(no subject)
Tinder
by whereupon
Supernatural: Sam/Dean, season-one-ish, PG, 1,560 words.
In response to a prompt by de_nugis.
The sky is bright as razors, and just as sharp.
The sky is bright as razors, and just as sharp; it's not a sky you could drown in, but one that would slice your palms to trail bright red ribbons of blood down onto the dulled crisp of autumn-fallowed leaves that rattle like old newspapers when the wind catches them just right. It won't snow today, it's still too early for that, at least at this latitude, but there was frost on the Impala this morning, and on the scrubby grass someone had planted next to the parking lot in a sad attempt at making it look like something other than a smear of gravel and shattered bottles over which the motel sign towered. Sam won't draw his hands up into the over-long sleeves of his jacket, tugging them down over his knuckles like a child trying to hide from a storm, or from the dark; he straightens his shoulders instead, as though the chill is something that can be warded off with focus and determination. It doesn't work. The cold is a seeping thing, inescapable, and out here, with nothing but these newly-bare trees and the predatory sweep of sky, he feels it all the more keenly.
It had been easy to be warm when they were still in town, kicking each other beneath the table in the diner with the Halloween decorations that Dean made fun of and Sam tried to ignore, cupping his hands around a mug of coffee that tasted bitter no matter how much milk and sugar he added, but that was three hours ago and the caffeine has long since worn off. His eyes burn. He will not let himself yawn. He will not, for what would be the fourth time in the last forty minutes, ask Dean if he's sure he knows where he's going, because the last time Sam did that, Dean had said yes, goddamnit, and that if he asked again, Dean would hit him over the head with a shovel and leave his unconscious ass there until spring, or at least Dean had finished what they'd come here for, which, by the way, would go a hell of a lot faster if he didn't have to put up with Sam asking so many damned stupid questions.
Sam's pretty sure that means Dean has no idea where they're going, but he's too tired to argue the point, and also, though he's fairly certain Dean wouldn't actually hit him with the shovel, Dean had looked kind of crazed when he'd made the threat, which means that he might pretend that he's going to try, at which point Sam would have to lunge out of the way and inevitably trip over his own feet, because it's hard to be graceful when you're dodging the blows of a shovel-wielding maniac, thus causing Dean to laugh himself sick and swear never to let Sam live it down. Which he wouldn't, Sam knows from experience.
Dean drives him crazy. Dean gets beneath his skin, is the threat of arson, the promise of a bottle-edge to his throat at the worst of times and a presence at his back, armed and dangerous and ready to kill the first person who even so much looks at Sam funny, at the best. His brother is turning back to look at him, now, eyes narrowed, knuckles wind-reddened and still swollen from last night's fight, ostensibly started because somebody didn't like the way Dean was looking at their girlfriend or because they didn't like the songs Dean kept choosing from the jukebox's meager selection. Sam knows better, though. The bruises are today like reminders of the season, of the approaching date. This time of year, they both go a little bit crazy. Dean picks fights. As far as Sam's concerned, there are worse ways to deal with -- things.
There are things they do not talk about, things that they've lost. That they do not speak of them is its own way of mourning. The holiest things are those not spoken aloud.
"You getting any freaky ghost vibes?" Dean asks. His boots crunch on the dead leaves, on the brittle twigs buried beneath them. He lowers the shovels from his shoulder, resting the blades on the ground. Sam takes advantage of the opportunity, even if only for a moment, to slide the pack from his own shoulders. It's heavy with salt and kerosene and the half-melted Hershey's bar Dean had tossed in like an afterthought. He'd claimed that if they got lost, they could live on that and the contents of his flask until they regained their bearings, to which Sam had said that he seemed to recall Dean saying, like, five minutes ago that Winchesters were genetically incapable of getting lost. Dean had ignored him, choosing that moment to go temporarily deaf as he usually did whenever he couldn't think of a good comeback to something Sam said.
"I thought you knew where we were going," Sam says now, a little accusatorily, but he thinks that's fair. After all, Dean had said that.
"I do," Dean says. "We're there. Here. Whatever. Start digging, the bones ain't gonna unbury themselves."
"I didn't say they would," Sam says, but only under his breath. It's not Dean's fault that they're out here. He knows Dean wishes just as badly as he does that today of all days they could stay somewhere warm, pretend that theirs is a life not etched with gravedirt and marked with the promise of bullets and shed blood.
He wishes he couldn't imagine dying out here, in the middle of nowhere, black-barked trees on all sides, a thin shroud offered by the faded gilt of leaves going crimson and gold and brown as earth. He can imagine it all too well. The man who'd taken Elisa Ness out here had stabbed her only once, because he wanted her to die slowly or because he was surprised after all at what it felt like, the immediacy of someone's blood on his hands. Sam and Dean hadn't been able to ask him; he'd died in his sleep, probably peacefully, some ten years ago. Elisa, dead thirty years before that, still walks. But this is something they can fix, something that, though they cannot make it right, they can at least bring to an end.
He stops noticing the temperature, warmed by the work of exhuming her grave. He doesn't shiver again until they've stopped, until he's poured kerosene over the small pyre they've built over her bones and Dean, having likewise shed his jacket, is crouching over the leather, rifling through a pocket for his lighter.
"Put your damn coat back on," Dean says absently, without looking at him, and then rises to his feet, lighter in hand. Sam rolls his eyes; it's not like he needs Dean to tell him these things, despite what Dean says to the contrary.
The fire catches, and instinct older than memory catches too at his heart for a split-second, hisses like breath across the back of his neck before disappearing under years of conditioning. The air smells of woodsmoke, the autumning of the world. It's a bad idea for people like them to be out after dark, this night of all nights, and so by nightfall they will be as safe as they will let themselves believe, behind a locked door, barred by salt, and warded. Tomorrow the world will be grey as ash, and subdued; against it they will tell each other bright lies that will flicker like candles against exhaustion, against the season, against the urge to lie down and sleep through the coming year, to lie down and maybe never get up again. Tomorrow they will find a diner that serves apple pie hot and rich with cinnamon and sugar. Dean will smile like it's the best thing he's ever seen, and Sam will pretend to be exasperated, and things will go unsaid.
Now, though, beneath the broken-glass sky that is the promise of winter, of bleak sunrises and murderous nights so cold that they will sleep close together in the backseat of the car, the cut of Dean's eyes is itself a blade, a danger, a promise. When Dean offers him the flask, against the temperature and the weight of what they've done here, he accepts, and the whiskey burns his throat. The flask trades hands; Dean's shoulder bumps his and he turns into the motion, turning to face his brother, Dean's face already canted towards his own. They scuffle and scuff through the leaves; the bony trunk of a tree presses at his back, rough bark scraping at the cloth of his coat. The skin just above the waist of Dean's jeans is hot to his touch.
This should be blasphemy, this close to the pyre still burning, but this place is already marked. He smells freshly-turned earth and his brother's aftershave; he knows that they will make it back to the car. They will not be here when winter comes, not here. They will be miles down the road, some road unknowable until that moment, maybe any back road or side street, unlit save for the glow of headlights, where they will take what warmth they can find, what little warmth is theirs to claim, in each other, perhaps the only thing that has ever been rightfully theirs.
--
end
by whereupon
Supernatural: Sam/Dean, season-one-ish, PG, 1,560 words.
In response to a prompt by de_nugis.
The sky is bright as razors, and just as sharp.
The sky is bright as razors, and just as sharp; it's not a sky you could drown in, but one that would slice your palms to trail bright red ribbons of blood down onto the dulled crisp of autumn-fallowed leaves that rattle like old newspapers when the wind catches them just right. It won't snow today, it's still too early for that, at least at this latitude, but there was frost on the Impala this morning, and on the scrubby grass someone had planted next to the parking lot in a sad attempt at making it look like something other than a smear of gravel and shattered bottles over which the motel sign towered. Sam won't draw his hands up into the over-long sleeves of his jacket, tugging them down over his knuckles like a child trying to hide from a storm, or from the dark; he straightens his shoulders instead, as though the chill is something that can be warded off with focus and determination. It doesn't work. The cold is a seeping thing, inescapable, and out here, with nothing but these newly-bare trees and the predatory sweep of sky, he feels it all the more keenly.
It had been easy to be warm when they were still in town, kicking each other beneath the table in the diner with the Halloween decorations that Dean made fun of and Sam tried to ignore, cupping his hands around a mug of coffee that tasted bitter no matter how much milk and sugar he added, but that was three hours ago and the caffeine has long since worn off. His eyes burn. He will not let himself yawn. He will not, for what would be the fourth time in the last forty minutes, ask Dean if he's sure he knows where he's going, because the last time Sam did that, Dean had said yes, goddamnit, and that if he asked again, Dean would hit him over the head with a shovel and leave his unconscious ass there until spring, or at least Dean had finished what they'd come here for, which, by the way, would go a hell of a lot faster if he didn't have to put up with Sam asking so many damned stupid questions.
Sam's pretty sure that means Dean has no idea where they're going, but he's too tired to argue the point, and also, though he's fairly certain Dean wouldn't actually hit him with the shovel, Dean had looked kind of crazed when he'd made the threat, which means that he might pretend that he's going to try, at which point Sam would have to lunge out of the way and inevitably trip over his own feet, because it's hard to be graceful when you're dodging the blows of a shovel-wielding maniac, thus causing Dean to laugh himself sick and swear never to let Sam live it down. Which he wouldn't, Sam knows from experience.
Dean drives him crazy. Dean gets beneath his skin, is the threat of arson, the promise of a bottle-edge to his throat at the worst of times and a presence at his back, armed and dangerous and ready to kill the first person who even so much looks at Sam funny, at the best. His brother is turning back to look at him, now, eyes narrowed, knuckles wind-reddened and still swollen from last night's fight, ostensibly started because somebody didn't like the way Dean was looking at their girlfriend or because they didn't like the songs Dean kept choosing from the jukebox's meager selection. Sam knows better, though. The bruises are today like reminders of the season, of the approaching date. This time of year, they both go a little bit crazy. Dean picks fights. As far as Sam's concerned, there are worse ways to deal with -- things.
There are things they do not talk about, things that they've lost. That they do not speak of them is its own way of mourning. The holiest things are those not spoken aloud.
"You getting any freaky ghost vibes?" Dean asks. His boots crunch on the dead leaves, on the brittle twigs buried beneath them. He lowers the shovels from his shoulder, resting the blades on the ground. Sam takes advantage of the opportunity, even if only for a moment, to slide the pack from his own shoulders. It's heavy with salt and kerosene and the half-melted Hershey's bar Dean had tossed in like an afterthought. He'd claimed that if they got lost, they could live on that and the contents of his flask until they regained their bearings, to which Sam had said that he seemed to recall Dean saying, like, five minutes ago that Winchesters were genetically incapable of getting lost. Dean had ignored him, choosing that moment to go temporarily deaf as he usually did whenever he couldn't think of a good comeback to something Sam said.
"I thought you knew where we were going," Sam says now, a little accusatorily, but he thinks that's fair. After all, Dean had said that.
"I do," Dean says. "We're there. Here. Whatever. Start digging, the bones ain't gonna unbury themselves."
"I didn't say they would," Sam says, but only under his breath. It's not Dean's fault that they're out here. He knows Dean wishes just as badly as he does that today of all days they could stay somewhere warm, pretend that theirs is a life not etched with gravedirt and marked with the promise of bullets and shed blood.
He wishes he couldn't imagine dying out here, in the middle of nowhere, black-barked trees on all sides, a thin shroud offered by the faded gilt of leaves going crimson and gold and brown as earth. He can imagine it all too well. The man who'd taken Elisa Ness out here had stabbed her only once, because he wanted her to die slowly or because he was surprised after all at what it felt like, the immediacy of someone's blood on his hands. Sam and Dean hadn't been able to ask him; he'd died in his sleep, probably peacefully, some ten years ago. Elisa, dead thirty years before that, still walks. But this is something they can fix, something that, though they cannot make it right, they can at least bring to an end.
He stops noticing the temperature, warmed by the work of exhuming her grave. He doesn't shiver again until they've stopped, until he's poured kerosene over the small pyre they've built over her bones and Dean, having likewise shed his jacket, is crouching over the leather, rifling through a pocket for his lighter.
"Put your damn coat back on," Dean says absently, without looking at him, and then rises to his feet, lighter in hand. Sam rolls his eyes; it's not like he needs Dean to tell him these things, despite what Dean says to the contrary.
The fire catches, and instinct older than memory catches too at his heart for a split-second, hisses like breath across the back of his neck before disappearing under years of conditioning. The air smells of woodsmoke, the autumning of the world. It's a bad idea for people like them to be out after dark, this night of all nights, and so by nightfall they will be as safe as they will let themselves believe, behind a locked door, barred by salt, and warded. Tomorrow the world will be grey as ash, and subdued; against it they will tell each other bright lies that will flicker like candles against exhaustion, against the season, against the urge to lie down and sleep through the coming year, to lie down and maybe never get up again. Tomorrow they will find a diner that serves apple pie hot and rich with cinnamon and sugar. Dean will smile like it's the best thing he's ever seen, and Sam will pretend to be exasperated, and things will go unsaid.
Now, though, beneath the broken-glass sky that is the promise of winter, of bleak sunrises and murderous nights so cold that they will sleep close together in the backseat of the car, the cut of Dean's eyes is itself a blade, a danger, a promise. When Dean offers him the flask, against the temperature and the weight of what they've done here, he accepts, and the whiskey burns his throat. The flask trades hands; Dean's shoulder bumps his and he turns into the motion, turning to face his brother, Dean's face already canted towards his own. They scuffle and scuff through the leaves; the bony trunk of a tree presses at his back, rough bark scraping at the cloth of his coat. The skin just above the waist of Dean's jeans is hot to his touch.
This should be blasphemy, this close to the pyre still burning, but this place is already marked. He smells freshly-turned earth and his brother's aftershave; he knows that they will make it back to the car. They will not be here when winter comes, not here. They will be miles down the road, some road unknowable until that moment, maybe any back road or side street, unlit save for the glow of headlights, where they will take what warmth they can find, what little warmth is theirs to claim, in each other, perhaps the only thing that has ever been rightfully theirs.
--
end