyes.

"Where's Sam?" he asks, as he has not for so long.

"God has resolved it," Castiel says.

Dean shakes his head. "Resolved what, Cas? Where the hell's Sam?"

"God has resolved the issue of your brother," Castiel says, slowly and deliberately.

"What the hell does that mean," Dean demands, and when Castiel takes a step towards him, he takes a step back and nearly slips and goes down hard onto the rocks. Castiel catches him by the shoulder, only to help him get his balance, and when Dean looks back at him with something akin to terror, Castiel feels chilled, as though his host had plunged into the river, as well. It's discomfiting, and he rests a soothing hand on the back of Dean's neck; he's gladdened when Dean's eyes slip shut.

He is able to bear Dean's weight easily, and it is no trouble at all to deposit Dean back at the motel room, to leave him on the bed with the rumpled sheets. Castiel has business to attend to elsewhere, but he knows that no one will disturb Dean until his return.

Now that the war is over, there's no one left who would.

--

"You tried to drown me," Dean says when he wakens. Castiel is sitting in the chair by the window; it's morning and the sunlight is bright, and warm. He thinks that if he were human, he might appreciate these sensations, but as it is, the only thing they bring him is satisfaction. The world is still here; his side won. There is still sunlight, though sunlight merely for victory's sake seems somehow pointless. There should be more, he thinks, and then he reminds himself about the Morningstar.

Perhaps sunlight for victory's sake is enough, after all; it is as his father wishes.

"I was absolving you," Castiel says, and when Dean only stares at him, he explains, "I was as John the Baptist was, giving the worthy another chance. You have done well. You deserved as much."

Dean swallows and scrubs his hands across his face. "A righteous man," he says hoarsely.

"That's right," Castiel says, and he smiles, and that's when he sees the blood on Dean's hand, the smudge on Dean's mouth, and he realizes that Dean has injured himself. Castiel rises to his feet and crosses the room; when he takes Dean's hand, Dean does not pull away. His eyes gleam wetly, but when Castiel presses his lips to the wound, Dean blinks, and they clear.

--

The sun has begun to set when Dean next wakes, gasping for air. His eyes are dark, and afraid, Castiel thinks, and when Castiel reaches for his shoulder to offer solace, to offer comfort, Dean flinches away, even as he continues to gasp, as his throat continues to work.

"You need to breathe," Castiel says, as though talking to a very young child, and Dean nods. He allows Castiel to rest a hand on his chest and a moment later, his breathing begins to even.

"Now that we have resolved the issue of your brother," Castiel says, and he realizes that though pride is a sin, he does not mind feeling it right now, for Dean has done so well, "are you ready to be accepted into the arms of your savior?"

Dean's eyes are clear, and light, but his mouth moves as though to shape a word, to speak a name; the sound, a name of grief and sorrow and heartbreak, does not come.

Castiel does not understand why, a moment later, Dean begins to cry.

--

end

whereupon @ 2010-06-05T16:47:00

2010-06-06T00:47:19Z

I've no idea why I've been writing so much as of late, guys, but I imagine it'll slow down at some point soon. In the meantime, apologies for spamming you with stories, eh?

Cradle
by whereupon
Sam/Dean. Season one, R, 3,070 words.
It would hurt that much more when he realized his mistake.
A remix (cover version?) of paxlux's "Riptide."

Between the howl and scrape of wind across the wracked mettle of land and the moon-damned sisyphean iterations of waves wind-charred white, Dean could well believe this is hell, a wasteland of cruel truth and futility, if not for his brother lighting broken candles on that battered table like something ravaged and returned by the sea. They have been drawn here by the lorelei's cry, have driven to the edge of the country at news of three drowned men, two fishermen who should have known better and one shopkeeper who never came home after locking the door, slipping the cool metal key into his pocket and, seeing the cast of moonlight across the surf, deciding that he could spare a moment to walk along the shore.

Here the light is strange, liminal, forever the first breath of winter; the sky is streaked rough with blue and white, grey, though in places it seems almost colorless. No one lives in this house, this crooked season-abandoned bungalow rising like a forgotten shipwreck from the dunes, and the nearest motel is sixty miles and one hundred dollars a night that they do not have away, so they've requisitioned it. Squatting, Sam had said, don't make it sound like it's something it's not, and Dean had shrugged, turned away. He'd only been trying to make it easier for his brother, make it something lighter, and he shouldn't have felt stung, but Sam always had been able to do that, even when he didn't mean to. Even when he didn't know he was doing it, and those hurt more, those accidental slights.

Sam sets the lighter down beside the candles and pulls his chair out, settles in across from Dean. Dean sets aside the knife he was using to turn a sheet formerly draped protectively over one of the chairs into strips, some of which will be used to keep the wind from slipping in through that missing windowpane, some of which will make their way into the first aid kit, where they will be used later to bind their wounds, steady broken bones and sprains, keep them from bleeding out, and some of which he smears now with gun oil, that scent familiar as memory itself.

They work quietly; they know what they're doing and there's no need to talk about it, no need for anything more than this ritual as familiar as prayer. They might be the only living things for miles, the warmth of the candles, the warmth spreading from their hands the only signs of life here at all. Sam bites his lip unthinkingly, his jaw set, and though he is four years older now, though Dean knows the t-shirt he's wearing below all of those layers is emblazoned with the motto of some college club, he is so very much Dean's brother at that moment, Sam as he always has been and maybe always will be, that Dean cannot help but smile. The candles melt slowly, dripping onto the scarred wood, and the cloudy light dulls the blade in Sam's hand, the gun in Dean's. Maybe it dulls Dean himself as well, because he doesn't look away in time when Sam looks up; he can't twist the smile into a smirk before Sam sees.

Candlelight flickers across Sam's face as he raises an eyebrow. Dean shrugs in answer, says like a question or a dare, "You didn't miss this at all."

"Squatting in an abandoned house with no heat at what might be America's most desolate tourist destination?" Sam says. "Yeah, you got me there."

"Don't go gettin' sentimental on me," Dean says. He kicks Sam's ankle, jostling the table, and for a moment the candles tilt dangerously, wax dripping like divination. He has to reach quickly to catch wayward bullets before they roll to the floor.

"You're such a fire hazard," Sam says, reproachful, as though he isn't one himself.

"Takes one to know one," Dean says, and Sam shakes his head, and then there's nothing more that needs to be said. There's the scrape of the sharpener and the click of disassembling machinery, those easy familiar motions and the pitch of the light like cotton, glinting with the candles' gutter.

--

Nightfall comes on fast and the temperature drops with it. Beneath their boots the sand shifts, clutching, and always the water seems to be drawing nearer, reaching towards them, flushed and greedy with high tide. They have been walking for hours, Dean thinks, though a glance at his watch claims it's only been two, which is hardly anything, and they have been listening, and watching, and so far they haven't found a goddamn thing.

"Not sure there's anything here," Dean says, loudly against the scrum of wind. "Maybe we drove five hundred freakin' miles for the, the ambience."

"It was more like four-seventy-five, and don't forget about the view," Sam says, hunched in his coat. "Didn't you pick this job?"

"I was rounding up," Dean says. "And look around, dude, we're on a beach and it's fuckin' freezing. You think I picked this job?"

"Had to be you," Sam says. "I sure as hell wouldn't have."

"Hey, you're the one who likes the beach so damn much," Dean says.

Sam pauses for a moment, and so Dean pauses beside him. He's squinting out at the water as though he sees something, hair falling windswept and careless across his eyes, but then he blinks and looks back at Dean. "Only when it's warm," he says.

"Then why didn't you pick somewhere else?" Dean asks. "Real bright move, there, genius."

"What, Dean, like California?" Sam says, his tone like he's not expecting an answer, like he knows his brother well enough, and Dean's annoyed despite himself.

"No," he says. "I just," but Sam's not listening; Sam's looking out at the dark water once more. "You see something?" Dean asks.

Sam shakes his head. "No," he says. "I, uh. For a second, I thought I did."

"You sure?" Dean asks, more concerned than suspicious, though he hopes it doesn't show. And then there is a sound, something akin to a moan, and out on the encrusted rocks a pale hand appears as she pulls herself out of the water. The lorelei's hair hangs in dark, tangled strands, and her lips are the color of pearls; her skin is the translucent milk-shade of something born to the deep chill black.

"Are you going to leave me?" she asks, her voice at once innocence and barest sorrow.

"That depends on your definition of 'leave,'" Dean says, because it's a stupid question. His hand brushes the butt of his gun and out of years-old habit, watch out for your brother, he glances at Sam, more to confirm his presence than anything else. He should have done it sooner, he thinks, should have done something despite the fact that there was no way he could have expected this, because Sam is staring at her, Sam will not look away, Sam is transfixed, witch-bound and rapt, and as the lorelei takes a step towards them, rising out of the water, Dean finds himself on his knees, tossed down, struggling for air. His gun is in his hand but he cannot lift it, can hardly breathe, his vision beginning to spark, cannot do more than watch as she entwines her fingers with his brother's, as she leans forward, rising onto her toes to press her mouth against Sam's neck, and Sam does not protest.

"Don't leave me," she says, and Dean hears it from all around, a cry rising from the sea itself, carried by the wind. Sam's arms encircle her waist, drawing her to him, and already his clothes are soaked, already he is growing paler, sea-wrecked and salt-white, and it's Dean, now, who cannot look away, horrified as he thinks for a moment that this is how it ends, that this is how he loses Sam, in a few days Sam's battered and empty body will wash up on the rocks, and it's his fault, he was the one who found the case, who came across the article while using Sam's laptop in that diner, and he should never have gone to California, should never have dragged Sam back into this--

And Sam is taking a step closer, is letting himself be led to the water, is following her to the sea, willing sacrifice to the water that laps around his ankles, his knees, his waist, swallowing him--

And Dean is crashing into the surf, almost blacking out with the force of it, sheer desperation crackling against whatever binding this is, his lungs on fire, his vision blurred until he hits the water, grabbing Sam's arm with his free hand, the gun still clutched in the other. "Sammy," he says, and he's not sure that his brother hears him; the wind tears at his throat, rips away his words. "Sammy, damn it, snap the fuck out of it, let go," because Sam is still holding on, Sam is still holding her hand, Sam will hold on even as it kills him, will believe that he is doing the right thing, that he is saving her, and Sam isn't listening, so Dean raises the gun and fires without thinking, and the world goes silent in the wake of the gunshot--

And the lorelei shrieks, and he does not hear it; he doesn't need to. He feels that death-thrash like the crack of a whip snapping out across the sea, across the sand, across the night, and Sam stumbles, choking on salt water though Dean had not seen him go under. Dean catches his shoulders, gun forgotten, and Sam leans against him and together they wade shaking back towards shore.

"You okay?" Dean asks on the sand, turning Sam towards him, thumb smoothing along Sam's jaw. Sam turns into the touch, eyes closing, and Dean thinks that he might be nodding, but it's hard to tell because he's also shivering, shuddering, soaked through to bone. "Fuckin' idiot, you always go for the goddamn damsel in distress, just gonna walk into the water and leave me here," and he so did not mean to say that last part aloud. Or at all. He didn't even mean to think it, and of course that's what Sam latches on to.

"I wasn't," Sam says, his teeth chattering. "I wasn't gonna, Dean, I, I, swear."

"C'mon, dumbass," Dean says, because of course Sam would say that, and because that's not the point at all; the point is that having managed not to die by lorelei, Sam appears to be giving death by hypothermia his best shot. "Let's get you dry and warm."

This time, Sam listens.

--

The windows are frosted, sea-rimed, by the time they make it back to the creaking house. Dean breaks the coffee table for firewood, wraps Sam in every blanket he can find and guides him towards the couch. "I can walk," Sam says, but he doesn't push Dean away. The fire isn't yet putting off much heat, but it's something, the kindle and spark of the flames distancing them from the chill of the beach, from the thought of the water closing black over Sam's head while Dean watched helpless and forever alone.

Sam might be thinking of the lorelei or of California, of his beautiful warm-breathed Jess or beaches skylit and golden, but Dean is remembering those desperate last days before Sam left for Stanford, when he knew how little they had left and because of that Sam's knuckles left him aching; Sam's mouth left him damned. He'd known then that anything they did would leave them both scattered and shattered and worse for it, but even as he knew this, he could not turn from his brother, could not turn away. Sam was leaving and then like the turn of winter the world would dim, bleaken, all empty halls, empty places, silence where an answer should have been. The hell of absence, and against this Dean scraped his mouth against his brother's, their teeth clicking together; against this they shook together, frightened boys clinging to that which was all that they knew and that which would not remain. That Sam is returned has not allowed Dean to forget that, not entirely, though sometimes there are blessed moments in which he can.

He's gathering Sam's wet clothes when he hears a strange clattering noise, realizes a moment later that it's coming from him, that it's his own teeth chattering together, that he, too, is shivering.

"Now who's the fuckin' idiot," Sam says from the couch, swathed in mismatched blankets, legs drawn up and only his face visible. His hair's still wet, curling damply. Even in fireglow he's still far paler than he ought to be, though no longer dangerously so, and probably Dean is as well. He looks absolutely ridiculous, Dean thinks, flipping Sam off as he does, and Dean's going to tell him as much, just as soon as he's done picking up the mess Sam left behind. When he edges close to Sam, Sam snakes out an arm and pulls him close, dragging him down onto the couch. The springs creak and whine beneath them. "You're gonna catch your death," Sam says.

"And whose fault would that be," Dean says, but he doesn't protest, doesn't push away as Sam's numb fingers struggle with the ouroborosed laces of his boots, with his shirt, with the buckle of his belt. At heart he's always known Sam will be the death of him. He lets Sam draw him close and they huddle together, knees knocking, shivering hard enough that it hurts as they stare at the crackling remains of the coffee table. "Owners are gonna be pissed when they get back," he says distantly. "Was probably an antique or something." Sam's short-lived laugh is startled, frantic, very nearly out of control.

"Tell me you didn't miss this," Dean says, his smirk weary but a smirk all the same, because any day he can make Sam laugh like that is a good day, even if Sam only laughed because he's tired and cold and possibly in shock.

"I missed having you use me as bait," Sam says. "Sure. Jerk."

Dean glances away, hums low in his throat and says, "Bitch. At least I saved your ass."

"You have to," Sam says. "I'm your brother, it's a rule."

"Yeah, Old Testament or New?" Dean says. "'sides, rules are made to be broken, Sammy. You know that."

Sam shakes his head. "You'd never," he says, more sure of his faith in Dean than Dean has ever been.

Dean lets out a breath. "You know me too well," he says. "That's cheating."

"It's called winning the argument, actually," Sam says, and then there's nothing more that needs to be said. There's the pop and hiss of the fire and the steady rhythm of their breath, those easy familiar motions and the pitch of the light, flickering golden across their faces, fading into soft shadow at the edges of the room.

--

There's a mattress in one of the other rooms, and now that the coffee table's no longer in the way, there's space enough for Sam to drag it in, put it in front of the fireplace. It's musty and it sags; whenever they move, whenever they breathe, they roll towards the center, towards each other, gravity or geas. The fifth time this happens, Sam edges a hand out and rests it almost tentatively on Dean's arm, as though he expects Dean to pull away. When Dean doesn't, when he doesn't move, doesn't dare do anything but look at his brother, look at the way Sam's looking at him, Sam skims his palm down, rests his thumb against Dean's wrist.

Dean's mouth is dry. "Sam," he says, and with the last of the dying flames, Sam's face is shadowed, familiar only in slants, angles, only for seconds.

"What," Sam says, his thumb moving in slow small circles over Dean's wrist, the thrum of his veins, and Dean wants to close his eyes, thinks desperately that he could die like this, die happy here with Sam, as long as he doesn't say anything. As long as he doesn't ask.

And so, of course, he opens his mouth.

"You didn't, uh. At the beach. You didn't hear me callin' you."

Sam's thumb stills. "I'm sorry," he says. His fingers trace up to Dean's shoulder, the heel of his hand resting on the curve of Dean's arm. The wind has quieted, some; Dean can hear it pushing at the windows, but it's no longer howling, no longer raging. It's grieving, he thinks, and he swallows.

"Sometimes I don't know what to do with you," he says. It's half a joke, a way to dismiss the conversation, and half truth. Sam is a gift, is everything he wants and everything he does not deserve. He wonders how long it will be until he loses Sam again, to a normal life or to some supernatural being, something evil and wretched that he should have seen coming. He will not let himself imagine that he will have Sam forever.

If he did, it would hurt that much more when he realized his mistake.

Sam kisses him, then, his mouth familiar against Dean's. He still tastes faintly of the sea, of brine, and Dean kisses him back, teeth cutting at Sam's lower lip, an erasure. Iron for salt. They curl against each other, warm against the cold grey of the outside world, of everything beyond, and Dean tastes salt in the hollow of Sam's throat, and when he pushes into Sam and Sam gasps, when Sam says Dean's name, when Sam shakes now with heat and need, Dean thinks didn't you miss this, and he does not need to know what Sam would say.

He knows that he will remember this until he dies, that he could never imagine otherwise, never imagine anything else, and if, for a moment, he allows himself to believe that this will indeed be forever, he'll never admit it, not to Sam, not to anyone, maybe not even to himself, later. He listens to the crash of Sam's breath and he closes his eyes into the rough heat between them; there are worse things than wolves at the door, but it is enough for now to drown the darkness outside.

--

end