FILLED: DAYDREAMS YOU HAVE IN HELL 1/4wave_obscuraApril 27 2011, 13:32:58 UTC
Note: SPOILERS FOR SEASON SIX, and takes place in some nebulous future time period.
daydreams you have in hell by wave obscura
It started with an everyday bar fight-- Dean picked the wrong fat schmuck to hustle in a pool game, the kind of guy who couldn’t handle the humiliation of losing a week’s salary in front of his buddies. He started throwing punches, surprisingly fast for a fat guy, managed to knock Dean to the floor before Sam came to the rescue.
There was only one thing to do after a bar fight, if you couldn’t escape before the cops came: act fall down fucking drunk. So drunk the arresting officers took you for some sad bastard who’d drank too much and lost control, instead of a guy who made a living hustling and assaulting local schmucks.
Sam had always been better at it than Dean. He began to cry in the police car, knock his forehead forlornly into the passenger head rest. He fashioned an elaborate story about catching his wife cheating, autistic twin girls, a failed used car business.
“Tha bish blames MEEEEfer the twinsesses c’ndishun!” Sam wailed, and Dean had to pretend to cough into his shoulder to hide his laughter. He loved the kid sometimes, he really did.
“An’ I sheeted on her, too!” Sam added, wiping his snotty nose on the back of the seat.
Dean was pretty sure the story came from an episode of Maury Povich, but it didn’t matter, not with the big fat tears rolling down Sam’s cheeks, his drunken snotting and drooling. It all seemed too real, too pathetic, to be untrue.
Re: FILLED: DAYDREAMS YOU HAVE IN HELL 2/4wave_obscuraApril 27 2011, 13:35:19 UTC
By the time they got to the station the cop was shaking his head. “I’ll convince Junior to drop the assault charge,” he told Dean, because Sam was supposedly incoherently drunk. “You keep your brother out of trouble from now on, ya hear? Tell him his twins need him. Bottle ain’t gonna solve none of his problems.”
The cop had them processed and thrown in the drunk tank together until morning. It wasn’t perfect, but it beat being stuck in separate cells for 24 hours or more.
In the drunk tank, Dean beamed with big-brotherly pride. “Excellent performance, dude. Well done.”
Sam smiled, but it was a smile like something hurt. He crossed his arms and sat down on the bench so close to Dean that their shoulders and knees were touching. A drop of sweat fell from his hairline.
The drunk tank was thankfully fairly empty, just Sam and Dean, some guy sleeping on the floor under the opposite bench, and a young kid spitting bile into the floor drain. A loudly ticking clock hung on the wall outside the cell.
The bile-spitter eyeballed them. “You got any smokes?”
“We don’t smoke,” Dean said.
“Assholes,” the bile-spitter replied.
Dean opened his mouth, closed it again. He felt Sam’s hand around his wrist, trembling. “What’s wrong?” Dean pushed Sam’s hair out of his face. His skin was clammy.
“When are they gonna let us out of here?”
“What’s wrong? That fucking guy hurt you somewhere?”
Sam scrubbed his face and dug two fingers into his temple. He took a long breath, straightened up and looked somewhat normal again. “I just wanna know when we get outta here.”
“Round eight o’clock would be my guess,” Dean said. “Few hours.”
“I don’t wanna be in here.” Sam knocked his knee against Dean’s, swallowed, arched his back. The gesture reminded Dean of all those times-- too many times-- Sam had been injured without proper pain medication. Sitting around all night helpless while his little brother writhed in pain.
He patted Sam down for injury, starting with his belly where he was hugging at himself. Sam let him, but maybe because he wasn’t all there. He had his chin to the ceiling, head rolling slowly from one shoulder to the other. His eyes were just barely open, just enough for tears to leak under his lashes.
“Sam,” Dean demanded, “tell me where you’re hurt.”
“Nowhere you can touch,” Sam muttered, and surprised Dean by smiling. The tears dripped into the corners of his mouth.
And then it wasn’t a smile anymore. Dean didn’t know what to call it, but it was vastly, terrifyingly miserable. Icy despair flooded his insides. “Sam? What...?”
“I’m never gonna get out of here,” Sam said. His eyes rolled to the ceiling, then into his head. One hand reached out at nothing. His chest heaved, too fast, too fast. “Never. Dean. Never.”
Re: FILLED: DAYDREAMS YOU HAVE IN HELL 3/4wave_obscuraApril 27 2011, 13:41:25 UTC
Dean tried to catch his brother’s arm; Sam tugged it away with a whine. It was noise almost from his performance has Sam-the-failed-car-salesmen-with-cheating-wife-and-autistic-twins, and for a fleeting moment Dean thought maybe-- hoped, even, that Sam was playing some kind of fucked up joke.
“What the hell are you talking about? Sammy? Tell me what’s wrong.”
Sam began to shiver. The sweat disappeared from his body and his teeth were clattering.
“What’s wrong with him?” The bile-spitter in the corner said.
“Shut up,” Dean snarled. He ran his hands up and down Sam’s arms. “I need help.” He raised his voice to roar. “I NEED SOME FUCKING HELP IN HERE.”
He shouldn’t be calling for help. They’d want to put Sam in the hospital, his symptoms were unexplainable, they might make Dean stay here in this fucking cell while they rushed Sam off alone.
The cop, the same cop who brought them in, came sauntering into the room. He was obviously used to hysterics. By this time Sam was convulsing with shivers, he had his face in Dean’s shoulder and was muttering into his sleeve. He kept wanting to flail his arms; Dean kept them pinned in his own lap.
“He needs out of this cell,” Dean said to the cop. “Please-- being trapped... he can’t handle...”
Dean trailed off. It was an explanation that made sense to him, of course, but to a cop? Probably the stupidest thing a man ever said to try to get out of jail.
The cop put his face closer to the cell and raised his eyebrows. Off in the corner, the bile-spitter heaved and vomited loudly into the drain. “Your boys gotta a flair for drama, don’t ya? You keep him calm or I’ll have to isolate him.”
He disappeared again. Sam’s lips were turning blue. He skin was cold. His shivering shook Dean to his bones.
“I’d get so cold in the cage, my body was all ice,” Sam whispered. His eyes rolled in his head. “Crumble apart if I moved too quick. Scratch my head? All my fingers would break off. Then my whole hand. They’d laugh, while I crumbled like that. They laughed, I crumbled.”
He freed his shaking hand from Dean’s grip and held it up for Dean to see. “Melting was bloody,” he said, and his face collapsed. “Dean, I need out. I need out. I need out.”
“Shhh,” Dean said. He wrapped himself around Sam. Sam was big but he had a way of disappearing into Dean when he needed to, he would shrink right up. He fit just right against Dean’s chest and stopped shaking just a little bit. “This isn’t the cage, Sammy. You know that. And I got you, okay? Not him. Me. Dean. Okay? Me.”
Sam moved against Dean’s chest in what he guessed was a nod. “Not as cold as I feel.”
“No. Just a little while, Sam, and we’re free, okay? Just a little while.”
Dean held his brother, and tried not to think about what he said. The cold. Body turned to ice, crumbling. Probably while Michael and Lucifer stood over him, laughed at his fear. Dean knew better than anybody that being in agony was one thing-- having it mocked, having someone reduce your fear to a game-- that was entirely different. Entirely more terrible.
Beneath him Sam jumped. He fought his way out of Dean’s grip. His eyes were wild, but tired. “I feel like it’s gonna happen again.”
“What?” Dean said, but he already knew. A seizure. A hell memory. Minutes like weeks.
“No. No no no... look at the clock,” Dean took his brother by the jaw, maybe less gently than he should have, and point his face to the clock outside the cell. “Watch the second hand. It’ll keep moving. And then we’ll be free, okay? Just a little while, Sam. You can hold on.”
Sam laid against Dean once more, kept his sagging eyes on the clock. “I need out, Dean,” he whispered.
“I know. I know, and we’re gonna. Just a little while.”
Re: FILLED: DAYDREAMS YOU HAVE IN HELL 4/5wave_obscuraApril 27 2011, 13:43:00 UTC
They watched the clock. Dean counted the seconds. Sam shivered until his muscles jumped and spasmed with fatigue. Dean burned with rage. If that fucking cop-- any of these fucking cops knew what Sam had done for them, for all of them, if they’d ever experienced the sound of laughter mixed with indescribable pain, watched in abject horror as their own flesh rotted away from their bones--
“HEY,” Dean called. He rested a hand over Sam’s ear. “OFFICER FRIENDLY!”
The cop came back, blank-faced, chewing on a ballpoint pen. He wasn’t a bad guy, Dean could tell. Just bored with an endless parade of drunks. He looked at Dean with fatigue, and Dean looked at him with desperation.
He had no plan. He stared at the cop, Sam shivered against him, and he had no plan to get out.
“He went to hell for you,” Dean found himself saying. He sounded insane. He knew he sounded insane, but he kept talking, “He burned, froze, bled in hell for a hundred years.”
The cop sighed, rubbed the back of his neck. “Are we gonna have a problem?”
Dean tried several scenarios in his head. He could lure the cop closer to the bars, break his fingers or knock him out. He could try to convince the cop that Sam was having a medical emergency and needed an ambulance, break the EMT’s fingers and knock him out. He could threaten to kill the bile-spitter unless the cop let them free.
But there would only be more cops, more guns, more cages.
“No,” Dean said, “We don’t have a problem.”
The cop looked relieved. He gave them one last suspicious glance, then turned and left.
Dean pulled Sam a little closer. “Just a little while longer, buddy, alright?”
Sam moved so his face was buried in Dean’s neck. His breath was cold. His fingers clutched painfully at Dean’s bicep.
“Lucifer was good to me for a while,” he whispered. “Almost twenty years. He held me too. He said the punishment was over. He said it was over and when I finally relaxed... I almost believed him, Dean. And then he ripped me open. He made me slurp the bile out of my intestines. I know the flavor of my own guts.”
“So do I. Don’t. Sammy. Please.”
For so long Dean had wanted Sam to talk about it. But he couldn’t handle it, he knew that now. Because in the back of his throat he could still taste his own insides. It would taint anything he put in his mouth for the rest of his life.
Re: FILLED: DAYDREAMS YOU HAVE IN HELL 5/5wave_obscuraApril 27 2011, 13:43:52 UTC
“You’re okay, Sammy. And I’m okay. And tomorrow morning we’re gonna walk and then no more cages, okay? Ever.”
Sam took a rattling breath. He was trying hard to hold on. “Don’t let me pass out, Dean. I’ll go there.”
“I’m not gonna let you pass out.”
“How much longer?”
“Just a little while. It’s okay. We’re okay. You’re with me, Sammy. Not him. Not him. You’re with me. We just got in a bar fight, and you were awesome, Sam, you totally saved my ass, and that performance you gave that cop? That was--”
That was it.
“Tell me about your made up wife, Sammy,” Dean said, his heart pounding with hope. “Tell me about your cheating, made up wife.”
He thought maybe he saw Sam smile. “She cheated on me.”
“What else? Come on, Sam. What else?”
“She has a blond perm. I hate it. I think she did it for her boyfriend.”
“Who’s her boyfriend?”
This time Sam definitely smiled. “My brother. My no good brother.”
“Really? Come on, man--”
“--not you. You’re my good brother. His name is Dave. He’s a total dick.”
“Tell me more about Dave.”
And on and on they went. Sam met his wife at a farmer’s market one fateful spring afternoon. There was a cloud burst and she offered to share her umbrella. It was love at first sight. She adored football and he was a fanatic. They dressed like Lois and Clark for Halloween.
But everything changed when the twins were born. She didn’t want to believe they had a condition. She didn’t want to believe they were anything less than perfect.
“I told her,” Sam said sleepily, his forehead still pressed against Dean’s neck, “I told her ‘they are perfect.’ But they also need help.’”
It destroyed their marriage. She slept with his brother. He slept with a woman he met in a support group.
By the time the jail cell gate clattered open, Sam was closing down his car lot and declaring bankruptcy. Dean looked at the hanging clock. They had made it. He couldn’t fucking believe they made it.
He helped Sam stand. He was white like death and his knees were shaking. He regarded the bars of the cell like they might eat him alive. Dean kept an arm around his back.
“You did awesome,” he told Sam. “I don’t know where you come up with this shit.”
Sam looked very, very tired. But he smiled. “Embarrassing, what you daydream about in hell. The more mundane, the more cliche, the better.”
Dean nodded. “Dude. You don’t even want to know what I daydreamed about in hell.”
They stepped out into the sun. Sam sighed with vast relief, and Dean sighed, too. They just stood. Dean had a million things he wanted to say, didn’t want to say, didn’t want to think about.
“Maybe we’ll stay outta jail for a while, huh?” he said to Sam.
Sam laughed, or maybe burst into tears, Dean couldn’t tell which.
Re: FILLED: DAYDREAMS YOU HAVE IN HELL 5/54thejourneyApril 30 2011, 00:22:33 UTC
I loved this! Even though you almost broue my heart! T_T Especially with the second to last line.
I loved this line: "I told her they are perfect. But they also need help." I don't know if you meant it that way, but it almost feels like it has a double meaning to it, like Sam's relating to them or something. IDK, it just crossed my mind.
daydreams you have in hell
by wave obscura
It started with an everyday bar fight-- Dean picked the wrong fat schmuck to hustle in a pool game, the kind of guy who couldn’t handle the humiliation of losing a week’s salary in front of his buddies. He started throwing punches, surprisingly fast for a fat guy, managed to knock Dean to the floor before Sam came to the rescue.
There was only one thing to do after a bar fight, if you couldn’t escape before the cops came: act fall down fucking drunk. So drunk the arresting officers took you for some sad bastard who’d drank too much and lost control, instead of a guy who made a living hustling and assaulting local schmucks.
Sam had always been better at it than Dean. He began to cry in the police car, knock his forehead forlornly into the passenger head rest. He fashioned an elaborate story about catching his wife cheating, autistic twin girls, a failed used car business.
“Tha bish blames MEEEEfer the twinsesses c’ndishun!” Sam wailed, and Dean had to pretend to cough into his shoulder to hide his laughter. He loved the kid sometimes, he really did.
“An’ I sheeted on her, too!” Sam added, wiping his snotty nose on the back of the seat.
Dean was pretty sure the story came from an episode of Maury Povich, but it didn’t matter, not with the big fat tears rolling down Sam’s cheeks, his drunken snotting and drooling. It all seemed too real, too pathetic, to be untrue.
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The cop had them processed and thrown in the drunk tank together until morning. It wasn’t perfect, but it beat being stuck in separate cells for 24 hours or more.
In the drunk tank, Dean beamed with big-brotherly pride. “Excellent performance, dude. Well done.”
Sam smiled, but it was a smile like something hurt. He crossed his arms and sat down on the bench so close to Dean that their shoulders and knees were touching. A drop of sweat fell from his hairline.
The drunk tank was thankfully fairly empty, just Sam and Dean, some guy sleeping on the floor under the opposite bench, and a young kid spitting bile into the floor drain. A loudly ticking clock hung on the wall outside the cell.
The bile-spitter eyeballed them. “You got any smokes?”
“We don’t smoke,” Dean said.
“Assholes,” the bile-spitter replied.
Dean opened his mouth, closed it again. He felt Sam’s hand around his wrist, trembling. “What’s wrong?” Dean pushed Sam’s hair out of his face. His skin was clammy.
“When are they gonna let us out of here?”
“What’s wrong? That fucking guy hurt you somewhere?”
Sam scrubbed his face and dug two fingers into his temple. He took a long breath, straightened up and looked somewhat normal again. “I just wanna know when we get outta here.”
“Round eight o’clock would be my guess,” Dean said. “Few hours.”
“I don’t wanna be in here.” Sam knocked his knee against Dean’s, swallowed, arched his back. The gesture reminded Dean of all those times-- too many times-- Sam had been injured without proper pain medication. Sitting around all night helpless while his little brother writhed in pain.
He patted Sam down for injury, starting with his belly where he was hugging at himself. Sam let him, but maybe because he wasn’t all there. He had his chin to the ceiling, head rolling slowly from one shoulder to the other. His eyes were just barely open, just enough for tears to leak under his lashes.
“Sam,” Dean demanded, “tell me where you’re hurt.”
“Nowhere you can touch,” Sam muttered, and surprised Dean by smiling. The tears dripped into the corners of his mouth.
And then it wasn’t a smile anymore. Dean didn’t know what to call it, but it was vastly, terrifyingly miserable. Icy despair flooded his insides. “Sam? What...?”
“I’m never gonna get out of here,” Sam said. His eyes rolled to the ceiling, then into his head. One hand reached out at nothing. His chest heaved, too fast, too fast. “Never. Dean. Never.”
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“What the hell are you talking about? Sammy? Tell me what’s wrong.”
Sam began to shiver. The sweat disappeared from his body and his teeth were clattering.
“What’s wrong with him?” The bile-spitter in the corner said.
“Shut up,” Dean snarled. He ran his hands up and down Sam’s arms. “I need help.” He raised his voice to roar. “I NEED SOME FUCKING HELP IN HERE.”
He shouldn’t be calling for help. They’d want to put Sam in the hospital, his symptoms were unexplainable, they might make Dean stay here in this fucking cell while they rushed Sam off alone.
The cop, the same cop who brought them in, came sauntering into the room. He was obviously used to hysterics. By this time Sam was convulsing with shivers, he had his face in Dean’s shoulder and was muttering into his sleeve. He kept wanting to flail his arms; Dean kept them pinned in his own lap.
“He needs out of this cell,” Dean said to the cop. “Please-- being trapped... he can’t handle...”
Dean trailed off. It was an explanation that made sense to him, of course, but to a cop? Probably the stupidest thing a man ever said to try to get out of jail.
The cop put his face closer to the cell and raised his eyebrows. Off in the corner, the bile-spitter heaved and vomited loudly into the drain. “Your boys gotta a flair for drama, don’t ya? You keep him calm or I’ll have to isolate him.”
He disappeared again. Sam’s lips were turning blue. He skin was cold. His shivering shook Dean to his bones.
“I’d get so cold in the cage, my body was all ice,” Sam whispered. His eyes rolled in his head. “Crumble apart if I moved too quick. Scratch my head? All my fingers would break off. Then my whole hand. They’d laugh, while I crumbled like that. They laughed, I crumbled.”
He freed his shaking hand from Dean’s grip and held it up for Dean to see. “Melting was bloody,” he said, and his face collapsed. “Dean, I need out. I need out. I need out.”
“Shhh,” Dean said. He wrapped himself around Sam. Sam was big but he had a way of disappearing into Dean when he needed to, he would shrink right up. He fit just right against Dean’s chest and stopped shaking just a little bit. “This isn’t the cage, Sammy. You know that. And I got you, okay? Not him. Me. Dean. Okay? Me.”
Sam moved against Dean’s chest in what he guessed was a nod. “Not as cold as I feel.”
“No. Just a little while, Sam, and we’re free, okay? Just a little while.”
Dean held his brother, and tried not to think about what he said. The cold. Body turned to ice, crumbling. Probably while Michael and Lucifer stood over him, laughed at his fear. Dean knew better than anybody that being in agony was one thing-- having it mocked, having someone reduce your fear to a game-- that was entirely different. Entirely more terrible.
Beneath him Sam jumped. He fought his way out of Dean’s grip. His eyes were wild, but tired. “I feel like it’s gonna happen again.”
“What?” Dean said, but he already knew. A seizure. A hell memory. Minutes like weeks.
“No. No no no... look at the clock,” Dean took his brother by the jaw, maybe less gently than he should have, and point his face to the clock outside the cell. “Watch the second hand. It’ll keep moving. And then we’ll be free, okay? Just a little while, Sam. You can hold on.”
Sam laid against Dean once more, kept his sagging eyes on the clock. “I need out, Dean,” he whispered.
“I know. I know, and we’re gonna. Just a little while.”
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“HEY,” Dean called. He rested a hand over Sam’s ear. “OFFICER FRIENDLY!”
The cop came back, blank-faced, chewing on a ballpoint pen. He wasn’t a bad guy, Dean could tell. Just bored with an endless parade of drunks. He looked at Dean with fatigue, and Dean looked at him with desperation.
He had no plan. He stared at the cop, Sam shivered against him, and he had no plan to get out.
“He went to hell for you,” Dean found himself saying. He sounded insane. He knew he sounded insane, but he kept talking, “He burned, froze, bled in hell for a hundred years.”
The cop sighed, rubbed the back of his neck. “Are we gonna have a problem?”
Dean tried several scenarios in his head. He could lure the cop closer to the bars, break his fingers or knock him out. He could try to convince the cop that Sam was having a medical emergency and needed an ambulance, break the EMT’s fingers and knock him out. He could threaten to kill the bile-spitter unless the cop let them free.
But there would only be more cops, more guns, more cages.
“No,” Dean said, “We don’t have a problem.”
The cop looked relieved. He gave them one last suspicious glance, then turned and left.
Dean pulled Sam a little closer. “Just a little while longer, buddy, alright?”
Sam moved so his face was buried in Dean’s neck. His breath was cold. His fingers clutched painfully at Dean’s bicep.
“Lucifer was good to me for a while,” he whispered. “Almost twenty years. He held me too. He said the punishment was over. He said it was over and when I finally relaxed... I almost believed him, Dean. And then he ripped me open. He made me slurp the bile out of my intestines. I know the flavor of my own guts.”
“So do I. Don’t. Sammy. Please.”
For so long Dean had wanted Sam to talk about it. But he couldn’t handle it, he knew that now. Because in the back of his throat he could still taste his own insides. It would taint anything he put in his mouth for the rest of his life.
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Sam took a rattling breath. He was trying hard to hold on. “Don’t let me pass out, Dean. I’ll go there.”
“I’m not gonna let you pass out.”
“How much longer?”
“Just a little while. It’s okay. We’re okay. You’re with me, Sammy. Not him. Not him. You’re with me. We just got in a bar fight, and you were awesome, Sam, you totally saved my ass, and that performance you gave that cop? That was--”
That was it.
“Tell me about your made up wife, Sammy,” Dean said, his heart pounding with hope. “Tell me about your cheating, made up wife.”
He thought maybe he saw Sam smile. “She cheated on me.”
“What else? Come on, Sam. What else?”
“She has a blond perm. I hate it. I think she did it for her boyfriend.”
“Who’s her boyfriend?”
This time Sam definitely smiled. “My brother. My no good brother.”
“Really? Come on, man--”
“--not you. You’re my good brother. His name is Dave. He’s a total dick.”
“Tell me more about Dave.”
And on and on they went. Sam met his wife at a farmer’s market one fateful spring afternoon. There was a cloud burst and she offered to share her umbrella. It was love at first sight. She adored football and he was a fanatic. They dressed like Lois and Clark for Halloween.
But everything changed when the twins were born. She didn’t want to believe they had a condition. She didn’t want to believe they were anything less than perfect.
“I told her,” Sam said sleepily, his forehead still pressed against Dean’s neck, “I told her ‘they are perfect.’ But they also need help.’”
It destroyed their marriage. She slept with his brother. He slept with a woman he met in a support group.
By the time the jail cell gate clattered open, Sam was closing down his car lot and declaring bankruptcy. Dean looked at the hanging clock. They had made it. He couldn’t fucking believe they made it.
He helped Sam stand. He was white like death and his knees were shaking. He regarded the bars of the cell like they might eat him alive. Dean kept an arm around his back.
“You did awesome,” he told Sam. “I don’t know where you come up with this shit.”
Sam looked very, very tired. But he smiled. “Embarrassing, what you daydream about in hell. The more mundane, the more cliche, the better.”
Dean nodded. “Dude. You don’t even want to know what I daydreamed about in hell.”
They stepped out into the sun. Sam sighed with vast relief, and Dean sighed, too. They just stood. Dean had a million things he wanted to say, didn’t want to say, didn’t want to think about.
“Maybe we’ll stay outta jail for a while, huh?” he said to Sam.
Sam laughed, or maybe burst into tears, Dean couldn’t tell which.
“Yeah, maybe so.”
:::
The end.
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I loved this line: "I told her they are perfect. But they also need help." I don't know if you meant it that way, but it almost feels like it has a double meaning to it, like Sam's relating to them or something. IDK, it just crossed my mind.
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Thank you so much for reading and for the lovely comment :)
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