(no subject)
Sheol
by whereupon
Sam/Dean, season two, R, 2,853 words.
The night before had been black.
(Thanks to paxlux, who gave this a title.)
The night before had been black, plateau of landscape like something unfurled outside of their motel window, dystopian and unending, full of sharp edges and cruel teeth. The bitter wind throwing rain at the window didn't help any, and as the night went on the rain turned into snow and grew duller with each flash of the bottle under the dirty-penny light of the cheap bulbs, the unhygienic light. Sam remembers thinking that it would have been a bitch to perform any kind of surgery under that light, how he could hardly see already, and the light would have made any injury seem worse. Their wounds are always of the most vital kind to begin with, always life threatening and dramatic. They always seem to be trying to keep each other alive with brute force, to keep pressure over each other's hearts, as though life is a force that can be sustained if only they believe hard enough in each other, as though life can be sustained through the continual application of death-threats and elbows to the ribs, through judicious name-calling, pressing salt into each other's wounds (sometimes literally), and their rough hands stitching each other up, stitching each other back together, just in time for the next blade to swing, the next bullet to burn, the next slick of gravel already waiting with cemetery patience.
He scrapes his eyes open, which takes more effort than it should. The shotgun seat refuses to contour to his body, no matter how much time he spends in it, and already his knees ache. There is dirt beneath his fingernails, dirt and probably blood, parabolas of black, guilty half-moons. Anyone examining his body postmortem would find a wealth of evidence, enough to convict in any state.
The aperture of the sky abrades his eyes when he looks up from the familiar black contours of the car. The grey concrete of the rest stop stands stooped but defiant, cut from the earth like the last evidence of a ruined civilization or like a blight, a nuclear test site. The night before had been black, but today is drawn in shades of isabelline, parchment and a muted brown like that of old stones. The sky is the color of oatmeal and is heavy with snow, pressing against Sam's skull as though it means to shatter bone, and he wishes that Dean would hurry up.
Something is spilling hot blood in the cornfields of Wisconsin, something winged slipping between the stalks. Sam thinks of the frost glittering across the dead brown of the fallow fields, of the way the shotgun will split the air, the ringing silence that will follow, and of how Dean looks with blood on his teeth. It's a familiar sight.
Speak of the devil: Dean steps from the shelter of the rest stop and Sam watches his approaching reflection in the sideview mirror. He walks like the last man standing, with full knowledge of all that entails, and he keeps his head ducked low against the weather. When he opens the car door, Sam breathes in November, half-winter taste, liminal and strange like burning leaves still alight and already growing cold.
Dean slides in, closes his door, and once more Sam is sealed off, the world kept at bay by the walls of his inheritance, his cursed family history. Dean frowns, either at Sam or at the world in general, and breathes against his hands to warm them. His leather jacket creaks when he hunches forward and he looks tired, Sam thinks, more tired than the past week has given him reason to, as though life at the edge of the known world is taking more from him than it has the right. It weighs more these days, their life, the choices they've made. They've paid in blood three times over, in addition to making a number of lesser sacrifices, and Dean still thinks that the third offering should have been his own.
Dean's own blood, not Dad's, though it's the same blood where it counts. Winchester blood, spilled and gone to dust because of something they never asked for in the first place, because of this tragedy that finds them no matter where they go, how far they run, as though they were born to it. Maybe they were born to it, born to fight and to grieve and to die, finally, no more at peace then than at any point in the messy, violent life that went before. John went to war and maybe war followed him home, or maybe it goes deeper than that, black-blood spiral as intricate as the sky and as inextricable from their lives as Dean is from Sam's, and vice versa.
Dean is still hunched, hands resting loosely on the steering wheel, middle-distance cut of his eyes as though there's something worth seeing between the dashboard and the line of horizon. Sam tastes smoke, suddenly and inexplicably, not from any of the fires that have shadowed and marked his life, but from the first and only cigarette he ever smoked, bummed from an anonymous girl at a party he wasn't meant to attend. It was an act of teenage rebellion, not his first, but one of a very limited few, a series that culminated with his departure for Stanford. He has no idea why he should be tasting it now, why he should remember that moment, except that it was at once frightening and thrilling, and it was very much an act. He thinks, now, that he is acting, that he has taken over Dean's role, because Dean hasn't been all right for a long time, not since the hospital, or even before that.
Neither of them are all right, but Sam's more afraid for Dean than he is for himself. This is not unusual, not in the least, but lately it's a more specific fear, more than that low-level filter of dread like background noise or life during wartime. The car does not bear any trace of the damage Dean dealt it, but Sam imagines that it's there all the same, that it will be there forever, like evidence of bones broken years before.
"You okay?" Sam asks. His voice is rough. There wasn't enough coffee this morning, though there never is, and what little there was wasn't strong enough. They got black coffee in paper cups from some drive-thru two blocks away from the motel, and it was only enough to allow him to open his eyes all the way, not nearly enough to cut all the way through the haze of his hangover, to allow him to be completely awake. At the time he thought it was a blessing, not seeing any particular reason to be any more conscious of the drive, of his immediate surroundings and the future they implied.
"Yeah," Dean says. He sits up straighter and looks at Sam with dull and bloodshot eyes. "It's fuckin' cold out there."
It's not an observation that requires an answer, nor does Sam think that Dean expects one, but something in his brother's expression makes Sam feel compelled to reply. "We could head south instead," he says, though in truth it's not an option. People are dying in Wisconsin and Dean would rather carve out his own heart than falter in his duty, than fail to save the next victim. "Hit Florida, maybe, check out the alligators."
"Florida's for tourists and old people," Dean says. "We ain't either of those, Sammy. Hell, we ain't ever gonna be." He doesn't hesitate when he says it, delivers it like it's a fact, one more observation. He says it casually, and the words weigh all the more for that.
"We could get lucky," Sam says, unflinching, though every day he believes this less and less. Still, someone has to say it, and maybe if Sam does, Dean will feel compelled to pretend to believe him. Maybe Dean will even let himself believe it, all in the name of putting on a show for his brother.
"Luck's not gonna change a damn thing," Dean says. "It's luck got us this far and we ain't exactly battin' a thousand here. Only kinda luck we get's bad." He blinks, looks like he's only now hearing what he just said. "But there's a first time for everything, huh?" he says, and he smiles, or tries to smile. It doesn't reach his eyes and it cuts Sam deep, more like a knife to the gut than anything close to reassuring.
The car is small enough, the front seat is small enough, that Sam can touch Dean's shoulder without shifting closer. He remembers a time when that was not possible. It's a sentimental gesture, but it's all he has, because words won't be enough. Words can be dismissed, can be misheard or ignored entirely. Dean has a long history of hearing only what he wants to hear, of hearing only the odds that work in his favor. Physical contact is the most obvious way to get his attention, to make him listen. Physical contact leaves the most obvious scars, which is not necessarily a coincidence.
The leather is chilled beneath Sam's palm, as though Dean is not warm enough to counter the onset of winter, and when Sam meets Dean's eyes, he has the thought that he isn't, either. Perhaps neither of them will make it to another spring, neither of them will survive the killing freeze. This might be one of the last times he will sit in the car with Dean, in this or any car with Dean, because each of them will only survive as long as the other, and if Dean's already dying, if Dean is already intent on dying, Sam will surely follow quickly. He wouldn't have it any other way, though he remembers a time when it seemed a possibility, as though there were another choice.
Dean licks his lips and for a second he looks like he's going to say something, as though there's something he could say that would avert this, but he keeps silent. He keeps his peace, for whatever small value of peace this might be, and he waits for Sam to make his move.
Sam feels it like gravity, inexorable. He could blame it on the hangover, or the weather, or the landscape, the utter desolation that surrounds them. But such desolation is nothing new; they've spent their whole lives in the ruins of a war-wracked world, though most of the time it's less a physical place than an idea, the sense of history, of loss and lack of future, that's sunk deep around their bones. In the end, he blames it on nothing more than surrender.
He is so tired of fighting, and he is tired of trying to keep Dean safe, to hold him near, to rein him in. He can't imagine a lifetime of this, much less another month, another week.
It's not romantic, when he kisses his brother. It has nothing to do with romance in the hearts and flowers sense, no sweeping music or giddy smiles, no breathless epiphanies. He kisses his brother and it does not mean a happy ending, because this will only complicate things, will only fuck them up deeper and truer and maybe beyond salvation, and perhaps because they have never had the power to change fate. If it has anything to do with romance, it is with the dying and the lost, the weary young and the defeated. He and Dean will not grow old, though perhaps in truth they are no longer young, and they have not been young for a very long time, if ever. There is heat, when he kisses his brother, and want, and love, because he loves Dean without question, completely and unreservedly, as he always has.
There is salt, when Dean kisses him back, and later, when they have moved into the backseat. Sam doesn't ask if this is okay, if he is okay, if either of them are, and neither does Dean, because he does not need to. It is not okay. He knows that. It's not okay, and they are not okay, and maybe they never will be, but that in itself might be okay. That might be what saves them, what makes them work, what lets them have this. They haven't been okay for a long time, and Sam's not sure he remembers how to be anything other than what he is right now, stumbling through the wreckage of this life, of this world, with Dean at his side, Dean at his back.
Dean's tongue slips into his mouth, sliding across his teeth, and Dean's hands slip beneath the hem of Sam's shirt, press against his back. They're cold, still, untouched by the meager heat of the car and the meager heat of his breath, the pounding of his heart and the rush of blood in his veins insufficient, nothing compared to the depthless force of the sky, the continuous tilt of the world. Sam shivers and pushes at Dean, pushes him back. There isn't much room to maneuver, but he manages, shifts so that he can straddle Dean, one knee pressed into the seatback, and Dean's eyes are bright again. Dean's eyes are the only bright thing left in the world when he leans up to meet Sam halfway, when he locks his hands around Sam's neck and pulls Sam down.
Sam's hands span wide across the brown leather strip of Dean's belt. Despite the smear of blood on one knee, Dean has worn the same jeans every day for the past week, as has Sam, because they've had neither the time nor the inclination to do laundry. Even if they'd had either, they didn't have the money until three days ago after they hustled pool and then got drunk in a basement bar. In the dirty bathroom, Sam had avoided meeting his own eyes in the mirror. He'd returned to the smoky barroom where Dean waited and they'd done a shaky two-step back to their room. Sam now remembers the slide of hands like the prelude to this.
There hadn't been violence, not that night. They hadn't been hunting, though violence is never far off no matter what they do. They are dogged with it, tracked by it, drawn to it. Dean craves it, now more than ever, and Sam can't say that he doesn't understand. They are gunshot-wounded, gutted, bleeding out.
They might only be exchanging a slow, excruciating death for one quick though not any less painful, but Sam has long since learned better than to hold out for more. He will take mercy where he can find it.
There is no going back from this, he knows. It's not a revelation, not an epiphany as he draws another sigh from his brother, as he licks across the raised scar that slips like the crack of a whip across Dean's stomach. They will not be able to erase it, to ignore it, to continue as though it never happened, as though they are something akin to innocent, but perhaps the heat of Dean's mouth, perhaps all of the new ways he can learn Dean, all of the new ways he can keep Dean, will be enough to keep the both of them here.
If not, he thinks, they will go out together, at least, inseparable. There might be nothing left to lose, now that he knows the shadows of Dean's body, now that Dean has pressed his teeth against Sam's shoulder and closed down sharp and sudden, hard and quick enough to make Sam groan, to make Sam clutch stupidly, desperately at him, half-begging and raw.
Tonight will be black, as will every night for as far as Sam can imagine, as every night has been for as long as Sam can remember. Tonight will be black and they will drink to their dead father, to their dead mother. They are orphans, now, and when Sam says this, Dean will hit him. Sam will taste blood and he will hit Dean back, and they will bruise each other on their knees on the carpet of that motel room with the cracked mirror and the television set that does not turn on. They will bruise each other in more ways than one, and in the morning they will go on, as they have learned to do, as they have been raised to do, because there is no other option. They will drink black coffee from paper cups and the coffee will taste bitter and burnt, and when Sam tastes it on Dean's lips, he will think that it tastes like their future, that it tastes like their lives, sealed in fate and signed in blood, and miles down the road, under a lightning-split sky, a bullet slides into the chamber of a stolen gun and cars sound like armageddon down the freeways and the twisted back roads and burnt-out alleys. This is where they have been going all their lives, this their destination, this the only future they have ever had.
--
end
by whereupon
Sam/Dean, season two, R, 2,853 words.
The night before had been black.
(Thanks to paxlux, who gave this a title.)
The night before had been black, plateau of landscape like something unfurled outside of their motel window, dystopian and unending, full of sharp edges and cruel teeth. The bitter wind throwing rain at the window didn't help any, and as the night went on the rain turned into snow and grew duller with each flash of the bottle under the dirty-penny light of the cheap bulbs, the unhygienic light. Sam remembers thinking that it would have been a bitch to perform any kind of surgery under that light, how he could hardly see already, and the light would have made any injury seem worse. Their wounds are always of the most vital kind to begin with, always life threatening and dramatic. They always seem to be trying to keep each other alive with brute force, to keep pressure over each other's hearts, as though life is a force that can be sustained if only they believe hard enough in each other, as though life can be sustained through the continual application of death-threats and elbows to the ribs, through judicious name-calling, pressing salt into each other's wounds (sometimes literally), and their rough hands stitching each other up, stitching each other back together, just in time for the next blade to swing, the next bullet to burn, the next slick of gravel already waiting with cemetery patience.
He scrapes his eyes open, which takes more effort than it should. The shotgun seat refuses to contour to his body, no matter how much time he spends in it, and already his knees ache. There is dirt beneath his fingernails, dirt and probably blood, parabolas of black, guilty half-moons. Anyone examining his body postmortem would find a wealth of evidence, enough to convict in any state.
The aperture of the sky abrades his eyes when he looks up from the familiar black contours of the car. The grey concrete of the rest stop stands stooped but defiant, cut from the earth like the last evidence of a ruined civilization or like a blight, a nuclear test site. The night before had been black, but today is drawn in shades of isabelline, parchment and a muted brown like that of old stones. The sky is the color of oatmeal and is heavy with snow, pressing against Sam's skull as though it means to shatter bone, and he wishes that Dean would hurry up.
Something is spilling hot blood in the cornfields of Wisconsin, something winged slipping between the stalks. Sam thinks of the frost glittering across the dead brown of the fallow fields, of the way the shotgun will split the air, the ringing silence that will follow, and of how Dean looks with blood on his teeth. It's a familiar sight.
Speak of the devil: Dean steps from the shelter of the rest stop and Sam watches his approaching reflection in the sideview mirror. He walks like the last man standing, with full knowledge of all that entails, and he keeps his head ducked low against the weather. When he opens the car door, Sam breathes in November, half-winter taste, liminal and strange like burning leaves still alight and already growing cold.
Dean slides in, closes his door, and once more Sam is sealed off, the world kept at bay by the walls of his inheritance, his cursed family history. Dean frowns, either at Sam or at the world in general, and breathes against his hands to warm them. His leather jacket creaks when he hunches forward and he looks tired, Sam thinks, more tired than the past week has given him reason to, as though life at the edge of the known world is taking more from him than it has the right. It weighs more these days, their life, the choices they've made. They've paid in blood three times over, in addition to making a number of lesser sacrifices, and Dean still thinks that the third offering should have been his own.
Dean's own blood, not Dad's, though it's the same blood where it counts. Winchester blood, spilled and gone to dust because of something they never asked for in the first place, because of this tragedy that finds them no matter where they go, how far they run, as though they were born to it. Maybe they were born to it, born to fight and to grieve and to die, finally, no more at peace then than at any point in the messy, violent life that went before. John went to war and maybe war followed him home, or maybe it goes deeper than that, black-blood spiral as intricate as the sky and as inextricable from their lives as Dean is from Sam's, and vice versa.
Dean is still hunched, hands resting loosely on the steering wheel, middle-distance cut of his eyes as though there's something worth seeing between the dashboard and the line of horizon. Sam tastes smoke, suddenly and inexplicably, not from any of the fires that have shadowed and marked his life, but from the first and only cigarette he ever smoked, bummed from an anonymous girl at a party he wasn't meant to attend. It was an act of teenage rebellion, not his first, but one of a very limited few, a series that culminated with his departure for Stanford. He has no idea why he should be tasting it now, why he should remember that moment, except that it was at once frightening and thrilling, and it was very much an act. He thinks, now, that he is acting, that he has taken over Dean's role, because Dean hasn't been all right for a long time, not since the hospital, or even before that.
Neither of them are all right, but Sam's more afraid for Dean than he is for himself. This is not unusual, not in the least, but lately it's a more specific fear, more than that low-level filter of dread like background noise or life during wartime. The car does not bear any trace of the damage Dean dealt it, but Sam imagines that it's there all the same, that it will be there forever, like evidence of bones broken years before.
"You okay?" Sam asks. His voice is rough. There wasn't enough coffee this morning, though there never is, and what little there was wasn't strong enough. They got black coffee in paper cups from some drive-thru two blocks away from the motel, and it was only enough to allow him to open his eyes all the way, not nearly enough to cut all the way through the haze of his hangover, to allow him to be completely awake. At the time he thought it was a blessing, not seeing any particular reason to be any more conscious of the drive, of his immediate surroundings and the future they implied.
"Yeah," Dean says. He sits up straighter and looks at Sam with dull and bloodshot eyes. "It's fuckin' cold out there."
It's not an observation that requires an answer, nor does Sam think that Dean expects one, but something in his brother's expression makes Sam feel compelled to reply. "We could head south instead," he says, though in truth it's not an option. People are dying in Wisconsin and Dean would rather carve out his own heart than falter in his duty, than fail to save the next victim. "Hit Florida, maybe, check out the alligators."
"Florida's for tourists and old people," Dean says. "We ain't either of those, Sammy. Hell, we ain't ever gonna be." He doesn't hesitate when he says it, delivers it like it's a fact, one more observation. He says it casually, and the words weigh all the more for that.
"We could get lucky," Sam says, unflinching, though every day he believes this less and less. Still, someone has to say it, and maybe if Sam does, Dean will feel compelled to pretend to believe him. Maybe Dean will even let himself believe it, all in the name of putting on a show for his brother.
"Luck's not gonna change a damn thing," Dean says. "It's luck got us this far and we ain't exactly battin' a thousand here. Only kinda luck we get's bad." He blinks, looks like he's only now hearing what he just said. "But there's a first time for everything, huh?" he says, and he smiles, or tries to smile. It doesn't reach his eyes and it cuts Sam deep, more like a knife to the gut than anything close to reassuring.
The car is small enough, the front seat is small enough, that Sam can touch Dean's shoulder without shifting closer. He remembers a time when that was not possible. It's a sentimental gesture, but it's all he has, because words won't be enough. Words can be dismissed, can be misheard or ignored entirely. Dean has a long history of hearing only what he wants to hear, of hearing only the odds that work in his favor. Physical contact is the most obvious way to get his attention, to make him listen. Physical contact leaves the most obvious scars, which is not necessarily a coincidence.
The leather is chilled beneath Sam's palm, as though Dean is not warm enough to counter the onset of winter, and when Sam meets Dean's eyes, he has the thought that he isn't, either. Perhaps neither of them will make it to another spring, neither of them will survive the killing freeze. This might be one of the last times he will sit in the car with Dean, in this or any car with Dean, because each of them will only survive as long as the other, and if Dean's already dying, if Dean is already intent on dying, Sam will surely follow quickly. He wouldn't have it any other way, though he remembers a time when it seemed a possibility, as though there were another choice.
Dean licks his lips and for a second he looks like he's going to say something, as though there's something he could say that would avert this, but he keeps silent. He keeps his peace, for whatever small value of peace this might be, and he waits for Sam to make his move.
Sam feels it like gravity, inexorable. He could blame it on the hangover, or the weather, or the landscape, the utter desolation that surrounds them. But such desolation is nothing new; they've spent their whole lives in the ruins of a war-wracked world, though most of the time it's less a physical place than an idea, the sense of history, of loss and lack of future, that's sunk deep around their bones. In the end, he blames it on nothing more than surrender.
He is so tired of fighting, and he is tired of trying to keep Dean safe, to hold him near, to rein him in. He can't imagine a lifetime of this, much less another month, another week.
It's not romantic, when he kisses his brother. It has nothing to do with romance in the hearts and flowers sense, no sweeping music or giddy smiles, no breathless epiphanies. He kisses his brother and it does not mean a happy ending, because this will only complicate things, will only fuck them up deeper and truer and maybe beyond salvation, and perhaps because they have never had the power to change fate. If it has anything to do with romance, it is with the dying and the lost, the weary young and the defeated. He and Dean will not grow old, though perhaps in truth they are no longer young, and they have not been young for a very long time, if ever. There is heat, when he kisses his brother, and want, and love, because he loves Dean without question, completely and unreservedly, as he always has.
There is salt, when Dean kisses him back, and later, when they have moved into the backseat. Sam doesn't ask if this is okay, if he is okay, if either of them are, and neither does Dean, because he does not need to. It is not okay. He knows that. It's not okay, and they are not okay, and maybe they never will be, but that in itself might be okay. That might be what saves them, what makes them work, what lets them have this. They haven't been okay for a long time, and Sam's not sure he remembers how to be anything other than what he is right now, stumbling through the wreckage of this life, of this world, with Dean at his side, Dean at his back.
Dean's tongue slips into his mouth, sliding across his teeth, and Dean's hands slip beneath the hem of Sam's shirt, press against his back. They're cold, still, untouched by the meager heat of the car and the meager heat of his breath, the pounding of his heart and the rush of blood in his veins insufficient, nothing compared to the depthless force of the sky, the continuous tilt of the world. Sam shivers and pushes at Dean, pushes him back. There isn't much room to maneuver, but he manages, shifts so that he can straddle Dean, one knee pressed into the seatback, and Dean's eyes are bright again. Dean's eyes are the only bright thing left in the world when he leans up to meet Sam halfway, when he locks his hands around Sam's neck and pulls Sam down.
Sam's hands span wide across the brown leather strip of Dean's belt. Despite the smear of blood on one knee, Dean has worn the same jeans every day for the past week, as has Sam, because they've had neither the time nor the inclination to do laundry. Even if they'd had either, they didn't have the money until three days ago after they hustled pool and then got drunk in a basement bar. In the dirty bathroom, Sam had avoided meeting his own eyes in the mirror. He'd returned to the smoky barroom where Dean waited and they'd done a shaky two-step back to their room. Sam now remembers the slide of hands like the prelude to this.
There hadn't been violence, not that night. They hadn't been hunting, though violence is never far off no matter what they do. They are dogged with it, tracked by it, drawn to it. Dean craves it, now more than ever, and Sam can't say that he doesn't understand. They are gunshot-wounded, gutted, bleeding out.
They might only be exchanging a slow, excruciating death for one quick though not any less painful, but Sam has long since learned better than to hold out for more. He will take mercy where he can find it.
There is no going back from this, he knows. It's not a revelation, not an epiphany as he draws another sigh from his brother, as he licks across the raised scar that slips like the crack of a whip across Dean's stomach. They will not be able to erase it, to ignore it, to continue as though it never happened, as though they are something akin to innocent, but perhaps the heat of Dean's mouth, perhaps all of the new ways he can learn Dean, all of the new ways he can keep Dean, will be enough to keep the both of them here.
If not, he thinks, they will go out together, at least, inseparable. There might be nothing left to lose, now that he knows the shadows of Dean's body, now that Dean has pressed his teeth against Sam's shoulder and closed down sharp and sudden, hard and quick enough to make Sam groan, to make Sam clutch stupidly, desperately at him, half-begging and raw.
Tonight will be black, as will every night for as far as Sam can imagine, as every night has been for as long as Sam can remember. Tonight will be black and they will drink to their dead father, to their dead mother. They are orphans, now, and when Sam says this, Dean will hit him. Sam will taste blood and he will hit Dean back, and they will bruise each other on their knees on the carpet of that motel room with the cracked mirror and the television set that does not turn on. They will bruise each other in more ways than one, and in the morning they will go on, as they have learned to do, as they have been raised to do, because there is no other option. They will drink black coffee from paper cups and the coffee will taste bitter and burnt, and when Sam tastes it on Dean's lips, he will think that it tastes like their future, that it tastes like their lives, sealed in fate and signed in blood, and miles down the road, under a lightning-split sky, a bullet slides into the chamber of a stolen gun and cars sound like armageddon down the freeways and the twisted back roads and burnt-out alleys. This is where they have been going all their lives, this their destination, this the only future they have ever had.
--
end