*Skids into home base, with 24ish hours to spare before the SPN season return* Ha, who says I can't make deadlines? Be quiet, tutors!
Fandom: Supernatural
Pairing: Gen. (Dean/OFCs if you want to get technical)
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Angst
Spoilers: Devil's Trap
Word Count: 2,668
With so much love and thanks to![[profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
vegetariansushi: for the cheerleading squad, the kick arse beta and making sure that I actually finished something for the first time in OMG, so long...
Five times Dean Winchester nearly sells his soul, and the one time he does.
1.
There’s this rare-car dealership on the way home from elementary school number seven, and the car in the showroom window takes his breath away. Dean fogs up the glass religiously every afternoon until one of the salesmen comes out to yell at him.
“You know what that is, kid?”
“Yessir,” says Dean. “It's a 1969 Impala SS four-two-seven.”
The man blinks, then casts a sneer over Dean’s second-hand clothes and ratty backpack.
“You know how much that costs, boy?”
Here is where Dean falters - there is no price in the window, and he hasn’t had the opportunity to boost car magazines from the newsagents yet. Lots of shotguns, he thinks. Too much rock salt.
“Put it this way, your immortal soul might get you a down payment.”
Dean opens his mouth to ask where he might get some goat’s blood - he isn’t sure what a down payment is, but he figures they can work something out with the credit cards - then pauses. He isn’t sure what the end result of selling your soul is, either, but it’s probably enough to make Dad yell at him. Dean closes his mouth.
2.
Don't look it in the eye, Dad had said, but he hadn't said anything about looking at her, because damn. She'd called to him, and started to saunter off through the trees before he can call back and explain: sorry, hunting tonight, how about I take your number for safe keeping? She's about fifty yards away, now, and she turns back to smile over her shoulder.
Dean glances around. Sammy and Dad are slowly picking their way down the gully, closing in on the grave, and the spirit is nowhere in sight. He has his shotgun, of course, but rock salt's not much good in the seduction game. It won't matter if he puts it down and follows, just for a minute…
He jogs to catch up.
"Hey honey," she says as he reaches her side.
Behind them, Sam slips on the slope and swears, and she glances over at the noise. Dean turns the Winchester Smile on full bore.
"Don't worry about them, just my idiot brother."
"Really?" she smiles. "I always wanted a brother." She steps forward and runs a hand over his chest. He has a moment to marvel over the fact that they're exactly the same height before she's damn near devouring his mouth and her other hand is heading south.
"Like that, huh?" she asks when his breath stutters. He can't quite form the words to respond because she's got his jeans open, and the world has shrunk down to -- Jesus Christ, what she's doing with that hand.
He can't see properly, even though he's pretty sure his eyes are open. Then she stops and he almost staggers, whimpering.
"Shh," she says, "wouldn't want you falling over, honey." She's guiding him down onto the ground and her hand's back where it belongs, but her other hand is pressing against his scalp. He tries to turn his head, and she pushes harder, keeping him still.
"Want my body, huh?" she grins.
"Please," he gasps as her hand twists, and he's vaguely aware that his feet have gone numb and there's something…
"Want to swap?" she whispers. "I always did want a brother." His feet are numb and his legs won't move and there's something inside him scrabbling, pushing against the hand on his head. The only thing that matters, though, is that she's hitching up her skirt and he's trying to find the breath to say: yes, anything, anything you want when her head explodes. She disintegrates with an unearthly howl of rage, and Sammy is sprinting towards him, shotgun in his arms, yelling his name.
~*~
Dad gives him a dressing down, but that's a minor deterrent compared to that sensation of something inside him trying to pull free, trying to rise up out of him. He wears a hat for weeks. By the time he takes it off, his gaze is schooled so it never quite reaches their eyes.
3.
A while after the Michigan incident, long enough so that Dean stops flinching when Sammy ruffles his hair, they settle in Benton, Pennsylvania for a few months.
Her name is Amy. She works in a diner on Main Street, and moves with a grace and confidence that carries straight over into the bedroom.
"We have pie," she announces one afternoon when Dean drops by to see her.
"Good pie?" he asks, sliding onto a stool.
"Good, fresh, and -- for you -- cheap. A buck a slice."
He thinks of the change in his pocket and winces a little: barely enough for a coffee. She must catch the flicker of expression, because she props her chin up on her hands, elbows on the counter.
"So, we are reduced to the time-honored tradition of bartering, yes?"
He can't help grinning back at her, and the pie does look good: dark cherries under a latticework of pastry.
"My body," he says. "All night."
Amy has Rules about not touching her lovers at work, but his skin tingles as she undresses him with her eyes. He shifts a little on the stool.
"And the fact that I have that anyway?"
“My soul," he says before he can think. She's laughing when his mind catches up with his words and the adrenaline-panic catches up with his body. He grips the edge of the counter, hard.
The laughter falls from her eyes, and she actually takes a step back and to the side, which is just as smoothly covered as a bow of deference.
"Alas," she says. "Not even our pies are worthy of such a trade," and he exhales.
"Thank you," he mutters, and gropes for his money. "Just a coffee." He empties his pockets for her tip.
~*~
When he gets back to the house, Dad is talking about a werewolf in New Jersey, and Sammy is checking over the shotguns and packing clothes. Dean doesn't know if he's relieved or not.
4.
In the months after Sammy leaves, Dad practically bans Sam's name from conversation, but it doesn't escape Dean's notice that their hunts become focused along the coast: Oregon, Utah, Arizona, never actually venturing into California, but close enough that should they be needed…
As if the hordes know they're a hunter down, their workload doubles. They deal with three poltergeists, four particularly nasty hauntings and a banshee in less than two months.
"We can cover more ground if we split up," Dad says. It's logical, and maybe Dad even thinks he's bestowing on Dean a compliment, that he's old enough and skilled enough to hunt alone, but all Dean can feel is a sort of misery and can't help wondering if Dad just wants him gone for a while. He hasn't exactly been a barrel of laughs since Sammy left.
They check in regularly, swap information and discoveries, but that doesn't change the reality of being alone on the road for hours, and checking into an empty motel room.
This one's no different. He finds the right room by counting doors -- most of the numbers are gone -- and his boots stick to the carpet when he steps inside. He dumps his bags on the spare bed and forces his aching, exhausted body into a reconnoiter. The window's painted shut, the TV doesn’t work, and there's a ghost in the bathroom.
It's huddled in the shower, and flinches when Dean pushes open the shower curtain. It's a little boy, no more than seven when he died, overalls caked with blood.
Dean crouches. "Hey," he says, very softly, not sure how long it's been here, if it still knows how to speak.
"Better off without me," it says mechanically, and flinches again. Dean relaxes; it's an echo, the strongest part of an already weak ghost, repeating over and over. "Better off without me," it says.
Dean's fishing the last of the rock salt from his jeans' pocket so he can get some damn sleep when it turns and looks directly at him. "Mom and dad said that, all the time: 'better off without you'. They were right. After I was gone, they were happy."
Right, not an echo then.
"You're dead," he says gently, because it seems lucid enough. "You should probably go on now."
It smiles at him, which is enough to raise the hairs on the back of Dean's neck.
"Come with me," it says. "They'd be happier without you."
"Yeah, because you're the bluebird of happiness, come to crap down people's chimneys," Dean says, but that's not what he's thinking. He's remembering how Sammy's voice practically flatlined last phone call, like he'd been expecting someone else; how he can't remember what Dad's laugh sounds like.
It smiles a little wider, and sits up. "See?" it whispers. "Come with me. They'll be soo happy. I can make them happy."
Despair and weariness tugs at him, almost a physical sensation tempting him from his crouch to his knees. He wonders, not so idly, how many suicides this motel's had.
"You promise?" Dean says, and it's not as sarcastic to his own ears as he would have liked. The thin paper of the salt packet is sticking to his palm, and it bursts when he clenches his fist.
"Yes, yes..." It's babbling, reaching out with icy fingers. "Come with me," it demands again. Dean reaches back, and its only dumb luck that that's the fist with the salt. The ghost shrieks, and dissipates with a gust of cold breeze over Dean's face.
He staggers to the bed, climbs under the covers, and breathes for a long time.
5.
Dean rolls his shoulders and wonders for a moment about propping his eyes open with toothpicks. His head is pounding from too many hours of loud music and too much bass. An entire night hunting at a rave: nothing to drink, no interesting glances, and most significantly, no sign of a succubus.
Sam doesn't look in any a better mood, mouth set in a thin line as they wait for the train. The fucking train. Sam had vetoed taking the car, citing traffic, parking, and lack of sleep by the end of it. It makes sense, but Dean's not about to admit that.
Something comes in from the right, nearly hits Dean in the chest, and he rears back enough to identify it as a pamphlet.
Dean turns his head, takes in the sight of the woman holding said pamphlet, and smiles.
“Do you know Jesus Christ?” she asks, and Sam has a tight grip above Dean’s elbow before Dean even opens his mouth.
“No,” he says, low and firm, and starts trying to pull Dean back. Dean braces his legs and holds fast.
“Do you know Jesus?” she implores again, and Dean looks her in the eye. “Yes, ma’am, I’ve heard of him.” Behind him, Sam groans and lets go.
“Heard of him? Have you accepted the blood of Jesus? Are you baptized?"
Dean thinks back. It sounds like the sort of thing Dad would have got Pastor Jim to do, but Dean doubts that counts.
"Not that I can remember."
"But your soul!" She says. "Who will take care of your immortal soul?"
“Would you like it?”
The woman blinks. “Jesus wants your soul.”
Dean glances around, taking in the gathering crowds of suits heading to work, and a glowering Sam.
“I don’t see him around, but you’re here. How much do you want for it?” Dean digs a stub of chalk out of his pocket and fishes one of the pamphlets (The Four-Fold Superiority of the King James Bible) out of her bag. He flips it over to the fluorescent orange back page and dictates as he writes.
“‘I, Dean Winchester, hereby commend my soul into the hands of…’ I’m sorry, what was your name again, ma’am?”
She's staring at him in a sort of horrified disbelief, and starts backing up even before Sam’s hand smacks down across Dean’s, the pamphlet and the chalk.
“Stop it, Dean," he says, and he actually looks a little spooked.
"What? Since when has baiting fundies not been a public service?"
Sam snatches the pamphlet from Dean's hand and waves under his nose. "I don't care about that, but man, these aren't just words. Of all people, you should know that."
The chalk is blunt, and has made almost illegible marks on the cheap paper but Dean feels a little chill anyway. He clears his throat a little, and is trying to think of a way of apologizing without admitting any wrongdoing when the train whooshes into the station. Onboard, it's too damned cramped to have a proper argument, but not quite cramped enough that Dean needs to stand as close to Sam as he does. He bumps his shoulder against Sam's on the next bend, and after a moment, Sam leans back.
The one time he does.
He divides his day between Sam's and Dad's rooms as best he can. The nurses look at him with pity in their eyes as they wheel him back and forth, but they let him hang amulets and perform blessings, and Dean can pretend it doesn't matter.
When the nurses tending to John start avoiding Dean's eyes, Dean prays. He rests his head on his hands and begs.
He sits by Sam’s bed for three days straight after John dies, talking low and steady and non-stop. He recites charms and blessings, and memories and jokes because otherwise the not-silence of the respirator will drive him insane.
“Hey, Sammy, Louise is here to take your blood pressure and stick a thermometer up your ass.”
Louise, second nurse of the Tuesday morning shift, rolls her eyes, but she’s smiling as she pumps up the blood pressure cuff.
"Don't listen to him, Sam," she says. "Your brother's full of it."
Louise’s eyes flicker to the reading on the display, the notes in her hand and when she straightens up, somewhere over Dean’s shoulder.
“Dean…” she says, and her voice is soft in all the wrong ways. For too long there’s only the hiss and click of the respirator.
“Don’t wanna hear it,” Dean says. “Sammy, you’re going to be fine.”
But after she leaves, he can’t say a word. He tangles his fingers with Sam's again, and tries to breathe for his brother, but he can feel it as the day wears on: no matter how hard he holds on, there's something tugging at Sammy's other hand.
For once, he lets the nurses wheel him to a proper bed down the hall for the night. After the first round of night shift has been through, Dean tears the sheet to give himself something to bite down on as he hauls himself back into the wheelchair and drops the folded fabric into his lap to hide the blood seeping from torn stitches as he heads for the elevators. The pain isn't as bad as the time the werewolf clawed his back, not with the morphine in him, and it's nowhere near watching Dad die, or feeling Sammy slipping.
The boiler room isn't exactly cold, but there are no windows, which is enough to count as a sunless room.
He doesn’t have any goat’s blood. His own will have to do.
Dean wakes shivering, and he has to sit up and blink for a long time before the chalk marks on the floor make any sense. He scrambles to get his hospital gown back on, but when he grabs the amulet Dad gave him years back, it burns his hand. He leaves it where it falls and stares at his palm for a moment, telling himself it doesn't matter.
When he walks into Sam’s room, his blistered palm aches at the sight of the blessed charms, and Sam’s eyes are fluttering open.
~finis~
Fandom: Supernatural
Pairing: Gen. (Dean/OFCs if you want to get technical)
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Angst
Spoilers: Devil's Trap
Word Count: 2,668
With so much love and thanks to
vegetariansushiFive times Dean Winchester nearly sells his soul, and the one time he does.
1.
There’s this rare-car dealership on the way home from elementary school number seven, and the car in the showroom window takes his breath away. Dean fogs up the glass religiously every afternoon until one of the salesmen comes out to yell at him.
“You know what that is, kid?”
“Yessir,” says Dean. “It's a 1969 Impala SS four-two-seven.”
The man blinks, then casts a sneer over Dean’s second-hand clothes and ratty backpack.
“You know how much that costs, boy?”
Here is where Dean falters - there is no price in the window, and he hasn’t had the opportunity to boost car magazines from the newsagents yet. Lots of shotguns, he thinks. Too much rock salt.
“Put it this way, your immortal soul might get you a down payment.”
Dean opens his mouth to ask where he might get some goat’s blood - he isn’t sure what a down payment is, but he figures they can work something out with the credit cards - then pauses. He isn’t sure what the end result of selling your soul is, either, but it’s probably enough to make Dad yell at him. Dean closes his mouth.
2.
Don't look it in the eye, Dad had said, but he hadn't said anything about looking at her, because damn. She'd called to him, and started to saunter off through the trees before he can call back and explain: sorry, hunting tonight, how about I take your number for safe keeping? She's about fifty yards away, now, and she turns back to smile over her shoulder.
Dean glances around. Sammy and Dad are slowly picking their way down the gully, closing in on the grave, and the spirit is nowhere in sight. He has his shotgun, of course, but rock salt's not much good in the seduction game. It won't matter if he puts it down and follows, just for a minute…
He jogs to catch up.
"Hey honey," she says as he reaches her side.
Behind them, Sam slips on the slope and swears, and she glances over at the noise. Dean turns the Winchester Smile on full bore.
"Don't worry about them, just my idiot brother."
"Really?" she smiles. "I always wanted a brother." She steps forward and runs a hand over his chest. He has a moment to marvel over the fact that they're exactly the same height before she's damn near devouring his mouth and her other hand is heading south.
"Like that, huh?" she asks when his breath stutters. He can't quite form the words to respond because she's got his jeans open, and the world has shrunk down to -- Jesus Christ, what she's doing with that hand.
He can't see properly, even though he's pretty sure his eyes are open. Then she stops and he almost staggers, whimpering.
"Shh," she says, "wouldn't want you falling over, honey." She's guiding him down onto the ground and her hand's back where it belongs, but her other hand is pressing against his scalp. He tries to turn his head, and she pushes harder, keeping him still.
"Want my body, huh?" she grins.
"Please," he gasps as her hand twists, and he's vaguely aware that his feet have gone numb and there's something…
"Want to swap?" she whispers. "I always did want a brother." His feet are numb and his legs won't move and there's something inside him scrabbling, pushing against the hand on his head. The only thing that matters, though, is that she's hitching up her skirt and he's trying to find the breath to say: yes, anything, anything you want when her head explodes. She disintegrates with an unearthly howl of rage, and Sammy is sprinting towards him, shotgun in his arms, yelling his name.
~*~
Dad gives him a dressing down, but that's a minor deterrent compared to that sensation of something inside him trying to pull free, trying to rise up out of him. He wears a hat for weeks. By the time he takes it off, his gaze is schooled so it never quite reaches their eyes.
3.
A while after the Michigan incident, long enough so that Dean stops flinching when Sammy ruffles his hair, they settle in Benton, Pennsylvania for a few months.
Her name is Amy. She works in a diner on Main Street, and moves with a grace and confidence that carries straight over into the bedroom.
"We have pie," she announces one afternoon when Dean drops by to see her.
"Good pie?" he asks, sliding onto a stool.
"Good, fresh, and -- for you -- cheap. A buck a slice."
He thinks of the change in his pocket and winces a little: barely enough for a coffee. She must catch the flicker of expression, because she props her chin up on her hands, elbows on the counter.
"So, we are reduced to the time-honored tradition of bartering, yes?"
He can't help grinning back at her, and the pie does look good: dark cherries under a latticework of pastry.
"My body," he says. "All night."
Amy has Rules about not touching her lovers at work, but his skin tingles as she undresses him with her eyes. He shifts a little on the stool.
"And the fact that I have that anyway?"
“My soul," he says before he can think. She's laughing when his mind catches up with his words and the adrenaline-panic catches up with his body. He grips the edge of the counter, hard.
The laughter falls from her eyes, and she actually takes a step back and to the side, which is just as smoothly covered as a bow of deference.
"Alas," she says. "Not even our pies are worthy of such a trade," and he exhales.
"Thank you," he mutters, and gropes for his money. "Just a coffee." He empties his pockets for her tip.
~*~
When he gets back to the house, Dad is talking about a werewolf in New Jersey, and Sammy is checking over the shotguns and packing clothes. Dean doesn't know if he's relieved or not.
4.
In the months after Sammy leaves, Dad practically bans Sam's name from conversation, but it doesn't escape Dean's notice that their hunts become focused along the coast: Oregon, Utah, Arizona, never actually venturing into California, but close enough that should they be needed…
As if the hordes know they're a hunter down, their workload doubles. They deal with three poltergeists, four particularly nasty hauntings and a banshee in less than two months.
"We can cover more ground if we split up," Dad says. It's logical, and maybe Dad even thinks he's bestowing on Dean a compliment, that he's old enough and skilled enough to hunt alone, but all Dean can feel is a sort of misery and can't help wondering if Dad just wants him gone for a while. He hasn't exactly been a barrel of laughs since Sammy left.
They check in regularly, swap information and discoveries, but that doesn't change the reality of being alone on the road for hours, and checking into an empty motel room.
This one's no different. He finds the right room by counting doors -- most of the numbers are gone -- and his boots stick to the carpet when he steps inside. He dumps his bags on the spare bed and forces his aching, exhausted body into a reconnoiter. The window's painted shut, the TV doesn’t work, and there's a ghost in the bathroom.
It's huddled in the shower, and flinches when Dean pushes open the shower curtain. It's a little boy, no more than seven when he died, overalls caked with blood.
Dean crouches. "Hey," he says, very softly, not sure how long it's been here, if it still knows how to speak.
"Better off without me," it says mechanically, and flinches again. Dean relaxes; it's an echo, the strongest part of an already weak ghost, repeating over and over. "Better off without me," it says.
Dean's fishing the last of the rock salt from his jeans' pocket so he can get some damn sleep when it turns and looks directly at him. "Mom and dad said that, all the time: 'better off without you'. They were right. After I was gone, they were happy."
Right, not an echo then.
"You're dead," he says gently, because it seems lucid enough. "You should probably go on now."
It smiles at him, which is enough to raise the hairs on the back of Dean's neck.
"Come with me," it says. "They'd be happier without you."
"Yeah, because you're the bluebird of happiness, come to crap down people's chimneys," Dean says, but that's not what he's thinking. He's remembering how Sammy's voice practically flatlined last phone call, like he'd been expecting someone else; how he can't remember what Dad's laugh sounds like.
It smiles a little wider, and sits up. "See?" it whispers. "Come with me. They'll be soo happy. I can make them happy."
Despair and weariness tugs at him, almost a physical sensation tempting him from his crouch to his knees. He wonders, not so idly, how many suicides this motel's had.
"You promise?" Dean says, and it's not as sarcastic to his own ears as he would have liked. The thin paper of the salt packet is sticking to his palm, and it bursts when he clenches his fist.
"Yes, yes..." It's babbling, reaching out with icy fingers. "Come with me," it demands again. Dean reaches back, and its only dumb luck that that's the fist with the salt. The ghost shrieks, and dissipates with a gust of cold breeze over Dean's face.
He staggers to the bed, climbs under the covers, and breathes for a long time.
5.
Dean rolls his shoulders and wonders for a moment about propping his eyes open with toothpicks. His head is pounding from too many hours of loud music and too much bass. An entire night hunting at a rave: nothing to drink, no interesting glances, and most significantly, no sign of a succubus.
Sam doesn't look in any a better mood, mouth set in a thin line as they wait for the train. The fucking train. Sam had vetoed taking the car, citing traffic, parking, and lack of sleep by the end of it. It makes sense, but Dean's not about to admit that.
Something comes in from the right, nearly hits Dean in the chest, and he rears back enough to identify it as a pamphlet.
Dean turns his head, takes in the sight of the woman holding said pamphlet, and smiles.
“Do you know Jesus Christ?” she asks, and Sam has a tight grip above Dean’s elbow before Dean even opens his mouth.
“No,” he says, low and firm, and starts trying to pull Dean back. Dean braces his legs and holds fast.
“Do you know Jesus?” she implores again, and Dean looks her in the eye. “Yes, ma’am, I’ve heard of him.” Behind him, Sam groans and lets go.
“Heard of him? Have you accepted the blood of Jesus? Are you baptized?"
Dean thinks back. It sounds like the sort of thing Dad would have got Pastor Jim to do, but Dean doubts that counts.
"Not that I can remember."
"But your soul!" She says. "Who will take care of your immortal soul?"
“Would you like it?”
The woman blinks. “Jesus wants your soul.”
Dean glances around, taking in the gathering crowds of suits heading to work, and a glowering Sam.
“I don’t see him around, but you’re here. How much do you want for it?” Dean digs a stub of chalk out of his pocket and fishes one of the pamphlets (The Four-Fold Superiority of the King James Bible) out of her bag. He flips it over to the fluorescent orange back page and dictates as he writes.
“‘I, Dean Winchester, hereby commend my soul into the hands of…’ I’m sorry, what was your name again, ma’am?”
She's staring at him in a sort of horrified disbelief, and starts backing up even before Sam’s hand smacks down across Dean’s, the pamphlet and the chalk.
“Stop it, Dean," he says, and he actually looks a little spooked.
"What? Since when has baiting fundies not been a public service?"
Sam snatches the pamphlet from Dean's hand and waves under his nose. "I don't care about that, but man, these aren't just words. Of all people, you should know that."
The chalk is blunt, and has made almost illegible marks on the cheap paper but Dean feels a little chill anyway. He clears his throat a little, and is trying to think of a way of apologizing without admitting any wrongdoing when the train whooshes into the station. Onboard, it's too damned cramped to have a proper argument, but not quite cramped enough that Dean needs to stand as close to Sam as he does. He bumps his shoulder against Sam's on the next bend, and after a moment, Sam leans back.
The one time he does.
He divides his day between Sam's and Dad's rooms as best he can. The nurses look at him with pity in their eyes as they wheel him back and forth, but they let him hang amulets and perform blessings, and Dean can pretend it doesn't matter.
When the nurses tending to John start avoiding Dean's eyes, Dean prays. He rests his head on his hands and begs.
He sits by Sam’s bed for three days straight after John dies, talking low and steady and non-stop. He recites charms and blessings, and memories and jokes because otherwise the not-silence of the respirator will drive him insane.
“Hey, Sammy, Louise is here to take your blood pressure and stick a thermometer up your ass.”
Louise, second nurse of the Tuesday morning shift, rolls her eyes, but she’s smiling as she pumps up the blood pressure cuff.
"Don't listen to him, Sam," she says. "Your brother's full of it."
Louise’s eyes flicker to the reading on the display, the notes in her hand and when she straightens up, somewhere over Dean’s shoulder.
“Dean…” she says, and her voice is soft in all the wrong ways. For too long there’s only the hiss and click of the respirator.
“Don’t wanna hear it,” Dean says. “Sammy, you’re going to be fine.”
But after she leaves, he can’t say a word. He tangles his fingers with Sam's again, and tries to breathe for his brother, but he can feel it as the day wears on: no matter how hard he holds on, there's something tugging at Sammy's other hand.
For once, he lets the nurses wheel him to a proper bed down the hall for the night. After the first round of night shift has been through, Dean tears the sheet to give himself something to bite down on as he hauls himself back into the wheelchair and drops the folded fabric into his lap to hide the blood seeping from torn stitches as he heads for the elevators. The pain isn't as bad as the time the werewolf clawed his back, not with the morphine in him, and it's nowhere near watching Dad die, or feeling Sammy slipping.
The boiler room isn't exactly cold, but there are no windows, which is enough to count as a sunless room.
He doesn’t have any goat’s blood. His own will have to do.
Dean wakes shivering, and he has to sit up and blink for a long time before the chalk marks on the floor make any sense. He scrambles to get his hospital gown back on, but when he grabs the amulet Dad gave him years back, it burns his hand. He leaves it where it falls and stares at his palm for a moment, telling himself it doesn't matter.
When he walks into Sam’s room, his blistered palm aches at the sight of the blessed charms, and Sam’s eyes are fluttering open.
~finis~
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I just love this. Dean, so cavalier with his soul, and everyone else in his life keeps looking out for him, keeps sticking their hand out at the last second and saying, "Hey, hold on, don't do that, dumbass." And then there's nobody left to look out for him, and of course he'd do anything for Sammy, how could he not...
And the little shoulder-bump on the train. Jeez.
This is really crappy feedback but, in short, it's meant to say: Hey! This is an awesome story, and it's very well-written! Thanks for sharing it with us. Hope you don't mind if I pass the link around a bit.
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Dean would do that for Sam, without a second's pause. Pause for the obligatory "Oh, Dean!" [grin]. Thanks so much for the feedback :)
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I think you really nailed Dean, with his deep need for family and tendency to be a bit too cocky.
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Yay! Thank you, that makes me really happy.
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Sometimes I want to smack him for being so damn selfless, but then where would all our angst come from? [grin]
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Especially the last one.
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And thank you so much for the feedback. I'm so happy you liked :) (Also, icon love. I *love* that scene)
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It's by
Now you know why your fic hit us so hard. Disturbing stuff, after that (hell, and before, it's really well done).
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I need a John icon, I don't have a John icon.
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(I'm waiting for the episode to download, taking too long, I might die in the wait)
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oh, Dean. *sigh*
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Wonderful job!
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yay! fic of awesomeness! thanks.
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And I have a big soft spot for the pie one, too. Really glad it worked for you :)
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No really, just wonderful.
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I feel like I should be apologising but really? I'm delighted it worked that well for you! [grin] Thank you!
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Thank you. I really appreciate your comment. It feels strange saying "I'm happy that I made you sad", but... Thank you.
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So sad and Dean would so do that. *pets the devoted big brother* So sweet and tormented and Dean.
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Thank you! Oh, Dean and your torment, what would we do without you? [grin]
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I could see the expressions and hear the words as if it was right before my eyes.
Well done :) Maybe I will have to read more Supernatural stuff :)
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I want to see an episode where the boys bait the fundies Hee! Me too, I think they'd be particularly good at it: Dean's snark and Sam probably being able to pick all the biblical inconsistencies...
Thanks!
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And this: He isn’t sure what the end result of selling your soul is, either, but it’s probably enough to make Dad yell at him.
I love that line.
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It's like you knew what was going to happen, like a prophet. Creepy.
Cool.
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