OKAY SO, I should have been in bed hours ago and this kind of just spilled out on the paper sans any actual plot, so I may go back and have actual things happen in it later, but FOR NOW, have a little atmospheric thingy:
Filled: Where the Sidewalk Ends, Gen, PG-13, (1/1)
It's not so much the flashes of dark and movement and teeth that get to him. Dean can handle those. Hell, he can handle anything this or the next world throws at him, he's proven that over and over, time and time and time again. So, no, it doesn't bother him when the world curls back in his peripheral vision, like it's nothing more than old wallpaper flaking away with every passing breeze. It's okay that he sometimes recognizes the shapes on the other side, the particular cant of a werewolf soul's snout, the flex and snap of the tentacled thing that haunts bogs and swamps, sending out will-o-the-wisp lures. (Sam thinks they're fireflies. When he was small, he used to chase them, and Dean doesn't have the heart to tell him how close he's come to falling off the edge of everything.)
It's none of the sights at all, not the deepening of the shadows in the corners or the faint glimmer of eyes in the edge of the laptop glow. Not the claws curling just behind the covers of the vents or the crawling motion just under their bags in the trunk. (Sam just reaches in, could lose his whole hand in there to the swarm, but Dean doesn't say a word.) It's not even the way they all do it silently, like they're creeping in and building their numbers, biding their time until they can snatch their plaything back and wrap him up in leathery wings that almost perfectly match a moonless night sky (and Sam will never know because he doesn't see them and Dean doesn't have the words, has never had the words to make him understand that the walls of the world are thin, they're so thin that Dean can scarcely breathe on them for fear they'll pop like soap bubbles). They're so silent Dean could even almost doubt they're real. He could let the weight and the undeniable substance of his brother be his rock -- but for the smell.
Hell stinks, of course. It reeks of brimstone and rancid meat, of fresh blood blending with boiling flesh, of pain and terror and shit and despair. There's no smell on earth, no combination of odors that can come close, and Dean will know it in an instant if he ever smells it again. Heaven should smell like lemons or pine, like fresh air and linen and what all those laundry companies think "mountain rain" smells like -- but it doesn't smell like anything at all. Heaven as Dean knows it is an absence of smell, like a place he's been so long he can't even pick scents from the air any more. The stench of Hell you can't escape; the smell of Heaven you can never even find.
Earth is supposed to smell like leather and motor oil, like wood ash, old books, and gunpowder. Like mold sometimes, or rot, but also soap and gasoline and fresh baked pie. But these days all Dean smells is age. Musty cheese and stagnant water. Dry bones and formaldehyde. Moth balls, stale bacon, and animal musk.
Purgatory smells like that. Like everything that is ancient and cold and unknowable. Like dinosaur bones fresh from the earth, like a hundred year old man a few days from death. Like eternity.
That's what gets to him, makes him twitch and bite his tongue as the spaces around him crumble a little further each day. What makes him snatch at Sam's hand when he reaches for spare change that's rolled under the vending machine, what makes him stop and lean in from more than a foot away from the edge of the bed when it's time to turn in. What keeps him up, eyes locked on the cracks in the ceiling while Sam snores in the next bed, what makes him flare his nostrils and struggle to drag in every little nuance of the air, trying to pick apart the smell of musty bed sheets from the smell of eons-dead monster.
The walls of the universe are toppling around him, breaking down bit by bit, and goddammit, Dean is going to be ready when they fall.
Eee! This is *awesome,* really fantastically atmospheric, and full of those fabulous details that make the skin crawl. And these days I'm less entertained by the whole 'is it real or is it all in his head?' thing, but it works really well here and felt fresh and new again. I think because the sense of genuine menace is so palpable. The part about Sam maybe losing his hand was what got me, I think, and that idea of razor-sharp somethings and human vulnerability. Brr. And also the exploration of the fact that Dean's now visited four different realms of existence and been in each long enough to know them as well as his home. Really nice. I love it.
If you *were* to expand on this, of course I'd be thrilled. *bambi eyes* Thank you so much for the awesome fill!
My writing brain has been rather fickle, lately, which is why I was so thrilled to get even this much out last night, but then I was up for another half an hour with a mind full of possible sceneage for this, so it might go further this weekend.
Trying to avoid too much "is it real? is it in his head?" is where the smell thing came in. I'm fascinated by the sense of smell and the way it triggers the human brain, and I felt it added a bit more of a punch to it all, another level of reality for Dean at least -- it's not something you can express that well in television, so we have no idea if Sam got smellovision in his Lucifer hallucinations, but I like to think maybe he didn't, and the smell really does confirm for Dean that while Sam's not seeing it, it's really there.
(Sam thinks they're fireflies. When he was small, he used to chase them, and Dean doesn't have the heart to tell him how close he's come to falling off the edge of everything.)
Oooh, man, so *very* creepy! I love it. *shudder*
I don't sleep with any part of me off the mattress. *clings to pillow*
It's wild to get a visual picture in my head of a smell. The descriptions are amazing as is the idea that the decaying smell of Purgatory is bleeding through. It's really tough to know here if Dean really sees Purgatory breaking through or if it's all in his head. Very creepy.
Filled: Where the Sidewalk Ends, Gen, PG-13, (1/1)
It's not so much the flashes of dark and movement and teeth that get to him. Dean can handle those. Hell, he can handle anything this or the next world throws at him, he's proven that over and over, time and time and time again. So, no, it doesn't bother him when the world curls back in his peripheral vision, like it's nothing more than old wallpaper flaking away with every passing breeze. It's okay that he sometimes recognizes the shapes on the other side, the particular cant of a werewolf soul's snout, the flex and snap of the tentacled thing that haunts bogs and swamps, sending out will-o-the-wisp lures. (Sam thinks they're fireflies. When he was small, he used to chase them, and Dean doesn't have the heart to tell him how close he's come to falling off the edge of everything.)
It's none of the sights at all, not the deepening of the shadows in the corners or the faint glimmer of eyes in the edge of the laptop glow. Not the claws curling just behind the covers of the vents or the crawling motion just under their bags in the trunk. (Sam just reaches in, could lose his whole hand in there to the swarm, but Dean doesn't say a word.) It's not even the way they all do it silently, like they're creeping in and building their numbers, biding their time until they can snatch their plaything back and wrap him up in leathery wings that almost perfectly match a moonless night sky (and Sam will never know because he doesn't see them and Dean doesn't have the words, has never had the words to make him understand that the walls of the world are thin, they're so thin that Dean can scarcely breathe on them for fear they'll pop like soap bubbles). They're so silent Dean could even almost doubt they're real. He could let the weight and the undeniable substance of his brother be his rock -- but for the smell.
Hell stinks, of course. It reeks of brimstone and rancid meat, of fresh blood blending with boiling flesh, of pain and terror and shit and despair. There's no smell on earth, no combination of odors that can come close, and Dean will know it in an instant if he ever smells it again. Heaven should smell like lemons or pine, like fresh air and linen and what all those laundry companies think "mountain rain" smells like -- but it doesn't smell like anything at all. Heaven as Dean knows it is an absence of smell, like a place he's been so long he can't even pick scents from the air any more. The stench of Hell you can't escape; the smell of Heaven you can never even find.
Earth is supposed to smell like leather and motor oil, like wood ash, old books, and gunpowder. Like mold sometimes, or rot, but also soap and gasoline and fresh baked pie. But these days all Dean smells is age. Musty cheese and stagnant water. Dry bones and formaldehyde. Moth balls, stale bacon, and animal musk.
Purgatory smells like that. Like everything that is ancient and cold and unknowable. Like dinosaur bones fresh from the earth, like a hundred year old man a few days from death. Like eternity.
That's what gets to him, makes him twitch and bite his tongue as the spaces around him crumble a little further each day. What makes him snatch at Sam's hand when he reaches for spare change that's rolled under the vending machine, what makes him stop and lean in from more than a foot away from the edge of the bed when it's time to turn in. What keeps him up, eyes locked on the cracks in the ceiling while Sam snores in the next bed, what makes him flare his nostrils and struggle to drag in every little nuance of the air, trying to pick apart the smell of musty bed sheets from the smell of eons-dead monster.
The walls of the universe are toppling around him, breaking down bit by bit, and goddammit, Dean is going to be ready when they fall.
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If you *were* to expand on this, of course I'd be thrilled. *bambi eyes* Thank you so much for the awesome fill!
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Trying to avoid too much "is it real? is it in his head?" is where the smell thing came in. I'm fascinated by the sense of smell and the way it triggers the human brain, and I felt it added a bit more of a punch to it all, another level of reality for Dean at least -- it's not something you can express that well in television, so we have no idea if Sam got smellovision in his Lucifer hallucinations, but I like to think maybe he didn't, and the smell really does confirm for Dean that while Sam's not seeing it, it's really there.
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Oooh, man, so *very* creepy! I love it.
*shudder*
I don't sleep with any part of me off the mattress.
*clings to pillow*
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These days, I'll dangle my feet off the end with abandon. ;D
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