[supernatural fic]: choking [sam, dean] [R]
[mood| 
busy]
Title: Choking
Author: Lago Lindari
Fandom: Supernatural
Characters: Sam, Dean, mentions of Castiel and Amy. Can be read as Wincest.
Rating: R for gore
Summary: Dean crawled to the table, head spinning, and drank himself stupid with whiskey, drank until he passed out on the floor, because Sammy, oh God, oh fuck, Sammy.
Note: coda of sorts to 7x05, Hello dr. Phil.
Dean Winchester has nightmares.
They come every time he shuts his eyes, even in the lightest sleep, the briefest nap. Because it’s all there, simmering inside his skull like water that just won’t stop boiling, and as soon as he relinquishes control of his thoughts, it takes over.
He sees the body that once belonged to Jimmy Novak, ravaged from the inside out, leaking viscous black blood, dissolving in a lake [Dean never stopped feeling guilty for Jimmy Novak, every time he looked at Castiel, never stopped remembering that those eyes, that face, those hands, belonged to a man named Jimmy Novak that he never had a chance to get to know - never stopped wanting to ask Castiel about that man, if they talked in that head, roommates in one weak body, what Jimmy said, how he felt. And when he dreams, he sometimes hears Jimmy’s voice, crying for help, asking why they wouldn’t just give him his life back].
He sees Sam standing in an empty warehouse shouting at his own nightmares, shooting at them [because Sam’s nightmares have learnt how to crawl out of his head and torture him when he’s awake as well, and Dean is left even more powerless than he’s always been, because he can’t even shake his brother awake - and when he sees him shudder at night, sees his eyelids tremble and the sweat breaking out on his skin, Dean sits on his bed, paralyzed, torn between the instinct to wake him and the fear that worse monsters might be waiting for Sam once he’s awake] and there’s a terrified, panicked light in Sam’s eyes because what if they're real, what if he's back there, in there, down there and Dean can’t beathe when Sam’s frozen in full-body terror, when he thinks he might still be in hell - can’t think about what they might have done to him there, just can’t.
And often, after that Dean wakes up - he wakes up reeling, a last glimpse of wide unnatural eyes tearing across his brain, the memory of a blade sinking in a woman’s stomach so easily [it went in so easy, Dean barely had to make an effort at all, it just slipped right in and cut the life out of her, and she wasn’t a woman, he tells himself, she was a monster, a monster, a monster, over and over again] and reaches for the nearest bottle, his stomach still sick from the day before - at least when he’s on his knees by the toilet retching his fucking insides up, head spinning so hard that if he closes his eyes he stumbles and falls in endless swirls of black, drowning in nausea, at least he doesn’t remember how to think.
And then, sometimes, Dean doesn’t wake up.
Somehow, he clings to the thin film of sleep through it all, teetering just below the threshold of consciousness, and sinks in deeper. Those times, it's the things buried at the very bottom of his skull that come to life, like corpses clawing out of their graves, like monsters crawling out of a lake, smearing blackness - the ones he can’t think about, won’t think about, the ones he never thinks about, because if he did he’d replace the bottle between his lips with the muzzle of his gun. The nightmares crawl slowly toward him, one tentacle at a time, because Dean is trapped now, and he cannot escape.
Dean sees his brother, standing in a grey motel room, his back turned to Dean. His skin is mangled and burned, twisted in deep red lesions, darkening to black where the flames consumed the muscle, digging into Sam’s flesh. The skin is torn, flayed open, hanging in tatters down his back, blackened and dead to reveal the shredded muscles underneath. Blood gleams everywhere, sluggish where it poured down past the waistband of Sam’s jeans, soaking the fabric, near black stains. His skin is torn apart, ripped open, ripped off him - Sam shifts and Dean gags when he glimpses the dirty white bone of his scapula under the ravaged flesh. Sam moves and the ruined muscle tears, vomiting a viscous gob of blood, thick and dark, and Dean knows what dead blood looks like, and he wants to scream Sam’s name but it gets caught in his throat, suffocating him, or maybe he can’t hear himself over the roaring blood in his ears. His hands are shaking so hard it makes his arms ache.
Sam’s hair is alwats a little too long and falls in stupid soft curls over his neck, always has, ever since he was a child. The stupid curls are dark and stiff with dried blood, because is neck is burned, red so dark it’s almost black, like the rest of his back - Dean thinks he can see the white of his spine and wants to collapse to his knees, wants to rip his own lungs out because he can’t fucking breathe, is shaking so hard because he remembers that one of Alistair’s favourite tricks was to rip out the vertebrae one by one from his victim’s neck and squash the spinal cord with his bare hands and Dean had learned that trick well - and in that moment he looks down and he’s surrounded by small, yellowed bones, and his hands are bloody, blood is spattered all the way to his elbows, blood smears the old carpet and coats the dozen vertebraes at his feet, and when he lifts his eyes again Sam’s back has a gaping, bleeding void torn right in the middle, and his fucking spine is gone, and Dean sees the ragged edges of his ribs poke out from the mangled, torn flesh. And then Sam collapses like a broken soul and Dean is screaming, screaming, and he wakes up choking, clothes plastered to his skin, and for a frantic, wild moment he thinks he’s drenched in blood, he knows what that feels like, drenched in Sam’s blood, and it’s only seeing the shape of his brother in the nearby bed that prevents him from screaming again.
Those times he doesn’t even reach for the bottle, too busy holding his hands still, still so he won’t reach for the knife under his pillow, the gun in the drawer, and he just looks at Sam - his chest rising and falling as he breathes, each minute movement he makes in his sleep, and it’s all his can do not to rip the blankets off him to make sure there is no blood, make sure his back is intact, white and whole, bones safely hidden under muscle and skin. He doesn’t want to know what could happen if he woke up and Sam wasn’t there, out buying breakfast or whatever, because he needs to see Sam alive and whole, right away, right away, if he is to remain sane.
In the nightmare, Sam turned toward him once. Only once. He was staring at Dean and one of his eyes had been ripped out, and his face was burning, slowly, flames licking the skin, tearing it apart, and Dean couldn’t fucking move and had to watch as Sam was consumed by the flames, screaming in agony, flesh turning to a mangled mess before darkening to coal, the smell of burning flesh making Dean choke and gag. His brother lifted his head one last time, looked at Dean even though his eye was fucking boiling, help me, help me, Dean, please-
- and Dean woke and threw up right there, hunched over the side of the bed, gasping, his mouth acid with whiskey and his eyes tearing up, his mind alight with flames and muscle burning like paper in the darkness of the room. Sam was fast asleep and he barely shifted at the noise, and Dean crawled to the table, head spinning, and drank himself stupid with whiskey, drank until he passed out on the floor, because Sammy, oh God, oh fuck, Sammy. And when he woke up again it was to Sam’s kind, concerned face and his gentle voice as he tried to talk to Dean, tried to reach out to him, worry plain on his face, and Dean wanted to yell and destroy things and laugh and laugh and right that moment he thought, I’m going insane, and, I don’t think I can survive this in one limpid moment of clarity.
Dean Winchester has nightmares, and he spends every waking hour trying not to look at his brother, because every time he does he can feel the heat of the flames at the back of his head, can feel the stink of burned flesh fill his lungs, and at the same time he wants to cling to Sam and never, ever let go.
Dean is choking, all the time - he cannot breathe, so he drinks instead.
.
busy]
Title: Choking
Author: Lago Lindari
Fandom: Supernatural
Characters: Sam, Dean, mentions of Castiel and Amy. Can be read as Wincest.
Rating: R for gore
Summary: Dean crawled to the table, head spinning, and drank himself stupid with whiskey, drank until he passed out on the floor, because Sammy, oh God, oh fuck, Sammy.
Note: coda of sorts to 7x05, Hello dr. Phil.
Dean Winchester has nightmares.
They come every time he shuts his eyes, even in the lightest sleep, the briefest nap. Because it’s all there, simmering inside his skull like water that just won’t stop boiling, and as soon as he relinquishes control of his thoughts, it takes over.
He sees the body that once belonged to Jimmy Novak, ravaged from the inside out, leaking viscous black blood, dissolving in a lake [Dean never stopped feeling guilty for Jimmy Novak, every time he looked at Castiel, never stopped remembering that those eyes, that face, those hands, belonged to a man named Jimmy Novak that he never had a chance to get to know - never stopped wanting to ask Castiel about that man, if they talked in that head, roommates in one weak body, what Jimmy said, how he felt. And when he dreams, he sometimes hears Jimmy’s voice, crying for help, asking why they wouldn’t just give him his life back].
He sees Sam standing in an empty warehouse shouting at his own nightmares, shooting at them [because Sam’s nightmares have learnt how to crawl out of his head and torture him when he’s awake as well, and Dean is left even more powerless than he’s always been, because he can’t even shake his brother awake - and when he sees him shudder at night, sees his eyelids tremble and the sweat breaking out on his skin, Dean sits on his bed, paralyzed, torn between the instinct to wake him and the fear that worse monsters might be waiting for Sam once he’s awake] and there’s a terrified, panicked light in Sam’s eyes because what if they're real, what if he's back there, in there, down there and Dean can’t beathe when Sam’s frozen in full-body terror, when he thinks he might still be in hell - can’t think about what they might have done to him there, just can’t.
And often, after that Dean wakes up - he wakes up reeling, a last glimpse of wide unnatural eyes tearing across his brain, the memory of a blade sinking in a woman’s stomach so easily [it went in so easy, Dean barely had to make an effort at all, it just slipped right in and cut the life out of her, and she wasn’t a woman, he tells himself, she was a monster, a monster, a monster, over and over again] and reaches for the nearest bottle, his stomach still sick from the day before - at least when he’s on his knees by the toilet retching his fucking insides up, head spinning so hard that if he closes his eyes he stumbles and falls in endless swirls of black, drowning in nausea, at least he doesn’t remember how to think.
And then, sometimes, Dean doesn’t wake up.
Somehow, he clings to the thin film of sleep through it all, teetering just below the threshold of consciousness, and sinks in deeper. Those times, it's the things buried at the very bottom of his skull that come to life, like corpses clawing out of their graves, like monsters crawling out of a lake, smearing blackness - the ones he can’t think about, won’t think about, the ones he never thinks about, because if he did he’d replace the bottle between his lips with the muzzle of his gun. The nightmares crawl slowly toward him, one tentacle at a time, because Dean is trapped now, and he cannot escape.
Dean sees his brother, standing in a grey motel room, his back turned to Dean. His skin is mangled and burned, twisted in deep red lesions, darkening to black where the flames consumed the muscle, digging into Sam’s flesh. The skin is torn, flayed open, hanging in tatters down his back, blackened and dead to reveal the shredded muscles underneath. Blood gleams everywhere, sluggish where it poured down past the waistband of Sam’s jeans, soaking the fabric, near black stains. His skin is torn apart, ripped open, ripped off him - Sam shifts and Dean gags when he glimpses the dirty white bone of his scapula under the ravaged flesh. Sam moves and the ruined muscle tears, vomiting a viscous gob of blood, thick and dark, and Dean knows what dead blood looks like, and he wants to scream Sam’s name but it gets caught in his throat, suffocating him, or maybe he can’t hear himself over the roaring blood in his ears. His hands are shaking so hard it makes his arms ache.
Sam’s hair is alwats a little too long and falls in stupid soft curls over his neck, always has, ever since he was a child. The stupid curls are dark and stiff with dried blood, because is neck is burned, red so dark it’s almost black, like the rest of his back - Dean thinks he can see the white of his spine and wants to collapse to his knees, wants to rip his own lungs out because he can’t fucking breathe, is shaking so hard because he remembers that one of Alistair’s favourite tricks was to rip out the vertebrae one by one from his victim’s neck and squash the spinal cord with his bare hands and Dean had learned that trick well - and in that moment he looks down and he’s surrounded by small, yellowed bones, and his hands are bloody, blood is spattered all the way to his elbows, blood smears the old carpet and coats the dozen vertebraes at his feet, and when he lifts his eyes again Sam’s back has a gaping, bleeding void torn right in the middle, and his fucking spine is gone, and Dean sees the ragged edges of his ribs poke out from the mangled, torn flesh. And then Sam collapses like a broken soul and Dean is screaming, screaming, and he wakes up choking, clothes plastered to his skin, and for a frantic, wild moment he thinks he’s drenched in blood, he knows what that feels like, drenched in Sam’s blood, and it’s only seeing the shape of his brother in the nearby bed that prevents him from screaming again.
Those times he doesn’t even reach for the bottle, too busy holding his hands still, still so he won’t reach for the knife under his pillow, the gun in the drawer, and he just looks at Sam - his chest rising and falling as he breathes, each minute movement he makes in his sleep, and it’s all his can do not to rip the blankets off him to make sure there is no blood, make sure his back is intact, white and whole, bones safely hidden under muscle and skin. He doesn’t want to know what could happen if he woke up and Sam wasn’t there, out buying breakfast or whatever, because he needs to see Sam alive and whole, right away, right away, if he is to remain sane.
In the nightmare, Sam turned toward him once. Only once. He was staring at Dean and one of his eyes had been ripped out, and his face was burning, slowly, flames licking the skin, tearing it apart, and Dean couldn’t fucking move and had to watch as Sam was consumed by the flames, screaming in agony, flesh turning to a mangled mess before darkening to coal, the smell of burning flesh making Dean choke and gag. His brother lifted his head one last time, looked at Dean even though his eye was fucking boiling, help me, help me, Dean, please-
- and Dean woke and threw up right there, hunched over the side of the bed, gasping, his mouth acid with whiskey and his eyes tearing up, his mind alight with flames and muscle burning like paper in the darkness of the room. Sam was fast asleep and he barely shifted at the noise, and Dean crawled to the table, head spinning, and drank himself stupid with whiskey, drank until he passed out on the floor, because Sammy, oh God, oh fuck, Sammy. And when he woke up again it was to Sam’s kind, concerned face and his gentle voice as he tried to talk to Dean, tried to reach out to him, worry plain on his face, and Dean wanted to yell and destroy things and laugh and laugh and right that moment he thought, I’m going insane, and, I don’t think I can survive this in one limpid moment of clarity.
Dean Winchester has nightmares, and he spends every waking hour trying not to look at his brother, because every time he does he can feel the heat of the flames at the back of his head, can feel the stink of burned flesh fill his lungs, and at the same time he wants to cling to Sam and never, ever let go.
Dean is choking, all the time - he cannot breathe, so he drinks instead.
.