(no subject)
a lack of geography
Supernatural
Dean, mostly (slight Sam/Dean if you squint); PG.
434 words
A/N: With super giant love to mcee, for doing a whole lot more hand-holding than usual. And for beta, as always.
Dean wakes up not knowing where he is, to ugly wallpaper and cheap furniture, a TV remote attached to the bedside table, the smell of stale coffee in paper cups. It's not an existential angst kind of thing, but a lack of geography; he can't remember the last state line he crossed, if it was the night before or a week past, if he's somewhere in the middle or approaching a coast. Border towns give him nightmares.
He was dreaming of driving, and his body hums with the lingering feel of the road under his tires, the breakdown from "Fool in the Rain" running through his head. There are cracks in the ceiling, a water stain in the corner above a spiderweb speckled with dead flies. It's every ceiling in every motel room he's ever seen, and he closes his eyes again, rubs the grit from them with the heels of his hands.
It comes back to him slowly, while he's contemplating coffee and greasy diner eggs: they're in Indiana, they've been here three days, they're waiting. There's been no word from Dad for two weeks, and they're doing their own clumsy scouting of jobs. They're heading west, for no reason other than that's the direction the road they got on went.
Sam makes a noise from the next bed and Dean turns to him automatically, blinking against the sunlight peeking through the cheap blinds, painting Sam in stripes of light and shadow. Sam's kicked most of the blankets off, and the back of his shirt's rucked up, showing a stretch of gold skin and the edge of a shiny pink scar. His hair is curling damply against his neck. The narrow beds are so close Dean could reach across the space between them and touch him; his fingers flex, but he tucks his arm under the misshapen pillow instead.
Sometimes Sam talks about things "back home," meaning Stanford, and Dean doesn't even have to wonder if Sam ever talked about him and Dad and called them that. Dean's never known anywhere he'd call home, not the way other people would. Lawrence is distant, abstract; he doesn't know it any better than any other town he's stopped in for a night or a week. He remembers the house, the yard, their street, but nothing beyond.
A breeze rattles the blinds and the light shifts and shimmers like water, the scar on Sam's back catching Dean's eye again, and he supposes that's a kind of geography, too; the topography of bone beneath skin, the mapwork of veins, those roads he knows all too well.
Supernatural
Dean, mostly (slight Sam/Dean if you squint); PG.
434 words
A/N: With super giant love to mcee, for doing a whole lot more hand-holding than usual. And for beta, as always.
Dean wakes up not knowing where he is, to ugly wallpaper and cheap furniture, a TV remote attached to the bedside table, the smell of stale coffee in paper cups. It's not an existential angst kind of thing, but a lack of geography; he can't remember the last state line he crossed, if it was the night before or a week past, if he's somewhere in the middle or approaching a coast. Border towns give him nightmares.
He was dreaming of driving, and his body hums with the lingering feel of the road under his tires, the breakdown from "Fool in the Rain" running through his head. There are cracks in the ceiling, a water stain in the corner above a spiderweb speckled with dead flies. It's every ceiling in every motel room he's ever seen, and he closes his eyes again, rubs the grit from them with the heels of his hands.
It comes back to him slowly, while he's contemplating coffee and greasy diner eggs: they're in Indiana, they've been here three days, they're waiting. There's been no word from Dad for two weeks, and they're doing their own clumsy scouting of jobs. They're heading west, for no reason other than that's the direction the road they got on went.
Sam makes a noise from the next bed and Dean turns to him automatically, blinking against the sunlight peeking through the cheap blinds, painting Sam in stripes of light and shadow. Sam's kicked most of the blankets off, and the back of his shirt's rucked up, showing a stretch of gold skin and the edge of a shiny pink scar. His hair is curling damply against his neck. The narrow beds are so close Dean could reach across the space between them and touch him; his fingers flex, but he tucks his arm under the misshapen pillow instead.
Sometimes Sam talks about things "back home," meaning Stanford, and Dean doesn't even have to wonder if Sam ever talked about him and Dad and called them that. Dean's never known anywhere he'd call home, not the way other people would. Lawrence is distant, abstract; he doesn't know it any better than any other town he's stopped in for a night or a week. He remembers the house, the yard, their street, but nothing beyond.
A breeze rattles the blinds and the light shifts and shimmers like water, the scar on Sam's back catching Dean's eye again, and he supposes that's a kind of geography, too; the topography of bone beneath skin, the mapwork of veins, those roads he knows all too well.