Supernatural Stories Part 1
Hi, I'm going to be posting all of the stories I've written and posted elsewhere here. I should have done this earlier, like say two years ago (whoops), but I was lazy. As a result, I will probably end up flooding people's F-lists. Sorry!
Title: Twenty-One Bottles of Beer on the Wall - Bobby Babysits Two Guys and an Angel (in a State of Completely Shitfaced and Drunken Inebriation) (1/21)
Author: poestheblackcat
Rating: PG-13
Fandom: Supernatural
Characters/Pairings: Bobby, Dean, Sam, Castiel
Warning/Spoilers: For my twentieth birthday, I wrote twenty one-shots in celebration (and as a challenge) about questions that Sam has asked Dean over the years, starting with baby!Sam and wee!Dean to about the end of Season 5. I posted one story a day until the big day. For my twenty-first, I wanted to do twenty-one stories about people getting drunk. Or more specifically, characters and situations associated with Supernatural and alcohol. Most of the stories in this birthday anthology are either really angsty or really silly. This first one is mostly silly.
Summary: What the title says: The Winchesters and their angel buddy get drunk at Bobby’s.
“Dude. I’m so drunk.” Manly giggle.
Equally masculine titter. “You said that already, man. You’re toasted.” Pause. “I think I am too.” Burp.
“I believe I am also in an inebriated state as well.” Slow blink, followed by a characteristic head tilt. “I find it…fascinating. The light from the lamp is quite mesmerizing.”
Loud snort and a hearty slap on the back. “Welcome to being human, Cas. Getting so shit-faced you can’t tell which way’s up or down is one of the joys a’ life, my fine feathery friend.” Liquid sloshes in the bottle. “Makes everything look better when your whole world’s already upside down an’ sideways.”
A line creases the center of the furrowed angelic brow. “By that logic, alcohol will return an upended world to its correct placement. That argument is fallible, as the Earth is a round object in a vacuum, and as such, cannot be turned downside top.” Hiccup. “Upside down."
“Dude, you are so drunk.” Snorting chuckles. “You’re a philosophizing drunk, is what you are.” A finger pokes hard at the loosened tie worn over a rumpled white shirt. “Sammy’s a philofopee…philofa-…falafel too, ain’tcha, Sammy? Sammy? Sam? You…you passed out already, dude?” Bright, lopsided grin. “Hey Bobby! Sam’s a lightweight! Cas! Cas? Dude, you too? Maaaan…’S ‘ctually a good idea… ”
Scoff and a paternal headshake. “Like I always said, none a’ you dumb idjits can hold your liquor worth a damn. Keep tellin’ you ta stay away from my stash!”
Rustling of fabric as it settles over the three sleeping figures drunkenly dreaming of endless libraries (Sam), big-bosomed women (surprisingly, Cas’ dream), and blueberry-walnut pie slathered with a mountain of whipped cream and served up on a naked girl (Dean).
Title: Twenty-One Bottles of Beer on the Wall - Nurpled (2/21)
Author: poestheblackcat
Rating: PG-13
Fandom: Supernatural
Characters/Pairings: Dean
Summary: Dean philosophizes on his intelligence, women, and alcohol. Based off of the purple nurple scene in “Tall Tales.” Mostly angst.
So that’s what Sam thinks of him. A drunken idiot who’ll chase after any ditzy bimbo in a skimpy skirt.
Dean likes to think of himself as smart, though he knows that Sam is smarter (which is a given, since the kid’s a friggin’ genius), but he’s not a complete retard. Dean never graduated high school, but he’s got a GED. Well, it’s not in his legal name (the paper says Bruce B. Wayne, actually), but Dean took the test, and he’s the one who received the envelope containing the congratulatory letter and the certificate from Bobby, whose mailing address he’d used.
Not-Starla was a classy chick, and she was smart. She sure didn’t think he was dumb, did she?
After all, she hadn’t blown him off when he’d sat down next to her and started talking to her about the strange happenings in the college town. They’d gotten to discussing contemporary cultural myths and legends, which happened to be what her master’s thesis was on, and he’d offered up examples from some of his own experiences…um, stories he’d heard while on the road.
Anyway, in his experience, straight women who have both good looks and brains like to converse with equally attractive and brilliant men. It’s a proven fact, with plenty of “scientific” data (gathered with care in the back of his Impala and other romantic getaways) to back it up. It’s not an accident that most of his conquests in high school were fellow students in his science classes.
Dean can be smart when he wants to show it.
The women Dean likes fall into three categories: fun to talk to, fun to, you know, be with, or both. Because Dean loves fun, he really does.
That’s where the alcohol comes in. Alcohol makes a pleasant buzz in his head, turns him on when he’s in the mood, and numbs the pain when the stress of the hunting gig (and what Dad told him) gets too bad. Sex is good for forgetting shit too. And as a combination-whoo!, that feels awesome.
So can you really blame him if he gives in to his base instincts and drinks, beds, and makes merry in general? Does that really make him a dumb lush?
Eh, maybe it does. Dean kind of does work hard to hide his smarts from Sam. Because alright, so he had been pulling Sam’s leg when he said that chick in the bar was oh-so-mesmerized by his stunningly good looks, but dude, it’s not like Dean’s gonna tell Sam about how much he geeked out with the girl. No, because he does have some sense of self-preservation from little brother’s teasing. Besides, “book stuff” is Sam-land, and “cool stuff” is Dean’s territory.
Sam’s supposed to be the big geek playing walking encyclopedia and straight man to Dean’s sarcastic straight-shooter suaveness. Sam smart puppy-eyes, Dean dumb womanizer, people talk lots. That’s how it goes.
Those purple nurples were really good though. They’re actually just grape jelly shots, made with plenty of alcohol. Dean loves grape, especially that grape-flavored lip gloss a lot of girls like to wear. He likes the way the tingle of the alcohol slips smoothly down his throat, and all the way down to his-well, wouldn’t you like to know?
And what’s that Sasquatch brother of his talking about? He totally blahs. All the damn time. When he’s in the car, when he’s in the shower, in his sleep, all the time, right in his ear. Blah blah-BLAH blah-BLAH. Blah.
Seriously.
Dean needs a drink.
Title: Twenty-One Bottles of Beer on the Wall - Punch-Drunk Love (3/21)
Author: poestheblackcat
Rating: PG-13
Fandom: Supernatural
Characters/Pairings: John, Mary
Warnings: Very PG (or maybe PG-13 at the most). References a few episodes/quotes that I think might spoil some things in the story if I mention them here (or really, it’s just more fun to try to figure out). PM me or review if you want to know the answer or if you just want to guess.
Summary: John Winchester and alcohol, Part One. This one’s warm and fuzzy and slightly hilarious: John’s courtship of Mary Campbell. Teaser - Mary has a mean right hook.
John wasn’t a hard drinker to begin with. The occasional beer by the lake with the rest of the kids from school, sure, but it wasn’t all the time. It was just a little social drinking anyhow. No harm in it.
Then the war came, and things got rough. Liquor got real useful then. Shoot, John reckons he spent most of his down time buzzed up, at least. His tour finally ended, and he came back home. He kept drinking, worried his momma practically to death, but he needed the alcohol to numb his mind. The things he’d seen…
Mary changed things. They’d gone to school together, from the time they’d been tiny Mary Campbell fetching a stolen ball back from wee Johnny Winchester, and bringing him down to the ground with one well-placed kick to bring the toy thief to shame.
Well, they’d hated each other ever since, but somehow, in the sweltering jungles of ‘Nam, he’d found himself wondering what ever became of her, if she’d married anyone, wishing he were back in Lawrence just so he could see her pretty smile in that angelic face framed by perfect golden waves. Then he’d wince and his hand would unconsciously go south to where she’d kneed him once as sophomores in high school over a comment that she deemed to be “overwhelmingly sexist.”
That woman sure was something, he’ll tell you that. Mean right hook, too.
Anyhow, he came home, a war-torn soldier older than his years warranted, and he forgot about the blonde angel who’d gotten him through so many agonizing nights. There were other women, easier women, who gave him what he needed without questioning him or frowning at the amount of whiskey he drank.
And then he saw her. Just walking down the street, head high in the air like she owned the town, and pretty blonde hair streaming behind her in the breeze. He fell, boy, did he fall. He got up from the bus bench he’d been sleeping off his daily hangover on and followed her in a daze. Three blocks from where he’d started, big bad war hero John friggin’ Winchester got his ass handed to him by a hundred-pound woman in a lacy white sundress, wearing three-inch heels, no less.
“Mary, Mary, it’s me,” he shouted as best he could from where his face was mashed up against the alley wall.
The tight grip on the arm twisted up behind him eased, and John relaxed, only to find himself flipped over and pressed back against the wall. He gaped vapidly at the girl who’d been beating him up since grade school.
“John? John Winchester?” A wrinkle creased the flawless porcelain forehead. “What the hell are you doing, following me like that? You scared the crap out of me! I could’ve-” sputtered Mary angrily.
Oh, and she cussed too. Dirty. A slap to the face snapped John out of his dreamy musings.
“Winchester!” Mary all but shouted as she yanked on his shirt.
“H-have dinner with me?” he stammered out. Years later, John remembers thinking, Where on earth did that come from?
She recoiled, as expected. “What? Why would I want to have dinner with you?” She shoved him back against the wall and stepped away, a quizzical expression on her face. John thinks it should have been a clue as to who Mary Campbell actually was, when she spit “Christo” at him.
“My name’s John, ‘member?” he’d told her. Back then, he was a naïve idiot; no matter what he’d seen in Vietnam, boy, he hadn’t seen nothin’ yet.
Well, Mary, satisfied that he was one hundred percent John Winchester and not a demon, sighed, refused his offer, and dragged him to Jay’s to get a cup of coffee to sober him up. Then she walked (more like frog marched) him home and dumped him on his momma’s front porch with a stern, “Ask me again when you’re sober. I don’t feel right beating up on a drunk man. I like an even playing field.”
Maybe he took that the wrong way, but he laid off of the alcohol, shaved his stubble and cut his hair, and got a steady job at his father’s shop. Having done that, he put on a clean suit, bought a bouquet of roses with his first paycheck, and went the bakery where Mary worked.
The fresh scent of baked goods hit his nostrils as soon as he entered. Mm, pie. Then he noticed the girl holding the tray. Helloooo, Mary. She was just standing there, with that tray of fresh-baked goodness in her hands, and by god, he wanted to marry her then and there, she was that beautiful.
A pie to the face shook him out of his daydream, and he realized that he must have said that out loud because she was right in front of him now, the rest of the pies safe on the counter.
“I thought I told you to sober up before coming near me again,” Mary was saying, hands on her slim hips.
“I am!” John cried, throwing his hands up. “If I’m drunk, I’m drunk on you!”
That stopped her cold. “What?”
“You do this thing to me, I dunno. It’s just…You’re it,” he said quietly, not caring how lame it sounded. “You’re the one.”
“O-kay,” she said, slowly, drawing out the vowels. A perfect eyebrow arched. Then her face changed, suddenly.
He didn’t know what any of that meant. “Okay?”
“Okay.” She tossed a dishtowel at him. “Wipe your face first. Wouldn’t want to be seen with you in public looking like a horror movie reject.”
He handed her the roses in return, blushing under the cherry pie filling. “Brought these for you.”
Mary turned the same bright red John’s face was as she stared at the bouquet. “Thank you,” she said after a moment. “I like red roses.”
And so she did. The first things she planted in the garden once they finally saved up enough to buy a proper house for their growing family were bushes of red roses. Mary loved those rosebushes, and John loved them because she did.
Now, it wasn’t a fairy-tale marriage, the way John would like to think it was-it had its ups and downs, like any other relationship-but it wasn’t as bad as some couples’ he could name. Sure, it drove him right back to drink once or twice, but Mary always let him come home once he blew off some steam and knocked on the door with his tail between his legs, each time with a bouquet of red roses as a peace offering. It was the way things were between them…until that night.
That night, his world ended.
Title: Twenty-One Bottles of Beer on the Wall - Jim, Jack, And Jose (4/21)
Author: poestheblackcat
Rating: PG-13
Fandom: Supernatural
Characters/Pairings: John, wee!Dean, wee!Sam
Summary: John Winchester and alcohol, Part Two. The aftermath of November 2, 1983.
That fatal night in November of the year his second son was born, John Winchester’s life burned up with his wife, his darling Mary, the woman of his dreams. All of their wishes and promises, their hopes and dreams, they all went up in an inferno of orange flames and black smoke, burning and choking the very existence out of him.
And what he saw…He knew what he saw that night, and no damned idiot cop was going to tell him different, no sirree. He saw her, burning to death in front of him, on the ceiling. Shock, his frickin’ lily-white ass. He’ll give him shock.
Anyway, the pull of the bottle was too much for him, seeing that no one believed a word he said, shaking their heads and looking at him and his boys with unwanted pity, and he fell down that slippery neck into the broken glass gullet of caustic liquor, down, down, into oblivion.
One chilly afternoon, he woke up from another drunken night to find his four-year-old son staring silently at him from across the room with his baby brother clutched in his arms, as if he’d never let go since his father had told the toddler to take Sam and run to safety. It wasn’t the tears on the young face that broke John out of his trance, for there hadn’t been any more to be wept after the first week of trauma and motherlessness; it was the emptiness he saw in the green depths, the vast hole of desolation that grief leaves.
He reached out a hand to his sons, crawled to them, and swept them up in his arms. “I’m so sorry, baby. I’m so sorry.” He rocked Mary’s boys, sobbing his apologies into their small bodies.
That was Christmas, one of the bleakest the Winchesters ever had.
Dean didn’t say anything. He didn’t say anything for almost two years after Mary’s death. Even then, when he got bigger and started talking and laughing, almost like that happy little boy he’d been before the fire, Dean never said anything when it came to John and drinking, nothing to stop him from swallowing that poison whiskey, not a word to stop him from going out to a bar for a beer or five. That look in his too-expressive eyes, even though he tried to hide it, was enough of a stinging reproach.
That same sad, disappointed expression Mary had had whenever he’d returned to the bottle.
Well, John couldn’t stand it most of the times Dean got that look-boy didn’t even know he was doing it, couldn’t know that John saw Mary in that look each and every time-but even though he knew he was doing wrong, he went and took that drink anyhow. Only way to numb the pain, other than hunting down that evil sonofabith that killed his Mary.
There are a handful of days in the year on which he always gets shit-faced, just like clockwork, year after year. Mary’s birthday, the day he first asked her out, the day she said yes, the day they got engaged (which coincided with the day her parents…died), their anniversary, the day she was killed and left her young boys motherless, the day he finally realized that little Dean had gone mute, the day he realized that little Sammy was a burbling baby no longer but an independent teenager…
John Winchester’s had a lot of bad shit happen in his life. He figures that justifies his long-term affair with Jim, Jack, and Jose. ‘Course, he makes sure he don’t think of his sons, and especially Dean and that look (just like his mother’s-he don’t think of her either), when he does his reasoning. The whiskey goes down better that way.
Title: Twenty-One Bottles of Beer on the Wall - It's My Party (5/21)
Author: poestheblackcat
Rating: PG-13
Fandom: Supernatural
Characters/Pairings: Sam/Jess, Dean
Summary: Sam’s overwhelmingly normal twenty-first birthday isn’t exactly how he’d imagined it would be.
Sam eyes the shot glass full of amber liquid with some trepidation.
It’s not as if he’s never had a drink before. Because he has, on numerous occasions. Or maybe not that many. But he’s had his fair share, for a just-turned-twenty-one year-old anyway, and not all just for fun and giggles.
Like that time when he was seventeen. A werewolf had sneaked up on him and slashed him across the back. He doesn’t remember much about what happened that night, just the excruciating, white-hot pain exploding across his spine, the loud bang of his brother’s gun launching a bullet into the monster, the werewolf’s angry snarl as the silver hit its chest. He remembers Dean’s cool hands and steady voice near him, trying to calm him so Dad could stitch up the gushing wound.
Sam remembers too the fiery liquid Dad finally forced down his throat to knock him out (so he’d stop screaming and let him work), and Dean’s knowing and apologetic look of sympathy on his worried face before the darkness took him over.
Dean.
The one constant in his life, until Sam decided he’d had enough of Dad and his crusade. The thought of Dad makes his blood boil, a Pavlovian response.
Sam throws his head back and dumps the contents of the shot glass down his throat like a seasoned alcoholic, much to the amazement and admiration of his friends.
Yeah, it’s not the first drink Sam’s ever had, but it’s his first legal one.
His first first drink was with Dean. The night of his sixteenth birthday, after a pretty awesome Star Wars marathon and pizza dinner, Dean had suddenly stood up, pulled the keys to the Impala out of his pocket, and thrown them at Sam.
“Hey Sammy. Ya wanna go to a bar? You’re driving.”
Pretty sweet, huh? Well, aside from the “Sammy” part of it. And the killer hangover.
It feels wrong somehow that Dean isn’t here to share a drink with him. The thought makes him glance at the cell phone that he’s subconsciously pulled out of his pocket.
He flips it open…and snaps it closed again. No, he’s not giving in to the sudden roiling wave of homesickness that has overcome him. Not tonight. It’s his birthday, his twenty-first birthday. This should be a day of celebration, spent with his friends and fa-…spent with his friends.
Sam puts the phone back in his jacket and directs a smile that he hopes is natural at his aforementioned friends. They don’t seem to have noticed his momentary lapse in jollity.
Except for Jessica. Always perceptive (kind of like Dean, his traitorous mind supplies), she shoots a worried glance at Sam from beside him. He shakes his head and broadens his smile. When she nods, still looking not quite satisfied, he puts his arm around her, reassuring her that he’s really alright. She settles into his side with a contented sigh and nestles her head trustingly back against his shoulder.
Brady slaps him on the shoulder and invites him to a game of pool. “I’ll go easy on you,” he says.
Sam accepts with a hidden smirk. Yeah, more like he’ll be the one going easy on him.
He’s lining up his shot when he hears the muffled revving of a familiar engine somewhere outside the bar. He freezes, heart stuttering in his chest. Then he smiles and chuckles softly. No way. Just his overactive imagination that Dean always used to tease him about…right?
Title: Twenty-One Bottles of Beer on the Wall - The Party-Crasher (6/21)
Author: poestheblackcat
Rating: PG-13
Fandom: Supernatural
Characters/Pairings: Dean, Sam
Summary: Companion piece to “It’s My Party.” Dean’s POV.
Dean watches his younger (and much taller-so not fair) brother from his seat in the dark corner.
Twenty-one.
Baby Sammy, his little snot-nosed kid brother, is legal now.
Twenty-one.
The six-month-old baby he’d carried out of their burning house the night their mother died, the baby whose first word was heard only by big brother, the toddler who’d followed him around all the time, the one for whom Dean had beat up more bullies than he had fingers (and toes), the annoying, stubborn jackass of a brother who’d picked fights with Dad, and who’d left three years ago for college.
That Sammy.
“It’s Sam,” he hears in his head. “Not Sammy.” Dean can practically see the eye-roll. Nah, little brother will always be “Sammy” to him, even when they’re old geezers with walking sticks and wheelchairs. Well, if Dean even lives that long.
Sam will, though. Sammy’s gonna be a lawyer, imagine that. With a family business like this, a lawyer in the family might come in handy. If the rest of said family could get along, that is.
Dean sighs and takes another swig from his bottle.
Across the room, the stereotype of a rich frat kid plunks a shot glass full of a clear white liquid down in front of Sam. Sam’s face turns solemn, as if he’s contemplating the momentousness of this event. Heck, knowing him, he probably is.
It’s not Sam’s first drink. No one knows that better than Dean. Now Sam’s first drink…oh man. He chortles at the memory.
Sam’s sixteenth, Dean let Sam drive the Impala, snuck the kid into a bar after dinner and movies, and got him shit-faced. Totally, utterly, completely shitfaced. It’s not his fault birthday boy was a lightweight. Two beers. Two. Good thing Dad wasn’t around, else the next morning, Sam might have begged him to kill him and end his misery, instead of just Dean, and Dad really might have.
Hangovers. Dean chuckles again. Greasy cheeseburger served up on a dirty ashtray. Now that was fun.
Sam’s face darkens, the change only perceptible to a close observer (like Dean), and he quickly tosses the alcohol back like a pro.
Damn, Sammy, says Dean to himself, thinking of Dad, are we? Now why the hell are you thinking about Dad, of all people? Oh yeah, normal stuff, right? Kid’s always had issues about “normal.”
Like how normal kids don’t have weapons training and hunting practice (speaking of which, Dean’s been tailing Sam for over an hour, and he hasn’t even turned around once-getting rusty there, kiddo) on top of homework. They don’t move every three weeks. They don’t get hurt, and nearly killed, on hunts. They go to college, they have homes, they don’t eat exclusively at diners. Normal, normal, normal. Everything Dean and Dad couldn’t give him.
Well, he’s got it now, Dean thinks. Doesn’t need big brother anymore. Or so he thinks, anyway.
Want proof? See that? Sam just took his phone out of his pocket. He’s not gonna call though. He’s thinking too much about it. Just watch. Dean knows his brother too well.
Dean’s hand hovers over the phone sitting on the table next to his own drink anyway.
Sam flips the cell open. Huh, maybe this year will be the-nope. The plastic clicks shut.
See? He was right. He’s always right.
Dean sighs and stands, pauses for a moment, then picks his bottle back up, and raises it in a toast to the group of college kids sitting in the bright light, his brother’s shaggy head sticking out like a giant in a room full of midgets.
“Happy birthday, Sammy.”
He finishes the beer, drops some bills on the table, and casts another look back at his brother, who’s got his arm draped protectively around the pretty blonde he’s been dating for six months. Blondie (Jessica Lee Moore, aged 20, psychology major) snuggles up to him. Attaboy.
Now Frat Boy’s wheedling Sammy into playing pool with him.
Dean chuckles to himself. Sammy-boy’s gonna clean him out. Unless he’s feeling stubborn, in which case he’ll try pathetically hard to lose every game. Oh, Sammy.
He leaves the bar with a small smile, feeling better than he had when he’d walked in; he’s seen his brother, seen how grown up he’s gotten (grown up and up, the stork-legged little bitch), seen him with that normal life he’s always wanted.
And Dean didn’t talk to him, didn’t even approach him. Best birthday present he could have given, he rationalizes. Not being there and messing things up when Sam doesn’t want him invading his life.
Except he was. He’s always been there for Sam’s first everything (well, except for his first, ya know, lay, but he sure heard about it right after), so there’s no reason why Dean should miss Sammy’s first legal drink.
That’s the sort of thing normal brothers would be around for, right?
He guns his engine and roars out of the bar’s parking lot, wondering if Sam had in fact noticed him, and was only pretending not to see him…Nah, Dean’s a sneakier bastard than even Sam can detect.
Because he’s just that good.
Title: Twenty-One Bottles of Beer on the Wall - Requiem For A Hunter (7/21)
Author: poestheblackcat
Rating: PG-13
Fandom: Supernatural
Characters/Pairings: Bobby, Sam, death!fic (Dean)
Warning: This one is kind of graphic. Not for the faint of heart and queasy of stomach. Also, a crapload of angst. You have been forewarned.
Summary: Post-NRFTW, Bobby POV.
Requiem aeternam dona eis, Domine - Requiem Mass
- - - - - -
Flies buzz around the still body on the bed. Calliphora vicina. Blue bottle flies.
Bobby knows they’re laying their eggs in the soft, exposed goo of the open wounds. He can see the maggots, already a squirming white mass all over the ragged torso, feasting and reproducing on the decaying flesh. They congregate in places where the skin is already open, either naturally or torn by the claws and teeth of ravenous hellhounds.
They’re crawling in the nostrils of the straight nose, and Bobby can see that the mouth, slackened in death, is starting to fill with larvae. The closed eyelids twitch, and he’s reminded that if he is so inclined to pry them open, he would find, not green-hazel eyes full of life and smirking up at him, nor even those very same eyes clouded in death, but two eye orbits swarming with the maggots that seem to be filling the empty body with gruesome, false life.
They’d tried to sew the boy back together, painstakingly stitching the gaping wounds closed, but the skin had been torn in so many places, and the gashes had been so large, that the work was shoddy at best. Still, they’d spent many long hours passing the needle and thread through the cold, decaying flesh, in an effort to leave the man with some dignity, even in death.
Sam had been silent throughout the ordeal, quiet except for a few hiccups and sniffles. He hadn’t said a word since Bobby had found him on the laminated wooden floor, sitting in a pool of his brother’s congealing blood, rocking the cooling corpse desperately in his arms, as if he could will the soul back into the body by simply wishing for it hard enough.
The older man had allowed himself a moment of grief, removing the worn cap from his head and wiping a tear from his eye, before stepping over the already decaying body of the blonde that had housed the demon Ruby. Bobby didn’t know what had happened in that room, but he knew it was bad, very bad.
- - - - - -
Buzzzz
- - - - - -
Dean, oh God…
Reaching down to the shaking shoulder, he whispered, “I’m so sorry, Sam,” his hoarse voice breaking the spell the violent death had cast over the room. “We-” his voice failed, “We have to go. Sam. We gotta go.”
Sam shook his head, and gripped his brother tighter, burying his face in the blood-drenched shoulder. “Go,” he said, or maybe it was “No.” “Leave us alone. Leave us alone,” he sobbed.
Bobby didn’t know what to do, short of forcibly pulling Sam up with one hand and trying to wrangle De-…the body with the other. Neither would come willingly; both would have the same dead weight quality. So he waited, waited to Sam to calm down enough to listen to reason.
The sound of far-off sirens was what shook Sam out of his trance. The heart-wrenching sobs trailed off as Sam finally looked up. Bobby took this as a sign that the boy might be ready to go now, and squeezed his shoulder again. “Let’s go, Sam.”
Sam’s eyes slowly focused on the grizzled face before him. “Bobby?” he said, looking for all the world like a lost little boy. “Dean, Dean’s gone. He’s gone.” Boy sounded like somebody’d run over his puppy or something, only worse. It was his brother, the one constant in his life, who was gone.
“I know, son,” Bobby said gently, not wanting to frighten the kid. “We gotta go, Sam. Somebody called the police.”
The wide forehead creased. “No police, Bobby. Can’t…” He looked around at the lake of drying blood around him, bewildered. “The blood. Can’t clean it up. Won’t come out, like Lady Macbeth.”
Bobby tugged on Sam’s arm this time. “Let’s go,” he said, disregarding Sam’s mumbling. “We’ll have to leave the mess. I’ll help you carry him.”
This prompted a low growl from the boy, who wrenched his arm out of Bobby’s grip and hugged his brother closer. “He’s my brother. I’m gonna take care of him. It’s my job now.”
“Alright,” Bobby said soothingly, hiding his nervousness about the rapidly approaching sirens. “You’ll carry him. We need to get him out of here though, okay?”
This apparently sounded like a good deal to Sam because he nodded and got up off of the floor, slipping and sliding in the blood underfoot. Dean’s head lolled loosely from its place in the crook of Sam’s arm. The empty green eyes stared accusingly at Bobby as Sam passed by with him.
They got Dean settled in the back seat of the Impala, wrapped in sheets from one of the beds and several layers of plastic garbage bags to keep what blood was left in the body from leaking through and staining the seats of Dean’s beloved car.
They went as far as they could before the danger of driving off the road became too high. They were tired, in both body and spirit, and adrenaline wears off after a while. They stopped in a small town in the middle of Illinois, where the 55 meets the 51.
Since Bobby had less blood on his clothes, he went and got the room, while keeping a very close eye on the younger man through the office window. He needn’t have, seeing that the only thing Sam did was get out of the front seat to sit in the back with his brother.
Having paid and gotten the key, Bobby went around to the Impala to see if Sam would allow him to help maneuver Dean out of the car. When he opened the door, the smell hit him; the metallic tang of blood, the contents of the loosened bladder and bowels (Dean, had he been alive-and Bobby wished he was but if he had a nickel for every wish-would have been mortified to find that not only had he peed himself, but he’d shit his pants too), and the cloying scent of death. It nearly made him gag, but he recovered himself without Sam noticing.
Surprisingly, Sam accepted the tentatively offered assistance, and together, they hauled the body, still wrapped like a mummy but stiff with rigor mortis, into the room. Bobby, keeping an eye out for anyone who’d see and call the police on them, was thankful for the cover of the darkening dusk.
They put the body on the bed and stood there just looking at it. Then Sam reached out a hand and gently unwrapped the bags twisted around the still figure until there was only the thin cotton cloth left, hard and tacky from dried blood. When that too was peeled off, a dry sob erupted from the old man.
Dean, oh, Dean.
The boy who’d somehow wriggled his way into his heart, from the first moment he’d spotted the tiny kid with the sad green eyes hiding behind his Daddy’s legs on his front porch. How long ago was that? Twenty-three, twenty-four years, wasn’t it? Damned long time. Boy had grown into a man, a good man, and he’d died that morning. That ain’t right. Young man like him, one of the best men Bobby’d ever known, dead, and an old codger like him still breathing, it ain’t right. It simply ain’t right.
Sam held the cold, dead face in his hands, brushing his thumbs over the slack features, rubbing at the droplets of dried blood from the arterial spray. The eyes were closed-Bobby hadn’t been able to stand the accusatory gaze any longer while they were wrapping him up.
Once the plastic was off the body, the smell grew stronger. Bobby got the ice bucket and filled it with warm water, got a couple of the crappy motel towels and threw it in to soak. Sam had gotten a knife out in his absence, which gave Bobby a jolt before he realized that it was for cutting the clothes off of the stiff body.
The knife slid under the sleeve of the dark jacket, ready to slit the fabric when Sam’s hand stalled. The knife shook, tearing a few threads. Bobby reached out a hand. “Give it here, Sam. I’ll do it.”
Sam shook his head. “No. I should do it. He’d want me to do it.” He took a deep breath and went on.
When that was over, they could finally see the full extent of the damage done-on the front. They’d take care of the front first, then flip him over to clean up the back. Until then…Bobby draped a dry towel over the groin, untouched by the hounds, to give the boy a semblance of privacy.
He handed one of the towels to Sam, who took it without a word. Silently, they wiped the dried blood from the smooth skin. Bobby, too, was reminded of Lady Macbeth as he rinsed the red cloth in rust-colored water. This blood would likewise stain his hands and conscience forever. This blood, of which each drop was precious to him.
He could remember the boy, teaching his baby brother how to walk, shielding him from everything from bullies to monsters to even death. This boy, who had so little thought of his own self-worth that he’d sold his soul away to return to his brother the life he’d guarded so loyally.
They started stitching after the blood was gone from the surface. This part was familiar, something they’d done many times after numerous hunts. The only things different about it were that they didn’t have to worry about giving the patient pain, and that the wounds didn’t ooze blood as they pulled the edges closed with their black thread.
Bobby couldn’t help thinking that if Dean was here, he’d make some stupid joke about Frankenstein’s monster. Sam would counter with a comparison to the girl from that Tim Burton movie. If, you know, Dean wasn’t lying here dead with his soul on the express train to Hell.
With another shudder, Bobby went back to work. His eyelids drooped, but he kept working, knowing he wouldn’t be able to rest anyhow. The needle flashed in and out of the cold flesh. In, out, in, out, in…
- - - - - -
The first fly arrived at midnight. Its buzzing broke the silence in the room. Two pairs of eyes watched as it landed on the tip of Dean’s nose. Beady multifaceted eyes stared back at them. The fly washed its face and lifted itself onto its front legs so it could wash its back two legs. The transparent wings shone iridescently in the lamplight.
It’s a blue bottle fly, a carrion fly.
Bobby knew enough about corpses-freshly dead, long dead, don’t matter, he’d seen ‘em all-to know that there was nothing he could do to keep the flies from coming and landing and multiplying on this new and fertile corpse.
He shooed it away anyway.
- - - - - -
Buzzzz
- - - - - -
The flies buzz, a swelling and undulating chorus.
One fat maggot spills out of the mass of its brothers and sisters swarming in Dean’s mouth, and lands on the stubbled cheek. It wriggles helplessly on the prickly surface, until, unable to find purchase, it slides down the jaw and plops onto the plastic covering the bed.
Bobby eyes it with distaste.
Sam’s been sitting here for days, watching his brother decompose. Another day and the neighbors will start complaining about the odor. The room already smells like one of the many houses they visit in the course of their job, the houses with the ripe, rotting corpses inside.
Bobby decides it’s been long enough. “Sam,” he says, voice rough from whiskey and disuse. And grief. Can’t forget that one. “Sam, it’s time.”
Greasy chestnut locks shake. “No, not yet.” Sam sounds like a zombie himself. Lack of sleep, lack of food, lack of brother will do that to you. “I can’t yet.”
Bobby sighs. “He’s starting to stink up the room.” He’s already thrown up in the bathroom three times. The buzzing’s giving him a headache. “He- Heck, Sam, he started smelling two days ago. We gotta…take care of him.”
“I’ll take care of him.” Sam’s voice is harsh, fierce. Sam sounds like his brother.
Bobby shifts on his feet. He takes his hat off, scratches his head. “I’ll-I’ll go get wood then.”
“Get boards.”
“What?” Bobby steps towards Sam, puts a hand on his shoulder and turns him around. The movement causes a black curtain of flies to rise up before settling again.
Sam holds Bobby’s gaze steadily. “I said, get boards. I’m not burning my brother.”
Bobby sighs. “Sam, he would have wanted-”
Sam stands. “You don’t know what he would have wanted,” he bellows. “He never said. I say we’re not burning my brother. When I find a way to get him back, he’ll need his body.”
“Sam.”
Sam goes back to his vigil. “Boards, Bobby.”
Bobby gets boards. Pine, nice solid pieces.
Sam puts the coffin together. Bobby puts out a hand to help but is waved away. Sam makes a cross too, to go over the grave.
They bury Dean a quarter of a mile off of the highway, and only four feet down. “Just in case he wakes up before we can get him out,” Sam explains.
Sam doesn’t put in the last boards until they’re ready to put the dirt back in. Bobby tries to hand him nails to secure the lid, but Sam shakes his head and grabs the shovel.
The sound of the dirt hitting the pine boards is one of the saddest things Bobby’s ever heard, although he can barely hear it over the sound of the buzzing. Most of the flies have deserted the body, though their larvae were still wriggling on the body (and in it) when they put the lid on. Even so, Bobby can still hear the adults buzzing.
“He was a good man,” he chokes out, and hurries away to the car, leaving Sam to have one last moment alone with his brother.
- - - - - -
The flies buzz. They’re not really there; they’re in his head, and nothing he can do will quiet them. And so he drinks. Drinks enough that the nefarious buzzing in his head hums along with the buzz of the alcohol.
The flies drone on. It’s a shit requiem for a hunter, but it’s all Bobby’s got. Requiems are meant to grant the dead eternal rest (Requiem aeternam dona eis, Domine), and if it’s one thing Dean Winchester ain’t getting right now, it’s rest.
Bobby shudders and takes another drink as the flies buzz louder in his mind. Sometimes he thinks he can hear a familiar voice chiding him for letting Sam slip out from under his watch; other times, he thinks he hears a pain-filled cry underneath all the buzzing. He doesn’t want to listen closer to find out.
The flies buzz. Bobby drinks.
- - - - - -I heard a fly buzz when I died - Emily Dickinson
Title: Twenty-One Bottles of Beer on the Wall - Bobby Babysits Two Guys and an Angel (in a State of Completely Shitfaced and Drunken Inebriation) (1/21)
Author: poestheblackcat
Rating: PG-13
Fandom: Supernatural
Characters/Pairings: Bobby, Dean, Sam, Castiel
Warning/Spoilers: For my twentieth birthday, I wrote twenty one-shots in celebration (and as a challenge) about questions that Sam has asked Dean over the years, starting with baby!Sam and wee!Dean to about the end of Season 5. I posted one story a day until the big day. For my twenty-first, I wanted to do twenty-one stories about people getting drunk. Or more specifically, characters and situations associated with Supernatural and alcohol. Most of the stories in this birthday anthology are either really angsty or really silly. This first one is mostly silly.
Summary: What the title says: The Winchesters and their angel buddy get drunk at Bobby’s.
“Dude. I’m so drunk.” Manly giggle.
Equally masculine titter. “You said that already, man. You’re toasted.” Pause. “I think I am too.” Burp.
“I believe I am also in an inebriated state as well.” Slow blink, followed by a characteristic head tilt. “I find it…fascinating. The light from the lamp is quite mesmerizing.”
Loud snort and a hearty slap on the back. “Welcome to being human, Cas. Getting so shit-faced you can’t tell which way’s up or down is one of the joys a’ life, my fine feathery friend.” Liquid sloshes in the bottle. “Makes everything look better when your whole world’s already upside down an’ sideways.”
A line creases the center of the furrowed angelic brow. “By that logic, alcohol will return an upended world to its correct placement. That argument is fallible, as the Earth is a round object in a vacuum, and as such, cannot be turned downside top.” Hiccup. “Upside down."
“Dude, you are so drunk.” Snorting chuckles. “You’re a philosophizing drunk, is what you are.” A finger pokes hard at the loosened tie worn over a rumpled white shirt. “Sammy’s a philofopee…philofa-…falafel too, ain’tcha, Sammy? Sammy? Sam? You…you passed out already, dude?” Bright, lopsided grin. “Hey Bobby! Sam’s a lightweight! Cas! Cas? Dude, you too? Maaaan…’S ‘ctually a good idea… ”
Scoff and a paternal headshake. “Like I always said, none a’ you dumb idjits can hold your liquor worth a damn. Keep tellin’ you ta stay away from my stash!”
Rustling of fabric as it settles over the three sleeping figures drunkenly dreaming of endless libraries (Sam), big-bosomed women (surprisingly, Cas’ dream), and blueberry-walnut pie slathered with a mountain of whipped cream and served up on a naked girl (Dean).
Title: Twenty-One Bottles of Beer on the Wall - Nurpled (2/21)
Author: poestheblackcat
Rating: PG-13
Fandom: Supernatural
Characters/Pairings: Dean
Summary: Dean philosophizes on his intelligence, women, and alcohol. Based off of the purple nurple scene in “Tall Tales.” Mostly angst.
So that’s what Sam thinks of him. A drunken idiot who’ll chase after any ditzy bimbo in a skimpy skirt.
Dean likes to think of himself as smart, though he knows that Sam is smarter (which is a given, since the kid’s a friggin’ genius), but he’s not a complete retard. Dean never graduated high school, but he’s got a GED. Well, it’s not in his legal name (the paper says Bruce B. Wayne, actually), but Dean took the test, and he’s the one who received the envelope containing the congratulatory letter and the certificate from Bobby, whose mailing address he’d used.
Not-Starla was a classy chick, and she was smart. She sure didn’t think he was dumb, did she?
After all, she hadn’t blown him off when he’d sat down next to her and started talking to her about the strange happenings in the college town. They’d gotten to discussing contemporary cultural myths and legends, which happened to be what her master’s thesis was on, and he’d offered up examples from some of his own experiences…um, stories he’d heard while on the road.
Anyway, in his experience, straight women who have both good looks and brains like to converse with equally attractive and brilliant men. It’s a proven fact, with plenty of “scientific” data (gathered with care in the back of his Impala and other romantic getaways) to back it up. It’s not an accident that most of his conquests in high school were fellow students in his science classes.
Dean can be smart when he wants to show it.
The women Dean likes fall into three categories: fun to talk to, fun to, you know, be with, or both. Because Dean loves fun, he really does.
That’s where the alcohol comes in. Alcohol makes a pleasant buzz in his head, turns him on when he’s in the mood, and numbs the pain when the stress of the hunting gig (and what Dad told him) gets too bad. Sex is good for forgetting shit too. And as a combination-whoo!, that feels awesome.
So can you really blame him if he gives in to his base instincts and drinks, beds, and makes merry in general? Does that really make him a dumb lush?
Eh, maybe it does. Dean kind of does work hard to hide his smarts from Sam. Because alright, so he had been pulling Sam’s leg when he said that chick in the bar was oh-so-mesmerized by his stunningly good looks, but dude, it’s not like Dean’s gonna tell Sam about how much he geeked out with the girl. No, because he does have some sense of self-preservation from little brother’s teasing. Besides, “book stuff” is Sam-land, and “cool stuff” is Dean’s territory.
Sam’s supposed to be the big geek playing walking encyclopedia and straight man to Dean’s sarcastic straight-shooter suaveness. Sam smart puppy-eyes, Dean dumb womanizer, people talk lots. That’s how it goes.
Those purple nurples were really good though. They’re actually just grape jelly shots, made with plenty of alcohol. Dean loves grape, especially that grape-flavored lip gloss a lot of girls like to wear. He likes the way the tingle of the alcohol slips smoothly down his throat, and all the way down to his-well, wouldn’t you like to know?
And what’s that Sasquatch brother of his talking about? He totally blahs. All the damn time. When he’s in the car, when he’s in the shower, in his sleep, all the time, right in his ear. Blah blah-BLAH blah-BLAH. Blah.
Seriously.
Dean needs a drink.
Title: Twenty-One Bottles of Beer on the Wall - Punch-Drunk Love (3/21)
Author: poestheblackcat
Rating: PG-13
Fandom: Supernatural
Characters/Pairings: John, Mary
Warnings: Very PG (or maybe PG-13 at the most). References a few episodes/quotes that I think might spoil some things in the story if I mention them here (or really, it’s just more fun to try to figure out). PM me or review if you want to know the answer or if you just want to guess.
Summary: John Winchester and alcohol, Part One. This one’s warm and fuzzy and slightly hilarious: John’s courtship of Mary Campbell. Teaser - Mary has a mean right hook.
John wasn’t a hard drinker to begin with. The occasional beer by the lake with the rest of the kids from school, sure, but it wasn’t all the time. It was just a little social drinking anyhow. No harm in it.
Then the war came, and things got rough. Liquor got real useful then. Shoot, John reckons he spent most of his down time buzzed up, at least. His tour finally ended, and he came back home. He kept drinking, worried his momma practically to death, but he needed the alcohol to numb his mind. The things he’d seen…
Mary changed things. They’d gone to school together, from the time they’d been tiny Mary Campbell fetching a stolen ball back from wee Johnny Winchester, and bringing him down to the ground with one well-placed kick to bring the toy thief to shame.
Well, they’d hated each other ever since, but somehow, in the sweltering jungles of ‘Nam, he’d found himself wondering what ever became of her, if she’d married anyone, wishing he were back in Lawrence just so he could see her pretty smile in that angelic face framed by perfect golden waves. Then he’d wince and his hand would unconsciously go south to where she’d kneed him once as sophomores in high school over a comment that she deemed to be “overwhelmingly sexist.”
That woman sure was something, he’ll tell you that. Mean right hook, too.
Anyhow, he came home, a war-torn soldier older than his years warranted, and he forgot about the blonde angel who’d gotten him through so many agonizing nights. There were other women, easier women, who gave him what he needed without questioning him or frowning at the amount of whiskey he drank.
And then he saw her. Just walking down the street, head high in the air like she owned the town, and pretty blonde hair streaming behind her in the breeze. He fell, boy, did he fall. He got up from the bus bench he’d been sleeping off his daily hangover on and followed her in a daze. Three blocks from where he’d started, big bad war hero John friggin’ Winchester got his ass handed to him by a hundred-pound woman in a lacy white sundress, wearing three-inch heels, no less.
“Mary, Mary, it’s me,” he shouted as best he could from where his face was mashed up against the alley wall.
The tight grip on the arm twisted up behind him eased, and John relaxed, only to find himself flipped over and pressed back against the wall. He gaped vapidly at the girl who’d been beating him up since grade school.
“John? John Winchester?” A wrinkle creased the flawless porcelain forehead. “What the hell are you doing, following me like that? You scared the crap out of me! I could’ve-” sputtered Mary angrily.
Oh, and she cussed too. Dirty. A slap to the face snapped John out of his dreamy musings.
“Winchester!” Mary all but shouted as she yanked on his shirt.
“H-have dinner with me?” he stammered out. Years later, John remembers thinking, Where on earth did that come from?
She recoiled, as expected. “What? Why would I want to have dinner with you?” She shoved him back against the wall and stepped away, a quizzical expression on her face. John thinks it should have been a clue as to who Mary Campbell actually was, when she spit “Christo” at him.
“My name’s John, ‘member?” he’d told her. Back then, he was a naïve idiot; no matter what he’d seen in Vietnam, boy, he hadn’t seen nothin’ yet.
Well, Mary, satisfied that he was one hundred percent John Winchester and not a demon, sighed, refused his offer, and dragged him to Jay’s to get a cup of coffee to sober him up. Then she walked (more like frog marched) him home and dumped him on his momma’s front porch with a stern, “Ask me again when you’re sober. I don’t feel right beating up on a drunk man. I like an even playing field.”
Maybe he took that the wrong way, but he laid off of the alcohol, shaved his stubble and cut his hair, and got a steady job at his father’s shop. Having done that, he put on a clean suit, bought a bouquet of roses with his first paycheck, and went the bakery where Mary worked.
The fresh scent of baked goods hit his nostrils as soon as he entered. Mm, pie. Then he noticed the girl holding the tray. Helloooo, Mary. She was just standing there, with that tray of fresh-baked goodness in her hands, and by god, he wanted to marry her then and there, she was that beautiful.
A pie to the face shook him out of his daydream, and he realized that he must have said that out loud because she was right in front of him now, the rest of the pies safe on the counter.
“I thought I told you to sober up before coming near me again,” Mary was saying, hands on her slim hips.
“I am!” John cried, throwing his hands up. “If I’m drunk, I’m drunk on you!”
That stopped her cold. “What?”
“You do this thing to me, I dunno. It’s just…You’re it,” he said quietly, not caring how lame it sounded. “You’re the one.”
“O-kay,” she said, slowly, drawing out the vowels. A perfect eyebrow arched. Then her face changed, suddenly.
He didn’t know what any of that meant. “Okay?”
“Okay.” She tossed a dishtowel at him. “Wipe your face first. Wouldn’t want to be seen with you in public looking like a horror movie reject.”
He handed her the roses in return, blushing under the cherry pie filling. “Brought these for you.”
Mary turned the same bright red John’s face was as she stared at the bouquet. “Thank you,” she said after a moment. “I like red roses.”
And so she did. The first things she planted in the garden once they finally saved up enough to buy a proper house for their growing family were bushes of red roses. Mary loved those rosebushes, and John loved them because she did.
Now, it wasn’t a fairy-tale marriage, the way John would like to think it was-it had its ups and downs, like any other relationship-but it wasn’t as bad as some couples’ he could name. Sure, it drove him right back to drink once or twice, but Mary always let him come home once he blew off some steam and knocked on the door with his tail between his legs, each time with a bouquet of red roses as a peace offering. It was the way things were between them…until that night.
That night, his world ended.
Title: Twenty-One Bottles of Beer on the Wall - Jim, Jack, And Jose (4/21)
Author: poestheblackcat
Rating: PG-13
Fandom: Supernatural
Characters/Pairings: John, wee!Dean, wee!Sam
Summary: John Winchester and alcohol, Part Two. The aftermath of November 2, 1983.
That fatal night in November of the year his second son was born, John Winchester’s life burned up with his wife, his darling Mary, the woman of his dreams. All of their wishes and promises, their hopes and dreams, they all went up in an inferno of orange flames and black smoke, burning and choking the very existence out of him.
And what he saw…He knew what he saw that night, and no damned idiot cop was going to tell him different, no sirree. He saw her, burning to death in front of him, on the ceiling. Shock, his frickin’ lily-white ass. He’ll give him shock.
Anyway, the pull of the bottle was too much for him, seeing that no one believed a word he said, shaking their heads and looking at him and his boys with unwanted pity, and he fell down that slippery neck into the broken glass gullet of caustic liquor, down, down, into oblivion.
One chilly afternoon, he woke up from another drunken night to find his four-year-old son staring silently at him from across the room with his baby brother clutched in his arms, as if he’d never let go since his father had told the toddler to take Sam and run to safety. It wasn’t the tears on the young face that broke John out of his trance, for there hadn’t been any more to be wept after the first week of trauma and motherlessness; it was the emptiness he saw in the green depths, the vast hole of desolation that grief leaves.
He reached out a hand to his sons, crawled to them, and swept them up in his arms. “I’m so sorry, baby. I’m so sorry.” He rocked Mary’s boys, sobbing his apologies into their small bodies.
That was Christmas, one of the bleakest the Winchesters ever had.
Dean didn’t say anything. He didn’t say anything for almost two years after Mary’s death. Even then, when he got bigger and started talking and laughing, almost like that happy little boy he’d been before the fire, Dean never said anything when it came to John and drinking, nothing to stop him from swallowing that poison whiskey, not a word to stop him from going out to a bar for a beer or five. That look in his too-expressive eyes, even though he tried to hide it, was enough of a stinging reproach.
That same sad, disappointed expression Mary had had whenever he’d returned to the bottle.
Well, John couldn’t stand it most of the times Dean got that look-boy didn’t even know he was doing it, couldn’t know that John saw Mary in that look each and every time-but even though he knew he was doing wrong, he went and took that drink anyhow. Only way to numb the pain, other than hunting down that evil sonofabith that killed his Mary.
There are a handful of days in the year on which he always gets shit-faced, just like clockwork, year after year. Mary’s birthday, the day he first asked her out, the day she said yes, the day they got engaged (which coincided with the day her parents…died), their anniversary, the day she was killed and left her young boys motherless, the day he finally realized that little Dean had gone mute, the day he realized that little Sammy was a burbling baby no longer but an independent teenager…
John Winchester’s had a lot of bad shit happen in his life. He figures that justifies his long-term affair with Jim, Jack, and Jose. ‘Course, he makes sure he don’t think of his sons, and especially Dean and that look (just like his mother’s-he don’t think of her either), when he does his reasoning. The whiskey goes down better that way.
Title: Twenty-One Bottles of Beer on the Wall - It's My Party (5/21)
Author: poestheblackcat
Rating: PG-13
Fandom: Supernatural
Characters/Pairings: Sam/Jess, Dean
Summary: Sam’s overwhelmingly normal twenty-first birthday isn’t exactly how he’d imagined it would be.
Sam eyes the shot glass full of amber liquid with some trepidation.
It’s not as if he’s never had a drink before. Because he has, on numerous occasions. Or maybe not that many. But he’s had his fair share, for a just-turned-twenty-one year-old anyway, and not all just for fun and giggles.
Like that time when he was seventeen. A werewolf had sneaked up on him and slashed him across the back. He doesn’t remember much about what happened that night, just the excruciating, white-hot pain exploding across his spine, the loud bang of his brother’s gun launching a bullet into the monster, the werewolf’s angry snarl as the silver hit its chest. He remembers Dean’s cool hands and steady voice near him, trying to calm him so Dad could stitch up the gushing wound.
Sam remembers too the fiery liquid Dad finally forced down his throat to knock him out (so he’d stop screaming and let him work), and Dean’s knowing and apologetic look of sympathy on his worried face before the darkness took him over.
Dean.
The one constant in his life, until Sam decided he’d had enough of Dad and his crusade. The thought of Dad makes his blood boil, a Pavlovian response.
Sam throws his head back and dumps the contents of the shot glass down his throat like a seasoned alcoholic, much to the amazement and admiration of his friends.
Yeah, it’s not the first drink Sam’s ever had, but it’s his first legal one.
His first first drink was with Dean. The night of his sixteenth birthday, after a pretty awesome Star Wars marathon and pizza dinner, Dean had suddenly stood up, pulled the keys to the Impala out of his pocket, and thrown them at Sam.
“Hey Sammy. Ya wanna go to a bar? You’re driving.”
Pretty sweet, huh? Well, aside from the “Sammy” part of it. And the killer hangover.
It feels wrong somehow that Dean isn’t here to share a drink with him. The thought makes him glance at the cell phone that he’s subconsciously pulled out of his pocket.
He flips it open…and snaps it closed again. No, he’s not giving in to the sudden roiling wave of homesickness that has overcome him. Not tonight. It’s his birthday, his twenty-first birthday. This should be a day of celebration, spent with his friends and fa-…spent with his friends.
Sam puts the phone back in his jacket and directs a smile that he hopes is natural at his aforementioned friends. They don’t seem to have noticed his momentary lapse in jollity.
Except for Jessica. Always perceptive (kind of like Dean, his traitorous mind supplies), she shoots a worried glance at Sam from beside him. He shakes his head and broadens his smile. When she nods, still looking not quite satisfied, he puts his arm around her, reassuring her that he’s really alright. She settles into his side with a contented sigh and nestles her head trustingly back against his shoulder.
Brady slaps him on the shoulder and invites him to a game of pool. “I’ll go easy on you,” he says.
Sam accepts with a hidden smirk. Yeah, more like he’ll be the one going easy on him.
He’s lining up his shot when he hears the muffled revving of a familiar engine somewhere outside the bar. He freezes, heart stuttering in his chest. Then he smiles and chuckles softly. No way. Just his overactive imagination that Dean always used to tease him about…right?
Title: Twenty-One Bottles of Beer on the Wall - The Party-Crasher (6/21)
Author: poestheblackcat
Rating: PG-13
Fandom: Supernatural
Characters/Pairings: Dean, Sam
Summary: Companion piece to “It’s My Party.” Dean’s POV.
Dean watches his younger (and much taller-so not fair) brother from his seat in the dark corner.
Twenty-one.
Baby Sammy, his little snot-nosed kid brother, is legal now.
Twenty-one.
The six-month-old baby he’d carried out of their burning house the night their mother died, the baby whose first word was heard only by big brother, the toddler who’d followed him around all the time, the one for whom Dean had beat up more bullies than he had fingers (and toes), the annoying, stubborn jackass of a brother who’d picked fights with Dad, and who’d left three years ago for college.
That Sammy.
“It’s Sam,” he hears in his head. “Not Sammy.” Dean can practically see the eye-roll. Nah, little brother will always be “Sammy” to him, even when they’re old geezers with walking sticks and wheelchairs. Well, if Dean even lives that long.
Sam will, though. Sammy’s gonna be a lawyer, imagine that. With a family business like this, a lawyer in the family might come in handy. If the rest of said family could get along, that is.
Dean sighs and takes another swig from his bottle.
Across the room, the stereotype of a rich frat kid plunks a shot glass full of a clear white liquid down in front of Sam. Sam’s face turns solemn, as if he’s contemplating the momentousness of this event. Heck, knowing him, he probably is.
It’s not Sam’s first drink. No one knows that better than Dean. Now Sam’s first drink…oh man. He chortles at the memory.
Sam’s sixteenth, Dean let Sam drive the Impala, snuck the kid into a bar after dinner and movies, and got him shit-faced. Totally, utterly, completely shitfaced. It’s not his fault birthday boy was a lightweight. Two beers. Two. Good thing Dad wasn’t around, else the next morning, Sam might have begged him to kill him and end his misery, instead of just Dean, and Dad really might have.
Hangovers. Dean chuckles again. Greasy cheeseburger served up on a dirty ashtray. Now that was fun.
Sam’s face darkens, the change only perceptible to a close observer (like Dean), and he quickly tosses the alcohol back like a pro.
Damn, Sammy, says Dean to himself, thinking of Dad, are we? Now why the hell are you thinking about Dad, of all people? Oh yeah, normal stuff, right? Kid’s always had issues about “normal.”
Like how normal kids don’t have weapons training and hunting practice (speaking of which, Dean’s been tailing Sam for over an hour, and he hasn’t even turned around once-getting rusty there, kiddo) on top of homework. They don’t move every three weeks. They don’t get hurt, and nearly killed, on hunts. They go to college, they have homes, they don’t eat exclusively at diners. Normal, normal, normal. Everything Dean and Dad couldn’t give him.
Well, he’s got it now, Dean thinks. Doesn’t need big brother anymore. Or so he thinks, anyway.
Want proof? See that? Sam just took his phone out of his pocket. He’s not gonna call though. He’s thinking too much about it. Just watch. Dean knows his brother too well.
Dean’s hand hovers over the phone sitting on the table next to his own drink anyway.
Sam flips the cell open. Huh, maybe this year will be the-nope. The plastic clicks shut.
See? He was right. He’s always right.
Dean sighs and stands, pauses for a moment, then picks his bottle back up, and raises it in a toast to the group of college kids sitting in the bright light, his brother’s shaggy head sticking out like a giant in a room full of midgets.
“Happy birthday, Sammy.”
He finishes the beer, drops some bills on the table, and casts another look back at his brother, who’s got his arm draped protectively around the pretty blonde he’s been dating for six months. Blondie (Jessica Lee Moore, aged 20, psychology major) snuggles up to him. Attaboy.
Now Frat Boy’s wheedling Sammy into playing pool with him.
Dean chuckles to himself. Sammy-boy’s gonna clean him out. Unless he’s feeling stubborn, in which case he’ll try pathetically hard to lose every game. Oh, Sammy.
He leaves the bar with a small smile, feeling better than he had when he’d walked in; he’s seen his brother, seen how grown up he’s gotten (grown up and up, the stork-legged little bitch), seen him with that normal life he’s always wanted.
And Dean didn’t talk to him, didn’t even approach him. Best birthday present he could have given, he rationalizes. Not being there and messing things up when Sam doesn’t want him invading his life.
Except he was. He’s always been there for Sam’s first everything (well, except for his first, ya know, lay, but he sure heard about it right after), so there’s no reason why Dean should miss Sammy’s first legal drink.
That’s the sort of thing normal brothers would be around for, right?
He guns his engine and roars out of the bar’s parking lot, wondering if Sam had in fact noticed him, and was only pretending not to see him…Nah, Dean’s a sneakier bastard than even Sam can detect.
Because he’s just that good.
Title: Twenty-One Bottles of Beer on the Wall - Requiem For A Hunter (7/21)
Author: poestheblackcat
Rating: PG-13
Fandom: Supernatural
Characters/Pairings: Bobby, Sam, death!fic (Dean)
Warning: This one is kind of graphic. Not for the faint of heart and queasy of stomach. Also, a crapload of angst. You have been forewarned.
Summary: Post-NRFTW, Bobby POV.
Requiem aeternam dona eis, Domine - Requiem Mass
- - - - - -
Flies buzz around the still body on the bed. Calliphora vicina. Blue bottle flies.
Bobby knows they’re laying their eggs in the soft, exposed goo of the open wounds. He can see the maggots, already a squirming white mass all over the ragged torso, feasting and reproducing on the decaying flesh. They congregate in places where the skin is already open, either naturally or torn by the claws and teeth of ravenous hellhounds.
They’re crawling in the nostrils of the straight nose, and Bobby can see that the mouth, slackened in death, is starting to fill with larvae. The closed eyelids twitch, and he’s reminded that if he is so inclined to pry them open, he would find, not green-hazel eyes full of life and smirking up at him, nor even those very same eyes clouded in death, but two eye orbits swarming with the maggots that seem to be filling the empty body with gruesome, false life.
They’d tried to sew the boy back together, painstakingly stitching the gaping wounds closed, but the skin had been torn in so many places, and the gashes had been so large, that the work was shoddy at best. Still, they’d spent many long hours passing the needle and thread through the cold, decaying flesh, in an effort to leave the man with some dignity, even in death.
Sam had been silent throughout the ordeal, quiet except for a few hiccups and sniffles. He hadn’t said a word since Bobby had found him on the laminated wooden floor, sitting in a pool of his brother’s congealing blood, rocking the cooling corpse desperately in his arms, as if he could will the soul back into the body by simply wishing for it hard enough.
The older man had allowed himself a moment of grief, removing the worn cap from his head and wiping a tear from his eye, before stepping over the already decaying body of the blonde that had housed the demon Ruby. Bobby didn’t know what had happened in that room, but he knew it was bad, very bad.
- - - - - -
Buzzzz
- - - - - -
Dean, oh God…
Reaching down to the shaking shoulder, he whispered, “I’m so sorry, Sam,” his hoarse voice breaking the spell the violent death had cast over the room. “We-” his voice failed, “We have to go. Sam. We gotta go.”
Sam shook his head, and gripped his brother tighter, burying his face in the blood-drenched shoulder. “Go,” he said, or maybe it was “No.” “Leave us alone. Leave us alone,” he sobbed.
Bobby didn’t know what to do, short of forcibly pulling Sam up with one hand and trying to wrangle De-…the body with the other. Neither would come willingly; both would have the same dead weight quality. So he waited, waited to Sam to calm down enough to listen to reason.
The sound of far-off sirens was what shook Sam out of his trance. The heart-wrenching sobs trailed off as Sam finally looked up. Bobby took this as a sign that the boy might be ready to go now, and squeezed his shoulder again. “Let’s go, Sam.”
Sam’s eyes slowly focused on the grizzled face before him. “Bobby?” he said, looking for all the world like a lost little boy. “Dean, Dean’s gone. He’s gone.” Boy sounded like somebody’d run over his puppy or something, only worse. It was his brother, the one constant in his life, who was gone.
“I know, son,” Bobby said gently, not wanting to frighten the kid. “We gotta go, Sam. Somebody called the police.”
The wide forehead creased. “No police, Bobby. Can’t…” He looked around at the lake of drying blood around him, bewildered. “The blood. Can’t clean it up. Won’t come out, like Lady Macbeth.”
Bobby tugged on Sam’s arm this time. “Let’s go,” he said, disregarding Sam’s mumbling. “We’ll have to leave the mess. I’ll help you carry him.”
This prompted a low growl from the boy, who wrenched his arm out of Bobby’s grip and hugged his brother closer. “He’s my brother. I’m gonna take care of him. It’s my job now.”
“Alright,” Bobby said soothingly, hiding his nervousness about the rapidly approaching sirens. “You’ll carry him. We need to get him out of here though, okay?”
This apparently sounded like a good deal to Sam because he nodded and got up off of the floor, slipping and sliding in the blood underfoot. Dean’s head lolled loosely from its place in the crook of Sam’s arm. The empty green eyes stared accusingly at Bobby as Sam passed by with him.
They got Dean settled in the back seat of the Impala, wrapped in sheets from one of the beds and several layers of plastic garbage bags to keep what blood was left in the body from leaking through and staining the seats of Dean’s beloved car.
They went as far as they could before the danger of driving off the road became too high. They were tired, in both body and spirit, and adrenaline wears off after a while. They stopped in a small town in the middle of Illinois, where the 55 meets the 51.
Since Bobby had less blood on his clothes, he went and got the room, while keeping a very close eye on the younger man through the office window. He needn’t have, seeing that the only thing Sam did was get out of the front seat to sit in the back with his brother.
Having paid and gotten the key, Bobby went around to the Impala to see if Sam would allow him to help maneuver Dean out of the car. When he opened the door, the smell hit him; the metallic tang of blood, the contents of the loosened bladder and bowels (Dean, had he been alive-and Bobby wished he was but if he had a nickel for every wish-would have been mortified to find that not only had he peed himself, but he’d shit his pants too), and the cloying scent of death. It nearly made him gag, but he recovered himself without Sam noticing.
Surprisingly, Sam accepted the tentatively offered assistance, and together, they hauled the body, still wrapped like a mummy but stiff with rigor mortis, into the room. Bobby, keeping an eye out for anyone who’d see and call the police on them, was thankful for the cover of the darkening dusk.
They put the body on the bed and stood there just looking at it. Then Sam reached out a hand and gently unwrapped the bags twisted around the still figure until there was only the thin cotton cloth left, hard and tacky from dried blood. When that too was peeled off, a dry sob erupted from the old man.
Dean, oh, Dean.
The boy who’d somehow wriggled his way into his heart, from the first moment he’d spotted the tiny kid with the sad green eyes hiding behind his Daddy’s legs on his front porch. How long ago was that? Twenty-three, twenty-four years, wasn’t it? Damned long time. Boy had grown into a man, a good man, and he’d died that morning. That ain’t right. Young man like him, one of the best men Bobby’d ever known, dead, and an old codger like him still breathing, it ain’t right. It simply ain’t right.
Sam held the cold, dead face in his hands, brushing his thumbs over the slack features, rubbing at the droplets of dried blood from the arterial spray. The eyes were closed-Bobby hadn’t been able to stand the accusatory gaze any longer while they were wrapping him up.
Once the plastic was off the body, the smell grew stronger. Bobby got the ice bucket and filled it with warm water, got a couple of the crappy motel towels and threw it in to soak. Sam had gotten a knife out in his absence, which gave Bobby a jolt before he realized that it was for cutting the clothes off of the stiff body.
The knife slid under the sleeve of the dark jacket, ready to slit the fabric when Sam’s hand stalled. The knife shook, tearing a few threads. Bobby reached out a hand. “Give it here, Sam. I’ll do it.”
Sam shook his head. “No. I should do it. He’d want me to do it.” He took a deep breath and went on.
When that was over, they could finally see the full extent of the damage done-on the front. They’d take care of the front first, then flip him over to clean up the back. Until then…Bobby draped a dry towel over the groin, untouched by the hounds, to give the boy a semblance of privacy.
He handed one of the towels to Sam, who took it without a word. Silently, they wiped the dried blood from the smooth skin. Bobby, too, was reminded of Lady Macbeth as he rinsed the red cloth in rust-colored water. This blood would likewise stain his hands and conscience forever. This blood, of which each drop was precious to him.
He could remember the boy, teaching his baby brother how to walk, shielding him from everything from bullies to monsters to even death. This boy, who had so little thought of his own self-worth that he’d sold his soul away to return to his brother the life he’d guarded so loyally.
They started stitching after the blood was gone from the surface. This part was familiar, something they’d done many times after numerous hunts. The only things different about it were that they didn’t have to worry about giving the patient pain, and that the wounds didn’t ooze blood as they pulled the edges closed with their black thread.
Bobby couldn’t help thinking that if Dean was here, he’d make some stupid joke about Frankenstein’s monster. Sam would counter with a comparison to the girl from that Tim Burton movie. If, you know, Dean wasn’t lying here dead with his soul on the express train to Hell.
With another shudder, Bobby went back to work. His eyelids drooped, but he kept working, knowing he wouldn’t be able to rest anyhow. The needle flashed in and out of the cold flesh. In, out, in, out, in…
- - - - - -
The first fly arrived at midnight. Its buzzing broke the silence in the room. Two pairs of eyes watched as it landed on the tip of Dean’s nose. Beady multifaceted eyes stared back at them. The fly washed its face and lifted itself onto its front legs so it could wash its back two legs. The transparent wings shone iridescently in the lamplight.
It’s a blue bottle fly, a carrion fly.
Bobby knew enough about corpses-freshly dead, long dead, don’t matter, he’d seen ‘em all-to know that there was nothing he could do to keep the flies from coming and landing and multiplying on this new and fertile corpse.
He shooed it away anyway.
- - - - - -
Buzzzz
- - - - - -
The flies buzz, a swelling and undulating chorus.
One fat maggot spills out of the mass of its brothers and sisters swarming in Dean’s mouth, and lands on the stubbled cheek. It wriggles helplessly on the prickly surface, until, unable to find purchase, it slides down the jaw and plops onto the plastic covering the bed.
Bobby eyes it with distaste.
Sam’s been sitting here for days, watching his brother decompose. Another day and the neighbors will start complaining about the odor. The room already smells like one of the many houses they visit in the course of their job, the houses with the ripe, rotting corpses inside.
Bobby decides it’s been long enough. “Sam,” he says, voice rough from whiskey and disuse. And grief. Can’t forget that one. “Sam, it’s time.”
Greasy chestnut locks shake. “No, not yet.” Sam sounds like a zombie himself. Lack of sleep, lack of food, lack of brother will do that to you. “I can’t yet.”
Bobby sighs. “He’s starting to stink up the room.” He’s already thrown up in the bathroom three times. The buzzing’s giving him a headache. “He- Heck, Sam, he started smelling two days ago. We gotta…take care of him.”
“I’ll take care of him.” Sam’s voice is harsh, fierce. Sam sounds like his brother.
Bobby shifts on his feet. He takes his hat off, scratches his head. “I’ll-I’ll go get wood then.”
“Get boards.”
“What?” Bobby steps towards Sam, puts a hand on his shoulder and turns him around. The movement causes a black curtain of flies to rise up before settling again.
Sam holds Bobby’s gaze steadily. “I said, get boards. I’m not burning my brother.”
Bobby sighs. “Sam, he would have wanted-”
Sam stands. “You don’t know what he would have wanted,” he bellows. “He never said. I say we’re not burning my brother. When I find a way to get him back, he’ll need his body.”
“Sam.”
Sam goes back to his vigil. “Boards, Bobby.”
Bobby gets boards. Pine, nice solid pieces.
Sam puts the coffin together. Bobby puts out a hand to help but is waved away. Sam makes a cross too, to go over the grave.
They bury Dean a quarter of a mile off of the highway, and only four feet down. “Just in case he wakes up before we can get him out,” Sam explains.
Sam doesn’t put in the last boards until they’re ready to put the dirt back in. Bobby tries to hand him nails to secure the lid, but Sam shakes his head and grabs the shovel.
The sound of the dirt hitting the pine boards is one of the saddest things Bobby’s ever heard, although he can barely hear it over the sound of the buzzing. Most of the flies have deserted the body, though their larvae were still wriggling on the body (and in it) when they put the lid on. Even so, Bobby can still hear the adults buzzing.
“He was a good man,” he chokes out, and hurries away to the car, leaving Sam to have one last moment alone with his brother.
- - - - - -
The flies buzz. They’re not really there; they’re in his head, and nothing he can do will quiet them. And so he drinks. Drinks enough that the nefarious buzzing in his head hums along with the buzz of the alcohol.
The flies drone on. It’s a shit requiem for a hunter, but it’s all Bobby’s got. Requiems are meant to grant the dead eternal rest (Requiem aeternam dona eis, Domine), and if it’s one thing Dean Winchester ain’t getting right now, it’s rest.
Bobby shudders and takes another drink as the flies buzz louder in his mind. Sometimes he thinks he can hear a familiar voice chiding him for letting Sam slip out from under his watch; other times, he thinks he hears a pain-filled cry underneath all the buzzing. He doesn’t want to listen closer to find out.
The flies buzz. Bobby drinks.
- - - - - -I heard a fly buzz when I died - Emily Dickinson