Comment fic, Napalm on the Brainstem
Title: Napalm on the Brainstem.
Rating: T (for language)
Characters: Sam, Dean, Bobby
Genre: Gen, horror, hurt/comfort
Disclaimer: Nope, still don't own 'em.
Warnings: Spoilers-in-passing for late S6.
Word Count: 1259
Summary: Written for this lovely lonely prompt at the hoodie time 'Fever' meme.
A/N: I'm not all that happy with it, but it's been WAAAAAAAAAAAAY too long since I posted much of anything, so this right here is me jumping back into the saddle (or possibly in over my head, depending on where you're looking from...)
In hindsight, you think you should have known something was up when you looked at the first photo in the coroners report (wide-eyed stare gazing back from the ruins of what had been a face and now looked like nothing more than so much hamburger helper) and heard the answering whisper right down in the back of your mind. You blame it on too many days and nights spent hunting for a way to stop an angel of the lord and the new king of hell to notice much of anything and before long, you're too distracted by the relentless pounding inside your head and the desperate, driving need to make it stop.
That's how they find you, blood slippery on your fingers; Bobby looks pissed, right up in your face with both hands locked around your wrists and half-glimpsed over his shoulder, Sam just looks frantic. Rough, calloused fingers dig in between tendons, force your fingers to open and the knife slips out of your grasp.
It leaves a bloody smear on the grimy floor and Sam curses raggedly.
“Son? Dean, you hearin' me?” Bobby's asking and you can hear the man alright but all you really care about is the knife on the floor and the beat-beat-beat in your head. Blood runs down into your eye from the slice you carved, trying to reach the awful sound and Get. It. Out.
“Dean. Jesus, Bobby. What do I...”
Sam trails off, or you tune your brother out (you're a little distracted, there's something inside you and it's whispering in your mind cut-cut-cut) and you must have lost some time there because all of a sudden the stained, faded wallpaper has turned to iron walls and Bo Derek sauntering along the beach.
“Bobby?” you grate, twist against the hands that are pushing you down and - fuck - you do not want to be tied down but your arms are like noodles, muscles quivering helplessly and your protests are muffled by the belt they fold in to your mouth. “Fuck you!” you spit out, only you don't because you're too busy choking on the taste of leather and Sam just cards a big, sweaty hand through your hair.
You flinch away, as far as you can - Sam's hand feels like iron, rough and too hot against your fever-sensitive skin.
“I'll be as fast as I can Dean, alright? Just... listen to Bobby, man. I'll be as fast as I can,” Sam says again, and you nod a little, groan into the belt as the motion triggers a Fourth-of-July fireworks display inside your head. you think you hear Sam cussing again but it could be Bobby or it could just be in your head (that thing down inside you, going burn-burn-burn).
“Shut up,” you mutter, incoherently, but it understands you, chuckles quietly and you want it out of you, right the fuck now but you're tied up, thick leather restraints at wrist and ankle, a wide strap around your midriff and the belt between your teeth and it's growing, it's getting bigger with every breath, with every pounding beat of your blood and you -
lose time again, come back to yourself exhausted, sagging limply into the thin mattress, shivering with reaction and the chill brush of air against the sweat trickling over your over-heated skin.
It's not Bobby's panic room they've locked you in, you realize, it's an oven. They're going to bake you alive, roast you until your skin crackles and blisters and (best served medium rare, hold the katsup, Alistair chimes in) god help you, you'd welcome it.
Slower than the knife, maybe, but you know it'll silence the thing inside you just as effectively.
“Crank it up,” you croak. Somehow, in all the thrashing around, you've worked the belt loose, jaw aching dully, teeth still tasting of old leather.
They turn the heat up until the walls are alive with heat-shimmer and the fan overhead throws out fat sparks as its bearings melt and you watch them, rapt, as they drift down in gossamer threads, wriggling worms that crawl over you until they ooze into your mouth, up your nose in your ears in your eyes and then you scream as they chew their way into your skull and your world turns incandescent.
Napalm on the brainstem, you think you think (it echoes back from the walls and did you say that aloud?) it's hard to be sure, hard to tell when your ears are bleeding (burning-burning-burn). Shut up, you're sure (this time) you think. Just shut the fuck up.
If you picture the knife on the floor hard enough you imagine you can feel it in your hand, cool against your palm as you slice through the restraints and the edge of the blade is like ice (blessed ice) inside you; slide through skin and flesh and saw through bone to the brain beneath, lumpy and slick against your fingers when you reach inside, hard chitinous shape that wriggles away from your touch; deeper (deep-deep-deep) until your arm is down inside your skull right up to the elbow by the time you finally grasp it tight, drag it out kicking and squealing and it hisses at you when you hold it up in front of your face, hisses and spits like water on a hot plate so you smile and pop it into your mouth and you cackle as you crunch down on it.
It tickles all the way down and hits your stomach like an incendiary grenade, bounces straight back up your throat but there are hands on you, holding you steady as you puke and heave, turn yourself inside out and shudder at the crunched up bits of shell in the mess on the floor. A warm hand smoothes your hair back from your face, folds a cool cloth over the back of your neck.
“It's gonna be okay,” someone's saying. “We got it in time.”
You reach up, hands clumsy as you knot your fist into your brother's shirt and hold on, heaving again (nothing left inside but it's quiet) and again until you're wrung out and shaking. They wipe your mouth, ease you back onto the cot, rub salve into the abraded skin around your wrists and you let them, pliant and weary. Sam keeps up a running monologue but all you hear is the way your brother's hands are trembling, unsteady as he re-bandages the cut over your brow.
You couldn't stop the apocalypse and you don't know how to stop whatever it is that Cas and Crowley are doing, but you know how to fix this (think, sometimes, that you were born knowing) so you summon up a weary smirk and slap Sam's hand away when it reaches for your forehead again.
“You wanna feel me up, you gotta buy me dinner first,” you rasp and Sam pauses, torn somewhere between anger and relief. “Or at least a drink. Dude. Get me outta here.”
At last, Sam snorts, shakes his head but he helps you up and you totter up the old cellar stairs on legs that feel like jello. The breeze coming in through the open door is nirvana, pure gold and you rock to a stop, stand in the doorway swaying slowly, letting it dry the last of the sweat from your skin, listening to your brother sigh patiently at your side and the crickets sawing away at their song in the junkyard outside.
chhrp-chhrp-chhrp.
Rating: T (for language)
Characters: Sam, Dean, Bobby
Genre: Gen, horror, hurt/comfort
Disclaimer: Nope, still don't own 'em.
Warnings: Spoilers-in-passing for late S6.
Word Count: 1259
Summary: Written for this lovely lonely prompt at the hoodie time 'Fever' meme.
A/N: I'm not all that happy with it, but it's been WAAAAAAAAAAAAY too long since I posted much of anything, so this right here is me jumping back into the saddle (or possibly in over my head, depending on where you're looking from...)
In hindsight, you think you should have known something was up when you looked at the first photo in the coroners report (wide-eyed stare gazing back from the ruins of what had been a face and now looked like nothing more than so much hamburger helper) and heard the answering whisper right down in the back of your mind. You blame it on too many days and nights spent hunting for a way to stop an angel of the lord and the new king of hell to notice much of anything and before long, you're too distracted by the relentless pounding inside your head and the desperate, driving need to make it stop.
That's how they find you, blood slippery on your fingers; Bobby looks pissed, right up in your face with both hands locked around your wrists and half-glimpsed over his shoulder, Sam just looks frantic. Rough, calloused fingers dig in between tendons, force your fingers to open and the knife slips out of your grasp.
It leaves a bloody smear on the grimy floor and Sam curses raggedly.
“Son? Dean, you hearin' me?” Bobby's asking and you can hear the man alright but all you really care about is the knife on the floor and the beat-beat-beat in your head. Blood runs down into your eye from the slice you carved, trying to reach the awful sound and Get. It. Out.
“Dean. Jesus, Bobby. What do I...”
Sam trails off, or you tune your brother out (you're a little distracted, there's something inside you and it's whispering in your mind cut-cut-cut) and you must have lost some time there because all of a sudden the stained, faded wallpaper has turned to iron walls and Bo Derek sauntering along the beach.
“Bobby?” you grate, twist against the hands that are pushing you down and - fuck - you do not want to be tied down but your arms are like noodles, muscles quivering helplessly and your protests are muffled by the belt they fold in to your mouth. “Fuck you!” you spit out, only you don't because you're too busy choking on the taste of leather and Sam just cards a big, sweaty hand through your hair.
You flinch away, as far as you can - Sam's hand feels like iron, rough and too hot against your fever-sensitive skin.
“I'll be as fast as I can Dean, alright? Just... listen to Bobby, man. I'll be as fast as I can,” Sam says again, and you nod a little, groan into the belt as the motion triggers a Fourth-of-July fireworks display inside your head. you think you hear Sam cussing again but it could be Bobby or it could just be in your head (that thing down inside you, going burn-burn-burn).
“Shut up,” you mutter, incoherently, but it understands you, chuckles quietly and you want it out of you, right the fuck now but you're tied up, thick leather restraints at wrist and ankle, a wide strap around your midriff and the belt between your teeth and it's growing, it's getting bigger with every breath, with every pounding beat of your blood and you -
lose time again, come back to yourself exhausted, sagging limply into the thin mattress, shivering with reaction and the chill brush of air against the sweat trickling over your over-heated skin.
It's not Bobby's panic room they've locked you in, you realize, it's an oven. They're going to bake you alive, roast you until your skin crackles and blisters and (best served medium rare, hold the katsup, Alistair chimes in) god help you, you'd welcome it.
Slower than the knife, maybe, but you know it'll silence the thing inside you just as effectively.
“Crank it up,” you croak. Somehow, in all the thrashing around, you've worked the belt loose, jaw aching dully, teeth still tasting of old leather.
They turn the heat up until the walls are alive with heat-shimmer and the fan overhead throws out fat sparks as its bearings melt and you watch them, rapt, as they drift down in gossamer threads, wriggling worms that crawl over you until they ooze into your mouth, up your nose in your ears in your eyes and then you scream as they chew their way into your skull and your world turns incandescent.
Napalm on the brainstem, you think you think (it echoes back from the walls and did you say that aloud?) it's hard to be sure, hard to tell when your ears are bleeding (burning-burning-burn). Shut up, you're sure (this time) you think. Just shut the fuck up.
If you picture the knife on the floor hard enough you imagine you can feel it in your hand, cool against your palm as you slice through the restraints and the edge of the blade is like ice (blessed ice) inside you; slide through skin and flesh and saw through bone to the brain beneath, lumpy and slick against your fingers when you reach inside, hard chitinous shape that wriggles away from your touch; deeper (deep-deep-deep) until your arm is down inside your skull right up to the elbow by the time you finally grasp it tight, drag it out kicking and squealing and it hisses at you when you hold it up in front of your face, hisses and spits like water on a hot plate so you smile and pop it into your mouth and you cackle as you crunch down on it.
It tickles all the way down and hits your stomach like an incendiary grenade, bounces straight back up your throat but there are hands on you, holding you steady as you puke and heave, turn yourself inside out and shudder at the crunched up bits of shell in the mess on the floor. A warm hand smoothes your hair back from your face, folds a cool cloth over the back of your neck.
“It's gonna be okay,” someone's saying. “We got it in time.”
You reach up, hands clumsy as you knot your fist into your brother's shirt and hold on, heaving again (nothing left inside but it's quiet) and again until you're wrung out and shaking. They wipe your mouth, ease you back onto the cot, rub salve into the abraded skin around your wrists and you let them, pliant and weary. Sam keeps up a running monologue but all you hear is the way your brother's hands are trembling, unsteady as he re-bandages the cut over your brow.
You couldn't stop the apocalypse and you don't know how to stop whatever it is that Cas and Crowley are doing, but you know how to fix this (think, sometimes, that you were born knowing) so you summon up a weary smirk and slap Sam's hand away when it reaches for your forehead again.
“You wanna feel me up, you gotta buy me dinner first,” you rasp and Sam pauses, torn somewhere between anger and relief. “Or at least a drink. Dude. Get me outta here.”
At last, Sam snorts, shakes his head but he helps you up and you totter up the old cellar stairs on legs that feel like jello. The breeze coming in through the open door is nirvana, pure gold and you rock to a stop, stand in the doorway swaying slowly, letting it dry the last of the sweat from your skin, listening to your brother sigh patiently at your side and the crickets sawing away at their song in the junkyard outside.
chhrp-chhrp-chhrp.