Fic: Every Snowflake is a Drop of Water 3/?
Title: Every Snowflake is a Drop of Water 3/?
Summary: More SF AU, with more cliches! Whee!
Parte the first
Parte the second
Sam let the noise of the marketplace wash over him. Once upon a time, he’d found exposure to the crowds and chaos jarring, even overwhelming, but after four years in St. Sebastian, three of those spent enrolled in the local university, he now found the controlled mayhem soothing, even homey. Where once he would have flinched away from the crowds of tourists and locals, students and townies, vendors and pickpockets and prostitutes, he now wove his way through without sparing them more than the barest glance.
He wondered idly where a person could go around here to buy some sort of weapon. He guessed there probably wouldn’t be much to be had in the same local marketplace that sold fresh vegetables and deodorant and the latest electronic gadgets; it was probably the sort of thing you had to buy online. Yet he couldn’t shake this feeling that, for some reason, he’d be deeply uncomfortable acquiring something he saw on a screen and couldn’t first hold in his hand. Couldn’t test the balance, weight, the feel of it in his grasp…
Sam made a face at himself. He’d never held anything more dangerous than a kitchen knife in his whole life. This was probably some latent macho tendency rearing its ugly head. Jess would never let him hear the end of it if she found out (which was why he wasn’t going to mention anything about it). Anyway, it wasn’t as if he was going to run off and start buying, like, butterfly knives or, or sawed-off shotguns or anything.
Jesus, what the hell’s the matter with me?
He shook his head, pushing away the slightly disturbing train of thought, and made an effort to return to more ordinary shopping concerns. He picked up more of Jess’s herbal tea, some vegetables for dinner, some toiletries they were running low on. Ordinary things which were not in any way sharp, or capable of perforating another human being. Well, aside from the safety razors, and in very special circumstances, the carrots…yeah, he seriously needed to get off this train of thought right now.
Just as he was preparing to head back, weaving his way through the crowds toward familiar back roads that would keep him well out of the way of the touristy hot spots most locals avoided like the plague, he was brought up short by an unexpected flicker of motion at the edge of his vision. He slowed in the middle of the road as he felt the hair on the back of his neck stand on end-an eerie sensation he couldn’t recall having ever experienced before. He cast around, up and down the street, suddenly glad for his nearly freakish height that let him see clearly above nearly every other person around.
His fingers itched, shifted and curled as if expecting some familiar, comfortable weight. Something heavy, solid, reassuring….
“Jesus,” he muttered.
What the hell’s going on?
Sam slipped to the side of the road, out of the crowd, past an open-air café where a half-empty cup of cappuccino and a plate of biscotti sat abandoned and forlorn at an empty table. He paused, looking down at the crumbs and wrinkling his nose at the distinctive odor of anise wafting up from the pile of cookies. He lifted a hand to rub and the back of his neck, and shivered without knowing why.
He turned sharply and strode along the side street as quickly as he could, long legs eating up the ground. Past familiar landmarks-the drug store, the little park swarming with kids, the liquor store, the corner deli-his speed increasing along with his growing sense of unease. Until he was practically sprinting. Until he finally gave up all pretense of calm, of normalcy, and dropped the bags by the side of the road and broke into a flat-out run.
He gasped aloud when his house (their house) hove into view, pounded up the stairs without slowing, and banged through the front door.
“Jess!” he shouted, voice bouncing off the walls.
But it wasn’t Jess standing in the living room, wasn’t Jess that turned to face Sam smiling a terrible smile.
“Hello, Sammy,” said the man in his house, and Sam reacted without thinking.
He only realized he’d made a fist when he felt the pain in his knuckles from the impact with the stranger’s face. He was halfway across the room and the sudden awareness of the motion disoriented him, enough to allow the other man to land two unexpected blows to his ribs and sternum, sending him staggering backward, gasping and clutching at his chest.
“Well, look at you,” his attacker said, grinning, “The one that got away.”
--
“This,” Jimmy declared, glancing around with something very much like disdain on his face, “is kind of a crappy neighborhood.”
Dean snorted. “How the hell would you know?” He demanded, “You’ve spent exactly as much time on the Outside as I have! Don’t wave that middle-class attitude around as if it’s yours, you wannabe.”
“Hey, I’ve seen pictures!” the smaller man retorted hotly, “And…movies and videos and…stuff.”
“Yeah, yeah.” Dean waved a dismissive hand, then gestured suddenly at the street below, specifically at the black-and-yellow police tape surrounding a white wall still smeared with rust brown. “Look! That’s where two guys tried to mug me!”
“You’re a lunat-,” Jimmy began, but broke off, eyes narrowing, as a familiar figure came pelting up the road and crashed through the front door of the house they’d perched across the street from.
“Jesus,” he whispered, “His hair.”
Dean shot to his feet. Something was wrong. Sam was-Sam needed-
“Come on,” he said shortly, as Sam’s hoarse cry of Jess! floated up to their ears. “We need to get down there.”
“Dean! Hold on!” Jimmy snapped, and clamped a hand on his arm. “You’re going to just, what, barge in there armed and ready for a fight?”
Dean bristled. “Yeah, I’m ‘just gonna barge in’-something’s wrong, I can feel it.” He had a job to do, one job, the same job he’d had his whole life. Take care of Sam. Every cell in his body strained toward the run-down house below, toward the noise of violence. Toward Sammy. Adrenaline surged through his bloodstream, his skin breaking out in goosebumps, hands clenching and unclenching.
“He’s not your Sam,” Jimmy ground out, shaking Dean a little, “You know he’s not, he didn’t even recognize you, you’ve never seen him before and until an hour ago you had no idea he even existed. Plus, you’re on the Outside, you have Castiel and Claire to worry about, and you’re not even trying to get past your programming, are you?”
Dean glared, but Jimmy’d known him (and his model type) for far too long, and he gazed back with deceptive passivity, unmoved by Dean’s distress. He didn’t even flinch when a resounding crash splintered the air. Dean, on the other hand, winced sharply and actually bit his lip, looking first down at the house before sending a pleading glance Jimmy’s way.
“It’s Sam,” he whispered. “I can’t just-I can’t stand by and do nothing.”
Jimmy pressed his lips together and wordlessly regarded Dean for far longer than seemed necessary, while the unmistakable noises of a serious throwdown continued to erupt from the house below. Finally he shook his head and snorted.
“Fine,” he bit out, jabbing a long finger at Dean’s chest, “But if this goes bad, I’m pinning all the blame it for it on you.”
Dean didn’t bother to respond beyond grinning hugely and slapping a hand on the other man’s shoulder before scrambling for the edge of the building.
--
Sam smashed bodily into the coffee table and felt it collapse under him. The man, the-whatever-he-was, efficient and lethal and constantly smiling-paced closer, pulled a collapsible baton from somewhere and whip-cracked it to its full length. Sam scrambled back, out of the wreckage of the destroyed furniture, planting one hand on an armrest of the old, beaten-up couch and hauling himself to his feet.
“Who are you?” he demanded, trying to force his shaking legs to steady by sheer force of will, trying to ignore the accompanying tremble in his throat. Smiley shrugged, swinging the weapon almost idly, circling around and forcing Sam to shuffle to keep him directly in front.
“This is just a lucky break for me,” Smiley observed, as calm as if they were two friends meeting on the street. “But look at you, Sam. All-” and he waved the baton in his direction, apparently indicating his clothes, “Playing dress-up. And that hair.”
A muffled shriek from another room yanked both their attention to the doorway and Sam choked on his horror when another man, more grizzled than Smiley, manhandled a struggling Jessica Moore into the room.
“You bastard!” Sam shouted, lunging for her, “Let her g-!”
Agony erupted across the back of his neck and his vision whited out. He felt his knees hit the floor, and an instant later a boot planted on his shoulder and shoved him to the floor, face-up.
When his vision cleared Smiley was standing over him, one foot lightly resting on his throat. Jess remained clasped in the arms of the other man, his hand clamped across her mouth, her right arm twisted up behind her back.
“Aw, lookie here, Kubrick,” Smiley observed, waving his baton in Sam’s direction, amusement evident in his voice. “It thinks it’s people.”
Kubrik gave a closed-mouth smile and Sam realized with slow horror that they were referring to him.
“Let’s bag-and-tag this one,” Smiley said, extracting a set of zip-ties from somewhere and kneeling roughly on Sam’s chest, binding his wrists with alarming efficiency. “We need to get back to-” but he broke off sharply and jerked his head in the direction of a tiny noise coming from the back of the house. A sound like a lock, clicking, and a door opening, slowly.
“Shit!” he was on his feet and moving in that direction so quickly Sam flinched, and Kubrick yanked Jess backward and out of his path, though he made no move to release her. Sam squirmed, pulling at the bindings on his wrist.
“Jess-” he began, but never managed to get any more words out as Smiley crashed backwards into the room, arms flailing, followed shortly after by the same man from the failed mugging an hour ago.
“What the f-” Sam again lost his train of thought as both Smiley and his larger opponent lunged for each other, and he caught the unmistakable flash of a blade even as he flinched and scrambled backward as best he could without his hands, out of the way of the fight.
Shit, his brain supplied helpfully, Shit shit shit. When had his life (and his house!) become some kind of insane battleground for highly-trained, violent lunatics? Because it was obvious that the newcomer was at least as combat-ready as his opponent, movements tight and controlled, expression focused but weirdly calm as he hammered at the smaller man. Kubrick remained off to the side, clearly unwilling to intervene and release his hostage.
More furniture got smashed. Smiley and his opponent were apparently taking turns slamming each other into walls and tables, and Sam winced when his would-be kidnapper was shoved bodily into a cabinet, glass and wood shattering. Smiley’s head lolled, eyes fluttering, and that seemed to be enough to get Kubrick motivated.
“Gordon!” He shouted, “Gordon!”
Sam almost groaned aloud at the arrival of a fourth unexpected man, this one on the slender side, gliding smoothly into the room and reaching for Sam before Kubrick could so much as lunge in Gordon’s direction.
“Dean!” the new addition shouted, laying one hand on Sam’s head and reaching forward with the other, even as Kubrick shoved Jessica away from him and snapped his hands up, a nasty-looking handgun pointed into the room. “Dean!”
‘Dean’ let Smiley-Gordon-slump unceremoniously to the floor and lunged across the room, belly-sliding, reaching out for the new man’s other hand even as Kubrick started shouting at them to Drop your weapons get on the floor put your hands where I can see the now now now! And Sam for some reason instinctively shut his eyes and turned his head away as the two newcomers clasped hands and a terrible light screamed into the room, burning afterimages across the insides of his eyelids.
He heard Jess cry out, one last time, and then the rush of wind and the sound of wings swallowed up everything.
_____________________
Next!
_____________________
Don’t worry, I do know almost exactly where I’m going with this. And I’m quite pleased at the surprising ease with which the main story components of Supernatural can be made to fit into a sci-fi future-y dramedy.
I'd been wanting to write an action scene for a while now. It was an interesting experience. I went back and watched the fight between Gordon and Dean and mostly just wrote impressions based on that. Heh.
(I should have something new and shiny to post tomorrow. Whee!)
Summary: More SF AU, with more cliches! Whee!
Parte the first
Parte the second
Sam let the noise of the marketplace wash over him. Once upon a time, he’d found exposure to the crowds and chaos jarring, even overwhelming, but after four years in St. Sebastian, three of those spent enrolled in the local university, he now found the controlled mayhem soothing, even homey. Where once he would have flinched away from the crowds of tourists and locals, students and townies, vendors and pickpockets and prostitutes, he now wove his way through without sparing them more than the barest glance.
He wondered idly where a person could go around here to buy some sort of weapon. He guessed there probably wouldn’t be much to be had in the same local marketplace that sold fresh vegetables and deodorant and the latest electronic gadgets; it was probably the sort of thing you had to buy online. Yet he couldn’t shake this feeling that, for some reason, he’d be deeply uncomfortable acquiring something he saw on a screen and couldn’t first hold in his hand. Couldn’t test the balance, weight, the feel of it in his grasp…
Sam made a face at himself. He’d never held anything more dangerous than a kitchen knife in his whole life. This was probably some latent macho tendency rearing its ugly head. Jess would never let him hear the end of it if she found out (which was why he wasn’t going to mention anything about it). Anyway, it wasn’t as if he was going to run off and start buying, like, butterfly knives or, or sawed-off shotguns or anything.
Jesus, what the hell’s the matter with me?
He shook his head, pushing away the slightly disturbing train of thought, and made an effort to return to more ordinary shopping concerns. He picked up more of Jess’s herbal tea, some vegetables for dinner, some toiletries they were running low on. Ordinary things which were not in any way sharp, or capable of perforating another human being. Well, aside from the safety razors, and in very special circumstances, the carrots…yeah, he seriously needed to get off this train of thought right now.
Just as he was preparing to head back, weaving his way through the crowds toward familiar back roads that would keep him well out of the way of the touristy hot spots most locals avoided like the plague, he was brought up short by an unexpected flicker of motion at the edge of his vision. He slowed in the middle of the road as he felt the hair on the back of his neck stand on end-an eerie sensation he couldn’t recall having ever experienced before. He cast around, up and down the street, suddenly glad for his nearly freakish height that let him see clearly above nearly every other person around.
His fingers itched, shifted and curled as if expecting some familiar, comfortable weight. Something heavy, solid, reassuring….
“Jesus,” he muttered.
What the hell’s going on?
Sam slipped to the side of the road, out of the crowd, past an open-air café where a half-empty cup of cappuccino and a plate of biscotti sat abandoned and forlorn at an empty table. He paused, looking down at the crumbs and wrinkling his nose at the distinctive odor of anise wafting up from the pile of cookies. He lifted a hand to rub and the back of his neck, and shivered without knowing why.
He turned sharply and strode along the side street as quickly as he could, long legs eating up the ground. Past familiar landmarks-the drug store, the little park swarming with kids, the liquor store, the corner deli-his speed increasing along with his growing sense of unease. Until he was practically sprinting. Until he finally gave up all pretense of calm, of normalcy, and dropped the bags by the side of the road and broke into a flat-out run.
He gasped aloud when his house (their house) hove into view, pounded up the stairs without slowing, and banged through the front door.
“Jess!” he shouted, voice bouncing off the walls.
But it wasn’t Jess standing in the living room, wasn’t Jess that turned to face Sam smiling a terrible smile.
“Hello, Sammy,” said the man in his house, and Sam reacted without thinking.
He only realized he’d made a fist when he felt the pain in his knuckles from the impact with the stranger’s face. He was halfway across the room and the sudden awareness of the motion disoriented him, enough to allow the other man to land two unexpected blows to his ribs and sternum, sending him staggering backward, gasping and clutching at his chest.
“Well, look at you,” his attacker said, grinning, “The one that got away.”
--
“This,” Jimmy declared, glancing around with something very much like disdain on his face, “is kind of a crappy neighborhood.”
Dean snorted. “How the hell would you know?” He demanded, “You’ve spent exactly as much time on the Outside as I have! Don’t wave that middle-class attitude around as if it’s yours, you wannabe.”
“Hey, I’ve seen pictures!” the smaller man retorted hotly, “And…movies and videos and…stuff.”
“Yeah, yeah.” Dean waved a dismissive hand, then gestured suddenly at the street below, specifically at the black-and-yellow police tape surrounding a white wall still smeared with rust brown. “Look! That’s where two guys tried to mug me!”
“You’re a lunat-,” Jimmy began, but broke off, eyes narrowing, as a familiar figure came pelting up the road and crashed through the front door of the house they’d perched across the street from.
“Jesus,” he whispered, “His hair.”
Dean shot to his feet. Something was wrong. Sam was-Sam needed-
“Come on,” he said shortly, as Sam’s hoarse cry of Jess! floated up to their ears. “We need to get down there.”
“Dean! Hold on!” Jimmy snapped, and clamped a hand on his arm. “You’re going to just, what, barge in there armed and ready for a fight?”
Dean bristled. “Yeah, I’m ‘just gonna barge in’-something’s wrong, I can feel it.” He had a job to do, one job, the same job he’d had his whole life. Take care of Sam. Every cell in his body strained toward the run-down house below, toward the noise of violence. Toward Sammy. Adrenaline surged through his bloodstream, his skin breaking out in goosebumps, hands clenching and unclenching.
“He’s not your Sam,” Jimmy ground out, shaking Dean a little, “You know he’s not, he didn’t even recognize you, you’ve never seen him before and until an hour ago you had no idea he even existed. Plus, you’re on the Outside, you have Castiel and Claire to worry about, and you’re not even trying to get past your programming, are you?”
Dean glared, but Jimmy’d known him (and his model type) for far too long, and he gazed back with deceptive passivity, unmoved by Dean’s distress. He didn’t even flinch when a resounding crash splintered the air. Dean, on the other hand, winced sharply and actually bit his lip, looking first down at the house before sending a pleading glance Jimmy’s way.
“It’s Sam,” he whispered. “I can’t just-I can’t stand by and do nothing.”
Jimmy pressed his lips together and wordlessly regarded Dean for far longer than seemed necessary, while the unmistakable noises of a serious throwdown continued to erupt from the house below. Finally he shook his head and snorted.
“Fine,” he bit out, jabbing a long finger at Dean’s chest, “But if this goes bad, I’m pinning all the blame it for it on you.”
Dean didn’t bother to respond beyond grinning hugely and slapping a hand on the other man’s shoulder before scrambling for the edge of the building.
--
Sam smashed bodily into the coffee table and felt it collapse under him. The man, the-whatever-he-was, efficient and lethal and constantly smiling-paced closer, pulled a collapsible baton from somewhere and whip-cracked it to its full length. Sam scrambled back, out of the wreckage of the destroyed furniture, planting one hand on an armrest of the old, beaten-up couch and hauling himself to his feet.
“Who are you?” he demanded, trying to force his shaking legs to steady by sheer force of will, trying to ignore the accompanying tremble in his throat. Smiley shrugged, swinging the weapon almost idly, circling around and forcing Sam to shuffle to keep him directly in front.
“This is just a lucky break for me,” Smiley observed, as calm as if they were two friends meeting on the street. “But look at you, Sam. All-” and he waved the baton in his direction, apparently indicating his clothes, “Playing dress-up. And that hair.”
A muffled shriek from another room yanked both their attention to the doorway and Sam choked on his horror when another man, more grizzled than Smiley, manhandled a struggling Jessica Moore into the room.
“You bastard!” Sam shouted, lunging for her, “Let her g-!”
Agony erupted across the back of his neck and his vision whited out. He felt his knees hit the floor, and an instant later a boot planted on his shoulder and shoved him to the floor, face-up.
When his vision cleared Smiley was standing over him, one foot lightly resting on his throat. Jess remained clasped in the arms of the other man, his hand clamped across her mouth, her right arm twisted up behind her back.
“Aw, lookie here, Kubrick,” Smiley observed, waving his baton in Sam’s direction, amusement evident in his voice. “It thinks it’s people.”
Kubrik gave a closed-mouth smile and Sam realized with slow horror that they were referring to him.
“Let’s bag-and-tag this one,” Smiley said, extracting a set of zip-ties from somewhere and kneeling roughly on Sam’s chest, binding his wrists with alarming efficiency. “We need to get back to-” but he broke off sharply and jerked his head in the direction of a tiny noise coming from the back of the house. A sound like a lock, clicking, and a door opening, slowly.
“Shit!” he was on his feet and moving in that direction so quickly Sam flinched, and Kubrick yanked Jess backward and out of his path, though he made no move to release her. Sam squirmed, pulling at the bindings on his wrist.
“Jess-” he began, but never managed to get any more words out as Smiley crashed backwards into the room, arms flailing, followed shortly after by the same man from the failed mugging an hour ago.
“What the f-” Sam again lost his train of thought as both Smiley and his larger opponent lunged for each other, and he caught the unmistakable flash of a blade even as he flinched and scrambled backward as best he could without his hands, out of the way of the fight.
Shit, his brain supplied helpfully, Shit shit shit. When had his life (and his house!) become some kind of insane battleground for highly-trained, violent lunatics? Because it was obvious that the newcomer was at least as combat-ready as his opponent, movements tight and controlled, expression focused but weirdly calm as he hammered at the smaller man. Kubrick remained off to the side, clearly unwilling to intervene and release his hostage.
More furniture got smashed. Smiley and his opponent were apparently taking turns slamming each other into walls and tables, and Sam winced when his would-be kidnapper was shoved bodily into a cabinet, glass and wood shattering. Smiley’s head lolled, eyes fluttering, and that seemed to be enough to get Kubrick motivated.
“Gordon!” He shouted, “Gordon!”
Sam almost groaned aloud at the arrival of a fourth unexpected man, this one on the slender side, gliding smoothly into the room and reaching for Sam before Kubrick could so much as lunge in Gordon’s direction.
“Dean!” the new addition shouted, laying one hand on Sam’s head and reaching forward with the other, even as Kubrick shoved Jessica away from him and snapped his hands up, a nasty-looking handgun pointed into the room. “Dean!”
‘Dean’ let Smiley-Gordon-slump unceremoniously to the floor and lunged across the room, belly-sliding, reaching out for the new man’s other hand even as Kubrick started shouting at them to Drop your weapons get on the floor put your hands where I can see the now now now! And Sam for some reason instinctively shut his eyes and turned his head away as the two newcomers clasped hands and a terrible light screamed into the room, burning afterimages across the insides of his eyelids.
He heard Jess cry out, one last time, and then the rush of wind and the sound of wings swallowed up everything.
_____________________
Next!
_____________________
Don’t worry, I do know almost exactly where I’m going with this. And I’m quite pleased at the surprising ease with which the main story components of Supernatural can be made to fit into a sci-fi future-y dramedy.
I'd been wanting to write an action scene for a while now. It was an interesting experience. I went back and watched the fight between Gordon and Dean and mostly just wrote impressions based on that. Heh.
(I should have something new and shiny to post tomorrow. Whee!)