Fic - Holding Fire 3/9 - Breathing but with Iron Lungs
Title: Breathing but with Iron Lungs
Series: Holding Fire
Author: Ry (curseangel / dreamsforlease)
Rating: PG-13
Characters/Pairings: Sam Winchester, Dean Winchester; John Winchester is mentioned.
Summary: A series of short!fics based around Sam's time in college, and it's effects, mostly on his brother and their relationship. Inspired by the Heather Nova song "A Way to Live". This chapter: Sam is learning, and it's breaking his heart seven different ways.
It's been a week already, and he doesn't realize it until he's already woken up and gotten dressed, and he checks his cell for messages and finds two calls already logged. He knows who they're from and deletes the messages without listening to them. Part of him wants to hear them, but he doesn't want to risk the inevitable guilt. It's been a week, and he's got his own dorm room now, and he's on his own, and he's just learning to ignore the phone. To not pick it up and stare at it whenever he gets a call from him. He listened to the first few messages left, but he can't anymore, cutting himself off from his own guilt over the tone of Dean's voice, his subtle and less-than-subtle pleas for him to come back already.
Come home, Dean had said in one of the first messages, and Sam had snapped at the phone that they didn't have a home, that he had to find his own home now. He hadn't even been talking to Dean, just to the ghost of him on the machine, but it still made him feel ashamed of himself, imagining his brother's flinch at the words, the inevitable, "Sammy," sounding just like the one in the message. Come on home, Sammy, Dad's going out of his mind. Of course Dean would never admit how he felt, not after the first one or two messages, the one admittance of Kinda miss you, Sam, that had made him feel terrible for a whole day because he didn't dare call back, didn't want to admit even to himself that he missed Dean, too. That would be weakness, it'd be a concession he couldn't make. Wouldn't make.
His dorm room is simple, and he's proud of it in a way he thinks is probably not the sign of a healthy psyche. It's plainness is appreciated, no ugly prints on the walls or hideous carpets or things stuck on the underside of the desk. Just him and his things, the things he had bought for the room, armed with a list the school's residence advisor had given him and one of the credit cards he's fully intending on cutting into pieces as soon as he finds a job. He knows Dean would laugh at him, at his simple plain room on the third floor of a Stanford dormitory, the modest beginnings of what he hopes will soon begin to resemble a life. He knows that Dean would never understand the necessity of stupid mundane things they had never needed to buy, like bedsheets and bath towels. If he was there-- but he isn't, and Sam reminds himself of that, sharp in his own head.
Dean's not going to see his dorm. For that matter, neither is Dad, but that's expected from the start. Sam knows that he needs this - it's what he wants, right now all he needs. And if he picks up the phone, if he talks to his brother, he'll be out of there sooner than he ever was in, and he can't do that anymore.
So he learns not to answer the phone, and he learns to delete the messages, and he stays in the quietness of his plain little room and tells himself that he has no regrets.
Series: Holding Fire
Author: Ry (curseangel / dreamsforlease)
Rating: PG-13
Characters/Pairings: Sam Winchester, Dean Winchester; John Winchester is mentioned.
Summary: A series of short!fics based around Sam's time in college, and it's effects, mostly on his brother and their relationship. Inspired by the Heather Nova song "A Way to Live". This chapter: Sam is learning, and it's breaking his heart seven different ways.
It's been a week already, and he doesn't realize it until he's already woken up and gotten dressed, and he checks his cell for messages and finds two calls already logged. He knows who they're from and deletes the messages without listening to them. Part of him wants to hear them, but he doesn't want to risk the inevitable guilt. It's been a week, and he's got his own dorm room now, and he's on his own, and he's just learning to ignore the phone. To not pick it up and stare at it whenever he gets a call from him. He listened to the first few messages left, but he can't anymore, cutting himself off from his own guilt over the tone of Dean's voice, his subtle and less-than-subtle pleas for him to come back already.
Come home, Dean had said in one of the first messages, and Sam had snapped at the phone that they didn't have a home, that he had to find his own home now. He hadn't even been talking to Dean, just to the ghost of him on the machine, but it still made him feel ashamed of himself, imagining his brother's flinch at the words, the inevitable, "Sammy," sounding just like the one in the message. Come on home, Sammy, Dad's going out of his mind. Of course Dean would never admit how he felt, not after the first one or two messages, the one admittance of Kinda miss you, Sam, that had made him feel terrible for a whole day because he didn't dare call back, didn't want to admit even to himself that he missed Dean, too. That would be weakness, it'd be a concession he couldn't make. Wouldn't make.
His dorm room is simple, and he's proud of it in a way he thinks is probably not the sign of a healthy psyche. It's plainness is appreciated, no ugly prints on the walls or hideous carpets or things stuck on the underside of the desk. Just him and his things, the things he had bought for the room, armed with a list the school's residence advisor had given him and one of the credit cards he's fully intending on cutting into pieces as soon as he finds a job. He knows Dean would laugh at him, at his simple plain room on the third floor of a Stanford dormitory, the modest beginnings of what he hopes will soon begin to resemble a life. He knows that Dean would never understand the necessity of stupid mundane things they had never needed to buy, like bedsheets and bath towels. If he was there-- but he isn't, and Sam reminds himself of that, sharp in his own head.
Dean's not going to see his dorm. For that matter, neither is Dad, but that's expected from the start. Sam knows that he needs this - it's what he wants, right now all he needs. And if he picks up the phone, if he talks to his brother, he'll be out of there sooner than he ever was in, and he can't do that anymore.
So he learns not to answer the phone, and he learns to delete the messages, and he stays in the quietness of his plain little room and tells himself that he has no regrets.