(no subject)
Title: Non Sequitur
Rating: PG-13 for violence and language.
Pairing/Characters: Sam, Dean...I guess Sam/Dean if you've really got your slash goggles on, but it's not a slash story.
Notes: For wanttobeatree , who breaks my heart into itty bitty pieces and puts up with me when I'm being a demanding whore.
Disclaimers: Don't own, don't sue. I wish.
Summary: Dean always has defined himself by his relationships to other people, and the last year is just another year, no different. Spoilers for AHBL Part 2, no spoilers for the third season.
"I found something," Sam says. There's something like manic intensity in his eyes, in his posture, like his whole body is aching for a solution. "I think it'll probably work."
Dean is lying on the bed and staring at the ceiling, holding ice over his hip where Joan Cassidy's spirit threw him into the sharp edge of a table. The bruise will be ugly and dark in the morning, he knows, and is glad he won’t live long enough to get old. "No, it won't."
Sam shuts the book with a snap that sounds like a door closing, turns the laptop off and pushes out of the chair, shoulders hunched as he makes for the bathroom. Leaves his research spread out over the table like so much garbage.
"No," he says, tossed over his shoulder, spitting the words like they’re blood. "It won't."
-
Dean doesn’t know how many days he has left.
Which isn’t exactly a lie, he knows, but he doesn’t think about it. There’s a demonic possession in some little rural farm town with a name he can’t remember after three days there, easy enough to exorcise. There’s a crossroads though, one lined with yarrow and Dean slows down just a bit as the car passes the center. He wonders how many boxes are buried under there, how many people have made their bargains for fame or money or love.
Dean doesn’t measure his time in days. Dean measures his time in people he has saved, in people he hasn’t been able to save in time. Dean measures his time in the plans that Sam comes up with and has to abandon because he knows he’ll die if he tries to get Dean out of the deal. Dean measures his time in nightmares (not his, never his, he doesn’t dream anymore) and vengeful spirits, the nights the laptop’s flickering glow keeps him up and demons wreaking havoc.
Dean still laughs and jokes and fucks and drinks and drives. Sam bleeds exhaustion and stays up at night to formulate wild, brilliant plans that will never work. Plans Dean won’t let work.
Dean thinks that Sam is keeping track of his days. Dean measures his time in Sam.
-
“So there we were, in the middle of the hotel room and she’s gettin’ pretty hot under the collar if y’know what I mean, Sammy,” and here Dean pauses and winks like he’s sharing some great pearl of wisdom, tips his bottle at Sam who’s about two drinks on the wrong side of sober. “So I tell her, I tell her ‘honey, y’ain’t seen nothing yet’.” His mouth is all but drawling honey-syrup words, putting the accent on over his rough everywhere voice like it’s a mask. “And she’s pulling my pants down, right? And then she starts like, choking or something and finally she says ‘yeah, I think I have’ and you know what, Sammy?”
Sam says “What,” even though he already knows, even though Dean’s told this story before. Always tells it when he’s got a beer in hand and whiskey that he pretends Sam didn’t see him drink curling all warm and biting in his stomach.
“Fucking witch from the day before cursed my fucking dick off.” Dean’s snorting with laughter, remembers like it was yesterday, the instinctive panic and even more instinctive embarrassment at being caught short where it really counted. The girl had been so shitfaced that her remembering wasn’t a problem, and it hadn’t been so bad when he’d gone home and found Dad in the same predicament. “It came back by the next day, but still, man. Appreciate your junk.”
“Oh, trust me,” Sam says, and he’s got this look on his face like he’s being fucking hilarious and knows it too, “I heard you appreciating it when I got up.” Beat. “You’re sure that’s not what made it fall off in the first place?”
Dean shouldn’t find it funny but he does, mostly ‘cause he’s drunk and so’s Sam (Sam more then him) and he laughs too, full belly laughs that come from deep in his chest and Sam’s crow-call that’s always a little too high and cracking. He doesn’t laugh a lot, maybe he’s embarrassed.
Dean finishes his beer and clinks it lightly against Sam’s, whispers “Hey, Sammy boy, remember that time I told you that jacking off would make your acne worse?”
“Yeah,” Sam says, only slurring his words a little and tipping up the bottle to get the last drops of cheap and bitter beer, the only kind they can afford right now while they’re waiting for the new cards. “And I believed you and didn’t fucking jerk off for like a month.”
“I know,” Dean says, and he snickers and that sets Sam off again for no reason. Dean tosses his head back and laughs with him, just because for now they’re alive and there’s beer and chips and nowhere to be in the morning but the open road.
-
Sam’s bleeding. Sam’s blood is all over the ground, coursing down his side in great sluggish stripes. Dean tries to remember old biology lessons and Dad quizzing him in the car, how many pints of blood can someone lose? Sam’s lying on the grass of the park, breath coming in surprised gasps, one hand pressing over the wound and the other reaching out, fingers fisting spasmodically as the pain starts to sink in. Sam is bleeding all over his hand and his hoodie and the ground and Dean isn’t sure about anything.
He says the right things anyhow, bent over the ground and skin goosepimpling in the cold night air as he uses his shirt to press against the wound. He says “Shhhh, Sammy, shh, it’s okay it’s okay I promise you’re gonna be fine gonna be just fine gonna patch you up real nice, maybe give you a scar ‘cause girls like scars and you really need to get yourself a girl sometime, y’know, it’s not a crime to want sex I mean look at me but I guess I am wanted by the Feds-” nervous laugh and Sam chokes on something that could be a chuckle, could be blood “-yeah that’s right Sam just focus on me, let’s get you back to the car c’mon I ain’t gonna carry you, asshole, you’re about a million feet tall, should be carrying me, should be, should be,” and his voice runs out in something that isn’t a sob. It isn’t. Dean won’t let it be.
He carries Sam to the car anyway, stuffs him inside and tells him not to bleed all over the upholstery before he guns it for the tiny little 24-hour clinic that suffices for a hospital in this town. He jams Bad Company in the tape deck with shaking fingers and lets the music relax him, turns it up to keep Sam from falling asleep and drives too many miles over the speed limit.
They fix Sam up at the clinic. It takes a while and they give him blood and ask too many questions, but no one seems to recognize their faces. Afterwards, he lies in a bed with his side stitched and bandaged, IV in, unconscious and too pale. Dean sits next to him and rests the first two fingers of his right hand on Sam’s left arm, feels the pulse beating there.
There is blood crusted around his knuckles, rust red and fading in spots to something like brown, like chocolate milk stains on white t-shirts. Dean watches Sam sleep so that he’ll be there when he wakes up.
-
Dean abuses Sam’s telekinesis. He makes him use it to turn on the television when they’re both too comfortable or too sore or too goddamn lazy to get up, makes him grab things from across the room without moving from his spot. When he’s bored, he annoys Sam until he gets pillows bounced off his head without Sam ever touching them. It’s a game, just a game.
They detour to take out a Woman in White haunting a lake, and when she knocks Dean’s shotgun out of his hand he doesn’t think just ducks and rolls and grabs it. Or, grabs where it should be but it isn’t, and Dean’s already preparing himself for some awesomely excruciating pain when he hears it go off and suddenly there’s no Woman in White, there’s just Sam sixty feet away and a shotgun hanging in midair.
Sam is white and scared; Dean is jubilant. He sings along to AC/DC and pounds his palms on the steering wheel, adrenaline coursing through his veins and pushing him higher then he should be. Sam huddles in the passenger seat and stares at his hands like they’re the answer to everything, even when Dean beans him nicely in the middle of his forehead with a mini chocolate bar and tells him to snap out of it because they have a grave to dig.
They salt and burn the bones like always, get back to the motel before four and sleep. Dean sleeps, anyhow, doesn’t dream but wakes up to Sam screaming and clinging to him and levitating the nightstand a foot off the ground. Sam calms down and sleeps, eventually; maybe because of the little white pills Dean ground up and slipped into his juice, maybe not. The next day they get three reports of demonic possession, all from different directions and Sam spends the day blaming himself.
Dean knows it wasn’t, knows it can’t have been, but the coincidence unsettles him.
-
Dean bleeds. Dean’s shoulder is dripping, running with bright red blood that makes his fingers sticky and sends the cloying, familiar scent of copper into his nose. It reminds him of Dad, enough that he inhales again and presses his nose to his sleeve to smell the combined scents of gunpowder, leather, and blood. He grew up on those smells, and even though other little children knew cookies baking and cologne Dean wouldn’t trade it for the world.
But Dean’s bleeding now, and he presses a hand to the wound to try and stop it. It’s not as bad as it looks, he thinks, and the Black Dog is very dead at his feet, head nothing much more then scattered flesh and bone and brains and one eyeball watching the sky thoughtfully, the work of the gun that’s now at his feet.
Sam comes crashing out of the underbrush even as Dean’s trying to decide if it’s bad enough to warrant bleeding on his phone so he can call Sam. Sam makes it unnecessary, though, appearing right then and talking too fast, hands moving too quickly. Dean tries to tell Sam it’s okay but gives that up in favour of just passing out, nice and quiet and dignified.
He wakes up later to Sam crying, ugly wet sobs that shake his whole body and make him screw his face up like a baby, snot and tears all over his shirtsleeves from where he’s bawling into his arms. Dean props himself up on the arm that isn’t heavily bandaged, feels a vague stab of pain but mostly just the weird-familiar floating in his head that comes of being drugged up on painkillers.
“Hey,” he says, “hey, hey, Sammy,” and then Sam’s on top of him and sniffling into Dean’s uninjured shoulder, wrapping his arms around his chest and making noises like he’s trying to stop crying and really not succeeding, great gasping breaths and hiccupy little sobs. “Hey,” Dean says, and tries to smooth a hand down his back, “I’m okay, you know,” and Sam just clings harder.
He never does explain what it was all about, but they’re in the Impala and driving south when Dean thinks about the ravenous barking of the dogs, the bite wounds in his arm, and the way sometimes he thinks he can hear hellhounds in the distance.
-
Dean goes to the crossroads the night before his year is up. He knows this because Sam told him, yelled it at him while they were fighting about how Dean wanted to spend his last night getting smashed in a bar and betting on the baseball game.
Sam’s asleep now, Dean’s made sure of that, and he’s left a note and taken the car. He drives down old country roads with a sharp and careful eye out for potholes or raised areas, driving his baby like she’s made of glass. She purrs for him and he only feels a moment of regret that Sam isn’t there riding shotgun and bitching about how Dean personifies his car.
They get there in plenty of time, moon not quite yet at her zenith, and Dean pulls over. He pours a ring of salt around the car just in case, patting her hood and running wistful fingers over her sleek lines. “If Sam doesn’t take care of you,” he whispers to her, “you just let me know, baby. I’ll come back and haunt his ass if it’s the last thing I do.”
He thinks he could probably summon the crossroads demon without doing anything if he really thought about it, but he wants to do this right. He’s got the little box in his palms, all ready except for one thing.
He digs a shallow hole and then flips the lid, digging his back pocket for his wallet. Extracting his driver’s license (his real one, the one that says Dean Winchester), he flicks it into the box and closes the lid, burying it. He’s barely turned around when she’s there, smiling and dark-haired, her dress flaming crimson and silken so that it hugs her curves in all the right places.
“Dean,” she says, purrs, “Dean Winchester, you’re early.”
“I want to make a deal,” he says. Blunt and firm and trying not to let himself respond to what he can see, a beautiful woman all too willing to come to him.
“Another one?” She raises a delicate eyebrow, shakes her head. “I don’t know if that’s allowed, Dean. I’d have to hear what you wanted.”
“I want you to take me now,” he says, and then flashes her that trademark Dean Winchester grin, the one that’s all arrogant and sexy and draws in the women like moths to a flame, all teeth and lips and sweet sweet promises that he’ll never ever keep. “Tonight. A day early. C’mon, it’s a sweet deal, and you know it is. You can brag to all your fellow demonspawn that the great Dean came to you, begging for you to take him.”
She raises the other eyebrow. “Are you begging?”
“Do you want me too?” He turns the smile up another megawatt, blinding and bright in the moonlight. He knows she could refuse, just for the hell of it, just to make him suffer. He knows that if she does he’ll take the car back and pretend like nothing happened, but he doesn’t want that.
He wants an ending now, before tomorrow. He wants Sam to remember him as laughing and joking and just Dean, just his brother, not as drawn out goodbyes filled with tears and screams as the hellhounds rip him to pieces. He wants something he can’t name and doesn’t try, just lets it fill him with the certainty of this is what I need to do.
“I just want to know why,” she admits, but she’s stalking closer, circling him like a wildcat with her prey. She wants him, and he knows it, steps forwards with all the posturing and expression that he can. Her step falters only once, but it still falters.
“I hate long goodbyes,” Dean says.
“Okay,” she says, and then she’s kissing him and he’s gasping his last breath into her mouth as the hellhounds cry joyfully down the road.
~+~