Fandom: Supernatural
Title: Irony
Author:
andacusRating: R or PG-13, depending on how you look at it.
Warnings: Mentions of sex. Language.
Summary: Sammy's been gone six months and it's like living in a house fire, all broken supports and ashy air. A short one-shot set in the scary place that is Dean's head.
Her name was Ginger and she was like vanilla, all rounded edges and blunt corners, sex in a bed with white cotton sheets and her eyes closed. That's the first time Dean really understands irony, his lips coasting along a thigh and his hands dimpling breasts.
She worked in one of those diners that smells like eggs and coffee and syrup, the ones that remind him of a home he only barely remembers.
He leaves as soon as he's sure she's asleep.
Three days into a one-night hunt his dad looks at him and says it's like tracking a fucking fish in a stream, but Dean knows better. Dad isn't failing because the beast is tricky or because it's better than him, Dad's failing because he's off his game, because he's a little lost and a little scared and a lot out to sea.
They kill it, barely, and Dean's got a gouge running long and thin down his thigh for his troubles. It's not so bad he says, not the end of the world, but Dad's got this look in his eyes like he'll set the sky on fire, because losing everything is not an option and he's two-thirds of the way there already.
Dean doesn't shrug it off, but he drops it, knows better than to stoke that flame. Sammy's been gone six months and it's like living in a house fire, all broken supports and ashy air. It's a wonder they've not crumpled in on themselves yet.
Winchesters. Bobby sighs it like it's an oath and in some ways Dean supposes it is. Bobby tries to reason with Dad and he tries to clear some of that ash from all the space around them, swirling and swelling like it belongs there, but even Bobby can't work miracles.
He gets postcards from his brother; short and hurried stories about his roommate and his professors written on the backs of moody beaches and historic buildings and huge trees with gnarled trunks. Irony tracks Sammy like a bitter ghost and Sammy knows it.
When his leg heals up and Vicky, the busty nurse that he's pretty sure Dad is screwing, takes the stitches out, Dad lets him go it alone for a while. The idea is like dying, but Dad looks so proud to be offering that Dean can hardly say no. A job like a thousand he's worked before - like all the battles he's ever won in cramped basements and graveyards and charred buildings. Then why does it feel like losing?
He starts to count his life in house fires. He started out ahead of the game if he looks at the tally just right, if he tilts his perception and doesn't think about it too hard. By the time he's twenty-four years old, Dean's life adds up to forty-one. He doesn't know what it means past what it is, but he can't help keep count. Those houses haunt him like any ghost would and they demand his attention.
He never sees Ginger again, but sometimes when there's something huge and daunting just out of his sight, when angels and demons are staring down at him with blood on their teeth and fear in their words, when he can feel the whisper of hell nipping at his heels, Dean thinks about Ginger and her round thighs and her soft moans and her blunt edges and he understands all over again just what irony is.