![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Title: The Skin Horse - 1/2
Rating/Warning: PG (language)
Wordcount: 3,112
Spoilers: End of S2 (Reference to S3 BDABR)
Fandom: SPN
By:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
kellifer_fic
Category: Gen
Summary: Dean has always been grounded by contact, needing to touch.
Disclaimer: Written for entertainment purposes only. No money, no sue.
“Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don’t matter at all, because once you are Real you can’t be ugly, except to people who don’t understand.”
- The Velveteen Rabbit by Margery Williams
Dean makes his way back to his dad’s storage locker when Sam claims he has things to do. Dean knows it’s more research, trying to find another way to crow bar Dean out of his deal but he simply nods because he’s been meaning to make this trip for a while.
Without Sam there and the urgent press of a case, Dean takes his time. He steers clear of the curse boxes and weapons, instead dwelling in the front part of the space where his father kept all the personal items. He sits at the piano for a while, remembering a small boy sitting by his mother while she played. She would hold her hands out for Dean’s inspection and tell him how it was her brother who got the right hands for playing. She winced when she caught a wrong note but Dean loved them as much as the right ones.
Dean contemplates taking Sam’s soccer trophy with him but then he spies something sitting at the back of a shelf, mostly hidden by decaying books. When he pushes them aside, he realises he’s looking at Sam’s old stuffed toy horse, a dun coloured pony with little black hooves and a tuft of caramel coloured mane.
Dean reaches out and picks it up but almost immediately drops it with nerveless fingers. He gets a strong flash of a little boy tagging after his big brother, a shaggy-haired and raggedy kid who just wants to go to school because he doesn’t want to be left behind. He can smell sunshine and candy and for a second he’s transported, he’s watching the scene from a weird perspective, swinging back and forth at a crazy sweeping angle.
As soon as the horse leaves his hand it all fades until Dean is firmly back in the musty storage locker, surrounded by memories he never knew his father had held on to. He hunkers down to pick up the horse, pausing just before he does to pull his sleeve over his hand. He almost laughs at himself because it’s just the place and the nostalgia of it all getting to him.
Almost.
000
Sam is rummaging in Dean’s duffle for headache pills three days later when Dean is only just getting out of the shower. Dean sees Sam pause, a frown on his face before he pulls free the horse.
“Where’d you get this?” he asks, turning it over in his hands. For a moment he makes it gallop in midair, his expression far away.
“Found it right in the bottom of the trunk when I cleaned it out completely.” Dean isn’t exactly sure why he lies but it’s possible. The Impala was the family car right up until Dean’s sixteenth birthday.
“Man, I haven’t seen this…” Dean remembers baby Sammy wrapping both arms around the horse and his stubby fingers not quite meeting. The toy is dwarfed in Sam’s hand as he curls it against his chest for a second.
Dean doesn’t object when Sam puts the horse in his own duffle after he finds the pills. He doesn’t say a word when Sam takes it out after he thinks Dean is asleep and holds it balanced on his knee while he’s curled over the laptop, fingers running restlessly over the worn face.
000
Dean’s almost entirely forgotten what happened the first time he picked up the horse when he’s handed a locket by an older lady named Doris as she’s saying been in my family for an age.
Sam and Dean are posing as antique valuers. They’re really looking for the cursed object that sees the first born son of each successive generation of the Mitkins family not live to see his fourteenth birthday. Peter Mitkins, grandson to Doris, is thirteen and eleven months.
Dean gets such a strong sense of fear and pain, coupled with a very vivid image of a small girl crouched in a corner as an older boy advances on her with a hatchet that he cries out and flings the locket away from himself and then drops to his knees, trying to spit the taste of copper from his mouth.
There’s a warm hand at his back, stroking soothing circles and Doris’ voice, shrill and unintelligible through the rushing sound in his ears. Dean lets Sam manhandle him out of the house and waves off his concern once he’s been settled in the car no matter how much Sam presses.
Sam keeps at him well into the night; concern etched on his features as he finally relents and crashes when Dean pretends to go to sleep first. Dean eases his way out of the motel room, stops at a mini-mart on the way to the old lady’s house and retrieves the locket from its case using an oven mitt with dolphins on it and a pair of tongs.
He destroys the locket on the way back to the motel room, using the multi-purpose cleansing ritual Bobby found for them and accepts Sam’s glower when he finally returns as the first fingers of dawn are reaching across the sky.
“Where’d you go?” Sam asks because he was never able to let a silence go on.
“Had stuff to do,” Dean answers cryptically, knowing he’s going to be in for miles and miles of very special Sam bitching but that’s not really his greatest concern at the moment.
Not by a long shot.
000
It’s two weeks of Dean keeping his hands in his pockets and doing weird things like opening doors with his elbows when Sam finally sits down and demands to know just what the hell is going on. Dean tries to evade but when Sam reaches out a hand and Dean flinches, there’s such hurt on Sam’s face that Dean will do anything to remove it, including finally admitting that maybe, possibly, there’s something actually wrong with him.
“It’s only happened twice,” Dean finishes after telling Sam what happened with the horse and then the locket. They’re sitting opposite each other on their beds, legs in the space in between. Sam’s hunched forward, fingers kneading his forehead like maybe he’ll come up with the answer to all of this if he presses hard enough.
“Okay,” Sam says, getting up and rubbing his hands off on his jeans. “Okay,” he repeats as he retrieves the small table by the door and puts it in front of Dean. He then rummages around the room, setting objects on the table in a row like a memory game. When he’s done, there’s one of their knives, the room’s bible, a quarter Sam found on the floor and a photo of Jess Sam had in his wallet. Dean looks over the items before using the corner of his jacket to nudge the photo to the furthest edge of the table from him.
“No way,” he says firmly.
“Wait, but-”
Dean gets up in one quick jerk of movement, making the table tip and everything but the bible slide to the floor. Dean grabs his keys and wallet and is to the door before Sam intercepts him. Sam smacks a hand to the door over Dean’s shoulder just as he pulls it open and it slams shut again so hard it rattles in the frame.
“Sam,” he warns, shoulders hunched up around his ears as he refuses to turn and Sam just leans harder on the door.
“Dean,” Sam says and Dean rolls his eyes and finally spins, tucking his chin down because Sam looms even when he doesn’t mean to. The only way Dean has ever been able to compensate was by closing down altogether, pulling back so he’s nothing but hard shell and spines.
Sam finally lets up when it’s clear that boxing Dean in is not accomplishing anything. Dean just needs air, to clear his head a little. Sam having visions scared the crap out of Dean but didn’t change how he felt about his brother. Dean had pretty much made his peace with the fact that Sam covered in blood, laughing maniacally and claiming to be the eggman by the light of the moon wouldn’t change his feelings for him.
This, though? Something inside him?
Whole different story.
000
In a spectacularly unusual first, Sam drops it completely.
Dean of course, realises only a few days later that Sam has actually just changed tack, deciding to wait him out, the little rat-bastard. His eyes go all narrow and keen every time Dean picks up as much as a spoon. He buys a pair of cheap gloves at a gas station outside Tennessee and Sam’s expression gets weirdly tight but he still doesn’t say anything.
Dean’s lulled into a false sense of security and touches a feather Sam was using as a bookmark when he’s half-asleep and in bed. He’s in the sky with thermals buffering his wings and gets such a strong surge of vertigo that he has to sit up and put his head between his knees.
Sam, sitting at the small kitchenette in the room, merely swivels in his chair and raises his eyebrows. “You booby-trapped a book!” Dean accuses, complaint thick in his voice and Sam spreads his hands.
“No-o, I marked my place in my book with a feather I picked up outside,” Sam corrects and then gestures between them. “That was bound to happen sooner or later.”
“Okay, fine,” Dean grates. “I’m sure you’ve got a theory about all this?”
“I think it might be a form of Clairtangency,” Sam says, getting up and rummaging through his duffle, pulling free a violent purple book with a picture of a hand on it with rainbows radiating out of the palm. Dean just looks at the book and back at Sam in exasperation. “It’s more commonly known as psychometry.”
“Which means?”
“You ever see one of those shows where the guy asks for people to give him items from the audience and he tells them personal info? A watch for example?”
“That stuff’s all fake,” Dean dismisses and Sam grunts.
“Yeah, maybe for your regular Vegas magic act. I think you’ve got the real deal.”
“I’m touching stuff all day,” Dean argues. “It doesn’t happen with everything.”
“I don’t think it would unless you were maybe trying,” Sam explains, warming up to his subject and Dean sits back on his bed, tucking his hands behind his head. “I think maybe you’re reading off items with a strong emotional imprint. The locket for one, because it was cursed. Snoob because-”
“Snoob?” Dean snorts, smirking.
Sam rolls his eyes and reaches back into his duffle, retrieving and shaking the horse in Dean’s direction. “Snoob,” he repeats and oh yeah, Dean wonders how he could’ve forgotten that. How their father had tried to make Sammy name the horse something else but he’d refused, bawling every time their father had suggested alternate names. It could’ve been worse. John had had no idea that the horse’s original name had in fact been Mister Pinkle Snooby Pants and it’d already taken a lot of convincing and Dean’s last bag of super-secret emergency gummi worms for Sam to shorten it.
“I’m still not really buying it,” Dean sniffs and Sam just gapes at him.
“Okay, here then.” Sam is pulling out his wallet and Dean knows what’s coming. He rolls off his bed and is backed up nearly to the bathroom when Sam finally unearths the photo, well creased and worn, taken out and held and put back hundreds of times.
“I said no!” Dean snaps because while he might try and tell Sam that he doesn’t really believe he’s got this… whatever it is, he’s fucking terrified of what will happen if he comes into contact with that particular item. Mostly because it’s been Sam’s touchstone for his grief and anger for so long.
“No, Dean, really,” Sam urges, voice going shrill with annoyance. “You think there’s some rational explanation for this? Low blood sugar or just fatigue so you’re taking micro-sleeps during the day and dreaming on your feet?”
“Hey, maybe-”
“Then touch this!” Sam demands, shoving the photo nearly into Dean’s nose. “You’re so sure this is all just some mistake? You’re not really just like me then it shouldn’t do anything to you.”
Dean’s stubborn streak, always the thing that most gets him into trouble, has him reaching out and snatching the photo before he has time to really think about what he’s doing. Smoke fills his nostrils and there’s pain and the smell of cookies and then it all… stops.
Dean’s standing in a kitchen, hip fetched up against a counter, drying a plate. He’s watching Jess who is sitting at the island in the middle on a stool, one foot swinging idly, laces of her sneaker dragging across the floor. “I love you,” he hears himself say but not, the voice is wrong and echoes strangely in his head. Jess looks up from her piles of books, hair swept up and held, defying all laws of physics, back from her face by a single strategically placed pen and she grins and crosses her eyes.
With her tongue sticking out at a jaunty angle, she says around it so she loses all her consonants, “I love you too, Sam.”
“I’m so glad I met such a delicate flower,” he says and there’s that same weird double-quality to his voice and a touch of sarcasm and it feels comfortable and silly, like this is an old, shared joke.
Dean blinks and he’s still in the motel room, Sam’s hands on his shoulders. “Hey!” Sam barks, a tiny edge of panic touching his face and Dean puts his hands up and shoves Sam because it’s all too much.
This time when he leaves the room, Sam doesn’t try to stop him.
000
There are fifteen missed calls on his cell phone and almost as many beers in him when Dean finally makes it back to the motel room. Sam is asleep, belly-down on his bed and his own cell phone leaning against his face like he passed out listening to it ring out or maybe Dean’s voicemail. Dean feels something tighten up in his chest at the very thought, remembering doing the very same thing with his dad’s voicemail right after he’d died.
Hell, he hasn’t had the heart to change it yet.
Sam’s brow is creased up and his feet are moving back and forth. Dean doesn’t think he’s having a nightmare but his dreams are definitely bad these days more often than not. Maybe it’s because he’s drunk or just so goddamn exhausted, but Dean leans over and puts his hands down flat on Sam’s spine, right where his t-shirt stops and before his boxer shorts begin.
Dean takes a breath and
he tries to keep up but his legs are too short and his hair keeps flopping in his eyes. Dean is way out ahead. He used to wait for him, jog backward sometimes and yell c’mon shortstack but he doesn’t much these days, face all drawn and serious. Something’s changed and he’s not sure why it had to but he can feel his dad’s eyes on him, full of disapproval and impatience because while he can pick up Latin like he’s always meant to speak it he still gets tangled in his feet sometimes and no matter how long and hard he practices he can’t always hit the bottles off the fence, not like Dean could from the very
jerks his hands back, holding them pressed against his chest for a second and trying to get his breathing under control. Dean looks down and Sam hasn’t moved, still frowning in his sleep.
Dean takes a long shower, scrubbing the guilt from his skin. He feels like he’s invaded, seen something he was never meant to. Dean’s a little worried though because it also felt like the first drag of a cigarette in the morning, the first belt of whiskey for the day.
It felt… addictive.
000
They spend most of the morning in silence. Dean’s almost halfway through his pancakes at the diner two blocks down from their motel when Sam finally clears his throat.
“Don’t start,” Dean warns, dousing his remaining pancakes with syrup even though they’re already swimming.
“We should go see Missouri,” Sam proposes. Dean reaches across the table and dumps syrup on what’s left of Sam’s scrambled eggs and Sam just watches him do it, exasperation plain on his features. He pushes his plate away and Dean redirects, managing to get a healthy belt of syrup into Sam’s coffee before Sam knocks his hand aside.
“We can’t just ignore this,” Sam snaps, reaching for Dean’s coffee and snatching his hand back when Dean raps him on the knuckles with his fork.
“I know that,” Dean says, waving a dismissive hand, because he does. He can pretend like nothing is happening all he likes but he’s seen how these things work. How Sam’s nightmares turned into crippling daylight visions.
“Have you ever thought that maybe this isn’t all bad?” Sam asks and Dean just blinks at him.
“Come again?”
“I mean, I was reading up on it and this thing you can do, with a little practice you might be able to-”
“I’m not a performing monkey,” Dean interjects, smacking his hand down on the table, making the cutlery and plates rattle. A waitress who’d been on her way over with the coffee pot does a sharp about-face and heads back towards the kitchen.
“Jesus Dean, I’m not saying that. We never… I never looked into maybe training my mind and I probably should have. I got taken by surprise with those visions every time we were close to the demon but maybe… “ Sam makes a helpless gesture with his hands. “Me being passive might have… Dad or you…”
“Don’t go there,” Dean sighs, scrubbing a hand over his face.
“Andy said with a little practice he was able to completely change what he could do. Ava learned to control demons. Maybe I could’ve-”
“Sam,” Dean says gently, Sam looking so glum that it just tears him up inside. “Alright,” he finally relents. “We’ll head for Lawrence, okay?”
Sam nods, still focused on his hands which are folded on the tabletop.
Part Two
Rating/Warning: PG (language)
Wordcount: 3,112
Spoilers: End of S2 (Reference to S3 BDABR)
Fandom: SPN
By:
kellifer_ficCategory: Gen
Summary: Dean has always been grounded by contact, needing to touch.
Disclaimer: Written for entertainment purposes only. No money, no sue.
“Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don’t matter at all, because once you are Real you can’t be ugly, except to people who don’t understand.”
- The Velveteen Rabbit by Margery Williams
Dean makes his way back to his dad’s storage locker when Sam claims he has things to do. Dean knows it’s more research, trying to find another way to crow bar Dean out of his deal but he simply nods because he’s been meaning to make this trip for a while.
Without Sam there and the urgent press of a case, Dean takes his time. He steers clear of the curse boxes and weapons, instead dwelling in the front part of the space where his father kept all the personal items. He sits at the piano for a while, remembering a small boy sitting by his mother while she played. She would hold her hands out for Dean’s inspection and tell him how it was her brother who got the right hands for playing. She winced when she caught a wrong note but Dean loved them as much as the right ones.
Dean contemplates taking Sam’s soccer trophy with him but then he spies something sitting at the back of a shelf, mostly hidden by decaying books. When he pushes them aside, he realises he’s looking at Sam’s old stuffed toy horse, a dun coloured pony with little black hooves and a tuft of caramel coloured mane.
Dean reaches out and picks it up but almost immediately drops it with nerveless fingers. He gets a strong flash of a little boy tagging after his big brother, a shaggy-haired and raggedy kid who just wants to go to school because he doesn’t want to be left behind. He can smell sunshine and candy and for a second he’s transported, he’s watching the scene from a weird perspective, swinging back and forth at a crazy sweeping angle.
As soon as the horse leaves his hand it all fades until Dean is firmly back in the musty storage locker, surrounded by memories he never knew his father had held on to. He hunkers down to pick up the horse, pausing just before he does to pull his sleeve over his hand. He almost laughs at himself because it’s just the place and the nostalgia of it all getting to him.
Almost.
Sam is rummaging in Dean’s duffle for headache pills three days later when Dean is only just getting out of the shower. Dean sees Sam pause, a frown on his face before he pulls free the horse.
“Where’d you get this?” he asks, turning it over in his hands. For a moment he makes it gallop in midair, his expression far away.
“Found it right in the bottom of the trunk when I cleaned it out completely.” Dean isn’t exactly sure why he lies but it’s possible. The Impala was the family car right up until Dean’s sixteenth birthday.
“Man, I haven’t seen this…” Dean remembers baby Sammy wrapping both arms around the horse and his stubby fingers not quite meeting. The toy is dwarfed in Sam’s hand as he curls it against his chest for a second.
Dean doesn’t object when Sam puts the horse in his own duffle after he finds the pills. He doesn’t say a word when Sam takes it out after he thinks Dean is asleep and holds it balanced on his knee while he’s curled over the laptop, fingers running restlessly over the worn face.
Dean’s almost entirely forgotten what happened the first time he picked up the horse when he’s handed a locket by an older lady named Doris as she’s saying been in my family for an age.
Sam and Dean are posing as antique valuers. They’re really looking for the cursed object that sees the first born son of each successive generation of the Mitkins family not live to see his fourteenth birthday. Peter Mitkins, grandson to Doris, is thirteen and eleven months.
Dean gets such a strong sense of fear and pain, coupled with a very vivid image of a small girl crouched in a corner as an older boy advances on her with a hatchet that he cries out and flings the locket away from himself and then drops to his knees, trying to spit the taste of copper from his mouth.
There’s a warm hand at his back, stroking soothing circles and Doris’ voice, shrill and unintelligible through the rushing sound in his ears. Dean lets Sam manhandle him out of the house and waves off his concern once he’s been settled in the car no matter how much Sam presses.
Sam keeps at him well into the night; concern etched on his features as he finally relents and crashes when Dean pretends to go to sleep first. Dean eases his way out of the motel room, stops at a mini-mart on the way to the old lady’s house and retrieves the locket from its case using an oven mitt with dolphins on it and a pair of tongs.
He destroys the locket on the way back to the motel room, using the multi-purpose cleansing ritual Bobby found for them and accepts Sam’s glower when he finally returns as the first fingers of dawn are reaching across the sky.
“Where’d you go?” Sam asks because he was never able to let a silence go on.
“Had stuff to do,” Dean answers cryptically, knowing he’s going to be in for miles and miles of very special Sam bitching but that’s not really his greatest concern at the moment.
Not by a long shot.
It’s two weeks of Dean keeping his hands in his pockets and doing weird things like opening doors with his elbows when Sam finally sits down and demands to know just what the hell is going on. Dean tries to evade but when Sam reaches out a hand and Dean flinches, there’s such hurt on Sam’s face that Dean will do anything to remove it, including finally admitting that maybe, possibly, there’s something actually wrong with him.
“It’s only happened twice,” Dean finishes after telling Sam what happened with the horse and then the locket. They’re sitting opposite each other on their beds, legs in the space in between. Sam’s hunched forward, fingers kneading his forehead like maybe he’ll come up with the answer to all of this if he presses hard enough.
“Okay,” Sam says, getting up and rubbing his hands off on his jeans. “Okay,” he repeats as he retrieves the small table by the door and puts it in front of Dean. He then rummages around the room, setting objects on the table in a row like a memory game. When he’s done, there’s one of their knives, the room’s bible, a quarter Sam found on the floor and a photo of Jess Sam had in his wallet. Dean looks over the items before using the corner of his jacket to nudge the photo to the furthest edge of the table from him.
“No way,” he says firmly.
“Wait, but-”
Dean gets up in one quick jerk of movement, making the table tip and everything but the bible slide to the floor. Dean grabs his keys and wallet and is to the door before Sam intercepts him. Sam smacks a hand to the door over Dean’s shoulder just as he pulls it open and it slams shut again so hard it rattles in the frame.
“Sam,” he warns, shoulders hunched up around his ears as he refuses to turn and Sam just leans harder on the door.
“Dean,” Sam says and Dean rolls his eyes and finally spins, tucking his chin down because Sam looms even when he doesn’t mean to. The only way Dean has ever been able to compensate was by closing down altogether, pulling back so he’s nothing but hard shell and spines.
Sam finally lets up when it’s clear that boxing Dean in is not accomplishing anything. Dean just needs air, to clear his head a little. Sam having visions scared the crap out of Dean but didn’t change how he felt about his brother. Dean had pretty much made his peace with the fact that Sam covered in blood, laughing maniacally and claiming to be the eggman by the light of the moon wouldn’t change his feelings for him.
This, though? Something inside him?
Whole different story.
In a spectacularly unusual first, Sam drops it completely.
Dean of course, realises only a few days later that Sam has actually just changed tack, deciding to wait him out, the little rat-bastard. His eyes go all narrow and keen every time Dean picks up as much as a spoon. He buys a pair of cheap gloves at a gas station outside Tennessee and Sam’s expression gets weirdly tight but he still doesn’t say anything.
Dean’s lulled into a false sense of security and touches a feather Sam was using as a bookmark when he’s half-asleep and in bed. He’s in the sky with thermals buffering his wings and gets such a strong surge of vertigo that he has to sit up and put his head between his knees.
Sam, sitting at the small kitchenette in the room, merely swivels in his chair and raises his eyebrows. “You booby-trapped a book!” Dean accuses, complaint thick in his voice and Sam spreads his hands.
“No-o, I marked my place in my book with a feather I picked up outside,” Sam corrects and then gestures between them. “That was bound to happen sooner or later.”
“Okay, fine,” Dean grates. “I’m sure you’ve got a theory about all this?”
“I think it might be a form of Clairtangency,” Sam says, getting up and rummaging through his duffle, pulling free a violent purple book with a picture of a hand on it with rainbows radiating out of the palm. Dean just looks at the book and back at Sam in exasperation. “It’s more commonly known as psychometry.”
“Which means?”
“You ever see one of those shows where the guy asks for people to give him items from the audience and he tells them personal info? A watch for example?”
“That stuff’s all fake,” Dean dismisses and Sam grunts.
“Yeah, maybe for your regular Vegas magic act. I think you’ve got the real deal.”
“I’m touching stuff all day,” Dean argues. “It doesn’t happen with everything.”
“I don’t think it would unless you were maybe trying,” Sam explains, warming up to his subject and Dean sits back on his bed, tucking his hands behind his head. “I think maybe you’re reading off items with a strong emotional imprint. The locket for one, because it was cursed. Snoob because-”
“Snoob?” Dean snorts, smirking.
Sam rolls his eyes and reaches back into his duffle, retrieving and shaking the horse in Dean’s direction. “Snoob,” he repeats and oh yeah, Dean wonders how he could’ve forgotten that. How their father had tried to make Sammy name the horse something else but he’d refused, bawling every time their father had suggested alternate names. It could’ve been worse. John had had no idea that the horse’s original name had in fact been Mister Pinkle Snooby Pants and it’d already taken a lot of convincing and Dean’s last bag of super-secret emergency gummi worms for Sam to shorten it.
“I’m still not really buying it,” Dean sniffs and Sam just gapes at him.
“Okay, here then.” Sam is pulling out his wallet and Dean knows what’s coming. He rolls off his bed and is backed up nearly to the bathroom when Sam finally unearths the photo, well creased and worn, taken out and held and put back hundreds of times.
“I said no!” Dean snaps because while he might try and tell Sam that he doesn’t really believe he’s got this… whatever it is, he’s fucking terrified of what will happen if he comes into contact with that particular item. Mostly because it’s been Sam’s touchstone for his grief and anger for so long.
“No, Dean, really,” Sam urges, voice going shrill with annoyance. “You think there’s some rational explanation for this? Low blood sugar or just fatigue so you’re taking micro-sleeps during the day and dreaming on your feet?”
“Hey, maybe-”
“Then touch this!” Sam demands, shoving the photo nearly into Dean’s nose. “You’re so sure this is all just some mistake? You’re not really just like me then it shouldn’t do anything to you.”
Dean’s stubborn streak, always the thing that most gets him into trouble, has him reaching out and snatching the photo before he has time to really think about what he’s doing. Smoke fills his nostrils and there’s pain and the smell of cookies and then it all… stops.
Dean’s standing in a kitchen, hip fetched up against a counter, drying a plate. He’s watching Jess who is sitting at the island in the middle on a stool, one foot swinging idly, laces of her sneaker dragging across the floor. “I love you,” he hears himself say but not, the voice is wrong and echoes strangely in his head. Jess looks up from her piles of books, hair swept up and held, defying all laws of physics, back from her face by a single strategically placed pen and she grins and crosses her eyes.
With her tongue sticking out at a jaunty angle, she says around it so she loses all her consonants, “I love you too, Sam.”
“I’m so glad I met such a delicate flower,” he says and there’s that same weird double-quality to his voice and a touch of sarcasm and it feels comfortable and silly, like this is an old, shared joke.
Dean blinks and he’s still in the motel room, Sam’s hands on his shoulders. “Hey!” Sam barks, a tiny edge of panic touching his face and Dean puts his hands up and shoves Sam because it’s all too much.
This time when he leaves the room, Sam doesn’t try to stop him.
There are fifteen missed calls on his cell phone and almost as many beers in him when Dean finally makes it back to the motel room. Sam is asleep, belly-down on his bed and his own cell phone leaning against his face like he passed out listening to it ring out or maybe Dean’s voicemail. Dean feels something tighten up in his chest at the very thought, remembering doing the very same thing with his dad’s voicemail right after he’d died.
Hell, he hasn’t had the heart to change it yet.
Sam’s brow is creased up and his feet are moving back and forth. Dean doesn’t think he’s having a nightmare but his dreams are definitely bad these days more often than not. Maybe it’s because he’s drunk or just so goddamn exhausted, but Dean leans over and puts his hands down flat on Sam’s spine, right where his t-shirt stops and before his boxer shorts begin.
Dean takes a breath and
he tries to keep up but his legs are too short and his hair keeps flopping in his eyes. Dean is way out ahead. He used to wait for him, jog backward sometimes and yell c’mon shortstack but he doesn’t much these days, face all drawn and serious. Something’s changed and he’s not sure why it had to but he can feel his dad’s eyes on him, full of disapproval and impatience because while he can pick up Latin like he’s always meant to speak it he still gets tangled in his feet sometimes and no matter how long and hard he practices he can’t always hit the bottles off the fence, not like Dean could from the very
jerks his hands back, holding them pressed against his chest for a second and trying to get his breathing under control. Dean looks down and Sam hasn’t moved, still frowning in his sleep.
Dean takes a long shower, scrubbing the guilt from his skin. He feels like he’s invaded, seen something he was never meant to. Dean’s a little worried though because it also felt like the first drag of a cigarette in the morning, the first belt of whiskey for the day.
It felt… addictive.
They spend most of the morning in silence. Dean’s almost halfway through his pancakes at the diner two blocks down from their motel when Sam finally clears his throat.
“Don’t start,” Dean warns, dousing his remaining pancakes with syrup even though they’re already swimming.
“We should go see Missouri,” Sam proposes. Dean reaches across the table and dumps syrup on what’s left of Sam’s scrambled eggs and Sam just watches him do it, exasperation plain on his features. He pushes his plate away and Dean redirects, managing to get a healthy belt of syrup into Sam’s coffee before Sam knocks his hand aside.
“We can’t just ignore this,” Sam snaps, reaching for Dean’s coffee and snatching his hand back when Dean raps him on the knuckles with his fork.
“I know that,” Dean says, waving a dismissive hand, because he does. He can pretend like nothing is happening all he likes but he’s seen how these things work. How Sam’s nightmares turned into crippling daylight visions.
“Have you ever thought that maybe this isn’t all bad?” Sam asks and Dean just blinks at him.
“Come again?”
“I mean, I was reading up on it and this thing you can do, with a little practice you might be able to-”
“I’m not a performing monkey,” Dean interjects, smacking his hand down on the table, making the cutlery and plates rattle. A waitress who’d been on her way over with the coffee pot does a sharp about-face and heads back towards the kitchen.
“Jesus Dean, I’m not saying that. We never… I never looked into maybe training my mind and I probably should have. I got taken by surprise with those visions every time we were close to the demon but maybe… “ Sam makes a helpless gesture with his hands. “Me being passive might have… Dad or you…”
“Don’t go there,” Dean sighs, scrubbing a hand over his face.
“Andy said with a little practice he was able to completely change what he could do. Ava learned to control demons. Maybe I could’ve-”
“Sam,” Dean says gently, Sam looking so glum that it just tears him up inside. “Alright,” he finally relents. “We’ll head for Lawrence, okay?”
Sam nods, still focused on his hands which are folded on the tabletop.
Part Two
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I absolutely love this. I love the concept of it, touching items and seeing things, and I love how you made that so visceral, putting Dean INTO Sam's body, talking to Jess. I love how the old toy of Sam's and the storage locker is important for the story.
Dean finding it addictive - Dean’s a little worried though because it also felt like the first drag of a cigarette in the morning, the first belt of whiskey for the day - This line - just perfect.
Really, really good work and I WANT MORE!
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