Supernatural ficlet
Posted on 2005.11.25 at 16:20Current Mood:
procrastinating
Yeah, I know, I should be working on my ![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/community.gif)
yuletide fic. What can I say, I just needed to get the pretty ghost-hunting boys out of my head before I can get back to the pretty [deleted because I can't mention what I'm writing for yuletide.
Title: Communication
Author:![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif)
marinarusalka
Rating: PG for some swearing
Pairing: None.
Summary: A short missing scene near the end of "Asylum"
Disclaimer: Sam and Dean are way too pretty to be owned by the likes of me.
They drove back to the motel in stony silence. Sam cleared his throat once or twice as if he was getting ready to say something, but Dean kept his eyes squarely on the road, and for once Sam took the hint and kept quiet. Dean was glad of it. He'd meant it when he told Sam he wasn't in a caring and sharing mood.
He wasn't in a driving mood, either. It was stupid: this wasn't the most physically demanding job he'd ever done, not by a long shot, and he'd certainly been hurt worse often enough, yet he didn't recall ever feeling so cripplingly tired before. He ached all over, every bone and muscle, and his chest was giving him a good idea of how a tenderized steak must feel. Getting old, Winchester. Over the hill at twenty-seven, how's that for pathetic? Any other time, he would've let Sam drive. Then again, any other time, they would've been talking now.
"Dibs on first shower," he said when they reached their room, and Sam actually looked startled to hear his voice for a moment. He started to clear his throat again, then caught himself, looked away from Dean and made a big production about digging his key from his pocket.
Dean would've traded the Impala for a long, hot soak, but their bathroom didn't have a tub, just a shower stall with a glass door and ancient, discolored white tiles. At least the water pressure was good. Dean stood under the scalding stream and willed his muscles to relax as the heat soaked in.
His chest was one giant bruise, mottled and raw, angry red specks marking where bits of salt had lodged under the skin. His coat and shirt had absorbed some of the blast, but not all. It stung like hell. Would probably go on stinging for hours. Looking made it feel worse somehow, so Dean stared at the wall and tried not to think about what would've happened if Sam had fired at his face.
His list of things not to think about was growing at an alarming rate recently. That was probably pathetic, too.
He could've stayed there all night, but the water ran cold after a while. Dean shivered as he reached for a towel. His clothes lay in a heap where he'd dropped them by the door. Dean left them there. Not his usual MO, but he was tired, dammit, and there was no one around to make him do fifty push-ups for being a lazy slob. So he wrapped the towel around his waist and trudged back into the room, ignoring the faint nagging of guilt caused by the sight of his socks soaking up a puddle under the sink.
Sam's eyes widened a little as he took in the damage, but all he said was, "You'd better not have used up all the hot water."
"Cold showers are good for you," Dean told him. Sam paused to glare at him before slamming the bathroom door shut.
Dean found a clean pair of boxers in his bag and put them on, then sat on the edge of the bed to rummage through the first-aid kit. There was a half-empty bottle of codeine left over from Sam's last trip to the ER and an almost-new tube of Aspercreme buried among the crystals, the vials of holy water and the carefully labeled herb pouches. Dean dry-swallowed two of the pills and rubbed a handful of the ointment over his chest, wincing every time his fingers slid over a tender spot. His stomach growled. Yesterday's dinner had been a long time ago, and apparently being shot by his baby brother burned up a lot of calories. Dean thought longingly about a big fat greasy cheeseburger, with bacon and mushrooms and onions, and French fries drowning in ketchup. And a beer. Several beers. Lots of beers. So fucking what if it was eight in the morning?
The fleabag motel they were staying at had no restaurant, but they'd passed a strip mall on the way. It would take maybe five minutes to drive over there. Dean started to rise to his feet, but the exhaustion washed over him in a cold, smothering wave. All the small steps that made up a routine food run -- get dressed, put on shoes, walk out to the car, start the car -- suddenly loomed before him as a series of giant, insurmountable obstacles. His legs wobbled and he sat back down, breathing as if he'd just had a workout.
He was still sitting there when Sam emerged from the bathroom, looking grumpy and carrying his clothes in a neatly folded pile. Dean braced himself for the inevitable bitching about the cold water, but it didn't come. He stared at the faded patch of carpet in front of him and didn't look up when Sam's bare feet came into view.
"Dean?" Sam's voice was soft, with a little hitch to it. He sounded all of ten years old when he talked liked that. Except he wasn't ten years old. He was twenty-two, a man grown. Old enough to vote and drink and hunt, and to think his big brother was a pathetic loser. Old enough to aim a gun at the pathetic loser's face and pull the trigger. It was just plain fucking unfair, after all that, that he could stand there and speak Dean's name in his little-boy-lost voice, and Dean had to fucking concentrate to keep from automatically reaching out to comfort him.
And he wasn't backing off, either. "Dean, are you okay?"
"Sure," Dean said. "I'm peachy."
Silence for a while after that. Sam's feet shuffled out of sight, returning a few minutes later clad in jeans and tennis shoes.
"I'm going to go get something to eat. You coming?"
"Nah. I'm…" damned it he was going to admit to being tired, or to any other weakness, just then. "…not hungry."
"Oh. Okay." Sam's voice hitched again. Dean clenched his hands around a fold in the bedspread. "Do you want me to--"
"I'll see you when you get back," Dean said sharply.
"Right. Sure." Sam shifted his weight from foot to foot. "Car keys?"
"In my coat."
Sam left. Dean stayed where he was for another couple of minutes before deciding that he'd wallowed enough. His legs still wobbled when he first stood up, but he braced himself against the wall and waited until they steadied before returning to the bathroom to retrieve his clothes from the floor.
Except they weren't on the floor. His jeans, scruffy but still wearable, lay carefully folded on the counter next to the sink. Everything else hung from the laundry line in the shower stall, wet and clean. Dean stood and stared for a while, then grabbed the jeans and went to get dressed.
He was flipping channels on the TV when Sam returned, juggling two paper sacks and two cups of coffee in a cardboard carry tray.
"Here." He said, and handed one of the sacks to Dean. "I know you said you weren't hungry, but I thought I'd bring you something just in case."
Cheeseburger with bacon and mushrooms and onions. Fries. An actual bottle of ketchup, not the little foil packets. No beer, but the coffee had the right amount of sugar in it when Dean sipped it.
The sudden new ache in Dean's chest had nothing at all to do with rock salt.
"Thanks," he muttered, and poured a puddle of ketchup into the styrofoam lid of the fries container. "You washed out my clothes."
Sam shrugged, not looking up from the coffee he was stirring. "I just figured, by the time we got to a laundromat, the bloodstains would set."
"Thanks," Dean said again. "I mean that."
Sam's face turned a faint shade of pink. He mumbled something that might've been "you're welcome" under his breath, fidgeted in his chair for a bit, and finally launched into speech at the exact moment as Dean.
"Dean, I swear I--"
"Sam, I'm really not--"
They both trailed off into silence. Sam's blush deepened. He looked at the floor, then at Dean, then at the floor again, and rubbed the back of his neck.
"You go first," he said.
"Nah," Dean said, "I don't think we really need to go there."
"But we--"
"Sam. I get the idea, okay? And I'm willing to take it on faith that you get it. Not seeing the need for a Hallmark moment here. Let a man eat his fries in peace, okay?"
"Okay," Sam sighed, but he looked more relieved than disappointed as he tore the wrappers off his own food. Which turned out to be a fruit cup and something that looked suspiciously like a bran muffin. Dean gaped at it in an only slightly exaggerated show of disgust.
"Granola food! A Winchester is eating granola food! What is the world coming to?"
"Hey," Sam said, "some of us like to take a break from the grease and sodium sometimes, Some of us actually remember what the word 'breakfast' means. Some of us are going to laugh and laugh at the irony when the cholesterol kills you before any ghost or demon has the opportunity."
"Some of you," Dean said, "are just asking to get that bran muffin crammed where the sun don't shine."
"Just you try it, that's all," Sam said and grinned.
Dean grinned back. It felt almost right.
So while I've got you all here, any Supernatural watchers on my flist willing to beta read future fics? I'd like to write more in this fandom, but I hate posting without a beta reader.
yuletide fic. What can I say, I just needed to get the pretty ghost-hunting boys out of my head before I can get back to the pretty [deleted because I can't mention what I'm writing for yuletide.Title: Communication
Author:
marinarusalkaRating: PG for some swearing
Pairing: None.
Summary: A short missing scene near the end of "Asylum"
Disclaimer: Sam and Dean are way too pretty to be owned by the likes of me.
They drove back to the motel in stony silence. Sam cleared his throat once or twice as if he was getting ready to say something, but Dean kept his eyes squarely on the road, and for once Sam took the hint and kept quiet. Dean was glad of it. He'd meant it when he told Sam he wasn't in a caring and sharing mood.
He wasn't in a driving mood, either. It was stupid: this wasn't the most physically demanding job he'd ever done, not by a long shot, and he'd certainly been hurt worse often enough, yet he didn't recall ever feeling so cripplingly tired before. He ached all over, every bone and muscle, and his chest was giving him a good idea of how a tenderized steak must feel. Getting old, Winchester. Over the hill at twenty-seven, how's that for pathetic? Any other time, he would've let Sam drive. Then again, any other time, they would've been talking now.
"Dibs on first shower," he said when they reached their room, and Sam actually looked startled to hear his voice for a moment. He started to clear his throat again, then caught himself, looked away from Dean and made a big production about digging his key from his pocket.
Dean would've traded the Impala for a long, hot soak, but their bathroom didn't have a tub, just a shower stall with a glass door and ancient, discolored white tiles. At least the water pressure was good. Dean stood under the scalding stream and willed his muscles to relax as the heat soaked in.
His chest was one giant bruise, mottled and raw, angry red specks marking where bits of salt had lodged under the skin. His coat and shirt had absorbed some of the blast, but not all. It stung like hell. Would probably go on stinging for hours. Looking made it feel worse somehow, so Dean stared at the wall and tried not to think about what would've happened if Sam had fired at his face.
His list of things not to think about was growing at an alarming rate recently. That was probably pathetic, too.
He could've stayed there all night, but the water ran cold after a while. Dean shivered as he reached for a towel. His clothes lay in a heap where he'd dropped them by the door. Dean left them there. Not his usual MO, but he was tired, dammit, and there was no one around to make him do fifty push-ups for being a lazy slob. So he wrapped the towel around his waist and trudged back into the room, ignoring the faint nagging of guilt caused by the sight of his socks soaking up a puddle under the sink.
Sam's eyes widened a little as he took in the damage, but all he said was, "You'd better not have used up all the hot water."
"Cold showers are good for you," Dean told him. Sam paused to glare at him before slamming the bathroom door shut.
Dean found a clean pair of boxers in his bag and put them on, then sat on the edge of the bed to rummage through the first-aid kit. There was a half-empty bottle of codeine left over from Sam's last trip to the ER and an almost-new tube of Aspercreme buried among the crystals, the vials of holy water and the carefully labeled herb pouches. Dean dry-swallowed two of the pills and rubbed a handful of the ointment over his chest, wincing every time his fingers slid over a tender spot. His stomach growled. Yesterday's dinner had been a long time ago, and apparently being shot by his baby brother burned up a lot of calories. Dean thought longingly about a big fat greasy cheeseburger, with bacon and mushrooms and onions, and French fries drowning in ketchup. And a beer. Several beers. Lots of beers. So fucking what if it was eight in the morning?
The fleabag motel they were staying at had no restaurant, but they'd passed a strip mall on the way. It would take maybe five minutes to drive over there. Dean started to rise to his feet, but the exhaustion washed over him in a cold, smothering wave. All the small steps that made up a routine food run -- get dressed, put on shoes, walk out to the car, start the car -- suddenly loomed before him as a series of giant, insurmountable obstacles. His legs wobbled and he sat back down, breathing as if he'd just had a workout.
He was still sitting there when Sam emerged from the bathroom, looking grumpy and carrying his clothes in a neatly folded pile. Dean braced himself for the inevitable bitching about the cold water, but it didn't come. He stared at the faded patch of carpet in front of him and didn't look up when Sam's bare feet came into view.
"Dean?" Sam's voice was soft, with a little hitch to it. He sounded all of ten years old when he talked liked that. Except he wasn't ten years old. He was twenty-two, a man grown. Old enough to vote and drink and hunt, and to think his big brother was a pathetic loser. Old enough to aim a gun at the pathetic loser's face and pull the trigger. It was just plain fucking unfair, after all that, that he could stand there and speak Dean's name in his little-boy-lost voice, and Dean had to fucking concentrate to keep from automatically reaching out to comfort him.
And he wasn't backing off, either. "Dean, are you okay?"
"Sure," Dean said. "I'm peachy."
Silence for a while after that. Sam's feet shuffled out of sight, returning a few minutes later clad in jeans and tennis shoes.
"I'm going to go get something to eat. You coming?"
"Nah. I'm…" damned it he was going to admit to being tired, or to any other weakness, just then. "…not hungry."
"Oh. Okay." Sam's voice hitched again. Dean clenched his hands around a fold in the bedspread. "Do you want me to--"
"I'll see you when you get back," Dean said sharply.
"Right. Sure." Sam shifted his weight from foot to foot. "Car keys?"
"In my coat."
Sam left. Dean stayed where he was for another couple of minutes before deciding that he'd wallowed enough. His legs still wobbled when he first stood up, but he braced himself against the wall and waited until they steadied before returning to the bathroom to retrieve his clothes from the floor.
Except they weren't on the floor. His jeans, scruffy but still wearable, lay carefully folded on the counter next to the sink. Everything else hung from the laundry line in the shower stall, wet and clean. Dean stood and stared for a while, then grabbed the jeans and went to get dressed.
He was flipping channels on the TV when Sam returned, juggling two paper sacks and two cups of coffee in a cardboard carry tray.
"Here." He said, and handed one of the sacks to Dean. "I know you said you weren't hungry, but I thought I'd bring you something just in case."
Cheeseburger with bacon and mushrooms and onions. Fries. An actual bottle of ketchup, not the little foil packets. No beer, but the coffee had the right amount of sugar in it when Dean sipped it.
The sudden new ache in Dean's chest had nothing at all to do with rock salt.
"Thanks," he muttered, and poured a puddle of ketchup into the styrofoam lid of the fries container. "You washed out my clothes."
Sam shrugged, not looking up from the coffee he was stirring. "I just figured, by the time we got to a laundromat, the bloodstains would set."
"Thanks," Dean said again. "I mean that."
Sam's face turned a faint shade of pink. He mumbled something that might've been "you're welcome" under his breath, fidgeted in his chair for a bit, and finally launched into speech at the exact moment as Dean.
"Dean, I swear I--"
"Sam, I'm really not--"
They both trailed off into silence. Sam's blush deepened. He looked at the floor, then at Dean, then at the floor again, and rubbed the back of his neck.
"You go first," he said.
"Nah," Dean said, "I don't think we really need to go there."
"But we--"
"Sam. I get the idea, okay? And I'm willing to take it on faith that you get it. Not seeing the need for a Hallmark moment here. Let a man eat his fries in peace, okay?"
"Okay," Sam sighed, but he looked more relieved than disappointed as he tore the wrappers off his own food. Which turned out to be a fruit cup and something that looked suspiciously like a bran muffin. Dean gaped at it in an only slightly exaggerated show of disgust.
"Granola food! A Winchester is eating granola food! What is the world coming to?"
"Hey," Sam said, "some of us like to take a break from the grease and sodium sometimes, Some of us actually remember what the word 'breakfast' means. Some of us are going to laugh and laugh at the irony when the cholesterol kills you before any ghost or demon has the opportunity."
"Some of you," Dean said, "are just asking to get that bran muffin crammed where the sun don't shine."
"Just you try it, that's all," Sam said and grinned.
Dean grinned back. It felt almost right.
So while I've got you all here, any Supernatural watchers on my flist willing to beta read future fics? I'd like to write more in this fandom, but I hate posting without a beta reader.