Flashfic: Shine ( Sequel to "Wonderful")
Shine
Summary: Part 2 of/sequel to Wonderful. Dean, PTSD
Warnings: Flashficcy
Spoilers: 5.22, slight 6.1
Shine
He rakes the leaves, for something to do. The air is cool and the ground damp, leaves brown and glistening. Slimy, he thinks, and doesn’t know why. When Lisa gets back from dropping off Ben at the library, Dean’s standing at the bathroom sink, tearing at a blister. Pus oozes onto his palms. His hands are dirty and a little bloody.
“Hey,” she murmurs, and he flashes her a smile. She’s leaning against the doorjamb with her arms crossed.
He pushes his thumbnail against the damaged skin, peels it away. It stings, distantly.
“Dean,” she says, and he doesn’t want to know why her voice seems muffled, “Dean, why don’t you wash your hands. I’ll make you some coffee. Come on.”
He runs lukewarm water and breathes through his nose. He watches the dirt and blood wash off his hands until they’re clean, shining wetly in the warm artificial light. He moves his hands in the water. He stands there until Lisa comes back and shuts the water off.
The coffee’s bitter. She sits with him at the table and they don’t talk. He wants to, he really does, and his eye flicker around the room. He flips through his memory for things to talk about, topics and conversational gambits. He winds up just saying her name, then pausing and saying it again.
“My hands hurt,” falls out of his mouth, unexpectedly, and he realizes that they do. Flexes them where they rest on the table, on either side of the coffee mug. “Why-I don’t…”
She rests her hand on the back of his, rubs her thumb over his knuckles. He shifts in his chair, uneasy. His hands feel sticky.
“You’re bleeding,” she says. “Go wash your hands again.”
--
She gave him the guest room to sleep in, that first night. He sat on the edge of the bed, his hands clasped and elbows on his knees, all the lights off. The bed sank under his weight and the streetlights pushed in through the window and blazed across the walls, bright and awful. He stayed there for a little while, breathing in and out, forcing it when he had to. Then he went into the living room and sat on the couch and dug his fingers into his thighs and didn’t think about anything. And didn’t think about anything.
When the sky began to lighten he went outside and stood in the cold and watched his breath fog and fade. He walked halfway out into the yard and stood there on the soggy ground scattered with patches of broad sycamore and maple leaves, and watched the sky grow lighter.
The world was waking up. He was surprised to find that, actually, he felt okay.
He blinked a few times, and smiled. It felt good.
The stars were fading in the sky.
--
Lisa finds things for him to do because he needs to keep moving. He hasn’t said so but he knows she can tell, can see how restless he gets sitting for longer than fifteen minutes or so at a time. So she sends him upstairs to clean or into the garage to work on her car, or on errands around the city because she says he needs to learn the lay of the land anyway. He feels weird driving an SUV and tells her that, too, and she shrugs and says it comes with the suburbanite territory.
“Suck it up,” she tells him, so he does.
Ben is funny. He makes goofy faces and tells kid jokes, and Dean laughs. Lisa too, though he suspects she’s heard a lot of them before and Ben is pleased to have a new audience. Dean goes along with him when he wants help with a science project, making a model solar system, lugging it to the school and along to the gym where the science fair’s being set up. The halls are big and echoey, even with all the kids swarming and squeaking outside their classrooms, and their heads are a sea of brown and gold and red and black. Dean doesn’t watch the motion too closely, the weird undulation, or the shine. Kids. They’re just kids.
Sometimes he gets cold. On the back of his neck. He helps Ben arrange the display and meets the science teacher, shakes hands, makes nice. It’s not hard.
He hums along to the radio on the way back.
--
He doesn’t ask Lisa about the walls. If they ever seem to shift, just a little. Or if the curtains billow gently in and out, as if caught in some momentary breeze. Or if the windows ever buckle, glass flexing like ribs around an inhalation.
He doesn’t ask. Just looks away. Doesn’t let his gaze settle for long.
It never lasts. He thinks he’s probably imagining things.
He walks circuits around the house sometimes, in the dark, long after Lisa and Ben are asleep. He doesn’t know if they know what he’s doing, but guesses they probably don’t. He leaves the lights off and walks quietly, without his shoes. It’s easier than trying to sit in the dark, waiting for the walls to crush the breath right out of him. He goes outside in the cold under the black and gaping sky, and walks. His skin buzzes. He just needs to keep moving. The static in his eyes makes most things grey and fuzzy and hard to look at too closely. He’s got a hole in his hand that was a blister. If he keeps walking, he can breathe.
His left foot hurts. He’s probably stepped on something sharp, somewhere between the house and wherever he is now. He’s near a highway, can hear the distant roar. Trees move soundlessly in the night breeze. It’s cold. He can feel it under the thin layer of his skin, but no further.
He goes back after a while. Isn’t sure how long he spent standing on the empty road watching the trees, with eyes that wouldn’t blink or focus. At the house he remembers that he forgot his shoes and goes to find them but isn’t sure where they are. Thinks maybe he left them in the guest room, or the downstairs closet. By the front door. In the bathroom, under the sink, and he can’t remember what he’s looking for. His feet hurt, and his hands. He’s kneeling in front of the sink looking into the pitch-dark cupboard and the stink of chemicals washes over him. He shuts the door and goes into the kitchen, bathed in moonlight.
He needs his shoes. Doesn’t know what he did with them.
He’s standing in the guest room, Lisa’s guest room. He was in the kitchen and now he’s here. But the space is too small and he opens the window, looks out at the dead lawn, the street, the houses on the other side.
His eyes catch on the streetlight outside and it’s a long time before he can look away. Before he remembers how.
--
“Dean,” she’s saying, “You need to stop. Just-settle, okay? Just stop.”
He doesn’t get angry, he’s not upset. He can’t go around smashing lamps and furniture, not with her. A punch to the face isn’t going to solve things. He’s not upset.
“Lisa…”
“There’s blood on the floor.” She points. “On my kitchen floor. You need to sleep, Dean.”
“I’ll clean it up,” he says, looks at the brown smears over the white tile, and away. “Look, just-I’m sorry. I’ll take care of it.” He’s reaching under the sink for the bucket she keeps there, and the Lysol, and she’s shaking her head.
“No-Dean, that’s not the point. You have to st-would you just stop?”
He slams the bucket down on the counter, harder than he meant to. The water’s running, hot enough to steam in the air, and he doesn’t remember turning it on. In the silence, it roars.
“Lisa,” he whispers, without looking at her. Hears her tiny sigh.
“Okay,” she says eventually, barely audible over the water. “Clean it up, Dean. If…if that’s what you want.”
He does, and she sits at the kitchen table and watches him the entire time.
--
His mouth is bleeding. He’s in the bathroom and he’s turned on the light, and the fan, and his hand is pressed to his mouth. He doesn’t know why it’s bleeding but when he pulls away red is all over the palm of his hand. On his fingers.
He washes it off as best he can, fumbles with the switches and gives the little space back over to the silence and the dark. He thinks it’s about two o’clock. The silence sits on his chest. He can’t breathe.
He can’t go back to the couch. He’d been asleep. Maybe he rolled off, smacked his face on the coffee table on the way down. Now a weight hangs in the room and he’s not going back in there. He’s not. Even the light didn’t push it away, not really. It’s all over him, clutching at his spine, digging under his ribs, into his muscles and bones. He breathes but he doesn’t, forces in air but it squeezes, it’s too heavy. He presses his hand over his mouth and feels his way along the wall, back into Lisa’s guestroom.
He pulls in air. The curtains are closed and the space is small. Four walls a ceiling and a floor. The smell of living space, and dust and cobwebs and blankets. It’s heavy. He stands there breathing through his nose and his mouth is bleeding again, warm against his hand. He jerks out of the room and pushes back against the wall in the hallway, rolls his head back, half-closes his eyes and just gives up on breathing. He can hear the highway, maybe, even though it’s far away. Some noise, some distant noise like the wind, or the roar of an engine. He smacks his head back against the wall.
It hurts, cuts right through everything. He pushes away from the wall and takes a deep, slow breath, and another. Runs both hands over his face and pushes them back, over his temples, his ears. He breathes and breathes and breathes.
Something sick and ugly is in his chest. That’s the problem.
He needs to stop this.
He needs to swallow it down. All the way down.
When Lisa shuffles out the back door into the light of false dawn, he’s on his third beer, the empty bottles set neatly beside him. She lowers herself down carefully on the edge of the small porch, fuzzy slippers settling on the patio tiles.
She says, “You can’t stay out here, Dean. It’s freezing.” She’s got her hands up under her armpits and her breath joins his on the air.
He looks down at her slippers, and his own bare feet. He forgot again.
He steels himself and lifts his head, meets her eyes. They’re a little puffy, he notes, but nothing too bad.
“Lisa,” he says, in the stillness that rests between night and day, “Lise I-I think I'm kind of in trouble, here.”
Her voice, when she answers him, is softly weary.
“I know. I know.”
-End-
________________
Notes: I tried to write this as quickly as possible, though it took longer than the first part. I tried not to get carried away with edits and clean-ups, though, so if there are issues, that's why.
Summary: Part 2 of/sequel to Wonderful. Dean, PTSD
Warnings: Flashficcy
Spoilers: 5.22, slight 6.1
Shine
He rakes the leaves, for something to do. The air is cool and the ground damp, leaves brown and glistening. Slimy, he thinks, and doesn’t know why. When Lisa gets back from dropping off Ben at the library, Dean’s standing at the bathroom sink, tearing at a blister. Pus oozes onto his palms. His hands are dirty and a little bloody.
“Hey,” she murmurs, and he flashes her a smile. She’s leaning against the doorjamb with her arms crossed.
He pushes his thumbnail against the damaged skin, peels it away. It stings, distantly.
“Dean,” she says, and he doesn’t want to know why her voice seems muffled, “Dean, why don’t you wash your hands. I’ll make you some coffee. Come on.”
He runs lukewarm water and breathes through his nose. He watches the dirt and blood wash off his hands until they’re clean, shining wetly in the warm artificial light. He moves his hands in the water. He stands there until Lisa comes back and shuts the water off.
The coffee’s bitter. She sits with him at the table and they don’t talk. He wants to, he really does, and his eye flicker around the room. He flips through his memory for things to talk about, topics and conversational gambits. He winds up just saying her name, then pausing and saying it again.
“My hands hurt,” falls out of his mouth, unexpectedly, and he realizes that they do. Flexes them where they rest on the table, on either side of the coffee mug. “Why-I don’t…”
She rests her hand on the back of his, rubs her thumb over his knuckles. He shifts in his chair, uneasy. His hands feel sticky.
“You’re bleeding,” she says. “Go wash your hands again.”
--
She gave him the guest room to sleep in, that first night. He sat on the edge of the bed, his hands clasped and elbows on his knees, all the lights off. The bed sank under his weight and the streetlights pushed in through the window and blazed across the walls, bright and awful. He stayed there for a little while, breathing in and out, forcing it when he had to. Then he went into the living room and sat on the couch and dug his fingers into his thighs and didn’t think about anything. And didn’t think about anything.
When the sky began to lighten he went outside and stood in the cold and watched his breath fog and fade. He walked halfway out into the yard and stood there on the soggy ground scattered with patches of broad sycamore and maple leaves, and watched the sky grow lighter.
The world was waking up. He was surprised to find that, actually, he felt okay.
He blinked a few times, and smiled. It felt good.
The stars were fading in the sky.
--
Lisa finds things for him to do because he needs to keep moving. He hasn’t said so but he knows she can tell, can see how restless he gets sitting for longer than fifteen minutes or so at a time. So she sends him upstairs to clean or into the garage to work on her car, or on errands around the city because she says he needs to learn the lay of the land anyway. He feels weird driving an SUV and tells her that, too, and she shrugs and says it comes with the suburbanite territory.
“Suck it up,” she tells him, so he does.
Ben is funny. He makes goofy faces and tells kid jokes, and Dean laughs. Lisa too, though he suspects she’s heard a lot of them before and Ben is pleased to have a new audience. Dean goes along with him when he wants help with a science project, making a model solar system, lugging it to the school and along to the gym where the science fair’s being set up. The halls are big and echoey, even with all the kids swarming and squeaking outside their classrooms, and their heads are a sea of brown and gold and red and black. Dean doesn’t watch the motion too closely, the weird undulation, or the shine. Kids. They’re just kids.
Sometimes he gets cold. On the back of his neck. He helps Ben arrange the display and meets the science teacher, shakes hands, makes nice. It’s not hard.
He hums along to the radio on the way back.
--
He doesn’t ask Lisa about the walls. If they ever seem to shift, just a little. Or if the curtains billow gently in and out, as if caught in some momentary breeze. Or if the windows ever buckle, glass flexing like ribs around an inhalation.
He doesn’t ask. Just looks away. Doesn’t let his gaze settle for long.
It never lasts. He thinks he’s probably imagining things.
He walks circuits around the house sometimes, in the dark, long after Lisa and Ben are asleep. He doesn’t know if they know what he’s doing, but guesses they probably don’t. He leaves the lights off and walks quietly, without his shoes. It’s easier than trying to sit in the dark, waiting for the walls to crush the breath right out of him. He goes outside in the cold under the black and gaping sky, and walks. His skin buzzes. He just needs to keep moving. The static in his eyes makes most things grey and fuzzy and hard to look at too closely. He’s got a hole in his hand that was a blister. If he keeps walking, he can breathe.
His left foot hurts. He’s probably stepped on something sharp, somewhere between the house and wherever he is now. He’s near a highway, can hear the distant roar. Trees move soundlessly in the night breeze. It’s cold. He can feel it under the thin layer of his skin, but no further.
He goes back after a while. Isn’t sure how long he spent standing on the empty road watching the trees, with eyes that wouldn’t blink or focus. At the house he remembers that he forgot his shoes and goes to find them but isn’t sure where they are. Thinks maybe he left them in the guest room, or the downstairs closet. By the front door. In the bathroom, under the sink, and he can’t remember what he’s looking for. His feet hurt, and his hands. He’s kneeling in front of the sink looking into the pitch-dark cupboard and the stink of chemicals washes over him. He shuts the door and goes into the kitchen, bathed in moonlight.
He needs his shoes. Doesn’t know what he did with them.
He’s standing in the guest room, Lisa’s guest room. He was in the kitchen and now he’s here. But the space is too small and he opens the window, looks out at the dead lawn, the street, the houses on the other side.
His eyes catch on the streetlight outside and it’s a long time before he can look away. Before he remembers how.
--
“Dean,” she’s saying, “You need to stop. Just-settle, okay? Just stop.”
He doesn’t get angry, he’s not upset. He can’t go around smashing lamps and furniture, not with her. A punch to the face isn’t going to solve things. He’s not upset.
“Lisa…”
“There’s blood on the floor.” She points. “On my kitchen floor. You need to sleep, Dean.”
“I’ll clean it up,” he says, looks at the brown smears over the white tile, and away. “Look, just-I’m sorry. I’ll take care of it.” He’s reaching under the sink for the bucket she keeps there, and the Lysol, and she’s shaking her head.
“No-Dean, that’s not the point. You have to st-would you just stop?”
He slams the bucket down on the counter, harder than he meant to. The water’s running, hot enough to steam in the air, and he doesn’t remember turning it on. In the silence, it roars.
“Lisa,” he whispers, without looking at her. Hears her tiny sigh.
“Okay,” she says eventually, barely audible over the water. “Clean it up, Dean. If…if that’s what you want.”
He does, and she sits at the kitchen table and watches him the entire time.
--
His mouth is bleeding. He’s in the bathroom and he’s turned on the light, and the fan, and his hand is pressed to his mouth. He doesn’t know why it’s bleeding but when he pulls away red is all over the palm of his hand. On his fingers.
He washes it off as best he can, fumbles with the switches and gives the little space back over to the silence and the dark. He thinks it’s about two o’clock. The silence sits on his chest. He can’t breathe.
He can’t go back to the couch. He’d been asleep. Maybe he rolled off, smacked his face on the coffee table on the way down. Now a weight hangs in the room and he’s not going back in there. He’s not. Even the light didn’t push it away, not really. It’s all over him, clutching at his spine, digging under his ribs, into his muscles and bones. He breathes but he doesn’t, forces in air but it squeezes, it’s too heavy. He presses his hand over his mouth and feels his way along the wall, back into Lisa’s guestroom.
He pulls in air. The curtains are closed and the space is small. Four walls a ceiling and a floor. The smell of living space, and dust and cobwebs and blankets. It’s heavy. He stands there breathing through his nose and his mouth is bleeding again, warm against his hand. He jerks out of the room and pushes back against the wall in the hallway, rolls his head back, half-closes his eyes and just gives up on breathing. He can hear the highway, maybe, even though it’s far away. Some noise, some distant noise like the wind, or the roar of an engine. He smacks his head back against the wall.
It hurts, cuts right through everything. He pushes away from the wall and takes a deep, slow breath, and another. Runs both hands over his face and pushes them back, over his temples, his ears. He breathes and breathes and breathes.
Something sick and ugly is in his chest. That’s the problem.
He needs to stop this.
He needs to swallow it down. All the way down.
When Lisa shuffles out the back door into the light of false dawn, he’s on his third beer, the empty bottles set neatly beside him. She lowers herself down carefully on the edge of the small porch, fuzzy slippers settling on the patio tiles.
She says, “You can’t stay out here, Dean. It’s freezing.” She’s got her hands up under her armpits and her breath joins his on the air.
He looks down at her slippers, and his own bare feet. He forgot again.
He steels himself and lifts his head, meets her eyes. They’re a little puffy, he notes, but nothing too bad.
“Lisa,” he says, in the stillness that rests between night and day, “Lise I-I think I'm kind of in trouble, here.”
Her voice, when she answers him, is softly weary.
“I know. I know.”
-End-
________________
Notes: I tried to write this as quickly as possible, though it took longer than the first part. I tried not to get carried away with edits and clean-ups, though, so if there are issues, that's why.