I Don't Trust Me (Supernatural, WIP, Chapter 2)
Title: I Don't Trust Me
Fandom: Supernatural
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: Gen
Characters: Sam, Dean
Word count: ~1000
Chapter: 2/? (WIP)
Disclaimer: I own nothing
Warnings: content: depression, eating disorder, OCD
Archive of Our Own link
Summary: A sort-of AU for Season 5 (starts at the end of 5.02) in which Sam's guilt about the events of Season 4 has him obsessively focused on self-discipline and self-control. Author's notes: Short chunk this week but I thought better to get it up sooner rather than wait until I've finished the whole next section (which, as we all know, is going to be stressful for Sammy)
2.
Sam’s feet punch against the asphalt of the highway. His thighs and his chest are burning, and the sweat on his forehead is dripping painfully into his eyes. Suck it up, Sammy, he thinks. Suck it up, you bloodsucking freak. He keeps on going.
Sam has to run further every day than the morning before. Forty-five minutes out, as fast as he thinks he can do it, and forty minutes back, so he doesn’t have the chance to slack off. If he doesn’t make it all the way back to the motel in time, he doesn’t get to eat anything until after he finishes work. Those are the rules; and though he knows they’re self-imposed, they’re already set reassuringly rigid in his mind.
He just makes it, today, sprinting flat-out for the last half-mile with the motel wavering in sight at the end of the street; slamming his hand onto the flaking wood of the door as his wristwatch tells him there are 25 seconds to go. His breath rasps gritty in his throat. His hand is shaking and the key skitters across the lock twice, three times before he can finally force it in. Come on Sam, he thinks. Don’t be such a bitch.
At work that afternoon the bar is quiet. Sam wipes down tables, stacks glasses, brings in the drinks delivery. He doesn’t speak to anybody until 4pm, when Lindsey arrives for her shift and greets him with a ‘Hey’. That’s okay. Sam’s conserving words as well.
He likes Lindsey, but he can feel her look at him as he works. It makes his skin feel taut and his heart beat faster. Stop it, he thinks. I’m not really here at all.
Sam goes to bed with a sensation of relief. Another day over and he is pretty sure that he hasn’t done anything dangerous or stupid enough to hurt anybody else. But when he wakes up in the middle of the night to find Jessica gazing into his eyes, he’s absolutely certain that this isn’t any kind of reward.
It’s worse because he hasn’t even thought about her for so long: he’s been so busy trying not to think about Dean. Hardening himself to the latest wound seems to have left the old unattended sore more raw and open, so that the sight of her propels him instantly back to the grief and desperation of that first year back on the road. “I miss you,” he says; and thinks, I’m so lonely it hurts. It’s worse because Jessica is so palpably real. The vividness of her terrifies him, draws him with a complicated longing even as she reminds him, in her beautiful forgotten voice, of all the reasons he can never have this again. Not just her, or the life they were supposed to have together; no, the whole difficult, crucial business of love, of caring hard about somebody and having them care about you. Sam isn’t going to be close to anybody, not any more.
He’s so shaken up that he can’t sleep for the rest of the night. When he runs the next morning, his legs feel heavy and sore. He catches himself stumbling more than once; and by the time his watch beeps to tell him he should be back, he’s still a good 400 yards away from the motel.
This failure sets him up for a terrible day. Lindsey keeps asking him questions that he doesn’t know how to answer, pressing him for a history he’s only half-bothered to invent. Then a couple sits down at a table covered in debris when Sam is clearing glasses on the other side of the room. He has to break sequence to clean it up for them and he never quite manages to get back in sync. By the end of the night he can’t even be sure that all of the tables have been wiped the same number of times. He’s pulled out of his jitters by the television over the bar, reporting weather conditions that sound decidedly demonic a few towns over. Mandatory evacuation, says the woman on TV. Sam’s head swims with images of families, abandoning belongings and homes and safety and running away. Of elderly people, or children, or pets, stranded and dying as the storm thunders down.
It’s enough to push him into speaking before he’s spoken to, calling up Bobby to tip him off about what’s going down. That conversation goes nowhere quickly, as Bobby seems to be of the same belief as fantasy-Jess: that Sam’s plan, to protect the rest of the world from his own destructive stupidity, is actually as selfish and ill-thought-through as his other ideas. But Sam knows, he just knows, that it would be madness to drop himself into a town full of demons right now. Something desperate will happen and he’ll think there’s no alternative and a demon will be lying dead and gory on the floor - and there’s just no way he can go through detox all by himself in an Oklahoma motel room. “Sorry, Bobby,” he says, heavy with the familiar weight of disappointing the people he loves.
Later, lying open-eyed in his lonely bed, Sam thinks, at least it hurt. It hurt me to say no so I guess it’s the right thing to do.
It’s not clear whether fantasy-Jess would agree. She doesn’t materialise again, although Sam finds himself aching for her to return. He sleeps shallowly, blinking awake several times to the sight of an empty pillow and the clench of a knot at his heart. I’m sorry, he thinks. I miss you, he thinks. Come back.
Fandom: Supernatural
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: Gen
Characters: Sam, Dean
Word count: ~1000
Chapter: 2/? (WIP)
Disclaimer: I own nothing
Warnings: content: depression, eating disorder, OCD
Archive of Our Own link
Summary: A sort-of AU for Season 5 (starts at the end of 5.02) in which Sam's guilt about the events of Season 4 has him obsessively focused on self-discipline and self-control. Author's notes: Short chunk this week but I thought better to get it up sooner rather than wait until I've finished the whole next section (which, as we all know, is going to be stressful for Sammy)
2.
Sam’s feet punch against the asphalt of the highway. His thighs and his chest are burning, and the sweat on his forehead is dripping painfully into his eyes. Suck it up, Sammy, he thinks. Suck it up, you bloodsucking freak. He keeps on going.
Sam has to run further every day than the morning before. Forty-five minutes out, as fast as he thinks he can do it, and forty minutes back, so he doesn’t have the chance to slack off. If he doesn’t make it all the way back to the motel in time, he doesn’t get to eat anything until after he finishes work. Those are the rules; and though he knows they’re self-imposed, they’re already set reassuringly rigid in his mind.
He just makes it, today, sprinting flat-out for the last half-mile with the motel wavering in sight at the end of the street; slamming his hand onto the flaking wood of the door as his wristwatch tells him there are 25 seconds to go. His breath rasps gritty in his throat. His hand is shaking and the key skitters across the lock twice, three times before he can finally force it in. Come on Sam, he thinks. Don’t be such a bitch.
At work that afternoon the bar is quiet. Sam wipes down tables, stacks glasses, brings in the drinks delivery. He doesn’t speak to anybody until 4pm, when Lindsey arrives for her shift and greets him with a ‘Hey’. That’s okay. Sam’s conserving words as well.
He likes Lindsey, but he can feel her look at him as he works. It makes his skin feel taut and his heart beat faster. Stop it, he thinks. I’m not really here at all.
Sam goes to bed with a sensation of relief. Another day over and he is pretty sure that he hasn’t done anything dangerous or stupid enough to hurt anybody else. But when he wakes up in the middle of the night to find Jessica gazing into his eyes, he’s absolutely certain that this isn’t any kind of reward.
It’s worse because he hasn’t even thought about her for so long: he’s been so busy trying not to think about Dean. Hardening himself to the latest wound seems to have left the old unattended sore more raw and open, so that the sight of her propels him instantly back to the grief and desperation of that first year back on the road. “I miss you,” he says; and thinks, I’m so lonely it hurts. It’s worse because Jessica is so palpably real. The vividness of her terrifies him, draws him with a complicated longing even as she reminds him, in her beautiful forgotten voice, of all the reasons he can never have this again. Not just her, or the life they were supposed to have together; no, the whole difficult, crucial business of love, of caring hard about somebody and having them care about you. Sam isn’t going to be close to anybody, not any more.
He’s so shaken up that he can’t sleep for the rest of the night. When he runs the next morning, his legs feel heavy and sore. He catches himself stumbling more than once; and by the time his watch beeps to tell him he should be back, he’s still a good 400 yards away from the motel.
This failure sets him up for a terrible day. Lindsey keeps asking him questions that he doesn’t know how to answer, pressing him for a history he’s only half-bothered to invent. Then a couple sits down at a table covered in debris when Sam is clearing glasses on the other side of the room. He has to break sequence to clean it up for them and he never quite manages to get back in sync. By the end of the night he can’t even be sure that all of the tables have been wiped the same number of times. He’s pulled out of his jitters by the television over the bar, reporting weather conditions that sound decidedly demonic a few towns over. Mandatory evacuation, says the woman on TV. Sam’s head swims with images of families, abandoning belongings and homes and safety and running away. Of elderly people, or children, or pets, stranded and dying as the storm thunders down.
It’s enough to push him into speaking before he’s spoken to, calling up Bobby to tip him off about what’s going down. That conversation goes nowhere quickly, as Bobby seems to be of the same belief as fantasy-Jess: that Sam’s plan, to protect the rest of the world from his own destructive stupidity, is actually as selfish and ill-thought-through as his other ideas. But Sam knows, he just knows, that it would be madness to drop himself into a town full of demons right now. Something desperate will happen and he’ll think there’s no alternative and a demon will be lying dead and gory on the floor - and there’s just no way he can go through detox all by himself in an Oklahoma motel room. “Sorry, Bobby,” he says, heavy with the familiar weight of disappointing the people he loves.
Later, lying open-eyed in his lonely bed, Sam thinks, at least it hurt. It hurt me to say no so I guess it’s the right thing to do.
It’s not clear whether fantasy-Jess would agree. She doesn’t materialise again, although Sam finds himself aching for her to return. He sleeps shallowly, blinking awake several times to the sight of an empty pillow and the clench of a knot at his heart. I’m sorry, he thinks. I miss you, he thinks. Come back.