No Mulligans, PG, Sam
Title: No Mulligans
Rating: PG
Genre: Gen
Characters: Sam
Word Count: ~ 400
Summary/Warnings: Episode tag for 6.01.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
The struggle with the djinn hadn’t been the first time he’d swung a driver, Sam realized as he watched molten silver puddle in the bullet molds he was filling. The memories were muted, like all of his memories of Before, but even across the haze of smoke separating Before from Now in his mind he could see the bright green fairways and sugar-white sand traps where some new college buddies had taught him the basics of golf between juvenile jokes about woods and balls. The course had been too perfect: a tame, manicured version of Nature instead of the real one, red in tooth and claw.
Distantly, beyond the chasm of screams between Before and Now, he heard his friend Brady laughingly shout ‘And Winchester sinks the birdie putt!’ into a sand wedge held like a microphone. The echo stirred up something like what he’d felt when Dean offered him his car keys: he knew it meant something to him Before, but couldn’t for the life of him grasp why it mattered Now. Sam tried to picture his brother stepping up to the tee box in slacks and a polo shirt, squaring his shoulders and adjusting his grip on his club just so.
He couldn’t imagine Dean doing anything so pointless.
“You okay, son?” he heard the other Samuel, the family patriarch, asking him softly. No one wanted to startle a man who’d spent time in Hell, but it usually wasn’t a problem. Sam had mastered compartmentalization in the endless time-between-times in the cage.
“Yeah. I was just...” Sam fumbled to find a word for what he’d been doing. “Just daydreaming, I guess,” he finished, frowning at the realization that his thoughts had wandered off on their own. He hadn’t let that happen in a long time.
The silver had cooled. Maybe it’d been a mistake to interact with his brother. Sam had liked being with Dean again, liked it as much as he liked anything Now, but there wasn’t any point in doing something that would make him…inefficient later.
“I played golf at school sometimes,” he remarked as he replaced the crucible on the burner. He looked up to see his grandfather staring at him.
“Why?” the old man asked, baffled.
Sam tilted his head, rummaging around for the reason. It was burned out of him, or too deeply buried in Before to find. Or to matter.
“I have no idea,” he answered, sitting back to wait for the metal to boil.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Further author’s notes: A mulligan is a do-over shot in non-competitive golf; life has no mulligans. I hope I’m not going to become one of those people who MUST POST FIC after every ep, but damn, I missed seeing my boys!
Comments are welcome, and all my fic may be found here.
Rating: PG
Genre: Gen
Characters: Sam
Word Count: ~ 400
Summary/Warnings: Episode tag for 6.01.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
The struggle with the djinn hadn’t been the first time he’d swung a driver, Sam realized as he watched molten silver puddle in the bullet molds he was filling. The memories were muted, like all of his memories of Before, but even across the haze of smoke separating Before from Now in his mind he could see the bright green fairways and sugar-white sand traps where some new college buddies had taught him the basics of golf between juvenile jokes about woods and balls. The course had been too perfect: a tame, manicured version of Nature instead of the real one, red in tooth and claw.
Distantly, beyond the chasm of screams between Before and Now, he heard his friend Brady laughingly shout ‘And Winchester sinks the birdie putt!’ into a sand wedge held like a microphone. The echo stirred up something like what he’d felt when Dean offered him his car keys: he knew it meant something to him Before, but couldn’t for the life of him grasp why it mattered Now. Sam tried to picture his brother stepping up to the tee box in slacks and a polo shirt, squaring his shoulders and adjusting his grip on his club just so.
He couldn’t imagine Dean doing anything so pointless.
“You okay, son?” he heard the other Samuel, the family patriarch, asking him softly. No one wanted to startle a man who’d spent time in Hell, but it usually wasn’t a problem. Sam had mastered compartmentalization in the endless time-between-times in the cage.
“Yeah. I was just...” Sam fumbled to find a word for what he’d been doing. “Just daydreaming, I guess,” he finished, frowning at the realization that his thoughts had wandered off on their own. He hadn’t let that happen in a long time.
The silver had cooled. Maybe it’d been a mistake to interact with his brother. Sam had liked being with Dean again, liked it as much as he liked anything Now, but there wasn’t any point in doing something that would make him…inefficient later.
“I played golf at school sometimes,” he remarked as he replaced the crucible on the burner. He looked up to see his grandfather staring at him.
“Why?” the old man asked, baffled.
Sam tilted his head, rummaging around for the reason. It was burned out of him, or too deeply buried in Before to find. Or to matter.
“I have no idea,” he answered, sitting back to wait for the metal to boil.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Further author’s notes: A mulligan is a do-over shot in non-competitive golf; life has no mulligans. I hope I’m not going to become one of those people who MUST POST FIC after every ep, but damn, I missed seeing my boys!
Comments are welcome, and all my fic may be found here.