Supernatural Fic: More Ocean Than Firm Land
A few weeks ago, I asked for twenty words from my flist. You very kindly responded and I am now posting the resulting fic inspired by those words.
It's quite a heifer, so settle in folks.
Title: More Ocean Than Firm Land
Fandom: Supernatural
Rating / Genre: PG-13, Gen. Twenty random words inspired twenty interconnected drabbles.
Words: 6183
Spoilers: 2.13: Houses of the Holy
Disclaimer: Supernatural belongs to Eric Kripke and The CW.
Schmoopy Dedication: For all my flist and particular Brandywine421 who got so excited about this show every week that I eventually couldn't resist checking it out. You're a very funky little individual.
Summary: Clear moments are so short.
~~~
Puddle
Post-Stanford Sam may be able to handle marginally more beer than pre-Stanford Sam, but the results are just as inevitable, just as hilarious, and it's not long before Dean's bundling him out the bar and watching him lurch around the parking lot like a special giraffe.
Sam finds, loses and finds his footing again, turning in what he mistakenly thinks is the vague direction of his brother, his nose scrunched up like a three year old. "Where's your car, dude?"
"Don't even-" Dean starts, knowing where this is headed, but they're too many tequilas down the line for Sam to hold back now.
"Dude. Where's your car?" Sam's inane grin spreads to Dean's own face before he can stop it and that's all the encouragement Sam needs. "Where's your car, Dude?... Dude, where’s your car?..."
Sam's smile beams as bright as the moon as he spins in a circle, pointing at one empty space after another and Dean doesn't need visions to know that Sam's immediate future's going to be, well, colourful. Possibly lumpy.
"… Where's your car, Dude?"
"It's back at the motel, Dude," Dean answers eventually after Sam starts to emphasize his question with a little dance of his own dorktastic invention and it all just becomes too painful to watch, "Come on, Sparky, let's you get you back home."
"Ain't got no home, Dean," Sam says looping an arm over his brother's shoulder with enough drunken momentum to inspire Dean not to tease him about his upper body strength or lack thereof for a good week and a half, "We’re homeless. Just the road, Jack. Just you and me."
"Against the world?"
"Against the universe!!" Sam bellows, before lurching off down the road at high speed. "Yeeeeeeeah!"
Dean watches him go, his own healthy buzz glowing as fat drops of warm Tennessee rain begin to fall. Ahead, Sam jumps up on to a lamppost and swings around it with another whoop and before Dean even has time to blink, Sam's singing showtunes.
"I'm singing in the rain, just singing in the rain… What a glorious feeling- I'm haaaaaaaaappy again..."
Still singing, Sam abandons the lamppost and stumbles with gusto into the small park just up from their motel. And the dance is back. Classic.
"I'm laughing at clouds, so high up above… The sun's in my heart and I'm ready for love."
"You're going to be ready for a bucket and one hell of a hangover before too long, you keep this up," says Dean as he catches up with where Sam has finally come to rest, sprawled contentedly on the grass, mouth open like a pelican to catch the summer rain. For emo reasons he can't identify, Dean feels compelled to join him and lies back next to Sam, breathing in the sweet fresh scent of the earth. For the first time in weeks, months maybe, he feels like somehow everything's going to work out okay.
"That's all we need though right?" Sam says, cutting into Dean's thoughts with a half-abandoned one of his own, "You and me, against the universe?"
Dean looks over at the earnest idiotic features of his kid brother, and smiles from the inside out. "Yeah, Sammy, that's all we need."
~~~
Memory
They’re walking casually as carefree college students through down the main drag in Santa Fe when Sam suddenly barrels sideways into the nearest shop, nearly pulling Dean’s arm off in the process.
"Sammy, what the hell?" Dean says, shrugging off aggressively his brother’s death grasp on his arm as he takes in his new surroundings. "You better be having a vision of me being dismembered by mutant pixies, because if you just dislocated my shoulder for Gouda, I’m going to kick your ass."
"Gouda?"
Eyebrows raised high in indignation, Dean directs Sam's attention to the array of cheese displayed in the refrigerated counter behind them. "Don't you think you have enough nightmares already without eating this fancy stuff?"
"Just- Shut up."
Dean's on the brink of saying something really inappropriate for their surroundings, when he realises Sam's gaze is focused firmly on a young man sitting alone outside a coffee shop across the street. Any other time, he'd make a joke about Sam checking him out, but there's an unmistakable air of melancholy behind his brother's eyes, so instead he asks, "Who is he?"
"Friend of Jess's from home. Joe-" Sam reaches for the name and finds it missing, "Joe somebody." He frowns, as he realises sometime in the past eighteen months he's taken another step away from normal without even knowing it. "Best friend, actually. Nice guy, stayed over a few times. I forgot he went here."
Dean can’t help but notice that Sam's colour has dropped a few shades paler at this ambush of grief and hates it. What he hates more is the fact that over a year down the line from Jessica's death, there's still some things that he can't fix, that Sam needs someone else to try and make better. Someone who knew Jess, who can say, "Hey, d'you remember that time when-?" or, "Did I ever tell you about when Jess decided / thought /told / cried…"
So he takes a deep breath and does what small part he can, "Go on, then." Dean nudges his shoulder into Sam's, nodding kind with insistence when Sam turns to look at him, as if asking for permission, which they both know in a way, he is. "I'll see you back at the car, 'kay?"
Sam frowns for a second, as if wondering which cosmic lottery he must have won to have bagged Dean for his side, before a flicker of a half-smile replaces it. "Thanks, man."
"Anytime, little brother," he says and Sam goes, leaving Dean alone with his new friend Mr Cheese. The girl behind the counter smiles chastely at him, and after a moment's pause he smiles back with the polar opposite. What the hell, he figures; he's got time to kill.
~~~
Mellifluous
"County wide what now?" Sam distinctly remembers asking Mrs Hawks with enough horrified indignation to make Dean proud.
"Spelling bee. You won the all-school contest, all-county's the next level. It's a wonderful achievement, Sam, congratulations."
"Thanks, but no thanks," he'd said. Been pretty firm about it too.
"You get extra credit."
"I've already got plenty. I'm taking Shakespeare 3. With you."
"It'll look good on your college applications," she'd persisted.
"I'm thirteen," Sam had snapped back, "And I'm not going to college." He'd meant it then, too. He wasn't that interested.
Two years later, the hunts are harder, the price for screwing up gets higher and Sam spends spring break at Pastor Jim's with a smashed up shoulder while Dean and Dad take on a poltergeist in Montana. Somehow, he realises as he finishes one Bronte novel and reaches with anticipation for another, that the peaceful quiet of studying is no longer a distraction or a means to an end, it's become the end itself.
~~~
Cacophony
It only happens the once, in Vermont, but it drops on Dean like a ton of bricks. Plagued by a vision they can't decipher, Sam's barely slept for two weeks straight and when he finally passes out in Walgreens from exhaustion, something jumps across to Dean, and gives him a front row seat for the freak show.
A starry sky and a full moon -
An empty road, a burnt out wreck of van -
A girl screams for help as her arms blister and burn -
The smell of her hair, acrid and bitter in his throat -
- Too late, they're going to be too late and she could be anywhere -
When the images fade and Dean stops seeing double he stays still, standing bent over with is hands on his knees, trying to breathe without puking. His heart races with panic and his head screams in protest at the fluorescent lights overhead, as the here and now finally pushes out the image of the lost girl. At his feet, Sam stirs. Dean helps his brother clamber gingerly to his feet, hoping he doesn't look as scared shitless as he feels.
"You okay, Dean? You look like you saw a ghost."
"What me?" Dean asks amazed that Sam could have his senses so violently assaulted and keep his shit together enough to play it down and ask after his brother. "Nah, I'm fine, you scared me, Sammy."
"Sam," Sam replies more out of habit than irritation, noticing not for the first time the particular way Dean always smiles at him when he's trying not to be freaked out by Sam's psychic episodes.
"Yeah, yeah whatever. You know you love it."
"Yeah, I kinda do," he acknowledges truthfully as they head for the exit and doesn't comment when Dean casually pockets a bottle of sleeping pills and some Aleve on the way.
Sam tells him on the way back to the motel that he caught the licence plate this time and Dean's mind is mugged by a momentary replay, the feeling of hopelessness, the smell of scorched flesh and wonders how the hell Sam's managed to live with this screaming inside of him without going completely cuckoo's nest. When they reach the cheap-nasty room, Dean promises to look into it while Sam catches up on some shut-eye, forcing two of each of the lifted pills into his brother without much resistance, following suit when he finds what he's looking for thirty minutes later.
The next day, after they've told the girl's twin brother about what took his sister and what to watch out for before hightailing it out of the county, there's a space so empty and still between them that Dean wouldn't be surprised if he looked in the rear view mirror and saw an elephant on the back seat.
Dean doesn't tell Sam about being pulled into the vision. There's not much point, he figures. Sam's already worked out what he did from the hand shaped burn marks running up Dean's arm.
~~~
Stutter
They haven't really spoken since they passed by Cape Girardeau last night without stopping on their way to Texas to check out a haunting. Usually that's okay; they can go happily for hours with nothing more than a few causal exchanges about food, peeing or gasoline. Sometimes, it's just tiredness, sometimes they're pissed at each other, but it's rarely truly awkward and it never outlasts the journey. They've never discussed it, but they know it's testament to how close they've gotten this last year, closer than when they were kids really, because this time they chose it; chose to open up, chose to trust, chose to stay, chose each other.
Problem is, even if there's a good reason for it, now when the quiet moments come they're more conspicuous than ever.
"Jessica's birthday was the same as yours," Sam says suddenly, splitting the silence wide open.
"Yeah?" Dean answers, with genuine interest, even if this is one hell of a curve ball Sam's just pitched him.
"Yeah. Didn't know at first though. Weird, huh?"
"Maybe" Dean shrugs with a smirk and leaps on the opportunity to wind Sam up. "Maybe you like, knew it without knowing it. You got the whole psychic deal now, maybe it was just hiding before."
"Yeah, right," Sam snorts scornfully, but who knows? Maybe Dean's got a point.
"Hey man, you moved a cabinet with your brain. "
"Right. Once, after watching you get shot in the face."
"Whatever, it's still pretty hardcore mojo, dude. And we both know that no way you would have got yourself a firecracker like Jess without some kind of Jedi mind trick," Dean teases, enjoying himself and the cheerful, semi-indignant look on Sam's face. "Girl was completely out of your league."
"Shut up!"
"So, what did you did you get her last year? For her birthday?"
This time it's Sam's turn to smile. "Lingerie." Dean's jaw drops about a foot and Sam could swear the Impala zigzags for a nanosecond and loves it. "And you know what?" Sam says, loving the chance to be the alpha male for a change, "She looked hot in it."
Dean exhales softly, like he's just downed a double shot of moonshine. "Damn, Sammy."
"Yeah," Sam smiles, "That's what I said."
They fall back into the journey again and Dean's thoughts turn back to Cassie, which he figures was probably Sam's intention all along, the sly dog. Screw it, Dean decides; maybe these silences are not so bad after all.
~~~
Narrow
In the dark of their hospital room, Dean lies awake trying to shut out the noise of Sam's ridiculously loud snort-wheezing.
It wasn't until he'd instinctively dived into the river after Dean and the ice cold water had stabbed his breath clean from his lungs, that Sam realised the ribs he'd pegged as bruised were definitely cracked and did not particularly feel like cooperating with his rescue mission.
Neither of them can really remember much about what came next other than sirens and doctors, but they both get that it's only down to luck and a group of students on a rafting trip that they're going to live to hunt another day. They also both know that there's not a chance in hell that day will be tomorrow.
"Dude, stop staring at me," Sam says finally, amused and fascinated by Dean's inability to sit still even with thumping concussion and near-drowning ticked off his day's to-do list.
"You awake?"
"Maybe I wouldn't be if you'd quit staring at me."
"Okay, bitchy."
"Assface."
"Nice. See if I save your life again."
"My life? Yeah, okay. You were drowning, Dean."
"So were you."
"Yeah, well, you started it," Sam says with a laugh, wincing as it sends a shift of pain through his chest. "Ow, man, this sucks. Next time I say let's go somewhere like Bolivia, let's go somewhere like Bolivia, okay?"
"You got it Sammy," Dean says, smiling at Sam's turn of phrase. "Now go to sleep already. Try not to puncture a lung during the night, okay?"
Sam considers giving Dean the finger, but sleep's finally looking to join the party and his eyelids are suddenly so very heavy. Besides, he decides, as he drifts away from the waking world, there's always tomorrow.
~~~
Effulgent
There's a scratch running from fender to bumper down the passenger side of the Impala. Long, deep and deliberate; Sam swears that if Dean were a cartoon, his eyes would be bugging out four feet out of his head right around now.
"Oh, man," Sam says, summing it up for both of them.
"Sam, please tell me I'm dreaming."
"Wish I could, seriously."
When Dean eventually finds enough coherent thought to ream out the motel manager, Sam has to physically drag his brother out of the office to stop him bursting a blood vessel, but still it's two hundred miles before Dean can let it go and Sam can settle into sleep against the window.
Two hours later with the moon rising early, he's woken with a jerk as Dean swerves the car to a stop. "Son of a-" he starts before he sees what Dean has parked crossways in the road to avoid, "- Whoa."
The unicorn stands facing them, without a care in the world.
"Dude, that's a-"
"- Yeah, I spotted it, thanks."
They both stare at the creature they'd both filed along with leprechauns and fairies under fictional less than forty-eight hours ago, sitting up straighter as it walks towards the car purposefully, white hair luminous in the headlights. It's not the biggest horse they've ever come across, but every inch is powerful and sleek. As for the horn, it's straight and closer to an elephant tusk than the slender silver spiral depicted in some of the illustrations they've seen … and now that it's closer, they can see it's tipped with what looks to be flecks of black… Black paint.
"What the-" Dean starts, as the crazy pieces start to fall into place.
The unicorn comes up to the car, lowers its head and keeps going, carving a matching scratch into Dean's side of the car and Sam has to act quickly and hang on tight to stop Dean from charging out of the car and getting himself impaled, cringing all the while at the shriek of the animal's horn on metal.
Job done, the unicorn trots the rest of the way round the car and stands before them again, proud and smug, before turning its back on them and farting loud and deliberately in their direction. The haze of the rainbow hangs in the air for a moment and Sam finally releases his death grip on Dean and laughs deep and full at the absurdity of it all. It's not long after Sam starts making that honking sound he can’t help when he's totally lost it that Dean lets go too and together they watch the unicorn disappear into the dark, leaving only the echo of laughter and a shimmer of silver moonbeam hanging in the night.
~~~
Sorry
They weren't fast enough in Absolution, Utah. Couldn't stop an evil they'd never faced before from taking a family of six whole, leaving only the grandfather behind to wonder why his loved ones were marked for a violent and desperate end. They both want to offer him something, anything that might help him find peace in his last days, but they weren't quick, clever or brave enough this time and they know it.
Sam and Dean have enough darkness to fill a lifetime of nightmares. Even so, it's a long time before either Winchester can close their eyes without seeing the little girl they failed watching them from the back of the police car, smiling with black eyes and blood stained hands as one by one the bodies are brought out.
~~~
Caress
John's fingers hover above the stone, but he doesn't touch it, fearing the brush of cold granite will supplant the warm blush of her upturned cheek beneath his lips. He closes his fingers into a fist and forces both his hands back into the worn pockets of his coat. He comes by twice a year, give or take, but these last few times it's been getting harder. Part of him wishes that he'd never completed the jigsaw, found out what Mary had been so afraid of, what she'd kept close and secret, hoping she could spare him, but he knows it wouldn't have changed things. Mary would still have been taken, he'd still have been pulled into the hunt, Dean would still have had to grow up faster than any child should and Sammy…
John closes his eyes, refusing to surrender, knowing that if their family stand a chance of riding out the storm, he's got to be stronger than this. He bends down to one knee, takes his hands from his pockets and places them both flat on plane polished headstone. The cold surface feels exactly he always imagined it would, but somehow the memory of his final goodnight kiss remains, bittersweet and lonely.
~~~
Exaggerate
"I'm not kidding, this spirit, it slams the door so hard it fell off its hinges," Sam's voice is brimming with pride and energy as he recounts the tale of his and Dean's first totally solo hunt to John.
"Yeah?"
Dean nods, confirming his brother's telling, wondering if he was still this giddy at nearly seventeen.
"And then it comes at us, right, with a frickin' cutlass, or sickle or something and it's laughing and the next thing I know, we're being dragged half way across the floor, but Dean? He doesn't even flinch, makes the shot with the shortbow, smack! Right into the bones, torches the bastard."
"Yeah?" John asks, pride laced with just the tiniest undercurrent of cynicism. "Pretty impressive, Dean."
"What can I say? I just don't scare easy as Florence here."
"Shut up," Sam snaps back at Dean, without venom, before picking up his praise again, "You should have seen it, the guy's blade, it was four feet long, easy."
"Four feet of steel?" John says sceptically with a tut of reproach, "Come on, Sammy, I've told you a million times not to exaggerate."
And just like that, Sam's face falls and the light of excitement dies in his eyes.
Dean doesn't think he’ll ever come to understand why someone as good at reading people as his dad could always get it so wrong when it came to his youngest son, or why someone as smart as Sam couldn’t work out when his dad was cracking a ill-conceived wiseass remark. What he knows right now for certain is that this thing, this friction-fight going on between Sam and his dad, it isn’t going to be fixed anytime soon.
~~~
Silk
The blinds he forgot to twist shut let the streetlight's amber-soft glow pour through the window and flow across the bed, painting her skin with honey.
There's something about the way Jess's lower back peeks out from under the rumpled t-shirt that pulls all the sound from the room and now all Sam can think about is touching her, tracing patterns on her skin, bending his neck to kiss the edges of hers and never leaving. Jess mumbles happily in her sleep and with a muffled grunt, rolls over so quickly, he's surprised to find her nose a breath away from his own. Unable to resist, Sam touches his nose to hers and she wrinkles it involuntarily, a trace of a smile playing across her lips. Sam takes comfort in the deep contentment of her perfect sleeping form and hopes that come sunrise, the memory won't be burned away by the fiery visage of Jessica he knows is waiting for him in his dreams.
~~~
Septic
Lessons About Hunting Dean and Sam Winchester Have Learned The Hard Way, Number 32: When asked to check out reports of a haunting in a new gated community, screw insect sightings and Indian burial grounds, the first question should always be, "So, residents claim that the plumbing's all funky and that there's this constant smell of methane and ammonia. Tell me, this development, was it built on a sewage works?"
~~~
Research
"Leave me alone, Dean. I'm fine," Sam mutters irritably as his cell phone rings for what he swears is the thirty-third time in thirty-two minutes. He glances down at the display, and surprised to see the number flashing up there, he slows the car down and picks up.
"Ash, hey, what's up?"
"Nothing. I uh…" Ash's voice trails away into nothing, like he's two kool-aids short of a magic bus ride.
"Come on man, what is it?" Sam says, with a hint of impatience. He's beyond grateful to Ash for his help, but right now he's as jumpy as Mexican bean and doesn't really have the forbearance for cryptic.
Ash evidently picks up on Sam's mood, because Sam can almost his brain shift up a gear. "I told you plot 486, right? For this Scott kid?"
"Yeah, why?"
"Nothing, I just thought for a second that maybe I told you 496, and well, there isn't one. Didn't want you wandering round the cemetery like a loon looking for something that don't exist."
"Oh. Okay, thanks."
"So, "Ash says, sounding spaced again, "486."
"486," Sam repeats, trying to sound confident, but there's something hesitant in Ash's voice that's got him frowning. "You okay, Ash?"
"Me?" Ash says in surprise, unmistakably thrown by Sam's question, maybe even a little touched. "I'm fine, Sam, I'm fine. Just… this thing going on with you… I get the feeling it's getting bigger, rougher too. You don't think maybe you should call your brother?"
"I'll call Dean, I will," Sam says, meaning it. "Just need a day or two to myself on this one. Figure some stuff out, you know?"
The line's quiet for a moment and Sam is beginning to wonder if Ash is still there when he hears his heavy sigh on the other end, "Yeah, I get it. You need anything else digging up, call me, okay? "
"Thanks, man."
"Hey, it's all for the fight, right? We all gotta find our own way of hunting."
"Yeah, guess so."
"Good luck, Sam," Ash says and hangs up, dropping it on to the table with a sigh. Rubbing at his eyes and takes one last look at the laptop, at the groups of names listed there on the screen in front of him. The group for '83, Sam's group, is the one that's at the centre of all this, he knows that, but it's the group from a few years earlier that's got him missing sleep. Seven names this time; two missing persons, one dead from cancer, one dead from a drug overdose and only three left standing, a teacher and palmist on the side, a doctor, and him.
Ash wonders if the doctor uses medicine to heal people, or if he just thinks about it and it happens, the way Ash just has to think about fire to start one. He wonders why he didn't- why he couldn't- find the words to tell Sam about their connection. Wonders if Sam will have a vision of him dying one day soon. What Ellen will say if he ever gets the courage to tell her the truth about him.
Lately, he wonders most of all if, or when, the yellow-eyed demon comes for him in his dreams like he knows one day it will, if he'll be strong enough to say no.
~~~
Machine
Sam's almost nodded off when he finally hears it; a soft-scratching noise in the corner of the room and the faint humming of an old Beatles song. He forces himself awake and points his gun in the direction of the supernatural intruder. "Hold it right there."
The thread-elf freezes in the sights of the shotgun, purple furry hand reaching right through the metal of the drier as if it were the most natural thing in the world. "Uh-oh, busted."
"Put those back!" Sam says, indicating the pile of odd socks the thread-elf has already liberated from the drier. He looks at Sam, at the socks and back at Sam, turns bright pink and sighs in a manner eerily reminiscent of Dean in bitch mode, "Oh, come on!"
Sam's got nothing against the little fellow personally, but doing the laundry's just about the only normal thing he's got left in his life, even if the bloodstains, mud and occasional beastie innards are anything but, and he'll be damned if he loses four pairs of socks in a week to a whatever-the-hell a thread-elf is.
Now coloured scarlet and sulking and muttering curses about evil giants under its breath, the bizarre little monster returns the socks to the drier, passing them through the solid door resentfully. Job done, it skulks off towards the air vent, knuckles trailing on the ground like a disgruntled orang-utan. Despite himself, Sam can't help but feel a little sorry for the creature. "I gotta ask," he calls out to it just before it passes through the door, "Why socks? What's so special about them?"
The furry guy just shrugs his now blue-green shoulders and sighs. "A guy's gotta eat." And like that, he's gone.
~~~
Greenish
"Here," Hannah says, throwing a stick to each of them before snapping her own and shaking it to mix the luminescent chemicals contained inside. The Winchesters follow suit and the darkness bows to the soft white-green light. "They last six hours and they don't run on batteries. Spooks don't dim them, nor demons neither."
Feeling more stupid than two hunters with their experience should ever feel, they follow the eighteen year old down through the mine, the glow of their snapsticks lighting a clear path through the gloam. "So, Mr I-May-Not-Be-A-College-Genius-But-At-Least-I'm-Practical," Sam says to Dean after thirty seconds of physically biting his lip to stop himself from laughing, "You want to tell me why you never thought of this?"
~~~
Happy
"Take me to the river," John sings with tuneless confidence in a way his youngest son will inherit years from now. "Wash me down…"
Unable to resist any longer, he lets his gaze focus fully on Mary standing behind the bar. She's ignoring all her customers, ignoring the smash behind her as her fellow bartender fumbles another glass, ignoring anything and everything that isn't the crazy, smitten guy singing his heart out and suddenly he knows. He's won her. This is the start.
Self-consciousness and words forgotten together, John begins to laugh, full, deep and with total abandon. To the relief of every patron of the smoke filled bar, he tosses the mic to Jacob, leaps from the corner-stage and walks through the smoke to where Mary, and the rest of his life, are waiting for him.
~~~
Wear
As they watch the remains of their trailer begin to melt, Sam and Dean have to admit; this was not one of their better ideas. John stands behind them, trying to keep his voice stern despite the tears of laughter threatening to spill down his cheeks. Two days he was away, not that long for a hunt three statelines and a time zone over. Two days and now their house could be the punchline in a dozen or more redneck jokes.
"So," he says as gruffly as he can manage, "Caleb gave you a couple of old books? Spell books."
"Yes, Sir," his sons reply in tandem.
"And you thought you'd test 'em out?"
"Pretty much the size of it," Dean says, more glibly than he intends, but there's something about the strain in his dad's voice that is beginning to give Dean the feeling that maybe he doesn't mind so much.
"Let me ask you this; Formica table, half a can of kerosene and a homemade recipe for a holocaust cloak," John muses, his smile cracking wide, "In hindsight, testing it inside, maybe not the smartest notion in the world?"
Dean gets it first and turns to see his dad creasing with laughter, before he reaches to pull them both into a hug. Sam's face turning back from ninety year old terminal worrier to contented teenager, just happy to see his dad again.
"It's too bad it didn't work," Dean says, relieved that this side of his father is still putting in an appearance after what's been a tough year on the road. "Sammy would have rocked the hell out of first place at the science fair."
"I don't know," John says, his gaze catching on something in smouldering tin can that up until this evening the Winchester boys called home and draws their attention to it with a nod of his head. Sam's smile of recognition shines far out into the night as John takes a long branch, fishes the unharmed holocaust cloak from the wreckage and brandishes it proudly, "Something tells me he still might."
~~~
Compress
Dean swears the air is shimmering with the smell of it all as he reaches another junction in the sewer pipes. He hauls himself out of the tunnel and stands up, grateful for the respite and the small pocket of fresher air from the tiny ventilation holes in the bricks above.
"Dude, move your ass before I throw up on it."
Dean turns to see Sam struggling to pull his lanky frame out of the mire and offers a hand to his brother. Dean hauls him to his feet, wincing as Sam thunks his head on a pipe, unable to help laughing when Sam follows it with an impressive string of curse words almost as vile as the shit-smelling foulness marring their clothes. "Come on, Sammy, not much further. Then we get to save the girl and put an end to something that really, really deserves it."
"That’d be nice," Sam grumbles as he drops to his knees and disappears into the last section of sewer pipe. It seems to take forever. Dean smiles again as his follows suit. Sometimes, just sometimes, being the short older brother is the best feeling in the world.
~~~
Oxygen / Fire
He can’t explain it, can't understand it, but whatever it is that these two boys are fighting for; Zeph needs to be part of it.
The fire came quickly, spreading through the house like it was made of paper, but the taller one, he just stood there, determination incarnate, and cleared a path for him. Just glanced at the side of the house for a second and tore a hole through it, shouting at him to go.
"It's okay, we got it," the other had told him, "We're ready for this."
Zeph didn't stop to think about how Sam (Sam? How does he know he's called Sam?) has done it- because really, you see someone rip out a wall in your house just by thinking it to save your life, it's probably a little rude to stop and ask questions- instead, he snatched Rachel from her crib and took the way out, sliding down the slant of the porch to safety and where his wife Della waited for him, breathless and afraid.
Now she holds their daughter in her arms, six months and screaming, watching with him transfixed, as their home burns. His neighbours have gathered, are asking him questions, draping a blanket round his shoulders, looking after his family, trying to pull him away too, but he needs to watch, to see what it is these two brothers- they're brothers, Sam and Dean, he knows they're brothers- are fighting with righteous anger inside his house.
The smoke and the flames are thickening with every passing second but Zeph can hear Dean hurling Latin furiously at the creature, a figure he can just make out pinned to the ceiling, can feel the power unleashed from Sam, the heat of the flames, the taste of sulphur…
A crack of gunfire cuts through the cacophony and all the noise, power, fire and fury is pulled into a backdraft before being expelled in a flash-blaze of energy that knocks him flat to the ground. Zeph's world is flooded with silence, eerie and disconcerting, as he sits up and sees the still forms of Dean and Sam crumpled and broken on the wet grass.
Zeph stumbles and slips as he rushes to them, reaching out to help, shaking them both, and then suddenly his mind is humming as Sam wakes gasping and involuntarily pours knowledge into Zeph's brain; the first fire, their mother, the hunt, their dad, the road, Jessica, Dean, Ava, Andy, Meg, the visions, the power, the dark, this final, bloody, conflict.
"Jesus," Zeph says, awestruck as he feels Sam pull back.
"Sorry," Sam coughs absently, watching the fire swallow the last of Zeph's house. "Sometimes, I can't switch it off."
"That's okay."
"Are you kidding me?" Dean wheezes, his voice ravaged by smoke, "It's a nightmare. I know he looks innocent, but he's got the filthiest mind. Nothing but porn, twenty-four seven."
"Yeah, and you'd know all about that," Sam kids back, grimacing as the adrenaline begins to fade and the pain kicks up a notch.
"Sorry about your house, man," Dean croaks, his own body's protests growing louder.
"It's a house. We can rebuild it." Zeph says and it's odd, but suddenly it doesn't matter. His home has gone up in flames, but his life hasn't. All that matters is Rachel, Della and that thanks to these two strangers they're both safe.
They watch it burn, mesmerized.
By the time the ambulance finally arrives, Sam and Dean are both weakening fast. Zeph steps back and rejoins his family, holding them close; watching with fading hope as the paramedics work.
The brothers eyes are closed, but Zeph can still hear their thoughts whispering to each other-
-We did it, we did it, we did it, it's over, you're safe, it's finished, thank you, shut up, I love you man, you too asshat, bitch, jerk-
Whether through exhaustion, pain or relief, their voices become faint and melt away, leaving Zeph alone. He doesn't know if Sam and Dean can hear him anymore, but as they're taken towards the waiting ambulance, he feels like he has to say something, offer some small words of gratitude and reassurance, however imperfect they may be, let them know that this moment will not go unmarked.
"It's going to be okay," he says, finally.
And it is.
~~~
Moment
Clear moments are so short.
There is much more darkness. More
ocean than firm land. More shadow than form.
Adam Zagajewski
Translated from the Polish by Renata Gorczynski
~~~
It's quite a heifer, so settle in folks.
Title: More Ocean Than Firm Land
Fandom: Supernatural
Rating / Genre: PG-13, Gen. Twenty random words inspired twenty interconnected drabbles.
Words: 6183
Spoilers: 2.13: Houses of the Holy
Disclaimer: Supernatural belongs to Eric Kripke and The CW.
Schmoopy Dedication: For all my flist and particular Brandywine421 who got so excited about this show every week that I eventually couldn't resist checking it out. You're a very funky little individual.
Summary: Clear moments are so short.
~~~
Puddle
Post-Stanford Sam may be able to handle marginally more beer than pre-Stanford Sam, but the results are just as inevitable, just as hilarious, and it's not long before Dean's bundling him out the bar and watching him lurch around the parking lot like a special giraffe.
Sam finds, loses and finds his footing again, turning in what he mistakenly thinks is the vague direction of his brother, his nose scrunched up like a three year old. "Where's your car, dude?"
"Don't even-" Dean starts, knowing where this is headed, but they're too many tequilas down the line for Sam to hold back now.
"Dude. Where's your car?" Sam's inane grin spreads to Dean's own face before he can stop it and that's all the encouragement Sam needs. "Where's your car, Dude?... Dude, where’s your car?..."
Sam's smile beams as bright as the moon as he spins in a circle, pointing at one empty space after another and Dean doesn't need visions to know that Sam's immediate future's going to be, well, colourful. Possibly lumpy.
"… Where's your car, Dude?"
"It's back at the motel, Dude," Dean answers eventually after Sam starts to emphasize his question with a little dance of his own dorktastic invention and it all just becomes too painful to watch, "Come on, Sparky, let's you get you back home."
"Ain't got no home, Dean," Sam says looping an arm over his brother's shoulder with enough drunken momentum to inspire Dean not to tease him about his upper body strength or lack thereof for a good week and a half, "We’re homeless. Just the road, Jack. Just you and me."
"Against the world?"
"Against the universe!!" Sam bellows, before lurching off down the road at high speed. "Yeeeeeeeah!"
Dean watches him go, his own healthy buzz glowing as fat drops of warm Tennessee rain begin to fall. Ahead, Sam jumps up on to a lamppost and swings around it with another whoop and before Dean even has time to blink, Sam's singing showtunes.
"I'm singing in the rain, just singing in the rain… What a glorious feeling- I'm haaaaaaaaappy again..."
Still singing, Sam abandons the lamppost and stumbles with gusto into the small park just up from their motel. And the dance is back. Classic.
"I'm laughing at clouds, so high up above… The sun's in my heart and I'm ready for love."
"You're going to be ready for a bucket and one hell of a hangover before too long, you keep this up," says Dean as he catches up with where Sam has finally come to rest, sprawled contentedly on the grass, mouth open like a pelican to catch the summer rain. For emo reasons he can't identify, Dean feels compelled to join him and lies back next to Sam, breathing in the sweet fresh scent of the earth. For the first time in weeks, months maybe, he feels like somehow everything's going to work out okay.
"That's all we need though right?" Sam says, cutting into Dean's thoughts with a half-abandoned one of his own, "You and me, against the universe?"
Dean looks over at the earnest idiotic features of his kid brother, and smiles from the inside out. "Yeah, Sammy, that's all we need."
~~~
Memory
They’re walking casually as carefree college students through down the main drag in Santa Fe when Sam suddenly barrels sideways into the nearest shop, nearly pulling Dean’s arm off in the process.
"Sammy, what the hell?" Dean says, shrugging off aggressively his brother’s death grasp on his arm as he takes in his new surroundings. "You better be having a vision of me being dismembered by mutant pixies, because if you just dislocated my shoulder for Gouda, I’m going to kick your ass."
"Gouda?"
Eyebrows raised high in indignation, Dean directs Sam's attention to the array of cheese displayed in the refrigerated counter behind them. "Don't you think you have enough nightmares already without eating this fancy stuff?"
"Just- Shut up."
Dean's on the brink of saying something really inappropriate for their surroundings, when he realises Sam's gaze is focused firmly on a young man sitting alone outside a coffee shop across the street. Any other time, he'd make a joke about Sam checking him out, but there's an unmistakable air of melancholy behind his brother's eyes, so instead he asks, "Who is he?"
"Friend of Jess's from home. Joe-" Sam reaches for the name and finds it missing, "Joe somebody." He frowns, as he realises sometime in the past eighteen months he's taken another step away from normal without even knowing it. "Best friend, actually. Nice guy, stayed over a few times. I forgot he went here."
Dean can’t help but notice that Sam's colour has dropped a few shades paler at this ambush of grief and hates it. What he hates more is the fact that over a year down the line from Jessica's death, there's still some things that he can't fix, that Sam needs someone else to try and make better. Someone who knew Jess, who can say, "Hey, d'you remember that time when-?" or, "Did I ever tell you about when Jess decided / thought /told / cried…"
So he takes a deep breath and does what small part he can, "Go on, then." Dean nudges his shoulder into Sam's, nodding kind with insistence when Sam turns to look at him, as if asking for permission, which they both know in a way, he is. "I'll see you back at the car, 'kay?"
Sam frowns for a second, as if wondering which cosmic lottery he must have won to have bagged Dean for his side, before a flicker of a half-smile replaces it. "Thanks, man."
"Anytime, little brother," he says and Sam goes, leaving Dean alone with his new friend Mr Cheese. The girl behind the counter smiles chastely at him, and after a moment's pause he smiles back with the polar opposite. What the hell, he figures; he's got time to kill.
~~~
Mellifluous
"County wide what now?" Sam distinctly remembers asking Mrs Hawks with enough horrified indignation to make Dean proud.
"Spelling bee. You won the all-school contest, all-county's the next level. It's a wonderful achievement, Sam, congratulations."
"Thanks, but no thanks," he'd said. Been pretty firm about it too.
"You get extra credit."
"I've already got plenty. I'm taking Shakespeare 3. With you."
"It'll look good on your college applications," she'd persisted.
"I'm thirteen," Sam had snapped back, "And I'm not going to college." He'd meant it then, too. He wasn't that interested.
Two years later, the hunts are harder, the price for screwing up gets higher and Sam spends spring break at Pastor Jim's with a smashed up shoulder while Dean and Dad take on a poltergeist in Montana. Somehow, he realises as he finishes one Bronte novel and reaches with anticipation for another, that the peaceful quiet of studying is no longer a distraction or a means to an end, it's become the end itself.
~~~
Cacophony
It only happens the once, in Vermont, but it drops on Dean like a ton of bricks. Plagued by a vision they can't decipher, Sam's barely slept for two weeks straight and when he finally passes out in Walgreens from exhaustion, something jumps across to Dean, and gives him a front row seat for the freak show.
A starry sky and a full moon -
An empty road, a burnt out wreck of van -
A girl screams for help as her arms blister and burn -
The smell of her hair, acrid and bitter in his throat -
- Too late, they're going to be too late and she could be anywhere -
When the images fade and Dean stops seeing double he stays still, standing bent over with is hands on his knees, trying to breathe without puking. His heart races with panic and his head screams in protest at the fluorescent lights overhead, as the here and now finally pushes out the image of the lost girl. At his feet, Sam stirs. Dean helps his brother clamber gingerly to his feet, hoping he doesn't look as scared shitless as he feels.
"You okay, Dean? You look like you saw a ghost."
"What me?" Dean asks amazed that Sam could have his senses so violently assaulted and keep his shit together enough to play it down and ask after his brother. "Nah, I'm fine, you scared me, Sammy."
"Sam," Sam replies more out of habit than irritation, noticing not for the first time the particular way Dean always smiles at him when he's trying not to be freaked out by Sam's psychic episodes.
"Yeah, yeah whatever. You know you love it."
"Yeah, I kinda do," he acknowledges truthfully as they head for the exit and doesn't comment when Dean casually pockets a bottle of sleeping pills and some Aleve on the way.
Sam tells him on the way back to the motel that he caught the licence plate this time and Dean's mind is mugged by a momentary replay, the feeling of hopelessness, the smell of scorched flesh and wonders how the hell Sam's managed to live with this screaming inside of him without going completely cuckoo's nest. When they reach the cheap-nasty room, Dean promises to look into it while Sam catches up on some shut-eye, forcing two of each of the lifted pills into his brother without much resistance, following suit when he finds what he's looking for thirty minutes later.
The next day, after they've told the girl's twin brother about what took his sister and what to watch out for before hightailing it out of the county, there's a space so empty and still between them that Dean wouldn't be surprised if he looked in the rear view mirror and saw an elephant on the back seat.
Dean doesn't tell Sam about being pulled into the vision. There's not much point, he figures. Sam's already worked out what he did from the hand shaped burn marks running up Dean's arm.
~~~
Stutter
They haven't really spoken since they passed by Cape Girardeau last night without stopping on their way to Texas to check out a haunting. Usually that's okay; they can go happily for hours with nothing more than a few causal exchanges about food, peeing or gasoline. Sometimes, it's just tiredness, sometimes they're pissed at each other, but it's rarely truly awkward and it never outlasts the journey. They've never discussed it, but they know it's testament to how close they've gotten this last year, closer than when they were kids really, because this time they chose it; chose to open up, chose to trust, chose to stay, chose each other.
Problem is, even if there's a good reason for it, now when the quiet moments come they're more conspicuous than ever.
"Jessica's birthday was the same as yours," Sam says suddenly, splitting the silence wide open.
"Yeah?" Dean answers, with genuine interest, even if this is one hell of a curve ball Sam's just pitched him.
"Yeah. Didn't know at first though. Weird, huh?"
"Maybe" Dean shrugs with a smirk and leaps on the opportunity to wind Sam up. "Maybe you like, knew it without knowing it. You got the whole psychic deal now, maybe it was just hiding before."
"Yeah, right," Sam snorts scornfully, but who knows? Maybe Dean's got a point.
"Hey man, you moved a cabinet with your brain. "
"Right. Once, after watching you get shot in the face."
"Whatever, it's still pretty hardcore mojo, dude. And we both know that no way you would have got yourself a firecracker like Jess without some kind of Jedi mind trick," Dean teases, enjoying himself and the cheerful, semi-indignant look on Sam's face. "Girl was completely out of your league."
"Shut up!"
"So, what did you did you get her last year? For her birthday?"
This time it's Sam's turn to smile. "Lingerie." Dean's jaw drops about a foot and Sam could swear the Impala zigzags for a nanosecond and loves it. "And you know what?" Sam says, loving the chance to be the alpha male for a change, "She looked hot in it."
Dean exhales softly, like he's just downed a double shot of moonshine. "Damn, Sammy."
"Yeah," Sam smiles, "That's what I said."
They fall back into the journey again and Dean's thoughts turn back to Cassie, which he figures was probably Sam's intention all along, the sly dog. Screw it, Dean decides; maybe these silences are not so bad after all.
~~~
Narrow
In the dark of their hospital room, Dean lies awake trying to shut out the noise of Sam's ridiculously loud snort-wheezing.
It wasn't until he'd instinctively dived into the river after Dean and the ice cold water had stabbed his breath clean from his lungs, that Sam realised the ribs he'd pegged as bruised were definitely cracked and did not particularly feel like cooperating with his rescue mission.
Neither of them can really remember much about what came next other than sirens and doctors, but they both get that it's only down to luck and a group of students on a rafting trip that they're going to live to hunt another day. They also both know that there's not a chance in hell that day will be tomorrow.
"Dude, stop staring at me," Sam says finally, amused and fascinated by Dean's inability to sit still even with thumping concussion and near-drowning ticked off his day's to-do list.
"You awake?"
"Maybe I wouldn't be if you'd quit staring at me."
"Okay, bitchy."
"Assface."
"Nice. See if I save your life again."
"My life? Yeah, okay. You were drowning, Dean."
"So were you."
"Yeah, well, you started it," Sam says with a laugh, wincing as it sends a shift of pain through his chest. "Ow, man, this sucks. Next time I say let's go somewhere like Bolivia, let's go somewhere like Bolivia, okay?"
"You got it Sammy," Dean says, smiling at Sam's turn of phrase. "Now go to sleep already. Try not to puncture a lung during the night, okay?"
Sam considers giving Dean the finger, but sleep's finally looking to join the party and his eyelids are suddenly so very heavy. Besides, he decides, as he drifts away from the waking world, there's always tomorrow.
~~~
Effulgent
There's a scratch running from fender to bumper down the passenger side of the Impala. Long, deep and deliberate; Sam swears that if Dean were a cartoon, his eyes would be bugging out four feet out of his head right around now.
"Oh, man," Sam says, summing it up for both of them.
"Sam, please tell me I'm dreaming."
"Wish I could, seriously."
When Dean eventually finds enough coherent thought to ream out the motel manager, Sam has to physically drag his brother out of the office to stop him bursting a blood vessel, but still it's two hundred miles before Dean can let it go and Sam can settle into sleep against the window.
Two hours later with the moon rising early, he's woken with a jerk as Dean swerves the car to a stop. "Son of a-" he starts before he sees what Dean has parked crossways in the road to avoid, "- Whoa."
The unicorn stands facing them, without a care in the world.
"Dude, that's a-"
"- Yeah, I spotted it, thanks."
They both stare at the creature they'd both filed along with leprechauns and fairies under fictional less than forty-eight hours ago, sitting up straighter as it walks towards the car purposefully, white hair luminous in the headlights. It's not the biggest horse they've ever come across, but every inch is powerful and sleek. As for the horn, it's straight and closer to an elephant tusk than the slender silver spiral depicted in some of the illustrations they've seen … and now that it's closer, they can see it's tipped with what looks to be flecks of black… Black paint.
"What the-" Dean starts, as the crazy pieces start to fall into place.
The unicorn comes up to the car, lowers its head and keeps going, carving a matching scratch into Dean's side of the car and Sam has to act quickly and hang on tight to stop Dean from charging out of the car and getting himself impaled, cringing all the while at the shriek of the animal's horn on metal.
Job done, the unicorn trots the rest of the way round the car and stands before them again, proud and smug, before turning its back on them and farting loud and deliberately in their direction. The haze of the rainbow hangs in the air for a moment and Sam finally releases his death grip on Dean and laughs deep and full at the absurdity of it all. It's not long after Sam starts making that honking sound he can’t help when he's totally lost it that Dean lets go too and together they watch the unicorn disappear into the dark, leaving only the echo of laughter and a shimmer of silver moonbeam hanging in the night.
~~~
Sorry
They weren't fast enough in Absolution, Utah. Couldn't stop an evil they'd never faced before from taking a family of six whole, leaving only the grandfather behind to wonder why his loved ones were marked for a violent and desperate end. They both want to offer him something, anything that might help him find peace in his last days, but they weren't quick, clever or brave enough this time and they know it.
Sam and Dean have enough darkness to fill a lifetime of nightmares. Even so, it's a long time before either Winchester can close their eyes without seeing the little girl they failed watching them from the back of the police car, smiling with black eyes and blood stained hands as one by one the bodies are brought out.
~~~
Caress
John's fingers hover above the stone, but he doesn't touch it, fearing the brush of cold granite will supplant the warm blush of her upturned cheek beneath his lips. He closes his fingers into a fist and forces both his hands back into the worn pockets of his coat. He comes by twice a year, give or take, but these last few times it's been getting harder. Part of him wishes that he'd never completed the jigsaw, found out what Mary had been so afraid of, what she'd kept close and secret, hoping she could spare him, but he knows it wouldn't have changed things. Mary would still have been taken, he'd still have been pulled into the hunt, Dean would still have had to grow up faster than any child should and Sammy…
John closes his eyes, refusing to surrender, knowing that if their family stand a chance of riding out the storm, he's got to be stronger than this. He bends down to one knee, takes his hands from his pockets and places them both flat on plane polished headstone. The cold surface feels exactly he always imagined it would, but somehow the memory of his final goodnight kiss remains, bittersweet and lonely.
~~~
Exaggerate
"I'm not kidding, this spirit, it slams the door so hard it fell off its hinges," Sam's voice is brimming with pride and energy as he recounts the tale of his and Dean's first totally solo hunt to John.
"Yeah?"
Dean nods, confirming his brother's telling, wondering if he was still this giddy at nearly seventeen.
"And then it comes at us, right, with a frickin' cutlass, or sickle or something and it's laughing and the next thing I know, we're being dragged half way across the floor, but Dean? He doesn't even flinch, makes the shot with the shortbow, smack! Right into the bones, torches the bastard."
"Yeah?" John asks, pride laced with just the tiniest undercurrent of cynicism. "Pretty impressive, Dean."
"What can I say? I just don't scare easy as Florence here."
"Shut up," Sam snaps back at Dean, without venom, before picking up his praise again, "You should have seen it, the guy's blade, it was four feet long, easy."
"Four feet of steel?" John says sceptically with a tut of reproach, "Come on, Sammy, I've told you a million times not to exaggerate."
And just like that, Sam's face falls and the light of excitement dies in his eyes.
Dean doesn't think he’ll ever come to understand why someone as good at reading people as his dad could always get it so wrong when it came to his youngest son, or why someone as smart as Sam couldn’t work out when his dad was cracking a ill-conceived wiseass remark. What he knows right now for certain is that this thing, this friction-fight going on between Sam and his dad, it isn’t going to be fixed anytime soon.
~~~
Silk
The blinds he forgot to twist shut let the streetlight's amber-soft glow pour through the window and flow across the bed, painting her skin with honey.
There's something about the way Jess's lower back peeks out from under the rumpled t-shirt that pulls all the sound from the room and now all Sam can think about is touching her, tracing patterns on her skin, bending his neck to kiss the edges of hers and never leaving. Jess mumbles happily in her sleep and with a muffled grunt, rolls over so quickly, he's surprised to find her nose a breath away from his own. Unable to resist, Sam touches his nose to hers and she wrinkles it involuntarily, a trace of a smile playing across her lips. Sam takes comfort in the deep contentment of her perfect sleeping form and hopes that come sunrise, the memory won't be burned away by the fiery visage of Jessica he knows is waiting for him in his dreams.
~~~
Septic
Lessons About Hunting Dean and Sam Winchester Have Learned The Hard Way, Number 32: When asked to check out reports of a haunting in a new gated community, screw insect sightings and Indian burial grounds, the first question should always be, "So, residents claim that the plumbing's all funky and that there's this constant smell of methane and ammonia. Tell me, this development, was it built on a sewage works?"
~~~
Research
"Leave me alone, Dean. I'm fine," Sam mutters irritably as his cell phone rings for what he swears is the thirty-third time in thirty-two minutes. He glances down at the display, and surprised to see the number flashing up there, he slows the car down and picks up.
"Ash, hey, what's up?"
"Nothing. I uh…" Ash's voice trails away into nothing, like he's two kool-aids short of a magic bus ride.
"Come on man, what is it?" Sam says, with a hint of impatience. He's beyond grateful to Ash for his help, but right now he's as jumpy as Mexican bean and doesn't really have the forbearance for cryptic.
Ash evidently picks up on Sam's mood, because Sam can almost his brain shift up a gear. "I told you plot 486, right? For this Scott kid?"
"Yeah, why?"
"Nothing, I just thought for a second that maybe I told you 496, and well, there isn't one. Didn't want you wandering round the cemetery like a loon looking for something that don't exist."
"Oh. Okay, thanks."
"So, "Ash says, sounding spaced again, "486."
"486," Sam repeats, trying to sound confident, but there's something hesitant in Ash's voice that's got him frowning. "You okay, Ash?"
"Me?" Ash says in surprise, unmistakably thrown by Sam's question, maybe even a little touched. "I'm fine, Sam, I'm fine. Just… this thing going on with you… I get the feeling it's getting bigger, rougher too. You don't think maybe you should call your brother?"
"I'll call Dean, I will," Sam says, meaning it. "Just need a day or two to myself on this one. Figure some stuff out, you know?"
The line's quiet for a moment and Sam is beginning to wonder if Ash is still there when he hears his heavy sigh on the other end, "Yeah, I get it. You need anything else digging up, call me, okay? "
"Thanks, man."
"Hey, it's all for the fight, right? We all gotta find our own way of hunting."
"Yeah, guess so."
"Good luck, Sam," Ash says and hangs up, dropping it on to the table with a sigh. Rubbing at his eyes and takes one last look at the laptop, at the groups of names listed there on the screen in front of him. The group for '83, Sam's group, is the one that's at the centre of all this, he knows that, but it's the group from a few years earlier that's got him missing sleep. Seven names this time; two missing persons, one dead from cancer, one dead from a drug overdose and only three left standing, a teacher and palmist on the side, a doctor, and him.
Ash wonders if the doctor uses medicine to heal people, or if he just thinks about it and it happens, the way Ash just has to think about fire to start one. He wonders why he didn't- why he couldn't- find the words to tell Sam about their connection. Wonders if Sam will have a vision of him dying one day soon. What Ellen will say if he ever gets the courage to tell her the truth about him.
Lately, he wonders most of all if, or when, the yellow-eyed demon comes for him in his dreams like he knows one day it will, if he'll be strong enough to say no.
~~~
Machine
Sam's almost nodded off when he finally hears it; a soft-scratching noise in the corner of the room and the faint humming of an old Beatles song. He forces himself awake and points his gun in the direction of the supernatural intruder. "Hold it right there."
The thread-elf freezes in the sights of the shotgun, purple furry hand reaching right through the metal of the drier as if it were the most natural thing in the world. "Uh-oh, busted."
"Put those back!" Sam says, indicating the pile of odd socks the thread-elf has already liberated from the drier. He looks at Sam, at the socks and back at Sam, turns bright pink and sighs in a manner eerily reminiscent of Dean in bitch mode, "Oh, come on!"
Sam's got nothing against the little fellow personally, but doing the laundry's just about the only normal thing he's got left in his life, even if the bloodstains, mud and occasional beastie innards are anything but, and he'll be damned if he loses four pairs of socks in a week to a whatever-the-hell a thread-elf is.
Now coloured scarlet and sulking and muttering curses about evil giants under its breath, the bizarre little monster returns the socks to the drier, passing them through the solid door resentfully. Job done, it skulks off towards the air vent, knuckles trailing on the ground like a disgruntled orang-utan. Despite himself, Sam can't help but feel a little sorry for the creature. "I gotta ask," he calls out to it just before it passes through the door, "Why socks? What's so special about them?"
The furry guy just shrugs his now blue-green shoulders and sighs. "A guy's gotta eat." And like that, he's gone.
~~~
Greenish
"Here," Hannah says, throwing a stick to each of them before snapping her own and shaking it to mix the luminescent chemicals contained inside. The Winchesters follow suit and the darkness bows to the soft white-green light. "They last six hours and they don't run on batteries. Spooks don't dim them, nor demons neither."
Feeling more stupid than two hunters with their experience should ever feel, they follow the eighteen year old down through the mine, the glow of their snapsticks lighting a clear path through the gloam. "So, Mr I-May-Not-Be-A-College-Genius-But-At-Least-I'm-Practical," Sam says to Dean after thirty seconds of physically biting his lip to stop himself from laughing, "You want to tell me why you never thought of this?"
~~~
Happy
"Take me to the river," John sings with tuneless confidence in a way his youngest son will inherit years from now. "Wash me down…"
Unable to resist any longer, he lets his gaze focus fully on Mary standing behind the bar. She's ignoring all her customers, ignoring the smash behind her as her fellow bartender fumbles another glass, ignoring anything and everything that isn't the crazy, smitten guy singing his heart out and suddenly he knows. He's won her. This is the start.
Self-consciousness and words forgotten together, John begins to laugh, full, deep and with total abandon. To the relief of every patron of the smoke filled bar, he tosses the mic to Jacob, leaps from the corner-stage and walks through the smoke to where Mary, and the rest of his life, are waiting for him.
~~~
Wear
As they watch the remains of their trailer begin to melt, Sam and Dean have to admit; this was not one of their better ideas. John stands behind them, trying to keep his voice stern despite the tears of laughter threatening to spill down his cheeks. Two days he was away, not that long for a hunt three statelines and a time zone over. Two days and now their house could be the punchline in a dozen or more redneck jokes.
"So," he says as gruffly as he can manage, "Caleb gave you a couple of old books? Spell books."
"Yes, Sir," his sons reply in tandem.
"And you thought you'd test 'em out?"
"Pretty much the size of it," Dean says, more glibly than he intends, but there's something about the strain in his dad's voice that is beginning to give Dean the feeling that maybe he doesn't mind so much.
"Let me ask you this; Formica table, half a can of kerosene and a homemade recipe for a holocaust cloak," John muses, his smile cracking wide, "In hindsight, testing it inside, maybe not the smartest notion in the world?"
Dean gets it first and turns to see his dad creasing with laughter, before he reaches to pull them both into a hug. Sam's face turning back from ninety year old terminal worrier to contented teenager, just happy to see his dad again.
"It's too bad it didn't work," Dean says, relieved that this side of his father is still putting in an appearance after what's been a tough year on the road. "Sammy would have rocked the hell out of first place at the science fair."
"I don't know," John says, his gaze catching on something in smouldering tin can that up until this evening the Winchester boys called home and draws their attention to it with a nod of his head. Sam's smile of recognition shines far out into the night as John takes a long branch, fishes the unharmed holocaust cloak from the wreckage and brandishes it proudly, "Something tells me he still might."
~~~
Compress
Dean swears the air is shimmering with the smell of it all as he reaches another junction in the sewer pipes. He hauls himself out of the tunnel and stands up, grateful for the respite and the small pocket of fresher air from the tiny ventilation holes in the bricks above.
"Dude, move your ass before I throw up on it."
Dean turns to see Sam struggling to pull his lanky frame out of the mire and offers a hand to his brother. Dean hauls him to his feet, wincing as Sam thunks his head on a pipe, unable to help laughing when Sam follows it with an impressive string of curse words almost as vile as the shit-smelling foulness marring their clothes. "Come on, Sammy, not much further. Then we get to save the girl and put an end to something that really, really deserves it."
"That’d be nice," Sam grumbles as he drops to his knees and disappears into the last section of sewer pipe. It seems to take forever. Dean smiles again as his follows suit. Sometimes, just sometimes, being the short older brother is the best feeling in the world.
~~~
Oxygen / Fire
He can’t explain it, can't understand it, but whatever it is that these two boys are fighting for; Zeph needs to be part of it.
The fire came quickly, spreading through the house like it was made of paper, but the taller one, he just stood there, determination incarnate, and cleared a path for him. Just glanced at the side of the house for a second and tore a hole through it, shouting at him to go.
"It's okay, we got it," the other had told him, "We're ready for this."
Zeph didn't stop to think about how Sam (Sam? How does he know he's called Sam?) has done it- because really, you see someone rip out a wall in your house just by thinking it to save your life, it's probably a little rude to stop and ask questions- instead, he snatched Rachel from her crib and took the way out, sliding down the slant of the porch to safety and where his wife Della waited for him, breathless and afraid.
Now she holds their daughter in her arms, six months and screaming, watching with him transfixed, as their home burns. His neighbours have gathered, are asking him questions, draping a blanket round his shoulders, looking after his family, trying to pull him away too, but he needs to watch, to see what it is these two brothers- they're brothers, Sam and Dean, he knows they're brothers- are fighting with righteous anger inside his house.
The smoke and the flames are thickening with every passing second but Zeph can hear Dean hurling Latin furiously at the creature, a figure he can just make out pinned to the ceiling, can feel the power unleashed from Sam, the heat of the flames, the taste of sulphur…
A crack of gunfire cuts through the cacophony and all the noise, power, fire and fury is pulled into a backdraft before being expelled in a flash-blaze of energy that knocks him flat to the ground. Zeph's world is flooded with silence, eerie and disconcerting, as he sits up and sees the still forms of Dean and Sam crumpled and broken on the wet grass.
Zeph stumbles and slips as he rushes to them, reaching out to help, shaking them both, and then suddenly his mind is humming as Sam wakes gasping and involuntarily pours knowledge into Zeph's brain; the first fire, their mother, the hunt, their dad, the road, Jessica, Dean, Ava, Andy, Meg, the visions, the power, the dark, this final, bloody, conflict.
"Jesus," Zeph says, awestruck as he feels Sam pull back.
"Sorry," Sam coughs absently, watching the fire swallow the last of Zeph's house. "Sometimes, I can't switch it off."
"That's okay."
"Are you kidding me?" Dean wheezes, his voice ravaged by smoke, "It's a nightmare. I know he looks innocent, but he's got the filthiest mind. Nothing but porn, twenty-four seven."
"Yeah, and you'd know all about that," Sam kids back, grimacing as the adrenaline begins to fade and the pain kicks up a notch.
"Sorry about your house, man," Dean croaks, his own body's protests growing louder.
"It's a house. We can rebuild it." Zeph says and it's odd, but suddenly it doesn't matter. His home has gone up in flames, but his life hasn't. All that matters is Rachel, Della and that thanks to these two strangers they're both safe.
They watch it burn, mesmerized.
By the time the ambulance finally arrives, Sam and Dean are both weakening fast. Zeph steps back and rejoins his family, holding them close; watching with fading hope as the paramedics work.
The brothers eyes are closed, but Zeph can still hear their thoughts whispering to each other-
-We did it, we did it, we did it, it's over, you're safe, it's finished, thank you, shut up, I love you man, you too asshat, bitch, jerk-
Whether through exhaustion, pain or relief, their voices become faint and melt away, leaving Zeph alone. He doesn't know if Sam and Dean can hear him anymore, but as they're taken towards the waiting ambulance, he feels like he has to say something, offer some small words of gratitude and reassurance, however imperfect they may be, let them know that this moment will not go unmarked.
"It's going to be okay," he says, finally.
And it is.
~~~
Moment
Clear moments are so short.
There is much more darkness. More
ocean than firm land. More shadow than form.
Adam Zagajewski
Translated from the Polish by Renata Gorczynski
~~~