Fic: Diction | Sam/Dean | R (Happy birthday mona1347!)
Title: Diction
Author: girlguidejones
Rating/Pairing: R | Sam/Dean | 1300 words | Sam POV in mid/late s1
Notes: Thanks to both brynwulf and essenceofmeanin for awesome beta and superbrains. This story is for mona1347 on her birthday. It’s a tribute to her fantastic story, Parts of Speech. It’s not necessary to read it first, but you really, really should. It’s incredible. I once told mona how her story was one of THE stories...one of those ones you read and never forget. The way she put me in Dean’s head -and heart- made me feel for the first time that I wanted not just to read fic, but to be a part of this fandom. This is my humble attempt at thanks.
Dean speaks differently now.
He used to speak in paragraphs; now it’s a hodge podge of dependent clauses and dangling participles, as if it’s too dicey to waste a complete sentence’s worth of words on Sam’s tenuous presence. Sam thinks that it isn't as though Dean trusts him to glean meanings so much as he doesn’t allow himself to care if Sam doesn’t.
Sam’s brain conjures up times when Dean would talk for hours about nothing and everything. He knows Dean didn’t talk much at all after the fire, not until Sam himself started toddling and needed a constant barrage of no, Sammy!’s to keep safe. He knows because Dean actually told him, and isn’t that incredible in the most literal sense of the word?
Sam recalls how Dean and Dad could shoot the shit about the Packers defense, or the best lure for smallmouth bass in June in West Virginia being different from the preferred one during August in Mississippi. When Dean taught Sam to drive, he made Sam sit behind the wheel in park for half an hour, holding forth about treating the Impala with respect, as if the car was some extension of himself. When he talked of the car, Dean said “she”...was all about how she was so good to him, and would be to Sammy, too, because she already knew Sammy was Important to Dean. He’d told her.
And when he showed Sam the difference between love and fucking, he went on for hours, all of it in whispered incomplete sentences and gasping declarations and full of interjections, but Sam knows that Browning or Shelley or Keats could not have found fault with Dean’s litany.
Sam took more than one psych course at Stanford, though most of what he knows of human -and inhuman- nature he’d learned (and practiced on others) long before enrolling. Dean is cautious, gun-shy, burnt. Maybe even betrayed, though getting even pre-Stanford Dean to admit to that vulnerability is about as likely as peace in the Middle East. No, a Dean gone from garrulous to taciturn is no surprise. Not considering how Sam’s said more than once that when they get Dad back he’s out of this life. Certainly not after the asylum.
What really hurts is Sam no longer gets his own subset of Deanspeak.
Everyone’s got ways they speak to cops versus bosses versus buddies versus lovers. For a Winchester, there are more subsets than usual. You talk one way to the cop who pulls you over, and another to the cop who’s being flashed your fake FBI badge. You speak a particular way to the mark with blue chalk handprints on his ass, but differently to the guy with his quarters in the next slot on your table who knows everybody in town and all their business.
Dad’s the only other one Sam’s ever seen get his own particular register from Dean. It was a weird conglomeration of how Dean might talk to a boss, or a commanding officer. It had elements of catcher-shortstop, and professor, and partner-in-crime and buddy movie. Each vocabulary option was meant to be incorporated, but deliberately not blended until it became something else entirely. They retained their separate characters, carefully folded into Category: John Winchester, like some sort of weird, speech soufflé. The rare times when Sam could remember Dean actually talking to their Dad like a dad seemed more of a embargo than anything else...deliberate stoppages of modus operandi brought on by Extenuating Circumstances.
Dean’s Sam-diction, though? It was the complete opposite of his Dad-speak. Instead of every element being fully marinated in its own identity, selectable and returnable to the whole upon demand, Dean fused dozens of ingredients into a mish-mash of tone and secret meaning and indistinguishable connotation that shifted not annually but hourly; fleetingly and often. Much like the various incarnations of “hash” Dean cooked for them growing up; the components were often unrecognizable in origin, but somehow always produced something feasible.
They’d once had an entire conversation in the middle of a crowded diner about Dean getting laid, via Dean retelling how he’d waxed and detailed the car while Sam blushed over mushy pancakes and fake maple syrup. Dean had let Sam know he was proud of him by telling Dad that he should let Sam carry the lock-picks from now on, because it would save time.
Dean had ten different ways to invoke the name of God, with up to three meanings apiece. Sam knew them all. Jesus!, (said with a gasp) generally indicated surprise, even shock. Jeezus... (alternately: JEEzus, or Jee.Zus.) denoted amusement, mild annoyance, or arousal. Christ... meant he was pissed off, or scared Sam was hurt, or going to come. Jesus-FUCKing-Christ meant either that Sam was being an idiot or an asshole (connotation of the latter being that Sam was doing so deliberately), or that if Sam didn’t get his cock inside Dean right-the-hell-now there would be Consequences.
Mostly these days Sam misses his own name. It used to be as much a part Dean’s Sam-speak as his tone or timbre. Dean doesn’t say it so often now, substitutes “hey...” or, annoyingly, “yo...” or simply looks at Sam until he feels the itch of Dean watching and turns his head to listen. And he never says Sammy. Not anymore.
Dean used to put more meanings into those two syllables than could be catalogued by the human ear, more sometimes than Sam himself could define. It meant “attention” hey look...and “instigation” I’m tou-ching yooouu....and “worship” I need you more than air.
Sam wouldn’t say it...never will...but he misses “Sammy” like he misses Jess and the life that never was. Maybe he misses it even more, because Sammy was real, and solid with history and meaning, and not a dream that seemed intangible even at the time. Losing Jess was like losing an arm, but for all that it was a shock, it wasn’t a surprise, not with all Sam knew. Losing “Sammy” stings like a slap every time the absence of use hangs in the air, like visible ellipses where Dean should place it, but doesn’t.
Dean’s lexicon of Sam seems to have vanished, and now, instead of having their own private language, Dean simply chooses from a panel of stock, generic categories when speaking to him. It’s nothing but situational diction when they speak, all intimacy gone. If Sam’s spent the day researching a gig at the library, Dean puts him in the lecturing professor role and asks questions and chooses responsive words accordingly. When they fuck, there’s not a single syllable passing his lips that Sam can’t hear Dean saying to any random chick he’s coaxed behind a locked bathroom door.
It hurts. It aches to have a conversation with Dean now; it sears him like a terrible burn being abraded again and again. Sam wonders when all the dead flesh will finally be gone and something pink and healthy might grow instead. He vacillates between guilt (Dean doesn’t realize he’s doing it, he’s just hurting, still scared that Sam will leave again) and hatred (Dean’s vindictive, withholding the S-word like denying S-ex to a philandering spouse).
“Hey. Wake up. McDonald’s or BK? I’m thinking Croissanwich, myself.” Sam’s eyes itch and he sits up, rubbing them. He looks at Dean, and his chest aches.
“I miss your hash.” Dean just stares at him, car paused in the turning lane between roadsides lined with fast food options. He clicks the blinker down to the right.
“Whatever. Burger King it is.”
When they get through the drive-through Sam reaches over and jacks the volume on the Steve Miller Band.
He doesn’t feel like talking.
stultiloquentia rocks! She make me an awesome fic-mix to go with this story, which you can find here. Enjoy!
Author: girlguidejones
Rating/Pairing: R | Sam/Dean | 1300 words | Sam POV in mid/late s1
Notes: Thanks to both brynwulf and essenceofmeanin for awesome beta and superbrains. This story is for mona1347 on her birthday. It’s a tribute to her fantastic story, Parts of Speech. It’s not necessary to read it first, but you really, really should. It’s incredible. I once told mona how her story was one of THE stories...one of those ones you read and never forget. The way she put me in Dean’s head -and heart- made me feel for the first time that I wanted not just to read fic, but to be a part of this fandom. This is my humble attempt at thanks.
Dean speaks differently now.
He used to speak in paragraphs; now it’s a hodge podge of dependent clauses and dangling participles, as if it’s too dicey to waste a complete sentence’s worth of words on Sam’s tenuous presence. Sam thinks that it isn't as though Dean trusts him to glean meanings so much as he doesn’t allow himself to care if Sam doesn’t.
Sam’s brain conjures up times when Dean would talk for hours about nothing and everything. He knows Dean didn’t talk much at all after the fire, not until Sam himself started toddling and needed a constant barrage of no, Sammy!’s to keep safe. He knows because Dean actually told him, and isn’t that incredible in the most literal sense of the word?
Sam recalls how Dean and Dad could shoot the shit about the Packers defense, or the best lure for smallmouth bass in June in West Virginia being different from the preferred one during August in Mississippi. When Dean taught Sam to drive, he made Sam sit behind the wheel in park for half an hour, holding forth about treating the Impala with respect, as if the car was some extension of himself. When he talked of the car, Dean said “she”...was all about how she was so good to him, and would be to Sammy, too, because she already knew Sammy was Important to Dean. He’d told her.
And when he showed Sam the difference between love and fucking, he went on for hours, all of it in whispered incomplete sentences and gasping declarations and full of interjections, but Sam knows that Browning or Shelley or Keats could not have found fault with Dean’s litany.
Sam took more than one psych course at Stanford, though most of what he knows of human -and inhuman- nature he’d learned (and practiced on others) long before enrolling. Dean is cautious, gun-shy, burnt. Maybe even betrayed, though getting even pre-Stanford Dean to admit to that vulnerability is about as likely as peace in the Middle East. No, a Dean gone from garrulous to taciturn is no surprise. Not considering how Sam’s said more than once that when they get Dad back he’s out of this life. Certainly not after the asylum.
What really hurts is Sam no longer gets his own subset of Deanspeak.
Everyone’s got ways they speak to cops versus bosses versus buddies versus lovers. For a Winchester, there are more subsets than usual. You talk one way to the cop who pulls you over, and another to the cop who’s being flashed your fake FBI badge. You speak a particular way to the mark with blue chalk handprints on his ass, but differently to the guy with his quarters in the next slot on your table who knows everybody in town and all their business.
Dad’s the only other one Sam’s ever seen get his own particular register from Dean. It was a weird conglomeration of how Dean might talk to a boss, or a commanding officer. It had elements of catcher-shortstop, and professor, and partner-in-crime and buddy movie. Each vocabulary option was meant to be incorporated, but deliberately not blended until it became something else entirely. They retained their separate characters, carefully folded into Category: John Winchester, like some sort of weird, speech soufflé. The rare times when Sam could remember Dean actually talking to their Dad like a dad seemed more of a embargo than anything else...deliberate stoppages of modus operandi brought on by Extenuating Circumstances.
Dean’s Sam-diction, though? It was the complete opposite of his Dad-speak. Instead of every element being fully marinated in its own identity, selectable and returnable to the whole upon demand, Dean fused dozens of ingredients into a mish-mash of tone and secret meaning and indistinguishable connotation that shifted not annually but hourly; fleetingly and often. Much like the various incarnations of “hash” Dean cooked for them growing up; the components were often unrecognizable in origin, but somehow always produced something feasible.
They’d once had an entire conversation in the middle of a crowded diner about Dean getting laid, via Dean retelling how he’d waxed and detailed the car while Sam blushed over mushy pancakes and fake maple syrup. Dean had let Sam know he was proud of him by telling Dad that he should let Sam carry the lock-picks from now on, because it would save time.
Dean had ten different ways to invoke the name of God, with up to three meanings apiece. Sam knew them all. Jesus!, (said with a gasp) generally indicated surprise, even shock. Jeezus... (alternately: JEEzus, or Jee.Zus.) denoted amusement, mild annoyance, or arousal. Christ... meant he was pissed off, or scared Sam was hurt, or going to come. Jesus-FUCKing-Christ meant either that Sam was being an idiot or an asshole (connotation of the latter being that Sam was doing so deliberately), or that if Sam didn’t get his cock inside Dean right-the-hell-now there would be Consequences.
Mostly these days Sam misses his own name. It used to be as much a part Dean’s Sam-speak as his tone or timbre. Dean doesn’t say it so often now, substitutes “hey...” or, annoyingly, “yo...” or simply looks at Sam until he feels the itch of Dean watching and turns his head to listen. And he never says Sammy. Not anymore.
Dean used to put more meanings into those two syllables than could be catalogued by the human ear, more sometimes than Sam himself could define. It meant “attention” hey look...and “instigation” I’m tou-ching yooouu....and “worship” I need you more than air.
Sam wouldn’t say it...never will...but he misses “Sammy” like he misses Jess and the life that never was. Maybe he misses it even more, because Sammy was real, and solid with history and meaning, and not a dream that seemed intangible even at the time. Losing Jess was like losing an arm, but for all that it was a shock, it wasn’t a surprise, not with all Sam knew. Losing “Sammy” stings like a slap every time the absence of use hangs in the air, like visible ellipses where Dean should place it, but doesn’t.
Dean’s lexicon of Sam seems to have vanished, and now, instead of having their own private language, Dean simply chooses from a panel of stock, generic categories when speaking to him. It’s nothing but situational diction when they speak, all intimacy gone. If Sam’s spent the day researching a gig at the library, Dean puts him in the lecturing professor role and asks questions and chooses responsive words accordingly. When they fuck, there’s not a single syllable passing his lips that Sam can’t hear Dean saying to any random chick he’s coaxed behind a locked bathroom door.
It hurts. It aches to have a conversation with Dean now; it sears him like a terrible burn being abraded again and again. Sam wonders when all the dead flesh will finally be gone and something pink and healthy might grow instead. He vacillates between guilt (Dean doesn’t realize he’s doing it, he’s just hurting, still scared that Sam will leave again) and hatred (Dean’s vindictive, withholding the S-word like denying S-ex to a philandering spouse).
“Hey. Wake up. McDonald’s or BK? I’m thinking Croissanwich, myself.” Sam’s eyes itch and he sits up, rubbing them. He looks at Dean, and his chest aches.
“I miss your hash.” Dean just stares at him, car paused in the turning lane between roadsides lined with fast food options. He clicks the blinker down to the right.
“Whatever. Burger King it is.”
When they get through the drive-through Sam reaches over and jacks the volume on the Steve Miller Band.
He doesn’t feel like talking.
stultiloquentia rocks! She make me an awesome fic-mix to go with this story, which you can find here. Enjoy!