fic: if it hurts, we're doing it to ourselves.
title: if it hurts, we’re doing it to ourselves.
pairings/characters: implied Dean/Alastair, implied Sam/Lucifer
warnings: torture, implied self-harm, dark themes, etc etc everything that goes along with Alastair and hell.
rating: R
summary: You haven't seen him in awhile, Alastair. But lately, you've been watching Sam.
notes: ~1300 words. second person pov because that's what i dooo. spoilers for all aired S7 episodes. i really want sam and dean to swap hell stories on the show can you tell? written for hoodie_time's h/c challenge numero 6 ( original prompt). title is part of a line from Road Music by Richard Siken. thank youu jacyevans for looking it over and being awesome as usual.
You haven't seen him in awhile, Alastair. Not in your dreams, not anywhere. You figure your brain's too tired to conjure up anything other than misery.
But lately, you've been watching Sam. You always watch Sam, it's true, but you've been seeing how similar he really is to you.
~
Sam says Lucifer likes to sing, like it's his thing, his favorite way to push all of Sam's buttons. Sam says not to worry, that's he's got it handled, that it's really not that annoying once you just get used to it; the catch of course being that you know he'll never get used to it.
See, Alastair liked to sing too. His songs usually had themes, though, like "Don't Go Breaking My Heart" as he was ripping your heart out of your chest, or "If I Only Had a Brain" as he was Hannibal Lectering his way around in your head. Alastair had a lot of songs and you never got used to hearing him sing them. You did however, learn to enjoy his repertoire.
You even added a few to your own playlist, once you picked up the knife.
~
There's that game people play when they're killing time or waiting on a ride, or maybe having their morning coffee with a friend. They look at a person and make up a grand tale about their life, taking hints from appearance, attitude, et cetera et cetera. Like, 'The girl with the red sweater and ultra thick makeup just broke up with her boyfriend and now she wants to have some fun' or 'Mr. Unkempt Beard and Raggedy Sweater recently lost his job and is looking for love in all the wrong places.' You and Sam used to do it sometimes in diners with your father; Dad could come up with the wildest, craziest scenarios.
When you first got back from hell, you played that game in your head almost everywhere you went. Except you wouldn't guess about people's love lives so much as what state their organs would be in if you strung them up on a rack, like 'Mr. Two Cheeseburger Lunch there probably has a sluggish heart and clogged arteries that would be fun to rip to shreds' or 'Ms. Sally Speedbump can run like the wind, I bet she's got a gorgeous set of lungs.'
It takes a long time to break old habits.
~
You mostly saw Alastair in your dreams, your body in his possession from the moment you fell asleep until the moment you woke up sweating, terrified, and exhilarated. You still saw him in your reflection sometimes, when you dragged yourself out of bed and into the bathroom, half torn between trying to fall back asleep to spend more time with him and running out for a triple red-eye to never sleep again. Most of the time you settled for the razor at the bottom of your travel kit and a steady hand to keep you sane.
Now you watch Sam as he pushes on the scar on his hand like it's the end-all be-all solution to everything. You had the best intentions when you told him to hold on to the pain, to let it ground him and keep him in the real world, but you always knew it was temporary. You knew that eventually he'd become numb to the pain, that Lucifer wouldn't stay away.
~
You actually missed Alastair for a bit, when you first came back. You missed the way his fingers felt on top of yours, guiding the knife in all the right places, first when he was teaching you on your own body and then later, on your first victim. You missed how he laughed when you spoke, how he told you that you shouldn’t talk when you had the knife in your hands because you looked more intimidating that way. Most of all you missed his praise whenever he swung by to watch you flay yet another victim on your rack, his whispers in your ear asking you 'Why flaying? Get your hands dirty, make a little mess!'
Chaos was his thing; you liked to do your torturing with control and precision. Skin just got in the way.
~
Sometimes, Castiel tried to talk to you about hell. He watched you there for a while before grabbing you and ripping you away. You don't remember being angry at him, downright furious, or so he said, shouting at him in ways he had never been shouted at before. You wanted to stay in hell, you wanted to stay so badly, and Castiel couldn't understand why. He always wanted to know why you did things.
You didn't understand either, but for the life of you, you couldn't stop wanting to go back to Alastair.
~
Sam won't talk about hell and you don't blame him; the two of you have never even joked about swapping stories or comparing war wounds. Hell's not something to trivialize, even though you do it every day. Sometimes you pick up on things though, while you're watching him, like how he flinches when a fire gets a little out of control or someone laughs just a little too loud across a room. You understand; the sound of an angry dog barking still sets your teeth on edge.
You're on a case about a missing stripper when Sam accidentally uses the term 'bunk buddy' to describe one of her coworkers. You watch him grimace the moment he says it, wishing he could rewind the moment and take it back, but he can't. Instead, he digs his fingernails into his palm, listens while you continue the interview, but there's no mistaking where his mind went, at least not for you.
~
You and Alastair had something of a symbiotic relationship once you got off his rack. He still came to you and sheathed his knife in your flesh and you still listened to him prattle on about his day's work and how lovely you looked spread out around his hands. In return you learned a shiny new way to torture your next victim and earned the knowledge that Alastair wanted to spend as much time with you as he possibly could, despite the fact that he didn't need to anymore.
You tell Sam you hated every minute you were down there, that you hated yourself for what you ended up doing to hundreds and hundreds of souls. You let slip that you enjoyed it, that you became the creature hell so greedily wanted you to be. You never tell him how much having Alastair as your torturer, mentor, and companion meant to you in the long run, but listening to the way Sam talks about Lucifer sometimes, you think he understands.
~
It gets better, after awhile. You don't miss hell and you don't see Alastair every night or in the mirror or in line at the DMV. You don't feel that twisted mixture of guilt and elation when you torment some demon for information; you're just doing a job, after all. Looking back you think it's because you had more things to worry about, like being a vessel for some archangel with a power complex or walking around with a hollowed-out robot imitation of a brother.
Not long after Bobby dies, Sam catches you in the bathroom late one night with the razor in your hand. ‘What‘re you going to do with that,’ he asks, but you can tell by the look on his face that he already knows, that he understands, that he's done it to himself before.
You know there are no happy endings in the world the two of you share.
pairings/characters: implied Dean/Alastair, implied Sam/Lucifer
warnings: torture, implied self-harm, dark themes, etc etc everything that goes along with Alastair and hell.
rating: R
summary: You haven't seen him in awhile, Alastair. But lately, you've been watching Sam.
notes: ~1300 words. second person pov because that's what i dooo. spoilers for all aired S7 episodes. i really want sam and dean to swap hell stories on the show can you tell? written for hoodie_time's h/c challenge numero 6 ( original prompt). title is part of a line from Road Music by Richard Siken. thank youu jacyevans for looking it over and being awesome as usual.
You haven't seen him in awhile, Alastair. Not in your dreams, not anywhere. You figure your brain's too tired to conjure up anything other than misery.
But lately, you've been watching Sam. You always watch Sam, it's true, but you've been seeing how similar he really is to you.
~
Sam says Lucifer likes to sing, like it's his thing, his favorite way to push all of Sam's buttons. Sam says not to worry, that's he's got it handled, that it's really not that annoying once you just get used to it; the catch of course being that you know he'll never get used to it.
See, Alastair liked to sing too. His songs usually had themes, though, like "Don't Go Breaking My Heart" as he was ripping your heart out of your chest, or "If I Only Had a Brain" as he was Hannibal Lectering his way around in your head. Alastair had a lot of songs and you never got used to hearing him sing them. You did however, learn to enjoy his repertoire.
You even added a few to your own playlist, once you picked up the knife.
~
There's that game people play when they're killing time or waiting on a ride, or maybe having their morning coffee with a friend. They look at a person and make up a grand tale about their life, taking hints from appearance, attitude, et cetera et cetera. Like, 'The girl with the red sweater and ultra thick makeup just broke up with her boyfriend and now she wants to have some fun' or 'Mr. Unkempt Beard and Raggedy Sweater recently lost his job and is looking for love in all the wrong places.' You and Sam used to do it sometimes in diners with your father; Dad could come up with the wildest, craziest scenarios.
When you first got back from hell, you played that game in your head almost everywhere you went. Except you wouldn't guess about people's love lives so much as what state their organs would be in if you strung them up on a rack, like 'Mr. Two Cheeseburger Lunch there probably has a sluggish heart and clogged arteries that would be fun to rip to shreds' or 'Ms. Sally Speedbump can run like the wind, I bet she's got a gorgeous set of lungs.'
It takes a long time to break old habits.
~
You mostly saw Alastair in your dreams, your body in his possession from the moment you fell asleep until the moment you woke up sweating, terrified, and exhilarated. You still saw him in your reflection sometimes, when you dragged yourself out of bed and into the bathroom, half torn between trying to fall back asleep to spend more time with him and running out for a triple red-eye to never sleep again. Most of the time you settled for the razor at the bottom of your travel kit and a steady hand to keep you sane.
Now you watch Sam as he pushes on the scar on his hand like it's the end-all be-all solution to everything. You had the best intentions when you told him to hold on to the pain, to let it ground him and keep him in the real world, but you always knew it was temporary. You knew that eventually he'd become numb to the pain, that Lucifer wouldn't stay away.
~
You actually missed Alastair for a bit, when you first came back. You missed the way his fingers felt on top of yours, guiding the knife in all the right places, first when he was teaching you on your own body and then later, on your first victim. You missed how he laughed when you spoke, how he told you that you shouldn’t talk when you had the knife in your hands because you looked more intimidating that way. Most of all you missed his praise whenever he swung by to watch you flay yet another victim on your rack, his whispers in your ear asking you 'Why flaying? Get your hands dirty, make a little mess!'
Chaos was his thing; you liked to do your torturing with control and precision. Skin just got in the way.
~
Sometimes, Castiel tried to talk to you about hell. He watched you there for a while before grabbing you and ripping you away. You don't remember being angry at him, downright furious, or so he said, shouting at him in ways he had never been shouted at before. You wanted to stay in hell, you wanted to stay so badly, and Castiel couldn't understand why. He always wanted to know why you did things.
You didn't understand either, but for the life of you, you couldn't stop wanting to go back to Alastair.
~
Sam won't talk about hell and you don't blame him; the two of you have never even joked about swapping stories or comparing war wounds. Hell's not something to trivialize, even though you do it every day. Sometimes you pick up on things though, while you're watching him, like how he flinches when a fire gets a little out of control or someone laughs just a little too loud across a room. You understand; the sound of an angry dog barking still sets your teeth on edge.
You're on a case about a missing stripper when Sam accidentally uses the term 'bunk buddy' to describe one of her coworkers. You watch him grimace the moment he says it, wishing he could rewind the moment and take it back, but he can't. Instead, he digs his fingernails into his palm, listens while you continue the interview, but there's no mistaking where his mind went, at least not for you.
~
You and Alastair had something of a symbiotic relationship once you got off his rack. He still came to you and sheathed his knife in your flesh and you still listened to him prattle on about his day's work and how lovely you looked spread out around his hands. In return you learned a shiny new way to torture your next victim and earned the knowledge that Alastair wanted to spend as much time with you as he possibly could, despite the fact that he didn't need to anymore.
You tell Sam you hated every minute you were down there, that you hated yourself for what you ended up doing to hundreds and hundreds of souls. You let slip that you enjoyed it, that you became the creature hell so greedily wanted you to be. You never tell him how much having Alastair as your torturer, mentor, and companion meant to you in the long run, but listening to the way Sam talks about Lucifer sometimes, you think he understands.
~
It gets better, after awhile. You don't miss hell and you don't see Alastair every night or in the mirror or in line at the DMV. You don't feel that twisted mixture of guilt and elation when you torment some demon for information; you're just doing a job, after all. Looking back you think it's because you had more things to worry about, like being a vessel for some archangel with a power complex or walking around with a hollowed-out robot imitation of a brother.
Not long after Bobby dies, Sam catches you in the bathroom late one night with the razor in your hand. ‘What‘re you going to do with that,’ he asks, but you can tell by the look on his face that he already knows, that he understands, that he's done it to himself before.
You know there are no happy endings in the world the two of you share.