All Your Dreams Are Still As New [Gen, PG-13]
All Your Dreams Are Still As New [Gen, PG-13]
Quoth Sam, "It’s not fair, and, you know, it hurts like hell, but… it’s worth it." Maybe he's right, but sometimes it feels like he's not.
Coda to WIaWSNB, the episode, title stolen from WIaWSNB, the song. Written for madame_meretrix's icon meme, and she beta'd it, too, 'cause she's awesome like that.
All Your Dreams Are Still As New
The house is right where it’s supposed to be.
Dean’s not surprised, not really, but he’s always half convinced it’ll be gone; missing, or maybe just absent, like it was never really there at all.
He eases up on the gas, coasts, hits the brake.
Sometimes, he hesitates, considers and reconsiders because it’s just a little too perfect, stranded and sad, like it was just dropped from the sky into a neighborhood where it doesn’t quite belong.
He knows what’s inside. A past that doesn’t belong to him, a future that doesn’t exist, a wish assembled from the scattered fragments of a child’s hopes and a man’s fears.
It’s an illusion, a mirage; it’s a choice, lives and deaths that depend on him, blood on his hands whether he stays or goes.
He makes the same decision every time.
“We’re not in Kansas anymore, Baby,” he says, and the echo of the shutting door fills the street. His hand trails over steel as if it were skin, searches for an empty pocket when he gets too far away to touch. Halfway up the brick path, he turns back to clarify that yes, technically, they are in Kansas, but the front door opens before second thoughts dig in, drive him back down to the street.
“Dean?” she says, and it never goes how he plans, but she draws him in past the porch, says, “Come inside, it’s windy out here,” and he goes, follows her voice, even though he only meant to say hello, cement her image in his mind before driving straight through to Illinois.
Instead, he sleeps on the couch, gets extra onions without ever having to ask, mows the lawn in Technicolor.
Somewhere between the arrival of the asparagus tower and that joyous flash of diamond, it hits him that his edges have blurred, the blue of his shirt has bled out into the scene, feathery tendrils of color that anchor him to this illusion, make him a part of it, implicit, irremovable.
It’s that, more than the ripple of excitement that explodes across the table, that gets him up on his feet.
He reaches for Sam, for a way to stop losing himself in the kaleidoscope of a fantasy that was never meant to come true, but the body in front of him has other priorities; Jess, Mom, the ritual clink of glassware that signifies the beginning of the future.
The room spins with sound and color, and he waits.
He waits his turn, catalogues the things that can never be real, rearranges them in his mind until they resemble the truth: merlot cutting a crimson swath across Jessica’s belly, slow burn of the oil lamp blazing up from the table, flaming her hair, tulips like promises on her grave.
Sam’s attention catches him unexpectedly.
He’s trapped now, between the man in front of him and the Sam in his head, hunched over Jessica’s headstone in the grey morning rain.
They’re both wearing the same yellow tie, the one that Dean grabbed a year and a half ago out of Sam and Jess’s dirty laundry, the only clothing that survived the fire, and it’s his choice. His choice whether to forget what’s real, whether to watch this false Sam live happily ever after.
He reaches out, adjusts the tie’s position around Sam’s neck and straightens the knot, remembers it from Palo Alto, and from Guthrie a few months back.
He thinks maybe this is where it wants to be. Where it came from, where it belongs, a world with sunshine and law school and Jessica, maybe two and a half kids eventually, soccer on Saturdays, church on Sundays.
Maybe it just clicked its heels-or its laundering instructions or whatever the hell it is that ties click when they wish-and said there's no place like home, brought them all here, safe and happy, away from that life, from the two for a dollar Goodwill ties stuffed into Sam’s duffel, maroon and gold, black; polyester.
Sam clears his throat.
The room is golden around them and Dean knows-he knows this is no magical, perfect life, no dream come true. He knows, but he allows himself a minute to believe in his mom, safe, alive; in Sammy having everything he ever wanted; in the love of a beautiful woman.
“Pay no attention to that djinn behind the curtain,” he whispers.
“What?” Sam says, and then, “Wait, Dean, no!” but for as many times as Dean’s been here, he still only knows one way out.
His next breath is desperate, ragged, like the stale grey air of the latest motel room somehow has less oxygen than the air in his dream. He coughs, rolls to his side to take the pressure off what should be a phantom pain.
Sam doesn’t let Dean sleep with a knife under his pillow anymore.
The bed creaks when Sam-his Sam-sits on the edge, says “Let me see.” He doesn’t wait for an answer, just pushes Dean’s shirt up, peels the bandage back. The wound won’t heal with Dean popping his stitches every night, but Sam keeps it clean.
“It’s worth it,” Sam says, same as he did the first time, same as every night since. He leans back against the headboard, and the hours pass in shades of charcoal, shifting him down until he’s curled around Dean’s body.
“It is worth it,” he says again, later. Dean wakes up for a minute but doesn’t respond; he knows Sam wasn’t talking to him.
They sleep, off and on, in the colorless, pre-dawn light.
###
Based on this icon:
Quoth Sam, "It’s not fair, and, you know, it hurts like hell, but… it’s worth it." Maybe he's right, but sometimes it feels like he's not.
Coda to WIaWSNB, the episode, title stolen from WIaWSNB, the song. Written for madame_meretrix's icon meme, and she beta'd it, too, 'cause she's awesome like that.
All Your Dreams Are Still As New
The house is right where it’s supposed to be.
Dean’s not surprised, not really, but he’s always half convinced it’ll be gone; missing, or maybe just absent, like it was never really there at all.
He eases up on the gas, coasts, hits the brake.
Sometimes, he hesitates, considers and reconsiders because it’s just a little too perfect, stranded and sad, like it was just dropped from the sky into a neighborhood where it doesn’t quite belong.
He knows what’s inside. A past that doesn’t belong to him, a future that doesn’t exist, a wish assembled from the scattered fragments of a child’s hopes and a man’s fears.
It’s an illusion, a mirage; it’s a choice, lives and deaths that depend on him, blood on his hands whether he stays or goes.
He makes the same decision every time.
“We’re not in Kansas anymore, Baby,” he says, and the echo of the shutting door fills the street. His hand trails over steel as if it were skin, searches for an empty pocket when he gets too far away to touch. Halfway up the brick path, he turns back to clarify that yes, technically, they are in Kansas, but the front door opens before second thoughts dig in, drive him back down to the street.
“Dean?” she says, and it never goes how he plans, but she draws him in past the porch, says, “Come inside, it’s windy out here,” and he goes, follows her voice, even though he only meant to say hello, cement her image in his mind before driving straight through to Illinois.
Instead, he sleeps on the couch, gets extra onions without ever having to ask, mows the lawn in Technicolor.
Somewhere between the arrival of the asparagus tower and that joyous flash of diamond, it hits him that his edges have blurred, the blue of his shirt has bled out into the scene, feathery tendrils of color that anchor him to this illusion, make him a part of it, implicit, irremovable.
It’s that, more than the ripple of excitement that explodes across the table, that gets him up on his feet.
He reaches for Sam, for a way to stop losing himself in the kaleidoscope of a fantasy that was never meant to come true, but the body in front of him has other priorities; Jess, Mom, the ritual clink of glassware that signifies the beginning of the future.
The room spins with sound and color, and he waits.
He waits his turn, catalogues the things that can never be real, rearranges them in his mind until they resemble the truth: merlot cutting a crimson swath across Jessica’s belly, slow burn of the oil lamp blazing up from the table, flaming her hair, tulips like promises on her grave.
Sam’s attention catches him unexpectedly.
He’s trapped now, between the man in front of him and the Sam in his head, hunched over Jessica’s headstone in the grey morning rain.
They’re both wearing the same yellow tie, the one that Dean grabbed a year and a half ago out of Sam and Jess’s dirty laundry, the only clothing that survived the fire, and it’s his choice. His choice whether to forget what’s real, whether to watch this false Sam live happily ever after.
He reaches out, adjusts the tie’s position around Sam’s neck and straightens the knot, remembers it from Palo Alto, and from Guthrie a few months back.
He thinks maybe this is where it wants to be. Where it came from, where it belongs, a world with sunshine and law school and Jessica, maybe two and a half kids eventually, soccer on Saturdays, church on Sundays.
Maybe it just clicked its heels-or its laundering instructions or whatever the hell it is that ties click when they wish-and said there's no place like home, brought them all here, safe and happy, away from that life, from the two for a dollar Goodwill ties stuffed into Sam’s duffel, maroon and gold, black; polyester.
Sam clears his throat.
The room is golden around them and Dean knows-he knows this is no magical, perfect life, no dream come true. He knows, but he allows himself a minute to believe in his mom, safe, alive; in Sammy having everything he ever wanted; in the love of a beautiful woman.
“Pay no attention to that djinn behind the curtain,” he whispers.
“What?” Sam says, and then, “Wait, Dean, no!” but for as many times as Dean’s been here, he still only knows one way out.
His next breath is desperate, ragged, like the stale grey air of the latest motel room somehow has less oxygen than the air in his dream. He coughs, rolls to his side to take the pressure off what should be a phantom pain.
Sam doesn’t let Dean sleep with a knife under his pillow anymore.
The bed creaks when Sam-his Sam-sits on the edge, says “Let me see.” He doesn’t wait for an answer, just pushes Dean’s shirt up, peels the bandage back. The wound won’t heal with Dean popping his stitches every night, but Sam keeps it clean.
“It’s worth it,” Sam says, same as he did the first time, same as every night since. He leans back against the headboard, and the hours pass in shades of charcoal, shifting him down until he’s curled around Dean’s body.
“It is worth it,” he says again, later. Dean wakes up for a minute but doesn’t respond; he knows Sam wasn’t talking to him.
They sleep, off and on, in the colorless, pre-dawn light.
###
Based on this icon: