Fic: There I go, turn the page
There I go, turn the page
Genre: Gen, h/c, angst
Length: About 1200 words
Characters: Sam Winchester, Kevin Tran, Dean Winchester
Spoilers: For the end of S8
Synopsis: Written for the 2016 Ohsam Triple Play for the following prompt:
1. snowy woods
2. Kevin
3. Where did Sam get to? Better follow the footprints. The bare and bloody part is disturbing, though.
Bonus illustration by the amazing quickreaver! Here's a sneak peek, but please go check out the original.
~~~
When Dean's ringtone warbles from Kevin's phone he spends a few seconds debating whether to answer it, but the ring somehow sounds angry and anxious and impatient - as if it were Dean's voice and not an inhuman electronic tone - and Kevin knows he won't stop calling until he gets an answer, so he grudgingly answers.
"Yeah."
"Where's Sam? He's not answering his phone."
"I'm great, thanks, how are you?"
"Dammit, Kevin." Dean's sigh sounds more worried than angry, and Kevin feels a sudden surge of guilt. "I'm sorry. It's just that he hasn't been answering for an hour, and he's still kind of messed up after the trials, and I just... can you please just check on him?"
"Fine, yeah. I'm on it. I'll call you back." Kevin pockets his phone and pads up the cold hallway to Sam's room, thinking unkind thoughts about giant grown men who are capable of killing monsters and yet need the resident teenager to keep to keep an eye on them, and about brothers who are so obsessively worried about those giant grown men and yet leave them behind instead of dragging their giant grown asses with them, and by the time he gets to Sam's room, he's annoyed again.
But Sam's room is empty. And so is the library, and the kitchen, and every other room Sam might conceivably hang out in, and the closer he gets to the garage, the more Kevin notices how freaking cold it is in here. When he gets to the reinforced steel door separating the garage from the bunker, he sees that it's hanging open, and the garage door itself is also open, revealing a cold grey sky, flurries of snow swirling in the dim late afternoon light, and no sign of Sam Winchester... except for a set of bloody footprints leading up the hill outside the garage.
Shit.
On further inspection, it looks like someone - and it has to be Sam, by the size of the feet - walked across the tire-puncturing grate that the Men of Letters apparently set up to keep anyone from stealing their car collection. And then kept walking, on bare bloody feet, right outside into the snow.
Shit.
Kevin pulls on his coat and gloves and sets out up the tree-covered hill, tracing the path of bloody footsteps. It looks like Sam wasn't watching where he was going. Kevin finds himself diverting right and left to avoid overhanging branches, but Sam seems to have walked straight through them. The trail is strewn with rocks and sticks and any number of sharp things that aren't insulated by the thin layer of snow, and the blood left in each print gets heavier and heavier, and Kevin's becoming pretty concerned about what exactly he will find at the end of the gory trail.
When he finally does top the hill he sees Sam standing in a clearing, but the sight doesn't reassure him as much as it should. He's facing Kevin, but doesn't seen to see him; he's gazing off into the distance as if he can't get enough of the featureless Kansas landscape. He is wearing nothing but a pair of worn jeans, and Kevin is shocked to see how much weight he lost during the trials. His skin is pale save for red stripes whipped by tree branches, stretched too tightly across prominent bones. It's been months since that day the Winchesters came back to the bunker and told him they'd failed to close the gates of Hell, but now Kevin sees why Dean keeps attempting to coddle his little brother, why he's so concerned about his health and welfare. But Sam stands tall, pulled to his full height with his shoulders held back, as if the frigid temperature, the cold wind ruffling his hair, the bloodied torso and lacerated feet aren't bothering him at all.
And Kevin's a little bit afraid of him.
"Sam?" he says.
Sam's eyes turn to him and pierce through him coldly. Kevin's heart pounds with a rush of adrenaline and he thinks, if this were anyone else but Sam, that he would be halfway back down the hill by now. That maybe he should go ahead and start running. Then there's a flash of recognition and Sam seems to retract back into Sam. He frowns, shakes his head, and looks down on himself in dismay.
"Oh, no," he breathes. "No, no, not again." He wraps his arms around himself, as if just now noticing the cold. "Kevin? What... how long... what are we... what am I doing out here?"
"I don't know, man." Kevin slips off his coat and puts it around Sam's shoulders. "You mean you don't know either?"
Sam wraps the coat around his body as well as he can. "Fuck," he mutters through chattering teeth. "I don't know. I don't know. I'm losing time. I just... I was in the bunker, getting dressed, and now I wake up and I'm out here."
"And this has happened before? Does Dean know about it?"
Sam's eyes widen. "No. Don't tell him. Please, Kevin, don't tell him."
"Jesus, Sam. You gotta let him know."
"No, I don't. He's already freaked out enough. Please, Kevin. Not yet."
"Well, maybe he needs to be freaked out some more. Because this is messed up, Sam. He's been calling you for an hour. You've been out here for at least an hour." He points Sam back down the hill. "You need to tell him."
"I will. I swear. Just not right now."
Sam stumbles on his bloody feet as he slowly, carefully picks his way back down the hill. Kevin keeps a hand latched onto his coat in case Sam falls, although there's probably nothing he could do anyway. The long-sleeved t-shirt he's left with does very little against the cold wind, and he tries to suppress a shiver. Sam stops and starts to pull the coat off. "Hey, you need this back. I'm fine."
"Dude, no," says Kevin. "You need it more than I do. You're a freaking icicle."
They're quiet for several minutes as they inch their way closer to the warmth of the bunker. Sam clears his throat, then quietly says "I'm sorry, Kevin."
"No, man, it's fine. I'm fine. We're almost there."
"No, I mean. I'm sorry. I'm sorry about everything. I'm sorry I didn't close Hell. I'm sorry about your mom. I'm sorry we couldn't protect you better. I'm sorry everything is so fucked up. I'm just sorry."
"Really, Sam, it's okay." And right now he means it. Tomorrow he'll probably be annoyed as hell at both Winchester brothers, but right now he feels almost overwhelmed by sorrow and sympathy and wishes desperately there were something he could do about it.
By the time they get back to the bunker, Sam's outgoing footprints have been covered by a dusting of snow. Within an hour there won't be any evidence that anything happened. And Kevin is fairly sure Sam will conveniently forget to mention it to Dean.
"Are you gonna be okay?" he asks, as Sam peels his coat off and hands it back to him.
Sam looks at his own feet and smiles. "Yeah, I'm fine. Thank you, Kevin. Really, I'm fine."
As Kevin watches him retreat into the heart of the bunker, he thinks No. You're really not.
~~~~
The title is from "Turn the Page" by Bob Seger. Please note that I originally called this story "Here I go, turn the page" but that's not the correct lyric so I had to fix it here because I'm anal like that (but not anal enough to get it right in the first place, sadly).
Genre: Gen, h/c, angst
Length: About 1200 words
Characters: Sam Winchester, Kevin Tran, Dean Winchester
Spoilers: For the end of S8
Synopsis: Written for the 2016 Ohsam Triple Play for the following prompt:
1. snowy woods
2. Kevin
3. Where did Sam get to? Better follow the footprints. The bare and bloody part is disturbing, though.
Bonus illustration by the amazing quickreaver! Here's a sneak peek, but please go check out the original.
~~~
When Dean's ringtone warbles from Kevin's phone he spends a few seconds debating whether to answer it, but the ring somehow sounds angry and anxious and impatient - as if it were Dean's voice and not an inhuman electronic tone - and Kevin knows he won't stop calling until he gets an answer, so he grudgingly answers.
"Yeah."
"Where's Sam? He's not answering his phone."
"I'm great, thanks, how are you?"
"Dammit, Kevin." Dean's sigh sounds more worried than angry, and Kevin feels a sudden surge of guilt. "I'm sorry. It's just that he hasn't been answering for an hour, and he's still kind of messed up after the trials, and I just... can you please just check on him?"
"Fine, yeah. I'm on it. I'll call you back." Kevin pockets his phone and pads up the cold hallway to Sam's room, thinking unkind thoughts about giant grown men who are capable of killing monsters and yet need the resident teenager to keep to keep an eye on them, and about brothers who are so obsessively worried about those giant grown men and yet leave them behind instead of dragging their giant grown asses with them, and by the time he gets to Sam's room, he's annoyed again.
But Sam's room is empty. And so is the library, and the kitchen, and every other room Sam might conceivably hang out in, and the closer he gets to the garage, the more Kevin notices how freaking cold it is in here. When he gets to the reinforced steel door separating the garage from the bunker, he sees that it's hanging open, and the garage door itself is also open, revealing a cold grey sky, flurries of snow swirling in the dim late afternoon light, and no sign of Sam Winchester... except for a set of bloody footprints leading up the hill outside the garage.
Shit.
On further inspection, it looks like someone - and it has to be Sam, by the size of the feet - walked across the tire-puncturing grate that the Men of Letters apparently set up to keep anyone from stealing their car collection. And then kept walking, on bare bloody feet, right outside into the snow.
Shit.
Kevin pulls on his coat and gloves and sets out up the tree-covered hill, tracing the path of bloody footsteps. It looks like Sam wasn't watching where he was going. Kevin finds himself diverting right and left to avoid overhanging branches, but Sam seems to have walked straight through them. The trail is strewn with rocks and sticks and any number of sharp things that aren't insulated by the thin layer of snow, and the blood left in each print gets heavier and heavier, and Kevin's becoming pretty concerned about what exactly he will find at the end of the gory trail.
When he finally does top the hill he sees Sam standing in a clearing, but the sight doesn't reassure him as much as it should. He's facing Kevin, but doesn't seen to see him; he's gazing off into the distance as if he can't get enough of the featureless Kansas landscape. He is wearing nothing but a pair of worn jeans, and Kevin is shocked to see how much weight he lost during the trials. His skin is pale save for red stripes whipped by tree branches, stretched too tightly across prominent bones. It's been months since that day the Winchesters came back to the bunker and told him they'd failed to close the gates of Hell, but now Kevin sees why Dean keeps attempting to coddle his little brother, why he's so concerned about his health and welfare. But Sam stands tall, pulled to his full height with his shoulders held back, as if the frigid temperature, the cold wind ruffling his hair, the bloodied torso and lacerated feet aren't bothering him at all.
And Kevin's a little bit afraid of him.
"Sam?" he says.
Sam's eyes turn to him and pierce through him coldly. Kevin's heart pounds with a rush of adrenaline and he thinks, if this were anyone else but Sam, that he would be halfway back down the hill by now. That maybe he should go ahead and start running. Then there's a flash of recognition and Sam seems to retract back into Sam. He frowns, shakes his head, and looks down on himself in dismay.
"Oh, no," he breathes. "No, no, not again." He wraps his arms around himself, as if just now noticing the cold. "Kevin? What... how long... what are we... what am I doing out here?"
"I don't know, man." Kevin slips off his coat and puts it around Sam's shoulders. "You mean you don't know either?"
Sam wraps the coat around his body as well as he can. "Fuck," he mutters through chattering teeth. "I don't know. I don't know. I'm losing time. I just... I was in the bunker, getting dressed, and now I wake up and I'm out here."
"And this has happened before? Does Dean know about it?"
Sam's eyes widen. "No. Don't tell him. Please, Kevin, don't tell him."
"Jesus, Sam. You gotta let him know."
"No, I don't. He's already freaked out enough. Please, Kevin. Not yet."
"Well, maybe he needs to be freaked out some more. Because this is messed up, Sam. He's been calling you for an hour. You've been out here for at least an hour." He points Sam back down the hill. "You need to tell him."
"I will. I swear. Just not right now."
Sam stumbles on his bloody feet as he slowly, carefully picks his way back down the hill. Kevin keeps a hand latched onto his coat in case Sam falls, although there's probably nothing he could do anyway. The long-sleeved t-shirt he's left with does very little against the cold wind, and he tries to suppress a shiver. Sam stops and starts to pull the coat off. "Hey, you need this back. I'm fine."
"Dude, no," says Kevin. "You need it more than I do. You're a freaking icicle."
They're quiet for several minutes as they inch their way closer to the warmth of the bunker. Sam clears his throat, then quietly says "I'm sorry, Kevin."
"No, man, it's fine. I'm fine. We're almost there."
"No, I mean. I'm sorry. I'm sorry about everything. I'm sorry I didn't close Hell. I'm sorry about your mom. I'm sorry we couldn't protect you better. I'm sorry everything is so fucked up. I'm just sorry."
"Really, Sam, it's okay." And right now he means it. Tomorrow he'll probably be annoyed as hell at both Winchester brothers, but right now he feels almost overwhelmed by sorrow and sympathy and wishes desperately there were something he could do about it.
By the time they get back to the bunker, Sam's outgoing footprints have been covered by a dusting of snow. Within an hour there won't be any evidence that anything happened. And Kevin is fairly sure Sam will conveniently forget to mention it to Dean.
"Are you gonna be okay?" he asks, as Sam peels his coat off and hands it back to him.
Sam looks at his own feet and smiles. "Yeah, I'm fine. Thank you, Kevin. Really, I'm fine."
As Kevin watches him retreat into the heart of the bunker, he thinks No. You're really not.
~~~~
The title is from "Turn the Page" by Bob Seger. Please note that I originally called this story "Here I go, turn the page" but that's not the correct lyric so I had to fix it here because I'm anal like that (but not anal enough to get it right in the first place, sadly).