Pour Out Your Heart Like Water [SPN, Sam/Dean, R-ish]
This was written in June of 2008, and is thus hopelessly out of date, but adelate asked me to post it and she's amazing, so here it is. I was never thrilled with the way season three of Supernatural handled the demons-are-going-to-eat-Dean's-soul-oh-no! arc, and I always meant to write like, an epic fic to fix that. This is not that fic. This is something I described to my BFF back when I wrote it as "2200-ish words of experimental-style nonsense," and was basically the only thing I ever wrote in this fandom. The title is from a random Bible verse fragment, and the cut text is from Okkervil River's song "Our Life Is Not A Movie Or Maybe," which always worked for me as an s3 song.
(it was your heart hurting, but not for too long, kid.)
"Once," Dean says, "I told this girl I wanted to fuck that I was a broadcast journalism major."
"Why broadcast journalism?" Sam puts the local news on mute and turns to face Dean over the two-foot gap between their beds. Dean has said much weirder shit apropos of nothing, so he figures he'll just go with it.
Dean shrugs. "It sounded good at the time. She thought I meant I wanted to be a newscaster, and I was all 'no, I want to work more in the writing and production side of things.'"
"Did she buy it?"
"Sure," Dean says, like that's not even the point. "Why wouldn't she?"
That's just the beginning.
They've got about a couple months left on the clock, running out as tangibly as if the crossroads demon had handed Dean a one-year egg timer, the kind that ticks as it counts down the seconds until you feel like going at it with a hammer.
And suddenly, Dean is all stories, helpful factoids, secrets. They're driving through Nebraska, and Dean stops drumming his hand on the steering wheel to a Rush song and says I had a cock piercing for a while, but the novelty wore off. They're waiting in some middle-aged shaman-lady's living room for her to consult some, whatever, bones or tiles or something about whether they can break the deal, and Dean stirs his iced tea and says Remember the time when you were in that school concert? You were little, and your class had to play "Yesterday" and it sounded like a xylophone factory exploding. And I told you dad was there, but he had to leave early? I lied to you, sorry. They're on line at a gas station convenience store, arms full of food, and Dean watches their grainy, black and white image in the little security camera monitor and says You can put the sour cream and onion chips back, if you want. I hate them, I only buy them because they remind me of that summer we lived in Ohio when I was eighteen.
Sam tries his best to respond, to say what the fuck, Dean, not something I needed to know; or that's okay; or yeah, I remember that.
Dean keeps on with the car maintenance lessons when there's time, and one day they're in the parking lot of an AutoBarn, changing the Impala's spark plugs (and you have to do this a lot, Sammy, because this is an old car and the spark plugs wear fast) and Dean hands him the wrench and says "This is the only useful stuff I really know. I wish I'd said fuck this and just been a mechanic."
It's not like he doesn't get it, like it's some big fucking mystery of the universe, why this, why now. It's probably healthy, Dean deciding that he wants to talk a little before his time's up, get some things off his chest, impart some information. He's parceling it out, all the things he's decided he wants to say. Usually just one item at a time, once a day, if that. He's careful not to look like he's expecting anything in return.
And Sam gets it, he gets it, and he likes it most of the time, likes just listening like he's in kindergarten and Dean is haltingly reading him a story or telling him about what being in fourth grade is like. He likes that Dean is talking, telling him things, without having to be coaxed or backed into a corner.
But sometimes it gets overwhelming, and he can feel all these new things swimming around in his head, taking over, like he's just a walking repository for Dean's memories. He's afraid of that, of building this up in his mind too much, of it seeming so important that he loses other things just to keep it all safe.
He wishes he weren't the only person in the world Dean had to talk to.
He hates every last thing Dean says to him, because it all means Dean really believes he's going to die.
They stop in a bar on their way to Madison, where they're going to check out this might-be-vampires thing and see a guy who calls himself a necromancer and will probably 60/40 try to kill them before they can get out of his house. Dean is elbow-deep in shot glasses and telling this big protracted story about some hunt he went on by himself just after Sam left, how sure he was he could handle it on his own, just a poltergeist, but shit got out of hand and people ended up getting killed who he should have been able to keep out of the fucking way.
He doesn't tell it like he's fishing for sympathy, not really, but Sam doesn't know how the hell else he's supposed to feel, and he had to stop at two shots so someone could drive and he's a little fed up with everything, so he drinks the last half-inch of Dean's beer and looks at him hard across the table.
"I know you maybe need to say all this stuff," he says, "And you can tell me whatever you want. But I can't...I can't absolve you, or anything."
"That's not what this is," Dean says, sounding more sober than he has for the last hour. "But if you wanna get out your priest outfit, I won't complain."
Sam throws a wadded-up napkin at him, and when they eventually get to Madison, it's not vampires and the necromancer guy barely even threatens their lives. All in all, it's pretty much a win.
It's the middle of the night, and Sam's driving them through some completely anonymous stretch of nothingness, just the headlights lighting up the highway lines and the roar of the open windows. Dean is sitting with his legs splayed out so far that he's almost nudging Sam's driving leg with his foot, and twice now, for no reason at all, Sam has looked down and expected Dean's foot to hook around his calf like they're kids kicking each other under the table, or maybe not like that at all.
"I was in a porn once," Dean says, slouching down a little more so he can tip his head back onto the seat. "Just amateur shit, in someone's basement. I made $400. It was really fucking weird."
"What kind of porn?" Sam says, takes his eyes off the road for a moment, and Dean is grinning at him like roses fall out of his mouth when he talks, like he's said the exact right thing.
"Nothing too screwed up. I just fucked this girl, and there was some...kind of naughty schoolgirl spanking shit."
"Is that your kind of thing?"
"What, spanking? Not really. The sound is amazing, but it's got all these..."
"Connotations?" Sam offers, curling his hands a little tighter around the wheel and not thinking about some girl in a plaid skirt bent over Dean's lap, Dean smoothing out his voice and saying you've been bad, Dean looking straight at the camera with heavy-lidded eyes.
"Yeah," Dean says. "And that's weird, kinda creepy. Plus, have you ever tried that on a girl in real life? Either way, you generally lose. Either it unlocks some whole 'oh, daddy, harder,' thing or you get slapped across the face. Not worth the trouble."
Sam just nods like okay, sure, whatever you say, this is fine, and Dean mercifully shuts up after that.
They're waiting in a hallway at the University of South Dakota for a meeting with this professor who's written some useful-sounding papers about demons, although it's not clear whether he thinks he's writing about superstition or if he's an ex-hunter or what, so Sam is trying to figure out the best way to get around that, to figure out as quickly as possible if he's going to have to start every damn question with but if demons were real, hypothetically or not.
"I went to one of your classes once," Dean says.
"What?"
"Your freshman year. I think it was in March. I picked out one that was a huge lecture, sat in the back. You looked very studious."
"What class?" Sam asks, and maybe he should be offended or creeped out that Dean kind of stalked him, and maybe last year, definitely the year before that, he would have been. But now, he's glad. He likes the idea of Dean being there, of Dean having seen his whole life, in some strange way.
"Something with math, and...vectors? I didn't understand a word of it."
"Yeah, that class sucked," Sam says.
Sam's making photocopies of some folklore book in a library, feeding an endless stream of nickels and dimes into the ancient monstrosity of a machine, which jams on every third copy, without fail. He's been at it for twenty minutes when Dean saunters in, and rather than sharing whatever he did or didn't find out at the county records office, he leans against the copier, which creaks ominously, and says "I've fucked guys. Not often, but I have."
"That's great," Sam snaps, because the copy machine is a piece of shit and they're not getting anywhere with this demon deal and what the fuck is Dean doing, what the fuck are they ever doing? "How nice for you," he continues, slamming the lid of the copier down.
Dean turns on his heel and stomps out, and Sam finishes making his copies and goes to Walgreens to pick out a peace offering, settling on a bag of peanut M&M's and some new headphones so Dean can listen to music on his phone again. Dean's waiting for him, sitting on the hood of the car with his sunglasses on.
It occurs to Sam that Dean hasn't fucked anyone---guys, girls, whatever---for months, not as far as he can tell. He wonders what that's about.
"I'm sorry about before," Sam says while Dean tries to pry the headphones out of their little plastic Fort Knox package. "It's not that I---it's okay with me, I mean, you can sleep with whoever you want. I don't mind about that. It's just been a crappy---"
"Year?" Dean suggests, and Sam can hear his half-smile.
They've got a hotel room with a kitchenette, so they stick some beer in the fridge. Dean is fiddling around with the stove, turning the burners on and off, and he sighs a little and says "I wish I knew how to cook."
"Do you want to learn?" Sam asks. He teaches Dean how to make pancakes, stacks and stacks of pancakes, and after a while they're not even a little burnt or very lopsided anymore.
Dean is reading the Sunday paper, all its sections spread out around him over three separate little plastic laundromat chairs. "Remember when we could both fit behind the Sunday comics section, and sometimes you'd get mad at me for trying to turn the pages too fast?" Dean says, peering over the paper at Sam, who's loading shirts into a drier. "That was nice. We had pretty fucked up childhoods, but that was good."
Sam puts the drier on for a half-hour and shoves the business and sports sections onto the floor so he can sit next to Dean, their shoulders pressed together, reading about what Marmaduke has been up to this week.
The spectral egg timer is down to two weeks and Sam is picking radish slices out of his salad in Keene, New Hampshire when Dean looks at him over the napkin dispenser and says "The first time I thought about fucking you, you were fifteen."
Sam puts his fork down very, very carefully and takes a sip of water, and Dean's eyes follow every motion he makes, curious and almost calm. Sam can feel his ears starting to blush, and he braces his hands on the edge of the table and says, "Do you still think about it?"
"Of course," Dean says, like Sam's asked if he wants ketchup for his fries and that's the most important thing anyone's ever asked him.
Sam throws some money on the table and drags Dean out the door by his sleeve. He runs three stoplights on the way back to the motel, and after the second one, Dean starts laughing.
He stops when Sam closes the door to their room by shoving him back into it, and they kiss and grope at each other for a while before Sam leans forward, resting his forehead uncomfortably on Dean's collarbone, and manages to blurt out "Now? You're telling me this now?"
Dean reaches backward, over Sam's head, to bolt the door. "You have to look at it from my point of view. If you were gonna freak out, at least I wouldn't have to put up with it for long."
"You are such an asshole," Sam says, dropping to his knees and mashing his face into the front of Dean's pants.
"You know you love it," Dean croons, curling a hand into Sam's hair and pulling a little.
Sam breathes out "Fuck yeah," and as his lips move they slide against Dean's cock through his jeans, and maybe Dean has been onto something this whole time, because it feels good to confess.
(it was your heart hurting, but not for too long, kid.)
"Once," Dean says, "I told this girl I wanted to fuck that I was a broadcast journalism major."
"Why broadcast journalism?" Sam puts the local news on mute and turns to face Dean over the two-foot gap between their beds. Dean has said much weirder shit apropos of nothing, so he figures he'll just go with it.
Dean shrugs. "It sounded good at the time. She thought I meant I wanted to be a newscaster, and I was all 'no, I want to work more in the writing and production side of things.'"
"Did she buy it?"
"Sure," Dean says, like that's not even the point. "Why wouldn't she?"
That's just the beginning.
They've got about a couple months left on the clock, running out as tangibly as if the crossroads demon had handed Dean a one-year egg timer, the kind that ticks as it counts down the seconds until you feel like going at it with a hammer.
And suddenly, Dean is all stories, helpful factoids, secrets. They're driving through Nebraska, and Dean stops drumming his hand on the steering wheel to a Rush song and says I had a cock piercing for a while, but the novelty wore off. They're waiting in some middle-aged shaman-lady's living room for her to consult some, whatever, bones or tiles or something about whether they can break the deal, and Dean stirs his iced tea and says Remember the time when you were in that school concert? You were little, and your class had to play "Yesterday" and it sounded like a xylophone factory exploding. And I told you dad was there, but he had to leave early? I lied to you, sorry. They're on line at a gas station convenience store, arms full of food, and Dean watches their grainy, black and white image in the little security camera monitor and says You can put the sour cream and onion chips back, if you want. I hate them, I only buy them because they remind me of that summer we lived in Ohio when I was eighteen.
Sam tries his best to respond, to say what the fuck, Dean, not something I needed to know; or that's okay; or yeah, I remember that.
Dean keeps on with the car maintenance lessons when there's time, and one day they're in the parking lot of an AutoBarn, changing the Impala's spark plugs (and you have to do this a lot, Sammy, because this is an old car and the spark plugs wear fast) and Dean hands him the wrench and says "This is the only useful stuff I really know. I wish I'd said fuck this and just been a mechanic."
It's not like he doesn't get it, like it's some big fucking mystery of the universe, why this, why now. It's probably healthy, Dean deciding that he wants to talk a little before his time's up, get some things off his chest, impart some information. He's parceling it out, all the things he's decided he wants to say. Usually just one item at a time, once a day, if that. He's careful not to look like he's expecting anything in return.
And Sam gets it, he gets it, and he likes it most of the time, likes just listening like he's in kindergarten and Dean is haltingly reading him a story or telling him about what being in fourth grade is like. He likes that Dean is talking, telling him things, without having to be coaxed or backed into a corner.
But sometimes it gets overwhelming, and he can feel all these new things swimming around in his head, taking over, like he's just a walking repository for Dean's memories. He's afraid of that, of building this up in his mind too much, of it seeming so important that he loses other things just to keep it all safe.
He wishes he weren't the only person in the world Dean had to talk to.
He hates every last thing Dean says to him, because it all means Dean really believes he's going to die.
They stop in a bar on their way to Madison, where they're going to check out this might-be-vampires thing and see a guy who calls himself a necromancer and will probably 60/40 try to kill them before they can get out of his house. Dean is elbow-deep in shot glasses and telling this big protracted story about some hunt he went on by himself just after Sam left, how sure he was he could handle it on his own, just a poltergeist, but shit got out of hand and people ended up getting killed who he should have been able to keep out of the fucking way.
He doesn't tell it like he's fishing for sympathy, not really, but Sam doesn't know how the hell else he's supposed to feel, and he had to stop at two shots so someone could drive and he's a little fed up with everything, so he drinks the last half-inch of Dean's beer and looks at him hard across the table.
"I know you maybe need to say all this stuff," he says, "And you can tell me whatever you want. But I can't...I can't absolve you, or anything."
"That's not what this is," Dean says, sounding more sober than he has for the last hour. "But if you wanna get out your priest outfit, I won't complain."
Sam throws a wadded-up napkin at him, and when they eventually get to Madison, it's not vampires and the necromancer guy barely even threatens their lives. All in all, it's pretty much a win.
It's the middle of the night, and Sam's driving them through some completely anonymous stretch of nothingness, just the headlights lighting up the highway lines and the roar of the open windows. Dean is sitting with his legs splayed out so far that he's almost nudging Sam's driving leg with his foot, and twice now, for no reason at all, Sam has looked down and expected Dean's foot to hook around his calf like they're kids kicking each other under the table, or maybe not like that at all.
"I was in a porn once," Dean says, slouching down a little more so he can tip his head back onto the seat. "Just amateur shit, in someone's basement. I made $400. It was really fucking weird."
"What kind of porn?" Sam says, takes his eyes off the road for a moment, and Dean is grinning at him like roses fall out of his mouth when he talks, like he's said the exact right thing.
"Nothing too screwed up. I just fucked this girl, and there was some...kind of naughty schoolgirl spanking shit."
"Is that your kind of thing?"
"What, spanking? Not really. The sound is amazing, but it's got all these..."
"Connotations?" Sam offers, curling his hands a little tighter around the wheel and not thinking about some girl in a plaid skirt bent over Dean's lap, Dean smoothing out his voice and saying you've been bad, Dean looking straight at the camera with heavy-lidded eyes.
"Yeah," Dean says. "And that's weird, kinda creepy. Plus, have you ever tried that on a girl in real life? Either way, you generally lose. Either it unlocks some whole 'oh, daddy, harder,' thing or you get slapped across the face. Not worth the trouble."
Sam just nods like okay, sure, whatever you say, this is fine, and Dean mercifully shuts up after that.
They're waiting in a hallway at the University of South Dakota for a meeting with this professor who's written some useful-sounding papers about demons, although it's not clear whether he thinks he's writing about superstition or if he's an ex-hunter or what, so Sam is trying to figure out the best way to get around that, to figure out as quickly as possible if he's going to have to start every damn question with but if demons were real, hypothetically or not.
"I went to one of your classes once," Dean says.
"What?"
"Your freshman year. I think it was in March. I picked out one that was a huge lecture, sat in the back. You looked very studious."
"What class?" Sam asks, and maybe he should be offended or creeped out that Dean kind of stalked him, and maybe last year, definitely the year before that, he would have been. But now, he's glad. He likes the idea of Dean being there, of Dean having seen his whole life, in some strange way.
"Something with math, and...vectors? I didn't understand a word of it."
"Yeah, that class sucked," Sam says.
Sam's making photocopies of some folklore book in a library, feeding an endless stream of nickels and dimes into the ancient monstrosity of a machine, which jams on every third copy, without fail. He's been at it for twenty minutes when Dean saunters in, and rather than sharing whatever he did or didn't find out at the county records office, he leans against the copier, which creaks ominously, and says "I've fucked guys. Not often, but I have."
"That's great," Sam snaps, because the copy machine is a piece of shit and they're not getting anywhere with this demon deal and what the fuck is Dean doing, what the fuck are they ever doing? "How nice for you," he continues, slamming the lid of the copier down.
Dean turns on his heel and stomps out, and Sam finishes making his copies and goes to Walgreens to pick out a peace offering, settling on a bag of peanut M&M's and some new headphones so Dean can listen to music on his phone again. Dean's waiting for him, sitting on the hood of the car with his sunglasses on.
It occurs to Sam that Dean hasn't fucked anyone---guys, girls, whatever---for months, not as far as he can tell. He wonders what that's about.
"I'm sorry about before," Sam says while Dean tries to pry the headphones out of their little plastic Fort Knox package. "It's not that I---it's okay with me, I mean, you can sleep with whoever you want. I don't mind about that. It's just been a crappy---"
"Year?" Dean suggests, and Sam can hear his half-smile.
They've got a hotel room with a kitchenette, so they stick some beer in the fridge. Dean is fiddling around with the stove, turning the burners on and off, and he sighs a little and says "I wish I knew how to cook."
"Do you want to learn?" Sam asks. He teaches Dean how to make pancakes, stacks and stacks of pancakes, and after a while they're not even a little burnt or very lopsided anymore.
Dean is reading the Sunday paper, all its sections spread out around him over three separate little plastic laundromat chairs. "Remember when we could both fit behind the Sunday comics section, and sometimes you'd get mad at me for trying to turn the pages too fast?" Dean says, peering over the paper at Sam, who's loading shirts into a drier. "That was nice. We had pretty fucked up childhoods, but that was good."
Sam puts the drier on for a half-hour and shoves the business and sports sections onto the floor so he can sit next to Dean, their shoulders pressed together, reading about what Marmaduke has been up to this week.
The spectral egg timer is down to two weeks and Sam is picking radish slices out of his salad in Keene, New Hampshire when Dean looks at him over the napkin dispenser and says "The first time I thought about fucking you, you were fifteen."
Sam puts his fork down very, very carefully and takes a sip of water, and Dean's eyes follow every motion he makes, curious and almost calm. Sam can feel his ears starting to blush, and he braces his hands on the edge of the table and says, "Do you still think about it?"
"Of course," Dean says, like Sam's asked if he wants ketchup for his fries and that's the most important thing anyone's ever asked him.
Sam throws some money on the table and drags Dean out the door by his sleeve. He runs three stoplights on the way back to the motel, and after the second one, Dean starts laughing.
He stops when Sam closes the door to their room by shoving him back into it, and they kiss and grope at each other for a while before Sam leans forward, resting his forehead uncomfortably on Dean's collarbone, and manages to blurt out "Now? You're telling me this now?"
Dean reaches backward, over Sam's head, to bolt the door. "You have to look at it from my point of view. If you were gonna freak out, at least I wouldn't have to put up with it for long."
"You are such an asshole," Sam says, dropping to his knees and mashing his face into the front of Dean's pants.
"You know you love it," Dean croons, curling a hand into Sam's hair and pulling a little.
Sam breathes out "Fuck yeah," and as his lips move they slide against Dean's cock through his jeans, and maybe Dean has been onto something this whole time, because it feels good to confess.