original by brin_bailey
Remix Title: A Hard Rain's Gonna Fall
Remix Author: apreludetoanend
Original Story: One Hell of a Rain
Original Author: brin_bailey
Rating: PG
Pairings: None
Summary: This is a story about the bleakness of war, the impossibility of Dean's situation, and the hope that can be found in something as simple as a rainstorm.
Warnings: Spoilers for AHBL2
It's raining when Sam breaks the deal, the first real rain he's seen in months. Water pours from the sky, forcefully, righteously, and Sam stands outside the car and lets it wash over him.
*
August 2, 2007
The back porch is the same as the front, a mottled, burnt umber combination of dirt and age and flaking paint, half rotted and sagging desperately towards the earth below. It's the kind of tangible fatigue that Sam sees everywhere he turns, in bowed tree trunks, heavy skies, the mirror. It's unrelenting. It's war.
He rubs a hand over his face and steps out from the shelter of the doorway. The boards squeak and bend under his weight, but they hold because that's what it's about these days, just holding on, holding out, holding in.
Holding it together.
It's quiet here. He lowers himself onto the stairs that join the porch and the grass and thinks of them as no man's land or maybe purgatory, a perverse kind of respite between here and there, before and after; between lifetimes.
He half expects them to crumble out from underneath him, fall away inch by inch, fragments coursing off into the ether like the spent boxes on the calendar. He imagines the first rumblings of collapse under his fingers, slow and distant but steady, gaining, pounding out a rhythm that's at odds with the pulsing of life, breaths and heartbeats and footsteps.
These are the things that will fall first, the bridges, the wires, the things between, until distance regains its meaning and living ceases to be more than the state of being alive.
Maybe.
Not if he and Dean can stop it. Stop them. But maybe.
His boots rest heavily on the third step and he braces his elbows behind him; his fingers slide over the back of his shirt, over memory and muscle and bone. They've been in Minnesota for almost four days, and Sam's beginning to get used to the hush of sixty-one point eight people per square mile.
He can't remember the last time he's seen two consecutive sunrises framed by wood instead of chrome. They're going on four now, but it's not a comfort; it just is. Time and rest have always been luxuries; now stillness is as well.
A drop of water hits his nose and he doesn't brush it off. The sky's been churning, threatening to break since they loaded their bags into the one-room cabin, and he's been waiting for it.
The clouds hang low and heavy; finally, the rain's poised to put an end to the oppressive heat.
Another drop slices through the thick, muggy air; he imagines that it sizzles as it meets bare skin, cutting through layers of necessary casualties and battles barely won, washing away the numbers and the miles, leaving him red and raw and closer to clean than he's felt in months.
The heat wave breaks like Dean does, inevitably, quietly; heavy with the weight of confession.
Sam's soaked through in a matter of minutes; he feels the water in his heart and in his bones and he wonders where he's broken, where holes have let the wetness in.
The screen door rattles when Dean kicks it open.
Sam smiles and swipes at the hair plastered across his forehead. This is good. It's not the hot rush of adrenaline or the numbness of collapse, it's not pain, it's not fear. It's just water falling from the sky, and he tips his head back and drinks.
"Stay out here long enough, you're gonna melt."
Sam laughs at that, almost. He tugs at his wet T-shirt where it clings to the valleys of his torso, the contours over his heart and spine.
"C'mon, Sammy. Get back inside," Dean says, knocking his heel against the doorjamb. It's aimless, arrhythmic; it's proof that whatever's running through Dean's head right now, it's not Metallica.
"Maybe I'm happy here." Sam pulls at the thin fabric of his shirt again and feels a drop of water run a crooked course across his back.
"Yeah, well." Dean swings his leg but doesn't step out onto the porch. "We got work to do."
"Screw work, Dean. For like, an hour, all right?" Sam twists on the step. "We've earned that."
Dean scowls, his brow curves and creases, and lines that once anchored mischief and laughter realign into a scrimshaw of battery and fatigue. Weary translucence settles under his eyes, and his irises are too green against violet skin, too dull against the rigid beat of war.
"I mean it, Sam. Come inside," he says.
Sam slaps a hand down onto the porch and the impact resonates like a thunderstorm trapped in the mountains; the sound splinters, fractures, and slivers of sonance refract into echoes almost louder than the whole.
The old wood is wet and slick under his palm and it creaks beneath his weight as he stands.
"Make me," he says, and it's a challenge made of outstretched arms and bared teeth and hope.
Water saturates the space between them. It's fragile, this yard of rain and rotted wood; Sam's seen smaller spaces than this expand into miles and days and barriers that should be impassable, and he holds his breath as though one poorly timed exhale might slip through the watery air and push Dean back inside the cabin.
His diaphragm spasms and revolts; his chest aches with the need to breathe, and he waits. Time passes differently without oxygen, it stretches and slows and refuses to be counted.
Dean meets his eyes, finally, a feral challenge of his own, and Sam smiles.
He steps back when Dean launches out the door, and they spill out onto the grass like an avalanche. The quiet of the rain is shattered by a rush of sound and motion, unrestrained, unstoppable. Dean's hand lands on Sam's chest, grappling for a fistful of wet cotton, and Sam twists away, boots sliding over muddy, rain-soaked earth.
He feints to the left, then ducks and aims a kick to Dean's exposed hip. It makes contact, lightly, precisely, but this isn't sparring, it's a release, a kind of temporary amnesty from a world in which they've been trained to see the invisible things, the things that shouldn't be, that can't be, that aren't.
It's a pardon that no one can issue.
Dean charges, and for a moment, Sam can see the sun-bleached hair and wide smiles of years past, years when they were invincible and summers lasted an eternity and Dad always, always killed the monster and saved the day.
And then Dean's shoulder is tucked under his ribs and the ground is solid, slippery under his back.
He struggles to pin Dean, a dizzying blur of grass and mud and laughter that eventually ends in a draw.
"Dude," Dean says, breathing heavily, chuckling, "why am I always the one getting covered in mud?"
They disentangle carefully, clumps and smears of muddy earth threatening to bind them as though it were the catalyst to the resin that coats them, makes them Winchesters. Dean ruffles Sam's hair with a mud-covered hand, spreads the dirt around purposefully, thoroughly, but Sam can't bring himself to care. He settles onto his back and lets the rain wash over him.
"Don't you love the rain?" he asks.
There's no answer.
"Dean?"
"No."
Sam turns to look at Dean. His face is brown and green in stripes and streaks, flushed pink underneath, and it's like war paint, vibrant and alive. It shifts and moves with the rain, scrubs at the memory of the grim stillness that's marked Dean's pale face in recent weeks.
Sam smiles. "I do."
"Yeah, well." Dean flicks a small clump of mud at Sam. "You ready to come inside now?"
"Dean," Sam says, dragging out the vowels just enough that it's embarrassing. "Just stay out here for a while."
Dean sits up and hooks his elbows around his knees.
"I look like the swamp thing," he says. "I gotta shower."
The rain picks up then, as though compelled by Dean's command. It's both ridiculous and terrifyingly plausible, and when Sam sits up to meet Dean's eyes, laughter explodes, bright and fragile, between them.
They sit while the deluge passes, easing off into almost nothing at all. After a minute, Dean stands and extends a hand to help Sam up.
"I'm gonna save you. You know that," Sam says.
Dean doesn't meet Sam's eyes. He draws his hand back, folds his arms across his chest like there's something he's trying to hold in or keep out. One hand rubs a steady rhythm over his heart as though the gesture offers some sort of comfort or protection. After a minute, he clears his throat and turns back toward the cabin. "Yeah," he whispers. "Course you are, Sammy."
Sam stands and reaches out a hand that doesn't quite make contact with Dean's back.
"So why do you like the rain?" Dean asks without turning around.
"I don't know," Sam says. "Pastor Jim always said that after it rains, you get a new start."
"Huh." Dean takes a step in the direction of the cabin and Sam grabs him by the shoulder. "Let me go," he says, jerking lightly away from Sam's hand.
Sam tightens his grip on Dean's muddy shirt and moves closer. "Not on your life," he says quietly, squeezing once before releasing Dean's shoulder. He moves ahead of Dean toward the cabin, brushing Dean's side as he passes.
He's almost at the stairs when he stops and turns around.
"Hey Dean, do you think we'll ever get a new start?"
The only answer is the sky opening, the rain soaking the drying air, pounding louder and heavier than before, and then Dean laughs. "Maybe, Sammy," he calls across the grass. "I guess you never know when a hard rain's gonna fall."
*
Water drips from Sam's clothes and drenches the seat as they drive away from the crossroads.
Dean doesn't complain.
"Hey, Dean," Sam says softly. "Don't you love the rain?"
Dean looks at Sam, and his mouth curves into a slow smile. "Yeah," he says. "Yeah, I do."
Remix Author: apreludetoanend
Original Story: One Hell of a Rain
Original Author: brin_bailey
Rating: PG
Pairings: None
Summary: This is a story about the bleakness of war, the impossibility of Dean's situation, and the hope that can be found in something as simple as a rainstorm.
Warnings: Spoilers for AHBL2
It's raining when Sam breaks the deal, the first real rain he's seen in months. Water pours from the sky, forcefully, righteously, and Sam stands outside the car and lets it wash over him.
*
August 2, 2007
The back porch is the same as the front, a mottled, burnt umber combination of dirt and age and flaking paint, half rotted and sagging desperately towards the earth below. It's the kind of tangible fatigue that Sam sees everywhere he turns, in bowed tree trunks, heavy skies, the mirror. It's unrelenting. It's war.
He rubs a hand over his face and steps out from the shelter of the doorway. The boards squeak and bend under his weight, but they hold because that's what it's about these days, just holding on, holding out, holding in.
Holding it together.
It's quiet here. He lowers himself onto the stairs that join the porch and the grass and thinks of them as no man's land or maybe purgatory, a perverse kind of respite between here and there, before and after; between lifetimes.
He half expects them to crumble out from underneath him, fall away inch by inch, fragments coursing off into the ether like the spent boxes on the calendar. He imagines the first rumblings of collapse under his fingers, slow and distant but steady, gaining, pounding out a rhythm that's at odds with the pulsing of life, breaths and heartbeats and footsteps.
These are the things that will fall first, the bridges, the wires, the things between, until distance regains its meaning and living ceases to be more than the state of being alive.
Maybe.
Not if he and Dean can stop it. Stop them. But maybe.
His boots rest heavily on the third step and he braces his elbows behind him; his fingers slide over the back of his shirt, over memory and muscle and bone. They've been in Minnesota for almost four days, and Sam's beginning to get used to the hush of sixty-one point eight people per square mile.
He can't remember the last time he's seen two consecutive sunrises framed by wood instead of chrome. They're going on four now, but it's not a comfort; it just is. Time and rest have always been luxuries; now stillness is as well.
A drop of water hits his nose and he doesn't brush it off. The sky's been churning, threatening to break since they loaded their bags into the one-room cabin, and he's been waiting for it.
The clouds hang low and heavy; finally, the rain's poised to put an end to the oppressive heat.
Another drop slices through the thick, muggy air; he imagines that it sizzles as it meets bare skin, cutting through layers of necessary casualties and battles barely won, washing away the numbers and the miles, leaving him red and raw and closer to clean than he's felt in months.
The heat wave breaks like Dean does, inevitably, quietly; heavy with the weight of confession.
Sam's soaked through in a matter of minutes; he feels the water in his heart and in his bones and he wonders where he's broken, where holes have let the wetness in.
The screen door rattles when Dean kicks it open.
Sam smiles and swipes at the hair plastered across his forehead. This is good. It's not the hot rush of adrenaline or the numbness of collapse, it's not pain, it's not fear. It's just water falling from the sky, and he tips his head back and drinks.
"Stay out here long enough, you're gonna melt."
Sam laughs at that, almost. He tugs at his wet T-shirt where it clings to the valleys of his torso, the contours over his heart and spine.
"C'mon, Sammy. Get back inside," Dean says, knocking his heel against the doorjamb. It's aimless, arrhythmic; it's proof that whatever's running through Dean's head right now, it's not Metallica.
"Maybe I'm happy here." Sam pulls at the thin fabric of his shirt again and feels a drop of water run a crooked course across his back.
"Yeah, well." Dean swings his leg but doesn't step out onto the porch. "We got work to do."
"Screw work, Dean. For like, an hour, all right?" Sam twists on the step. "We've earned that."
Dean scowls, his brow curves and creases, and lines that once anchored mischief and laughter realign into a scrimshaw of battery and fatigue. Weary translucence settles under his eyes, and his irises are too green against violet skin, too dull against the rigid beat of war.
"I mean it, Sam. Come inside," he says.
Sam slaps a hand down onto the porch and the impact resonates like a thunderstorm trapped in the mountains; the sound splinters, fractures, and slivers of sonance refract into echoes almost louder than the whole.
The old wood is wet and slick under his palm and it creaks beneath his weight as he stands.
"Make me," he says, and it's a challenge made of outstretched arms and bared teeth and hope.
Water saturates the space between them. It's fragile, this yard of rain and rotted wood; Sam's seen smaller spaces than this expand into miles and days and barriers that should be impassable, and he holds his breath as though one poorly timed exhale might slip through the watery air and push Dean back inside the cabin.
His diaphragm spasms and revolts; his chest aches with the need to breathe, and he waits. Time passes differently without oxygen, it stretches and slows and refuses to be counted.
Dean meets his eyes, finally, a feral challenge of his own, and Sam smiles.
He steps back when Dean launches out the door, and they spill out onto the grass like an avalanche. The quiet of the rain is shattered by a rush of sound and motion, unrestrained, unstoppable. Dean's hand lands on Sam's chest, grappling for a fistful of wet cotton, and Sam twists away, boots sliding over muddy, rain-soaked earth.
He feints to the left, then ducks and aims a kick to Dean's exposed hip. It makes contact, lightly, precisely, but this isn't sparring, it's a release, a kind of temporary amnesty from a world in which they've been trained to see the invisible things, the things that shouldn't be, that can't be, that aren't.
It's a pardon that no one can issue.
Dean charges, and for a moment, Sam can see the sun-bleached hair and wide smiles of years past, years when they were invincible and summers lasted an eternity and Dad always, always killed the monster and saved the day.
And then Dean's shoulder is tucked under his ribs and the ground is solid, slippery under his back.
He struggles to pin Dean, a dizzying blur of grass and mud and laughter that eventually ends in a draw.
"Dude," Dean says, breathing heavily, chuckling, "why am I always the one getting covered in mud?"
They disentangle carefully, clumps and smears of muddy earth threatening to bind them as though it were the catalyst to the resin that coats them, makes them Winchesters. Dean ruffles Sam's hair with a mud-covered hand, spreads the dirt around purposefully, thoroughly, but Sam can't bring himself to care. He settles onto his back and lets the rain wash over him.
"Don't you love the rain?" he asks.
There's no answer.
"Dean?"
"No."
Sam turns to look at Dean. His face is brown and green in stripes and streaks, flushed pink underneath, and it's like war paint, vibrant and alive. It shifts and moves with the rain, scrubs at the memory of the grim stillness that's marked Dean's pale face in recent weeks.
Sam smiles. "I do."
"Yeah, well." Dean flicks a small clump of mud at Sam. "You ready to come inside now?"
"Dean," Sam says, dragging out the vowels just enough that it's embarrassing. "Just stay out here for a while."
Dean sits up and hooks his elbows around his knees.
"I look like the swamp thing," he says. "I gotta shower."
The rain picks up then, as though compelled by Dean's command. It's both ridiculous and terrifyingly plausible, and when Sam sits up to meet Dean's eyes, laughter explodes, bright and fragile, between them.
They sit while the deluge passes, easing off into almost nothing at all. After a minute, Dean stands and extends a hand to help Sam up.
"I'm gonna save you. You know that," Sam says.
Dean doesn't meet Sam's eyes. He draws his hand back, folds his arms across his chest like there's something he's trying to hold in or keep out. One hand rubs a steady rhythm over his heart as though the gesture offers some sort of comfort or protection. After a minute, he clears his throat and turns back toward the cabin. "Yeah," he whispers. "Course you are, Sammy."
Sam stands and reaches out a hand that doesn't quite make contact with Dean's back.
"So why do you like the rain?" Dean asks without turning around.
"I don't know," Sam says. "Pastor Jim always said that after it rains, you get a new start."
"Huh." Dean takes a step in the direction of the cabin and Sam grabs him by the shoulder. "Let me go," he says, jerking lightly away from Sam's hand.
Sam tightens his grip on Dean's muddy shirt and moves closer. "Not on your life," he says quietly, squeezing once before releasing Dean's shoulder. He moves ahead of Dean toward the cabin, brushing Dean's side as he passes.
He's almost at the stairs when he stops and turns around.
"Hey Dean, do you think we'll ever get a new start?"
The only answer is the sky opening, the rain soaking the drying air, pounding louder and heavier than before, and then Dean laughs. "Maybe, Sammy," he calls across the grass. "I guess you never know when a hard rain's gonna fall."
*
Water drips from Sam's clothes and drenches the seat as they drive away from the crossroads.
Dean doesn't complain.
"Hey, Dean," Sam says softly. "Don't you love the rain?"
Dean looks at Sam, and his mouth curves into a slow smile. "Yeah," he says. "Yeah, I do."