"Religion for the Night"
Title: “Religion for the Night”
Summary: Extended re-imagining of 4.08, "Wishful Thinking."
Disclaimer/Author's Note: I know what I’m asking for this year. Hook me up, Santa! Title is taken from “Higher Power” by Boston. Written for the ahhh-mazing comment-fic meme over at mad_server's journal. Check it out! (And then renew it; it's that awesome!)
Prompt (by ariadnes_string): Okay, this one is totally my imagination, but I've always thought Dean/JA looked terribly pale in 4.08--and Dean does spend some time puking after the wished-up sandwich goes bad (and drinking/sleeping after that). So: what if it wasn't just the sandwich, but the beginning of the flu or something? All that denial and drinking getting to him? Sam trying to help while hiding secrets of his own?
Dean’s genuflecting on the cold tile, sweat beading on his forehead.
“You’re not even Catholic,” Sam says from the doorway.
Dean rests his cheek against the porcelain toilet bowl and just looks at Sam, who raises an eyebrow.
“Last I checked, you didn’t believe in God, either.”
Dean pulls himself up to dry heave over the bowl. Resting an elbow on the seat, voice rasping, “Better late than never.”
Sam’s got no reply for that, he lost his own faith a long time ago, burned it away with a serrated knife as the flint and copious amounts of cheap whiskey and despair the fuel. Funny how when you’re drunk, ‘despair’ and ‘desperation’ kind of sound the same. Maybe they are the same; maybe they come from the same root word. He wouldn’t doubt that.
He turns away from the door, tries not to think how it sounds like Dean’s insides are clawing their way topside. Tries not to think about all the dirt under Dean’s fingernails the first time he saw him.
~~~~~
It all started a few days ago with a teddy bear and a sandwich. Harmless at first glance, but then again Winchesters have always been apt at shattering the gloss on top to see what lies beneath. Fans of reality, you could say, though Dean’s never really been much for Survivor.
Sam’s not really surprised to find Dean puking up the wished-for sandwich-he remembers Dean’s description of the djinn’s world, so he knows that what they wish for isn’t really good for them. Look at him, prime example, look how well that “normal-life-law-school-and-a-Beamer” thing turned out. Yeah. Exactly.
He is surprised when it doesn’t stop, though. Dean’s sick again at Wesley Mondale’s house while Sam is talking to him about the coin.
“’M good,” he insists, brushing past Sam. “Just hungover.”
“Must be some hangover,” Sam says. “For you to toss your cookies like a girl who had too many Appletinis. Where’s that famed Winchester stamina?”
“Aw, shut up.” Dean wipes his mouth with his hand, and for a second Sam thinks that his arm is shaking. It’s forgotten in the whole “averting destruction of the town” thing, though, until that night at the next motel. They’d skipped out of Dodge pretty quickly after the wish reversal, but instead of insisting that they drive all night, Dean had checked them into a motel only an hour or so away. Sam doesn’t comment, still working through the whole, “There is no forgetting. There's no making it better,” thing.
~~~~~
They’re pretending to watch some movie on TV, though Sam thinks if you asked either one of them what it was they wouldn’t be able to tell you. It’s classic Winchester avoidance, and Sam can hardly imagine what it must’ve been like the past few weeks for his brother, acting like everything was all hunky-dory when really he was dying again, except this time on the inside.
There’s a car chase on the screen. Dean’s progressed to lying on top of the covers, staring up at the ceiling. He’s so quiet, Sam feels like he has to say something, if only to remind himself that Dean’s here, to cover up the silence that roared in his ears as he drove Dean’s body across Illinois. Like a tidal wave that had suddenly lost its gravitational pull.
Dean has one arm draped over his eyes, the other hand rubbing his stomach. Sam thinks about asking him if he’s okay, but they’re so far beyond that now that it would be wasted breath. As though it isn’t like every breath they take feels wasted, feels like they bought it with their own blood, earned it but didn’t want it. The air in this motel room tastes like unsaid words-arsenic and iron. A slow-moving poison, lacing through latticed veins, a death not to be proud of but ashamed, but maybe it would work. Maybe it would stick. Sam hasn’t died slowly yet, and if he really thinks about it, Dean didn’t either, mostly because of his own disbelief that it would actually happen; that the doomsday clock would really keep inching ever closer until- Tick, tick, boom. Midnight. Smashed pumpkins and shattered glass.
~~~~~
Sam wakes in the middle of the night to the sound of Dean’s miserable retching from the bathroom. He slides out from under the thin covers and pads over to the doorway. He nudges the door further open and rubs his eyes.
“Come to join my party, Sammy?” Dean asks, his smile half-hearted.
“Some party,” Sam deadpans. “I’ll bring the coroner.”
Dean rolls his eyes tiredly, and winces.
“This is some hangover,” Sam says conversationally.
“’S’not a hangover, Sam.”
“Huh. You don’t say.”
“Urgh-I-hate-you,” Dean manages in between waves of nausea. He sits back, leans his head against the wall, his pallor stark against the wallpaper (a color Sam can’t identify- never a good sign) and dim lighting.
“Do you think it’s still the sandwich?” Sam asks. A valid question. “Because you look kinda feverish to me.”
“Dunno.” Dean closes his eyes. “’S’hard to tell, Sam.”
“What?”
Dean opens his eyes, and now Sam can really see how overbright they are, even with the lighting. “I said it’s hard to tell, Sam, when you’ve been burning for so long.” His words are slightly slurred, running into each other, a single drop of blood dispersing in a glass of water, until the whole thing is contaminated.
There’s a pause. A long one. Sam can taste metal in his mouth, and he never had orthodontia.
“Oh,” is all he can think to say.
He brings Dean a glass of water later, promises ginger ale in the morning (“Not Mary-Ann, though?” Dean mumbles, head pillowed on Sam’s wrinkled hoodie). He falls into an uneasy sleep fraught with dreams where Jessica looks on disapprovingly as he drinks from Ruby’s wrist, but he can’t stop himself. He wakes again at some ungodly hour (then again, what hour isn’t these days), only to stare at the ceiling and think of things that he’s tried not to think of for so long. It all comes out eventually, though, isn’t that a saying or something? Blood on his hands, his lips (Jessica’s blood dripping from the ceiling; demon blood he sucked down like genetically enhanced milk; Dean’s blood everywhere).
What would I do without you, he’d asked Jessica. Crash and burn, she’d said, and wasn’t that like a self-fulfilling prophecy. The power of suggestion-
He never asked Dean that question, maybe because he didn’t want to hear the response. All Dean said was, Take care of my wheels… Remember what Dad taught you… remember what I taught you. Yeah, martyrdom 101, or maybe they’re up to graduate studies by now.
~~~~~
The flu or whatever it is drags on for four days, during which Dean mumbles feverish things about Hell to Sam, things that Sam’s not sure if he wants to believe are fever-borne dreams or something a little more concrete. Freud’s always seemed to hate them.
Morning on the fifth day, they drive away from the latest godforsaken motel room, Dean pale behind dark sunglasses against the too-bright sun, Sam craving something which he can’t name out loud but which his very blood calls out for. He glances over at Dean, thinks of Richard Gere and Paul Sorvino, shakes his head. He fingers the cell phone in his pocket, wonders where Ruby is. Thinks about the word ‘revenge,’ and how it kind of sounds like ‘redemption.’
Summary: Extended re-imagining of 4.08, "Wishful Thinking."
Disclaimer/Author's Note: I know what I’m asking for this year. Hook me up, Santa! Title is taken from “Higher Power” by Boston. Written for the ahhh-mazing comment-fic meme over at mad_server's journal. Check it out! (And then renew it; it's that awesome!)
Prompt (by ariadnes_string): Okay, this one is totally my imagination, but I've always thought Dean/JA looked terribly pale in 4.08--and Dean does spend some time puking after the wished-up sandwich goes bad (and drinking/sleeping after that). So: what if it wasn't just the sandwich, but the beginning of the flu or something? All that denial and drinking getting to him? Sam trying to help while hiding secrets of his own?
Dean’s genuflecting on the cold tile, sweat beading on his forehead.
“You’re not even Catholic,” Sam says from the doorway.
Dean rests his cheek against the porcelain toilet bowl and just looks at Sam, who raises an eyebrow.
“Last I checked, you didn’t believe in God, either.”
Dean pulls himself up to dry heave over the bowl. Resting an elbow on the seat, voice rasping, “Better late than never.”
Sam’s got no reply for that, he lost his own faith a long time ago, burned it away with a serrated knife as the flint and copious amounts of cheap whiskey and despair the fuel. Funny how when you’re drunk, ‘despair’ and ‘desperation’ kind of sound the same. Maybe they are the same; maybe they come from the same root word. He wouldn’t doubt that.
He turns away from the door, tries not to think how it sounds like Dean’s insides are clawing their way topside. Tries not to think about all the dirt under Dean’s fingernails the first time he saw him.
~~~~~
It all started a few days ago with a teddy bear and a sandwich. Harmless at first glance, but then again Winchesters have always been apt at shattering the gloss on top to see what lies beneath. Fans of reality, you could say, though Dean’s never really been much for Survivor.
Sam’s not really surprised to find Dean puking up the wished-for sandwich-he remembers Dean’s description of the djinn’s world, so he knows that what they wish for isn’t really good for them. Look at him, prime example, look how well that “normal-life-law-school-and-a-Beamer” thing turned out. Yeah. Exactly.
He is surprised when it doesn’t stop, though. Dean’s sick again at Wesley Mondale’s house while Sam is talking to him about the coin.
“’M good,” he insists, brushing past Sam. “Just hungover.”
“Must be some hangover,” Sam says. “For you to toss your cookies like a girl who had too many Appletinis. Where’s that famed Winchester stamina?”
“Aw, shut up.” Dean wipes his mouth with his hand, and for a second Sam thinks that his arm is shaking. It’s forgotten in the whole “averting destruction of the town” thing, though, until that night at the next motel. They’d skipped out of Dodge pretty quickly after the wish reversal, but instead of insisting that they drive all night, Dean had checked them into a motel only an hour or so away. Sam doesn’t comment, still working through the whole, “There is no forgetting. There's no making it better,” thing.
~~~~~
They’re pretending to watch some movie on TV, though Sam thinks if you asked either one of them what it was they wouldn’t be able to tell you. It’s classic Winchester avoidance, and Sam can hardly imagine what it must’ve been like the past few weeks for his brother, acting like everything was all hunky-dory when really he was dying again, except this time on the inside.
There’s a car chase on the screen. Dean’s progressed to lying on top of the covers, staring up at the ceiling. He’s so quiet, Sam feels like he has to say something, if only to remind himself that Dean’s here, to cover up the silence that roared in his ears as he drove Dean’s body across Illinois. Like a tidal wave that had suddenly lost its gravitational pull.
Dean has one arm draped over his eyes, the other hand rubbing his stomach. Sam thinks about asking him if he’s okay, but they’re so far beyond that now that it would be wasted breath. As though it isn’t like every breath they take feels wasted, feels like they bought it with their own blood, earned it but didn’t want it. The air in this motel room tastes like unsaid words-arsenic and iron. A slow-moving poison, lacing through latticed veins, a death not to be proud of but ashamed, but maybe it would work. Maybe it would stick. Sam hasn’t died slowly yet, and if he really thinks about it, Dean didn’t either, mostly because of his own disbelief that it would actually happen; that the doomsday clock would really keep inching ever closer until- Tick, tick, boom. Midnight. Smashed pumpkins and shattered glass.
~~~~~
Sam wakes in the middle of the night to the sound of Dean’s miserable retching from the bathroom. He slides out from under the thin covers and pads over to the doorway. He nudges the door further open and rubs his eyes.
“Come to join my party, Sammy?” Dean asks, his smile half-hearted.
“Some party,” Sam deadpans. “I’ll bring the coroner.”
Dean rolls his eyes tiredly, and winces.
“This is some hangover,” Sam says conversationally.
“’S’not a hangover, Sam.”
“Huh. You don’t say.”
“Urgh-I-hate-you,” Dean manages in between waves of nausea. He sits back, leans his head against the wall, his pallor stark against the wallpaper (a color Sam can’t identify- never a good sign) and dim lighting.
“Do you think it’s still the sandwich?” Sam asks. A valid question. “Because you look kinda feverish to me.”
“Dunno.” Dean closes his eyes. “’S’hard to tell, Sam.”
“What?”
Dean opens his eyes, and now Sam can really see how overbright they are, even with the lighting. “I said it’s hard to tell, Sam, when you’ve been burning for so long.” His words are slightly slurred, running into each other, a single drop of blood dispersing in a glass of water, until the whole thing is contaminated.
There’s a pause. A long one. Sam can taste metal in his mouth, and he never had orthodontia.
“Oh,” is all he can think to say.
He brings Dean a glass of water later, promises ginger ale in the morning (“Not Mary-Ann, though?” Dean mumbles, head pillowed on Sam’s wrinkled hoodie). He falls into an uneasy sleep fraught with dreams where Jessica looks on disapprovingly as he drinks from Ruby’s wrist, but he can’t stop himself. He wakes again at some ungodly hour (then again, what hour isn’t these days), only to stare at the ceiling and think of things that he’s tried not to think of for so long. It all comes out eventually, though, isn’t that a saying or something? Blood on his hands, his lips (Jessica’s blood dripping from the ceiling; demon blood he sucked down like genetically enhanced milk; Dean’s blood everywhere).
What would I do without you, he’d asked Jessica. Crash and burn, she’d said, and wasn’t that like a self-fulfilling prophecy. The power of suggestion-
He never asked Dean that question, maybe because he didn’t want to hear the response. All Dean said was, Take care of my wheels… Remember what Dad taught you… remember what I taught you. Yeah, martyrdom 101, or maybe they’re up to graduate studies by now.
~~~~~
The flu or whatever it is drags on for four days, during which Dean mumbles feverish things about Hell to Sam, things that Sam’s not sure if he wants to believe are fever-borne dreams or something a little more concrete. Freud’s always seemed to hate them.
Morning on the fifth day, they drive away from the latest godforsaken motel room, Dean pale behind dark sunglasses against the too-bright sun, Sam craving something which he can’t name out loud but which his very blood calls out for. He glances over at Dean, thinks of Richard Gere and Paul Sorvino, shakes his head. He fingers the cell phone in his pocket, wonders where Ruby is. Thinks about the word ‘revenge,’ and how it kind of sounds like ‘redemption.’