Some chatter, some news, some fic... Wolfpack 'verse - "Breathing Space"
*waves*
Oh, it's been a while, hasn't it? My goodness. We've had actual *hot* weather, which i so hate. Put the fans in the windows and broke out the tank tops and everything! Now we're back to rain, rain, rain, which is so much nicer.
I joined the spn_j2_bigbang comm but! Was too late with my entry for the first deadline. Woe! So, instead, my story summary is hanging out here, at spn_longfic where, i'm hoping, an interested artist might decide to give it some art. Check out both comms - there's going to be some *awesome* fic and art going up in June!
I wanted to pimp a couple SPN fics, too. This one, by rahmi is a lovely 'someone makes a wish' fic. It doesn't turn out quite the way you think, and Sam'n'Dean are just...perfect. You *will* enjoy it. Secure the Blessing.
There's also sevenfists fic Life As We Know It, where we get to see the boys being all domestic...but not for the reason you might think. Totally without schmoop, totally perfect voices, lovely stuff.
Also, the final talley is up at Sweet Charity and omg, people - over 22,000 dollars! Thank you, everyone who participated. My deadline for the fics i auctioned is June 31st, and have no fear, they *will* be done.
Hrmmm...i think that's it. :) The fic here is a bit of the Wolfpack 'verse. Something from Dean's pov. I didn't know if that would actually *work*, and i really wanted to give it a try, so... It takes place immediately after 'Dogs of War'. Enjoy!
Previous Wolfpack stories here.
The poem quoted is Maxine Kumin's 'The Hermit Prays'.
God of the topmost branch
god of the sheltering leaf
fold your wing over.
Keep secret and keep safe.
Dean knew what they called him and his family. Wolfpack. The first time he'd ever heard it, he'd liked it and laughed at it in the same breath. Didn't let it go to his head. John ignored it and Sam - a total geek at fourteen - researched it and told Dean he should roll over and show his belly. Dean wrestled Sam to the ground and yanked Sam's shirt up and Dad brought his hand down in a ringing slap onto Sam's flat belly, grinning. Sam wore the imprint for hours, shooting black looks at Dean from under his shaggy bangs.
Later, Dean traced the mark with tongue and lips until Sam was panting, hips lifting up in little jerky arcs. Dad in the other bed, breathing soft and slow. Watching, or not - didn't matter. They'd lived too long as one entity, one thing - *one pack* - to truly care. Sam was soap-sweet and salt-sour on Dean's tongue, fingers rubbing up the back of Dean's neck. One leg bent and flexing, heel pressed into Dean's ribs. He came with a hiss of ragged breath, hands going flat to the mattress, head thrown back and Dean wanted to wind himself around his brother and never let go.
Winchester Wolfpack but Dean didn't know if they counted as a pack anymore, now that they were only two. Him and Sam. Their Dad...lost. The ruins of the church at Stull - the ground itself - cracking and falling and gone, funneling down into an ever-widening fissure that had eventually swallowed six miles of Kansas dirt.
And Dean lifting Sam, shoulder under Sam's arm and arm around Sam's waist, dragging him to the car and shoving him inside. Stifling the need to help him, help Sam, Sam's hurt because Dad was hurt. Dad was down, on his knees - screaming out the words of the spell in a voice gone raw and broken. Bloody froth falling from his lips as easily as the Latin, skin and muscle and finally bone ablating away in a caustic, dust-choked whirlwind.
And Dean had promised - promised - his Dad. Promised he wouldn't try to stop him - wouldn't try to interfere. He'd stood there for agonizing seconds, watching as Dad, Dad, Dad his father had been... Rubbed out. Scoured down to nothing, his ashes furling out in a glittering skein and mixing with the writhing black pillar that was the demon. Cold-silver thread twining forever with black - all of it twisting and turning and finally flowing down - away - gone.
And then Dean had turned and gotten into the car - started the engine and driven away as if all the demons of hell were pouring up out of that crack in the earth, instead of being yanked down into it. Driven with white knuckles and wet cheeks and his heart pounding, pounding, pounding. Sam whimpering, an endless, mindless creel of agony that Dean couldn't fix and couldn't bear. It was a half an hour before he'd registered where they were - what direction he was driving. Near enough to Rock Creek and that old man - that old doctor that had helped their Dad once. He'd help Sam, now.
The next day - around four - they'd arrived at the little, tree-shrouded cabin on the north side of the Potawatomi Reservation and it had taken Dean ten minutes to uncramp his hands from the steering wheel and just...let go. *Safe...finally safe.*
Sitting on the floor now, legs outstretched and his Dad's journal lying in the v between his thighs, Dean blinked heavy eyes and rested his head on the edge of the mattress behind him. Awake for too long, his intermittent, pained cat-naps in Rock Creek nothing against the tidal exhaustion that was drowning him. Sam right there, his hand lying curled beside Dean's head - his lungs rising and falling in too-short breaths, little wheeze and hitch from three broken ribs. A Sam who was washed and tended and drifting toward a codeine sleep and Dean could finally just...breathe.
*Just us, just us, Sam and me, not even a pack anymore, just us, oh god, Dad, Daddy...* Aware, because of the itch, of the dust and the sweat that soaked him - chafed him. Dust that was probably some small part of his Dad, and Dean ground his head back into the mattress and stared at the ceiling until it swam, cold line of tears flowing into his hair. The bandages the old man had wound around his arm - his chest - pulling and uncomfortable. Sam breathed in - exhaled harshly and jerked, and Dean turned his head to look at him. Sam's eye was half open, pupil pin-point small, the dappled brown and gold and green of the iris dull. The other hidden by clean white gauze, hurt but mending. Not blind, thank Christ.
"Hey, Sam."
Sam licked his lips - moved his head fitfully, looking dazedly into the shadowed corners of the room. "Dee...Dean."
"I'm here. Need a drink?" Sam nodded and Dean leaned to his right, picking up a water bottle from the floor, bright blue bendable straw sticking out of the top. "Here. Take it slow, now."
Sam drank, measured mouthfuls that he swallowed carefully. Two, three - some of a fourth and his head fell back, little tremor of exhausted muscles. A drop of water trickled from the corner of his mouth and Dean wiped it gently away with his thumb. "Dean...Dad?"
Dean concentrated on the moisture on Sam's lip - on pushing the damp strands of hair back from Sam's forehead. Hurt welling in his chest and throat - making everything so tight he could barely breathe. Couldn't speak at all, so he finally just shook his head. Sam made a small, wounded sound - animal sound - his eye squeezing shut and his whole face contorting in shock and grief. Exhaustion and drugs making tears streak down, sudden quicksilver track and Dean heaved himself up onto his knees and wrapped an arm around Sam's shoulders - put a hand to the back of Sam's head and pulled him close. Sam's face wet and hot in the crook of Dean's neck, Sam's fingers weakly twisting in Dean's t-shirt as Sam fought not to cry. Fought not to move, lungs pressing against broken bone and torn muscle.
"Shhh, shhh, shhh...I know, I know," Dean murmured. Kissed Sam's hair and stroked his temple - his cheek. Choking back his own tears because he would cry when Sam could. "He did it, he won, but he's gone, he's gone, Sam, just us..."
Sam was nodding into Dean's neck - sniffing carefully, shuddering all over. Dean eased away from him, rocking back onto his heels a little. Wiping Sam's face with the corner of the sheet and Sam tried a tiny, wobbly smile. Lost it. "Dean, c-can we... I want to have mom h-here. Please?"
"Sure. Sure, Sam." Dean said. He reached down and picked up Dad's journal - opened it and shuffled carefully through the haphazard collection of business cards and scrap paper tucked into the front. At the bottom, carefully folded into a worn piece of paper was a square of cardboard. He unwrapped it with slow reverence, careful to handle it by the edges. His fingers were dirty. He handed the cardboard to Sam and Sam took it with equal care - turned it toward the dim lamp on the night stand.
It was a prayer card, something that they'd found in Pastor Jim's church years ago. When Sam had been five and Dean nine and the church had been all huge, hollow spaces and echoes, light falling through the colored glass like knife-blades. Beautiful and terrible. The woman on the card was dressed in white and blue with a pale-golden veil over her head. Dean remembered when they'd found her - when he'd carefully read the inscription on the front. 'Mary', it said. 'Blessed Mother'. "Our mother", he'd whispered to Sam, awestruck and shaking. Their mother as Dad said she was, up in heaven. "An angel, watching over us, boys. She's always watching over us..."
Sam touched the card with reverent, shaking fingers - stroked the white robe and the gently smiling face. "Dad's with her, right? He's with Mom now. He k-killed the demon so he - he gets to go to heaven."
"Yeah, he does. He's up there with her right now. They're both watching us now, Sam." Dean wanted to touch the card, too - wanted to draw comfort from the worn surface but he was too dirty. Was sure he would leave fingerprints - mar her perfection forever.
"I want to go to church," Sam murmured, his eye drooping shut - the card slipping sideways in his hands. He knew where they were - knew that Our Lady of Snows was twenty minutes away. Mom was, in gilded splendor in the little clapboard church.
"We will. In a couple of days," Dean promised. Sam didn't reply - breathed softly, asleep again, and Dean plucked the card gingerly from his hand. He hesitated a long moment and then slid it under Sam's pillow. Then he levered himself to his feet and made the rounds, checking each window, both doors. A warm June breeze puffed through the screens and the crickets sang in the underbrush. A whip-poor-will called, and then called again, and Dean could hear the sonorous croaking of the frogs in the far off creek -
come-across, come-across, come-across. Everything was still - the salt safe in the deep troughs they'd carved in the sills. Devil's traps, binding glyphs, protection sigils and wards of intent on every wall. On the floor, on the ceiling. Witches' jars buried in the yard and bottles hung from the trees.
Nowhere was safer - nowhere was more impregnable. They had a generator, a couple of tankless water heaters and a well that ran pure and cold all year long. Dean took a long, long breath and finally, slowly, let himself relax. He looked over at Sam one more time and then headed to the bathroom.
Half an hour later, showered and freshly bandaged, he shuffled out to the main room. He'd lost a fingernail, broken the finger and looked - and felt - like the loser in a heavyweight championship fight. But Sam was safe, and Dean edged himself down carefully onto the bed - under the covers. Curled up beside Sam, skin on skin, his head on the same pillow and his fingers resting lightly on Sam's hip. His other hand under the pillow, just grazing the edge of the card. Loaded gun by the door, another by the bed, a knife in the sheath on the headboard. *Safe, we're safe, Sammy... Oh, Dad...*
He was asleep in minutes, moonlight just beginning to sift down through the trees.
Next part - Savage and Jaunty.
Oh, it's been a while, hasn't it? My goodness. We've had actual *hot* weather, which i so hate. Put the fans in the windows and broke out the tank tops and everything! Now we're back to rain, rain, rain, which is so much nicer.
I joined the spn_j2_bigbang comm but! Was too late with my entry for the first deadline. Woe! So, instead, my story summary is hanging out here, at spn_longfic where, i'm hoping, an interested artist might decide to give it some art. Check out both comms - there's going to be some *awesome* fic and art going up in June!
I wanted to pimp a couple SPN fics, too. This one, by rahmi is a lovely 'someone makes a wish' fic. It doesn't turn out quite the way you think, and Sam'n'Dean are just...perfect. You *will* enjoy it. Secure the Blessing.
There's also sevenfists fic Life As We Know It, where we get to see the boys being all domestic...but not for the reason you might think. Totally without schmoop, totally perfect voices, lovely stuff.
Also, the final talley is up at Sweet Charity and omg, people - over 22,000 dollars! Thank you, everyone who participated. My deadline for the fics i auctioned is June 31st, and have no fear, they *will* be done.
Hrmmm...i think that's it. :) The fic here is a bit of the Wolfpack 'verse. Something from Dean's pov. I didn't know if that would actually *work*, and i really wanted to give it a try, so... It takes place immediately after 'Dogs of War'. Enjoy!
Previous Wolfpack stories here.
The poem quoted is Maxine Kumin's 'The Hermit Prays'.
God of the topmost branch
god of the sheltering leaf
fold your wing over.
Keep secret and keep safe.
Dean knew what they called him and his family. Wolfpack. The first time he'd ever heard it, he'd liked it and laughed at it in the same breath. Didn't let it go to his head. John ignored it and Sam - a total geek at fourteen - researched it and told Dean he should roll over and show his belly. Dean wrestled Sam to the ground and yanked Sam's shirt up and Dad brought his hand down in a ringing slap onto Sam's flat belly, grinning. Sam wore the imprint for hours, shooting black looks at Dean from under his shaggy bangs.
Later, Dean traced the mark with tongue and lips until Sam was panting, hips lifting up in little jerky arcs. Dad in the other bed, breathing soft and slow. Watching, or not - didn't matter. They'd lived too long as one entity, one thing - *one pack* - to truly care. Sam was soap-sweet and salt-sour on Dean's tongue, fingers rubbing up the back of Dean's neck. One leg bent and flexing, heel pressed into Dean's ribs. He came with a hiss of ragged breath, hands going flat to the mattress, head thrown back and Dean wanted to wind himself around his brother and never let go.
Winchester Wolfpack but Dean didn't know if they counted as a pack anymore, now that they were only two. Him and Sam. Their Dad...lost. The ruins of the church at Stull - the ground itself - cracking and falling and gone, funneling down into an ever-widening fissure that had eventually swallowed six miles of Kansas dirt.
And Dean lifting Sam, shoulder under Sam's arm and arm around Sam's waist, dragging him to the car and shoving him inside. Stifling the need to help him, help Sam, Sam's hurt because Dad was hurt. Dad was down, on his knees - screaming out the words of the spell in a voice gone raw and broken. Bloody froth falling from his lips as easily as the Latin, skin and muscle and finally bone ablating away in a caustic, dust-choked whirlwind.
And Dean had promised - promised - his Dad. Promised he wouldn't try to stop him - wouldn't try to interfere. He'd stood there for agonizing seconds, watching as Dad, Dad, Dad his father had been... Rubbed out. Scoured down to nothing, his ashes furling out in a glittering skein and mixing with the writhing black pillar that was the demon. Cold-silver thread twining forever with black - all of it twisting and turning and finally flowing down - away - gone.
And then Dean had turned and gotten into the car - started the engine and driven away as if all the demons of hell were pouring up out of that crack in the earth, instead of being yanked down into it. Driven with white knuckles and wet cheeks and his heart pounding, pounding, pounding. Sam whimpering, an endless, mindless creel of agony that Dean couldn't fix and couldn't bear. It was a half an hour before he'd registered where they were - what direction he was driving. Near enough to Rock Creek and that old man - that old doctor that had helped their Dad once. He'd help Sam, now.
The next day - around four - they'd arrived at the little, tree-shrouded cabin on the north side of the Potawatomi Reservation and it had taken Dean ten minutes to uncramp his hands from the steering wheel and just...let go. *Safe...finally safe.*
Sitting on the floor now, legs outstretched and his Dad's journal lying in the v between his thighs, Dean blinked heavy eyes and rested his head on the edge of the mattress behind him. Awake for too long, his intermittent, pained cat-naps in Rock Creek nothing against the tidal exhaustion that was drowning him. Sam right there, his hand lying curled beside Dean's head - his lungs rising and falling in too-short breaths, little wheeze and hitch from three broken ribs. A Sam who was washed and tended and drifting toward a codeine sleep and Dean could finally just...breathe.
*Just us, just us, Sam and me, not even a pack anymore, just us, oh god, Dad, Daddy...* Aware, because of the itch, of the dust and the sweat that soaked him - chafed him. Dust that was probably some small part of his Dad, and Dean ground his head back into the mattress and stared at the ceiling until it swam, cold line of tears flowing into his hair. The bandages the old man had wound around his arm - his chest - pulling and uncomfortable. Sam breathed in - exhaled harshly and jerked, and Dean turned his head to look at him. Sam's eye was half open, pupil pin-point small, the dappled brown and gold and green of the iris dull. The other hidden by clean white gauze, hurt but mending. Not blind, thank Christ.
"Hey, Sam."
Sam licked his lips - moved his head fitfully, looking dazedly into the shadowed corners of the room. "Dee...Dean."
"I'm here. Need a drink?" Sam nodded and Dean leaned to his right, picking up a water bottle from the floor, bright blue bendable straw sticking out of the top. "Here. Take it slow, now."
Sam drank, measured mouthfuls that he swallowed carefully. Two, three - some of a fourth and his head fell back, little tremor of exhausted muscles. A drop of water trickled from the corner of his mouth and Dean wiped it gently away with his thumb. "Dean...Dad?"
Dean concentrated on the moisture on Sam's lip - on pushing the damp strands of hair back from Sam's forehead. Hurt welling in his chest and throat - making everything so tight he could barely breathe. Couldn't speak at all, so he finally just shook his head. Sam made a small, wounded sound - animal sound - his eye squeezing shut and his whole face contorting in shock and grief. Exhaustion and drugs making tears streak down, sudden quicksilver track and Dean heaved himself up onto his knees and wrapped an arm around Sam's shoulders - put a hand to the back of Sam's head and pulled him close. Sam's face wet and hot in the crook of Dean's neck, Sam's fingers weakly twisting in Dean's t-shirt as Sam fought not to cry. Fought not to move, lungs pressing against broken bone and torn muscle.
"Shhh, shhh, shhh...I know, I know," Dean murmured. Kissed Sam's hair and stroked his temple - his cheek. Choking back his own tears because he would cry when Sam could. "He did it, he won, but he's gone, he's gone, Sam, just us..."
Sam was nodding into Dean's neck - sniffing carefully, shuddering all over. Dean eased away from him, rocking back onto his heels a little. Wiping Sam's face with the corner of the sheet and Sam tried a tiny, wobbly smile. Lost it. "Dean, c-can we... I want to have mom h-here. Please?"
"Sure. Sure, Sam." Dean said. He reached down and picked up Dad's journal - opened it and shuffled carefully through the haphazard collection of business cards and scrap paper tucked into the front. At the bottom, carefully folded into a worn piece of paper was a square of cardboard. He unwrapped it with slow reverence, careful to handle it by the edges. His fingers were dirty. He handed the cardboard to Sam and Sam took it with equal care - turned it toward the dim lamp on the night stand.
It was a prayer card, something that they'd found in Pastor Jim's church years ago. When Sam had been five and Dean nine and the church had been all huge, hollow spaces and echoes, light falling through the colored glass like knife-blades. Beautiful and terrible. The woman on the card was dressed in white and blue with a pale-golden veil over her head. Dean remembered when they'd found her - when he'd carefully read the inscription on the front. 'Mary', it said. 'Blessed Mother'. "Our mother", he'd whispered to Sam, awestruck and shaking. Their mother as Dad said she was, up in heaven. "An angel, watching over us, boys. She's always watching over us..."
Sam touched the card with reverent, shaking fingers - stroked the white robe and the gently smiling face. "Dad's with her, right? He's with Mom now. He k-killed the demon so he - he gets to go to heaven."
"Yeah, he does. He's up there with her right now. They're both watching us now, Sam." Dean wanted to touch the card, too - wanted to draw comfort from the worn surface but he was too dirty. Was sure he would leave fingerprints - mar her perfection forever.
"I want to go to church," Sam murmured, his eye drooping shut - the card slipping sideways in his hands. He knew where they were - knew that Our Lady of Snows was twenty minutes away. Mom was, in gilded splendor in the little clapboard church.
"We will. In a couple of days," Dean promised. Sam didn't reply - breathed softly, asleep again, and Dean plucked the card gingerly from his hand. He hesitated a long moment and then slid it under Sam's pillow. Then he levered himself to his feet and made the rounds, checking each window, both doors. A warm June breeze puffed through the screens and the crickets sang in the underbrush. A whip-poor-will called, and then called again, and Dean could hear the sonorous croaking of the frogs in the far off creek -
come-across, come-across, come-across. Everything was still - the salt safe in the deep troughs they'd carved in the sills. Devil's traps, binding glyphs, protection sigils and wards of intent on every wall. On the floor, on the ceiling. Witches' jars buried in the yard and bottles hung from the trees.
Nowhere was safer - nowhere was more impregnable. They had a generator, a couple of tankless water heaters and a well that ran pure and cold all year long. Dean took a long, long breath and finally, slowly, let himself relax. He looked over at Sam one more time and then headed to the bathroom.
Half an hour later, showered and freshly bandaged, he shuffled out to the main room. He'd lost a fingernail, broken the finger and looked - and felt - like the loser in a heavyweight championship fight. But Sam was safe, and Dean edged himself down carefully onto the bed - under the covers. Curled up beside Sam, skin on skin, his head on the same pillow and his fingers resting lightly on Sam's hip. His other hand under the pillow, just grazing the edge of the card. Loaded gun by the door, another by the bed, a knife in the sheath on the headboard. *Safe, we're safe, Sammy... Oh, Dad...*
He was asleep in minutes, moonlight just beginning to sift down through the trees.
Next part - Savage and Jaunty.