Not that meme
So the WiP meme is going around, but at the moment I have no WiPs. So I thought I’d take this as an opportunity to post snippets of unfinished (and likely to remain unfinished) fics.
I dunno though, I figure if people see one they really want me to finish, I might make an effort. Or just write that follow-up to the Henriksen fic I keep putting off.
1. Gristle and Bone
By the time I hit Missoula, the hunters were already there.
Ruthie was in a panic-or at least she had been when I talked to her from the road, whimpering breathlessly into the phone.
2. Untitled wing!fic
Everybody knows. Everybody. That’s what they say, he tells Bobby, but Bobby’s too busy hauling him to his feet and into the house. Bobby isn’t listening.
But that’s what they say.
“Listen,” he tries grabbing at the older man long fingers tangling in worn jacket, seams and buttons and zippers, “Listen, it’ll be me soon, okay, you’ve got to-you have to-” But Bobby’s not listening and he’s shoved him down on the sofa and Sam gasps when his knees pop, sudden and open. His eyes feel too wide. He stares into the corners at the dust and licks his lips.
Bobby comes back with water and Sam shakes his head, sharply, says, “No, keep it dry. It should be dry. You didn’t see what happened. You didn’t see, Bobby.”
3. ?????
The sound of feet crunching glass was enough to get Dean moving again. He couldn’t hold onto his arm and his brother at the same time, so he let it flop loose as he hauled Sammy up and half-dragged him down the stairs and out the door. Dust on the piano, and spider webs.
“Sam, c’mon!” he whispered hoarsely, “I’m gonna need your help on this!”
His brother muttered and twisted in Dean’s grasp, and he hissed and let go, clutching again at his arm, at the cold wetness soaking the sleeve. Blood didn’t radiate warmth.
“Sam, we don’t have-“
Small strong fingers clutched at him, at the front of his jacket, the folds of his shirt. Dug into his skin like iron. Sam’s eyes rolled around before fixing on Dean’s face.
“You got-“ he began, thickly. “Dean?”
“Come on. Walk with me, Sam.” He grabbed at the boy, again, ignoring the pain in his arm, and pulled him stumbling along the street.
“God, my head…”
“Shush!”
4. Grey
After, when everything was dry again and the sky had turned into a kind of soupy grey mess, they stood down by the headstones and threw peanut shells at the fence posts. Sam was the one eating most of the peanuts; Dean just collected the shells and tried and failed repeatedly to get them to stay on top of the flat wooden posts.
“I’ve never seen you eat that many peanuts,” he said, and Sam shrugged, cracking a shell in half with huge, deft fingers.
“They were free,” was all he said by way of explanation, and that seemed to be that.
The sun lurked behind the grainy, lumpy clouds like the bastard that it was, but even so the waning of the day was something Dean could feel on his skin. The breeze belly-crawled across the dry grass and lifted the leaves, sent them skittering into markers and lodging them in bunches of plastic flowers. Tree branches rattled, and in the very far distance a thin noise, like a voice left too long in the rain, spiraled upward, hung in the air, then dissipated.
Dean turned the hollow shell between his fingers over, and over again, and stared at the treeline, at the shadows huddled under the branches’ shelter.
“Monsters in the forest, huh?” he said.
5. Tribe
So there’s this thing about the wings. That Sam was trying to explain for about an hour before John just threw his hands up in the air and said tohellwithit, and stomped off to the other side of the house and left Sam standing in the Devil’s Trap room.
“The wings are a metaphor!” he shouted after his father.
Sam glared, then looked over at Bobby’s skull, polished and grinning at him, managing to convey an aura of well-worn, if affectionate, disapproval despite the current absence of its owner’s spirit.
“You’re no help,” Sam muttered.
He didn’t want to go on standing alone in the creepy room waiting for either his father to get over his metaphysical hissy-fit, or Bobby to return from wherever he’d been wandering for the last eight days, so Sam took himself out onto the back porch and stood with his arms folded, watching the burning clouds roll around the sky. The air was dry and the sun rained down from behind the house, painting the dusty yard in radioactive brilliance.
When John came up behind him he said, “They’re coming here and you know it. Bobby arranged this whole thing just because of him.”
John said, “It wasn’t supposed to be this way. I never meant…”
Sam pressed his lips together. He knew what his father was avoiding, what he couldn’t bring himself to say.
“He won’t be the same,” he told John.
It wouldn’t be like Bobby, at all. That was sort of the whole point, really. Bobby had never actually died, except in a very technical sense. He’d gotten a deal, really. Managed to keep his connection to his physical body, even in a pretty macabre way.
6. Freefall
He’s picking slivers of glass out the bottoms of his feet with the tweezers from his bathroom kit. He’s been doing it for a while.
Every time the metal prongs close around another thin flake, the skin at the back of his neck tightens in anticipation. It should hurt.
He pulls, and blood wells and spatters in droplets on the white tile. And there’s pain, he thinks. Or there was. But it’s already gone. He missed it.
He’ll do better next time.
--
“Shh,” Sam says, and Dean rounds on him, snarling. Not meaning to, it just foams out of his throat, puddles from his mouth. He can’t control it and he’s going to hurt somebody and even
Sam sees it, rocks back a step, eyes widening. Alarm. His brother takes a sharp breath, eyes bright. Glossy and clear.
“Don’t you -tell me what to do,” Dean spits. They were doing something. What were they doing? Standing at the window, talking about something. His head is…there’s a gap, a hole, he can’t see around it. A thin, high-pitched, relentless noise that he can’t hear. But it’s there, obscuring everything.
You’re not my brother, he thinks, and wonders why.
“We can stay,” Sam’s saying. “For a few days. A little while.”
Stopping and staying. Seasick on land. He makes brief fists, shakes his head. Adrenaline floods his mouth.
7. Having a Wonderful Time
Jack’s still a little uneasy about the therapist.
He knows there’s nothing wrong with it. On a cerebral level, at least, he gets that going to a therapist doesn’t make him weak, or less of a man, or whatever. Leslie’s said more than once that it would be stupid not to use whatever tools are available to deal with the things life throws at you. He knows it’s nothing to feel shame over. Consciously, he knows.
So maybe it’s in his nature, or whatever. This feeling of unease. The sense that he’s failed, somehow, by even putting himself in this position in the first place. It’s been four months and he still fidgets, still sits on the very edge of the comfy sofa, still has to struggle to make himself meet her eyes. And that’s another thing-his therapist is a woman. Sure, she’s middle aged and wears glasses instead of contacts and sits in her chair with her arms folded across her belly and an attitude of total awareness in every inch of her body, but that doesn’t change the fact that he, Jack [ ], is seeing a female therapist because of a bunch of things that he refuses to accept are symptoms of PTSD.
(NOTE: ACTUALLY THERE ARE 740 WORDS OF THIS AND I TOTALLY FORGOT ABOUT IT AND SHOULD PROBABLY FINISH IT OR SOMETHING I GUESS MAYBE)
I dunno though, I figure if people see one they really want me to finish, I might make an effort. Or just write that follow-up to the Henriksen fic I keep putting off.
1. Gristle and Bone
By the time I hit Missoula, the hunters were already there.
Ruthie was in a panic-or at least she had been when I talked to her from the road, whimpering breathlessly into the phone.
2. Untitled wing!fic
Everybody knows. Everybody. That’s what they say, he tells Bobby, but Bobby’s too busy hauling him to his feet and into the house. Bobby isn’t listening.
But that’s what they say.
“Listen,” he tries grabbing at the older man long fingers tangling in worn jacket, seams and buttons and zippers, “Listen, it’ll be me soon, okay, you’ve got to-you have to-” But Bobby’s not listening and he’s shoved him down on the sofa and Sam gasps when his knees pop, sudden and open. His eyes feel too wide. He stares into the corners at the dust and licks his lips.
Bobby comes back with water and Sam shakes his head, sharply, says, “No, keep it dry. It should be dry. You didn’t see what happened. You didn’t see, Bobby.”
3. ?????
The sound of feet crunching glass was enough to get Dean moving again. He couldn’t hold onto his arm and his brother at the same time, so he let it flop loose as he hauled Sammy up and half-dragged him down the stairs and out the door. Dust on the piano, and spider webs.
“Sam, c’mon!” he whispered hoarsely, “I’m gonna need your help on this!”
His brother muttered and twisted in Dean’s grasp, and he hissed and let go, clutching again at his arm, at the cold wetness soaking the sleeve. Blood didn’t radiate warmth.
“Sam, we don’t have-“
Small strong fingers clutched at him, at the front of his jacket, the folds of his shirt. Dug into his skin like iron. Sam’s eyes rolled around before fixing on Dean’s face.
“You got-“ he began, thickly. “Dean?”
“Come on. Walk with me, Sam.” He grabbed at the boy, again, ignoring the pain in his arm, and pulled him stumbling along the street.
“God, my head…”
“Shush!”
4. Grey
After, when everything was dry again and the sky had turned into a kind of soupy grey mess, they stood down by the headstones and threw peanut shells at the fence posts. Sam was the one eating most of the peanuts; Dean just collected the shells and tried and failed repeatedly to get them to stay on top of the flat wooden posts.
“I’ve never seen you eat that many peanuts,” he said, and Sam shrugged, cracking a shell in half with huge, deft fingers.
“They were free,” was all he said by way of explanation, and that seemed to be that.
The sun lurked behind the grainy, lumpy clouds like the bastard that it was, but even so the waning of the day was something Dean could feel on his skin. The breeze belly-crawled across the dry grass and lifted the leaves, sent them skittering into markers and lodging them in bunches of plastic flowers. Tree branches rattled, and in the very far distance a thin noise, like a voice left too long in the rain, spiraled upward, hung in the air, then dissipated.
Dean turned the hollow shell between his fingers over, and over again, and stared at the treeline, at the shadows huddled under the branches’ shelter.
“Monsters in the forest, huh?” he said.
5. Tribe
So there’s this thing about the wings. That Sam was trying to explain for about an hour before John just threw his hands up in the air and said tohellwithit, and stomped off to the other side of the house and left Sam standing in the Devil’s Trap room.
“The wings are a metaphor!” he shouted after his father.
Sam glared, then looked over at Bobby’s skull, polished and grinning at him, managing to convey an aura of well-worn, if affectionate, disapproval despite the current absence of its owner’s spirit.
“You’re no help,” Sam muttered.
He didn’t want to go on standing alone in the creepy room waiting for either his father to get over his metaphysical hissy-fit, or Bobby to return from wherever he’d been wandering for the last eight days, so Sam took himself out onto the back porch and stood with his arms folded, watching the burning clouds roll around the sky. The air was dry and the sun rained down from behind the house, painting the dusty yard in radioactive brilliance.
When John came up behind him he said, “They’re coming here and you know it. Bobby arranged this whole thing just because of him.”
John said, “It wasn’t supposed to be this way. I never meant…”
Sam pressed his lips together. He knew what his father was avoiding, what he couldn’t bring himself to say.
“He won’t be the same,” he told John.
It wouldn’t be like Bobby, at all. That was sort of the whole point, really. Bobby had never actually died, except in a very technical sense. He’d gotten a deal, really. Managed to keep his connection to his physical body, even in a pretty macabre way.
6. Freefall
He’s picking slivers of glass out the bottoms of his feet with the tweezers from his bathroom kit. He’s been doing it for a while.
Every time the metal prongs close around another thin flake, the skin at the back of his neck tightens in anticipation. It should hurt.
He pulls, and blood wells and spatters in droplets on the white tile. And there’s pain, he thinks. Or there was. But it’s already gone. He missed it.
He’ll do better next time.
--
“Shh,” Sam says, and Dean rounds on him, snarling. Not meaning to, it just foams out of his throat, puddles from his mouth. He can’t control it and he’s going to hurt somebody and even
Sam sees it, rocks back a step, eyes widening. Alarm. His brother takes a sharp breath, eyes bright. Glossy and clear.
“Don’t you -tell me what to do,” Dean spits. They were doing something. What were they doing? Standing at the window, talking about something. His head is…there’s a gap, a hole, he can’t see around it. A thin, high-pitched, relentless noise that he can’t hear. But it’s there, obscuring everything.
You’re not my brother, he thinks, and wonders why.
“We can stay,” Sam’s saying. “For a few days. A little while.”
Stopping and staying. Seasick on land. He makes brief fists, shakes his head. Adrenaline floods his mouth.
7. Having a Wonderful Time
Jack’s still a little uneasy about the therapist.
He knows there’s nothing wrong with it. On a cerebral level, at least, he gets that going to a therapist doesn’t make him weak, or less of a man, or whatever. Leslie’s said more than once that it would be stupid not to use whatever tools are available to deal with the things life throws at you. He knows it’s nothing to feel shame over. Consciously, he knows.
So maybe it’s in his nature, or whatever. This feeling of unease. The sense that he’s failed, somehow, by even putting himself in this position in the first place. It’s been four months and he still fidgets, still sits on the very edge of the comfy sofa, still has to struggle to make himself meet her eyes. And that’s another thing-his therapist is a woman. Sure, she’s middle aged and wears glasses instead of contacts and sits in her chair with her arms folded across her belly and an attitude of total awareness in every inch of her body, but that doesn’t change the fact that he, Jack [ ], is seeing a female therapist because of a bunch of things that he refuses to accept are symptoms of PTSD.
(NOTE: ACTUALLY THERE ARE 740 WORDS OF THIS AND I TOTALLY FORGOT ABOUT IT AND SHOULD PROBABLY FINISH IT OR SOMETHING I GUESS MAYBE)