comment fic meme!
Following the results of the poll we took last month (don't make it easy on us or anything, guys, haha!), we've decided to hold a comment fic meme once every three months. This gives everyone time to write and prompt to their heart's content, and allows us mods to keep up with y'all. And we're starting right now!
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:::
Turns out, Sam was born to be a smoker. He just hadn’t realized it. He loved everything about it - the ritual of it, crinkling the cellophane, packing the box against his palm, sliding one out, fitting it between his lips, raising the lighter, and, god, that perfect moment when it first caught and the tobacco crackled and smoke poured down his throat like a caress, like everything was right with the world… That first drag was his favorite. No, the second one, relaxing into it - or maybe the last, especially when he didn’t have anywhere to go and he knew that last drag was just a prelude to another first on his next cigarette…
He wasn’t just a smoker. He was a chain-smoker.
Molly had graduated with nary a kiss but she’d left Sam a legacy that he could not shake, although he tried, sophomore year, telling himself he should stop “before it got too bad”; except by that point it was already bad. He woke up in the morning and reached for his cigarettes before his eyes had even focused.
He knew it was bad. Of course he knew. But it felt so good. So normal. So - apart from everything in his old life.
“I can hear it in your lungs,” Jess said one night, her head on his chest. “When you breathe, I can hear all that nicotine rattling around. Baby, when are you gonna quit?”
“After we graduate,” Sam said, like he always said. Smoking was a college thing. It had to be. Yet he felt a little thrill of panic when he thought of quitting - never smoke another cigarette again? People really did that? Shit, he wanted a cigarette just thinking about it.
But neither of them ever graduated.
:::
For the first few days back with his brother, Sam tried to hide the habit. Dean was wary around him, eager-to-please, willing to concede him anything and everything he asked for, so Sam said he needed space; he took lots of long walks. He did a bunch of tooth-brushing.
A week after the fire, he sat on the curb outside a motel room in Poughkeepsie and held a hand to his chest, breathing in smoke and wishing to god he’d quit for Jess when he had the chance; wishing he’d done that one thing for her before it was too late.
“Dude,” Dean said from behind him, and Sam froze. “I knew it,” Dean said. “Fuck, I knew it.”
“I just,” Sam tried, but Dean was shaking his head, mouth all twisted up.
“You idiot,” he said. “You fucking dumbass. You gotta stop.”
“I know,” Sam said, “I know, I will.”
“That’s what they taught you at college?” Dean demanded. “How to choke yourself?”
“Stow the lecture,” Sam snapped. “I know it’s bad for me, all right?”
“Lungs are a very important part of the human body. They help you breathe. Which helps you run. Which keeps you alive.”
“I said shut up.” Sam flicked ash off the end of his cigarette, and Dean followed the gesture with his eyes, face crumpling a little.
“Jesus, Sam,” he said. “I taught you better than this.”
“It’s not a personal insult to you, Dean,” Sam said, and fuck it, took a drag, let the smoke sift out through his nostrils. Part of him was relieved it was out in the open now, so he wouldn’t have to scuttle around like he was committing some kind of atrocity. “And I’m gonna quit, when I’m ready. I’m not ready yet.”
“I’m not giving you money for that shit,” Dean said. “Forget about using any of our credit cards.”
Sam didn’t answer. This was not an argument he cared to have. He took another drag, stared down at the burning red tip and thought about how tobacco smelled so much different than burning skin. In a way, he felt like the smoke from his cigarettes was washing away the smoke from Jess’s death, taking its place. It felt cleansing. Which was a fucked-up thing to think, and he knew it.
Dean stood over him for a while, boots planted next to Sam’s ass on the dirty concrete stoop, but Sam didn’t move to get up, and after a while Dean turned and went back inside. Sam stubbed his butt out and, after a moment’s deliberation, tapped another one out of the pack. Cupped his hands around the flame, and took relief where he could get it.
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:::
Sam tried something new that night after dinner. He put his silverware on his empty plate and slid his legs out of the diner booth.
“I’m, uh,” he said, trying to gather courage in the face of Dean’s sneer. “I’m gonna go have a smoke.”
“Fuck you.”
“Wow,” Sam said. “Okay, then.”
By the time he pushed through the diner’s double doors, he had a cigarette in his mouth and his lighter poised and ready. He lit up, slit his eyes against the smoke and eyed the row of windows that sat above a bed of mulch and dying petunias. Halfway down he could see the back of his brother’s head through the glare of the glass, and he went over, knocked on the window. Dean jolted, head darting around in a way that was almost comical, and his mouth dropped open a little bit when he saw Sam.
Sam settled the cigarette on his lower lip and gave Dean two thumbs up.
Dean gave him the finger.
:::
“Dean,” Sam said, “please, I am begging you.”
“No fucking way.”
“My bladder is about to explode, dude, come on.”
“You haven’t had anything to drink since our last bathroom break, which was a mere two hours ago. So, no Sam, I’m not buying it.”
“You want me to whip it out right here?” Sam asked. “’Cause I will. I will piss all over this nice upholstery, swear to god, Dean.”
“Be my guest.”
“Fine,” Sam said. “You wanna play? We can play.” He reached into his jacket pocket.
“What the hell are you doing?” Dean’s furious gaze darted from Sam to the road and back again.
“You called my bluff,” Sam said around the filter of his cigarette. He started shaking his lighter. “I need a fucking cigarette. And if you won’t stop, I’ll smoke it right here.”
“Motherfucker. Put that down, Sam. Sam. Put that down. If you light up in this car so help me god I will end you.”
Sam flicked the lighter and watched the flame shoot up. “Here I go,” he said. “Gonna coat this car in nicotine. Aaaaah, it’s gonna smell so good.”
“Sonuva -” Dean wrenched the car over to the shoulder.
Victory.
:::
One morning Sam woke up and found his cigarettes in the toilet. All of them - the pack from the Impala, the pack from his duffle, the one from his jacket, and the one he’d had sitting on his nightstand. They’ve stained the toilet water yellow, or maybe Dean peed on them.
“Good morning, sunshine,” Dean chirped from the door of the bathroom, and Sam gave him a black eye.
:::
“It’s not working,” Sam announced. He picked at the edge of the nicotine patch on his arm. (He’d felt really bad about that black eye.)
“Give it time,” Dean told him sagely.
Sam gave it three hours.
:::
Because the thing is, it’s nice to have something he can depend on. Something that’ll always be there.
Something that goes up in flames, but doesn’t die screaming.
end
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Oh, that was wonderful.
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May I just say that Sam smoking because he fell for a hipster goddess is so perfect I can't even begin to tell you.
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