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Mar. 16th, 2015 05:37 pm![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
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spn_springflingTitle: Frozen Truths
Pairing: Sam/Dean
Rating: R
Any warnings: none
Sam’s first spring without Dean is lonely mornings and new faces that mean nothing, voices that leave no trace.
It’s a shy group of people scattered across the campus. A group of people Sam’s scared to call friends because their cheeks are not peppered with freckles and for all he knows, their bare teeth could be deadly.
As February slowly melts into March, he tentatively kisses a girl, his thumb pressing down on the small tattoo of an arrow behind her ear, but it’s not right. She’s smooth where Dean was rough, all hills and mountaintops of scars.
He sends an I miss you text that night. At 4:12 in the morning, there is still no response, and he wonders whether there is any point in keeping Dean’s number. He remembers it anyway.
Sam feels Dean-less that first spring, which perhaps shouldn’t be an emotion, but it’s there – or rather, it isn’t.
--
Their goodbye was a bitter one, tender words hiding behind furrowed brows, held there like prisoners. Instead of kisses, they hardly managed to keep their voices down.
John was two rooms away, barely.
Don’t leave me’s were out of place, having been uttered months and months ago when Sam first gently hinted at leaving for college. He remembers, he wanted Dean to come with him, but Dean carried an odd respect for his roots within him and he couldn’t shred them. He’d take the army hand over the textbooks even today, Sam knows.
That night, oh, that night before Sam left, though.
Hands on mouths. “I hate you.”
Sam nodded, he knew, he understood, but for some reason, staying was not an option.
“Don’t call me, I don’t – I wouldn’t – ”
Kisses against the petal-veined skin of Sam’s eyelids as their bodies rocked together. Sam remembers the quiet seconds that followed as Dean moved inside him, his hips clutched in Sam’s hands and moving almost in circles. It was oh-so-very quiet, until Sam broke it with his moan as if it was made of porcelain.
Dean frowned slightly and lost himself in Sam; Sam remembers, he was there and it felt unearthly, to be so full of someone and yet feel like he was losing them, piece by piece.
“I love you,” Dean said that night, his frown leaning against Sam’s. It was different than the soft hum of other I love you’s, different than the quiet food and clothes sharing, different than any and all the words they had ever exchanged.
They were the last ones, too. Sam decides the B Safe note on the lunchbox he found on the passenger seat of his brand new car doesn’t count.
--
“Stay here with me for the summer,” the arrow tattoo girl says, a mouthful of words and her toes digging into Sam’s calves for warmth.
She still doesn’t feel right, but it also feels like he could text Dean over and over again, one blue bubble after the next, and it would be the same as screaming into the void.
“M-hm,” he hums affirmatively into the back of his hand. They’re lying in bed with the heat of the coming summer lying on top of them, crawling across their skin.
Sam is used to summers like this, all sweat and frustration and palms wet and enveloped in the day’s tight heat. It’s different now. The people around, there are too many of them, and the crook of the girl’s neck is not as comfortable as Dean’s.
The Dean-less feeling deepens and settles in Sam with finality, not in any way nonchalant, rather cutting through the flesh to get to his guts. It becomes a companion, not a monster lurking around the corner.
He will stay, he says, he will stay with her if she wants.
--
I miss you, he types in June again, and he wonders why this isn’t as important as Dean’s angry I love you. They certainly hurt the same.
I have a girlfriend, he texts him then, in spite of himself, trying to draw jealousy or at least some kind of reaction out of his brother. It occurs to him then, with the Winchester lifestyle, the phone could have been swallowed by a monster. It could have fallen into a grave. Dean could have tossed it away.
It doesn’t stop him from texting, though – in a very subtle way, it encourages it.
Lawrence, Kansas anagrams to carnal weakness.
Apples rot in this stupid heat. It’s like, you bite into it and before you even eat it, it collapses between your fingers.
I thought I saw you yesterday, but turns out the guy was as tall as me. Also, I’m pretty sure he had his nipples pierced.
What would you think if I grew a beard?
Eventually, he stops, when the urge to hit dial instead of texting is almost too strong. The fear of hearing that the number no longer exists, or of his text returning with the same message, grows subtly alongside the need to hear Dean’s voice, and so he stops. He cuts it off.
Studies show going off cocaine is generally easier than not thinking about Dean and all the places and little spots of him, on him, in him that Sam used to know.
--
When the world ends in October, Sam realizes that for him, it ended over a year ago when he started the engine and pulled out of their dusty driveway.
For some reason, the streets empty of people but filled with filth and the infected don’t surprise him. The weight of a gun, when he gets one, is nice in his palm. These days, he prefers the knives, though.
The arrow tattoo girl disappears. Sam doesn’t know whether something killed her, turned her or whether she found another, more powerful group, but he doesn’t really care; the place in his chest where he was supposed to store feelings for her has been hollow for months.
He sets out on a journey. He feels small and vulnerable, and walking to Carnal Weakness sounds crazy, but he doesn’t have a motherly voice to tell him to steal a car even if it makes noise. So he walks, sets out to test his knees and ankles and guts and whether his finger is still steady on the trigger. Or around the knife. Around the dagger, the rock, the whatever is near when an infected attacks.
--
“Wake up,” the girl whispered that night, “I think there’s someone outside.”
Sam went to check, of course, awfully thrilled that there might be trouble, almost ashamed of how it got his blood pumping. He wanted it to be a ghost, he wanted it to be anything that he knew and could fight.
It was an infected – mouth bloody and red like it just swallowed an entire cherry pie, two empty wells for eyes, irises widened and wild. It pushed Sam back into the apartment and made a mess of the kitchen before Sam managed to kill it. Ironically, it wasn’t his experience as a young hunter but all the movies they watched on small motel TVs that told him to aim for the head.
“What is happening?” wept the girl and with her, perhaps the entire nation.
“I don’t know,” Sam breathed and ran to check his phone, his bloody fingers slipping over the buttons to unlock it. He wasn’t expecting an answer, but for a moment, he wanted to believe in another I love you or a hesitant Come home. Alas, there was nothing.
By morning, the world was in chaos. True, the TV told everyone to stay calm and inside, but funnily enough, the nation of sheep didn’t listen. Everyone as one still, they went out and stirred the fire even more, till it burned high and heavy.
With no electricity, Sam’s phone died within three days, but he kept it. As if hoping that he just barely missed a voicemail or a text. As if hoping that one day, he’ll find a charger that will work and he’ll be able to listen to it, read it.
--
Carnal Weakness is miles and miles away. It’s trees and roads and abandoned churches away, and Sam passes them all.
He meets groups of people – some aim guns at him, some don’t – and sometimes he stays. He likes the boldness that comes with not being alone. Some have fires, some break windows to get inside houses, some shoot their guns as if unafraid of luring more of the infected.
In one of the towns he passes (the welcome sign was torn out and tossed aside and he truly, truly did not care enough to turn it over and see, because it wasn’t Carnal Weakness and that’s about all he needed to know), he meets two girls. Or rather – he trips on the rope they put up and decorated with various objects that would clatter and make noise. His giant legs Dean used to laugh at get tangled up in it and he falls over.
The dark haired one almost shoots him.
“Oh, hello there, cowboy,” she says when she sees he’s a living breathing man, even though she’s the one wearing a hat.
He spends the winter with them – their banter reminds him of what he used to have. The winter is mild, the months a blur, days marked with body count.
“The hair behind your ears is all funny,” the blonde one says around what they think is Christmas time, and Sam’s hand shoots up to the curled locks, messy and poking out in all ways.
“Cut it,” he murmurs hurriedly, swallowing hard.
They get scissors within seconds, really, but it’s enough for the worry to settle in Sam’s gut again. Is Dean okay? a voice hums low in his ears, over and over again, until his reply changes from I hope so to It’s not likely and I’m not ready for this.
Amongst the rotten bodies, snowdrops fight their way out.
“I think it’s time to move on,” Sam tells the girls. This is not the world where they try to stop him – this is the world where they are secretly thankful they’ll have more food for themselves, even though it’s their friend leaving.
--
It’s strangely quiet, and Sam doesn’t think it’s only because he’s finally getting there. Months have passed, the cherry blossoms tell him in a gust of wind.
It still rains occasionally, and Sam is not enough of a child to catch the drops in his palms. He does like it, though. He’s always liked it. He’s careful to always have a nice little house for himself when it rains – not for shelter, just so he can hear the rain on the rooftop and against the windows.
As he gets closer to Carnal Weakness, he almost throws the phone away. He desperately wants to text Dean, ask, Hey is it okay that I’m doing this? Will I find you or will you be gone?
The less infected he sees, the more it feels like everything is coming back to life. The world is so strangely dead, though. It’s hard to believe there are people still alive.
--
The most terrifying thing is that Sam doesn’t recognize it at first. The sign tells him he’s here, but it doesn’t feel like home. It truly feels like the movies.
The main road is cramped with cars. The houses’ doors and windows gape open like hellhounds’ mouths, and Sam is scared. He can’t tell if it’s the worry or actual fear eating at him, but it’s there. He has never felt more Dean-less.
The last few miles he walks towards their old house are agony. He imagines his knees creaking and his ankles snapping, he can practically feel his skull split open as his mind gets too loud.
The fact is, he never said I love you back. That night, he never said it. He knows he should have. He should have texted it at least. But he never did. Aimless tapping at the phone’s button in the dead of night now, the screen black, means nothing.
It takes a lot not to walk down the street with his eyes closed.
As he nears the house, the old creaky wonderful house that he does not want to file as abandoned, he takes a deep breath and spends a few seconds regretting ever getting here. He could have stayed with the girls, blissfully unaware of whether his family is dead or not. They could be dead. They probably are.
And then he sees a ghost of a silhouette pass one of the front windows, and his heart picks up a violent speed, smashing against his ribs violently.
There is someone inside. Would it be appropriate to knock?
--
“You’re here,” he whispers, the words like bullets in the silent house. He looks into the vibrant green, his fingers trace the almost-ginger stubble.
“Of course I am,” Dean says, lips chapped and bitten raw but still the prettiest as they shape around the words, still the finest and sweetest. His eyes are smiling, happier than in the photos that guard the walls.
Instead of feeling panicked or freaking out, Sam is calm, and Dean seems to be, too.
“I love you.” Sam’s voice breaks, he blames it on the fact he ran out of water just as he passed the town entrance. Dean’s fingers catch his forearms lightly and hold on, just hold on. His freckles are astounding when the sun shines on them through the window.
They drop to the floor. Sam is not quite sure whether it’s him who brings them down or the other way around.
He would swear he can hear birds chirping outside. The world seems brighter as they collapse, all Pleasantville-like, the world jumping into color suddenly as their lonely mouths find themselves in a kiss and their frowns come to rest against each other again.
The kiss is horrible, it shouldn’t be legal to feel this weightless in such a heavy world.
If it’s not real, if Dean really is just a ghost of a silhouette, Sam does not want to know.
Pairing: Sam/Dean
Rating: R
Any warnings: none
Sam’s first spring without Dean is lonely mornings and new faces that mean nothing, voices that leave no trace.
It’s a shy group of people scattered across the campus. A group of people Sam’s scared to call friends because their cheeks are not peppered with freckles and for all he knows, their bare teeth could be deadly.
As February slowly melts into March, he tentatively kisses a girl, his thumb pressing down on the small tattoo of an arrow behind her ear, but it’s not right. She’s smooth where Dean was rough, all hills and mountaintops of scars.
He sends an I miss you text that night. At 4:12 in the morning, there is still no response, and he wonders whether there is any point in keeping Dean’s number. He remembers it anyway.
Sam feels Dean-less that first spring, which perhaps shouldn’t be an emotion, but it’s there – or rather, it isn’t.
--
Their goodbye was a bitter one, tender words hiding behind furrowed brows, held there like prisoners. Instead of kisses, they hardly managed to keep their voices down.
John was two rooms away, barely.
Don’t leave me’s were out of place, having been uttered months and months ago when Sam first gently hinted at leaving for college. He remembers, he wanted Dean to come with him, but Dean carried an odd respect for his roots within him and he couldn’t shred them. He’d take the army hand over the textbooks even today, Sam knows.
That night, oh, that night before Sam left, though.
Hands on mouths. “I hate you.”
Sam nodded, he knew, he understood, but for some reason, staying was not an option.
“Don’t call me, I don’t – I wouldn’t – ”
Kisses against the petal-veined skin of Sam’s eyelids as their bodies rocked together. Sam remembers the quiet seconds that followed as Dean moved inside him, his hips clutched in Sam’s hands and moving almost in circles. It was oh-so-very quiet, until Sam broke it with his moan as if it was made of porcelain.
Dean frowned slightly and lost himself in Sam; Sam remembers, he was there and it felt unearthly, to be so full of someone and yet feel like he was losing them, piece by piece.
“I love you,” Dean said that night, his frown leaning against Sam’s. It was different than the soft hum of other I love you’s, different than the quiet food and clothes sharing, different than any and all the words they had ever exchanged.
They were the last ones, too. Sam decides the B Safe note on the lunchbox he found on the passenger seat of his brand new car doesn’t count.
--
“Stay here with me for the summer,” the arrow tattoo girl says, a mouthful of words and her toes digging into Sam’s calves for warmth.
She still doesn’t feel right, but it also feels like he could text Dean over and over again, one blue bubble after the next, and it would be the same as screaming into the void.
“M-hm,” he hums affirmatively into the back of his hand. They’re lying in bed with the heat of the coming summer lying on top of them, crawling across their skin.
Sam is used to summers like this, all sweat and frustration and palms wet and enveloped in the day’s tight heat. It’s different now. The people around, there are too many of them, and the crook of the girl’s neck is not as comfortable as Dean’s.
The Dean-less feeling deepens and settles in Sam with finality, not in any way nonchalant, rather cutting through the flesh to get to his guts. It becomes a companion, not a monster lurking around the corner.
He will stay, he says, he will stay with her if she wants.
--
I miss you, he types in June again, and he wonders why this isn’t as important as Dean’s angry I love you. They certainly hurt the same.
I have a girlfriend, he texts him then, in spite of himself, trying to draw jealousy or at least some kind of reaction out of his brother. It occurs to him then, with the Winchester lifestyle, the phone could have been swallowed by a monster. It could have fallen into a grave. Dean could have tossed it away.
It doesn’t stop him from texting, though – in a very subtle way, it encourages it.
Lawrence, Kansas anagrams to carnal weakness.
Apples rot in this stupid heat. It’s like, you bite into it and before you even eat it, it collapses between your fingers.
I thought I saw you yesterday, but turns out the guy was as tall as me. Also, I’m pretty sure he had his nipples pierced.
What would you think if I grew a beard?
Eventually, he stops, when the urge to hit dial instead of texting is almost too strong. The fear of hearing that the number no longer exists, or of his text returning with the same message, grows subtly alongside the need to hear Dean’s voice, and so he stops. He cuts it off.
Studies show going off cocaine is generally easier than not thinking about Dean and all the places and little spots of him, on him, in him that Sam used to know.
--
When the world ends in October, Sam realizes that for him, it ended over a year ago when he started the engine and pulled out of their dusty driveway.
For some reason, the streets empty of people but filled with filth and the infected don’t surprise him. The weight of a gun, when he gets one, is nice in his palm. These days, he prefers the knives, though.
The arrow tattoo girl disappears. Sam doesn’t know whether something killed her, turned her or whether she found another, more powerful group, but he doesn’t really care; the place in his chest where he was supposed to store feelings for her has been hollow for months.
He sets out on a journey. He feels small and vulnerable, and walking to Carnal Weakness sounds crazy, but he doesn’t have a motherly voice to tell him to steal a car even if it makes noise. So he walks, sets out to test his knees and ankles and guts and whether his finger is still steady on the trigger. Or around the knife. Around the dagger, the rock, the whatever is near when an infected attacks.
--
“Wake up,” the girl whispered that night, “I think there’s someone outside.”
Sam went to check, of course, awfully thrilled that there might be trouble, almost ashamed of how it got his blood pumping. He wanted it to be a ghost, he wanted it to be anything that he knew and could fight.
It was an infected – mouth bloody and red like it just swallowed an entire cherry pie, two empty wells for eyes, irises widened and wild. It pushed Sam back into the apartment and made a mess of the kitchen before Sam managed to kill it. Ironically, it wasn’t his experience as a young hunter but all the movies they watched on small motel TVs that told him to aim for the head.
“What is happening?” wept the girl and with her, perhaps the entire nation.
“I don’t know,” Sam breathed and ran to check his phone, his bloody fingers slipping over the buttons to unlock it. He wasn’t expecting an answer, but for a moment, he wanted to believe in another I love you or a hesitant Come home. Alas, there was nothing.
By morning, the world was in chaos. True, the TV told everyone to stay calm and inside, but funnily enough, the nation of sheep didn’t listen. Everyone as one still, they went out and stirred the fire even more, till it burned high and heavy.
With no electricity, Sam’s phone died within three days, but he kept it. As if hoping that he just barely missed a voicemail or a text. As if hoping that one day, he’ll find a charger that will work and he’ll be able to listen to it, read it.
--
Carnal Weakness is miles and miles away. It’s trees and roads and abandoned churches away, and Sam passes them all.
He meets groups of people – some aim guns at him, some don’t – and sometimes he stays. He likes the boldness that comes with not being alone. Some have fires, some break windows to get inside houses, some shoot their guns as if unafraid of luring more of the infected.
In one of the towns he passes (the welcome sign was torn out and tossed aside and he truly, truly did not care enough to turn it over and see, because it wasn’t Carnal Weakness and that’s about all he needed to know), he meets two girls. Or rather – he trips on the rope they put up and decorated with various objects that would clatter and make noise. His giant legs Dean used to laugh at get tangled up in it and he falls over.
The dark haired one almost shoots him.
“Oh, hello there, cowboy,” she says when she sees he’s a living breathing man, even though she’s the one wearing a hat.
He spends the winter with them – their banter reminds him of what he used to have. The winter is mild, the months a blur, days marked with body count.
“The hair behind your ears is all funny,” the blonde one says around what they think is Christmas time, and Sam’s hand shoots up to the curled locks, messy and poking out in all ways.
“Cut it,” he murmurs hurriedly, swallowing hard.
They get scissors within seconds, really, but it’s enough for the worry to settle in Sam’s gut again. Is Dean okay? a voice hums low in his ears, over and over again, until his reply changes from I hope so to It’s not likely and I’m not ready for this.
Amongst the rotten bodies, snowdrops fight their way out.
“I think it’s time to move on,” Sam tells the girls. This is not the world where they try to stop him – this is the world where they are secretly thankful they’ll have more food for themselves, even though it’s their friend leaving.
--
It’s strangely quiet, and Sam doesn’t think it’s only because he’s finally getting there. Months have passed, the cherry blossoms tell him in a gust of wind.
It still rains occasionally, and Sam is not enough of a child to catch the drops in his palms. He does like it, though. He’s always liked it. He’s careful to always have a nice little house for himself when it rains – not for shelter, just so he can hear the rain on the rooftop and against the windows.
As he gets closer to Carnal Weakness, he almost throws the phone away. He desperately wants to text Dean, ask, Hey is it okay that I’m doing this? Will I find you or will you be gone?
The less infected he sees, the more it feels like everything is coming back to life. The world is so strangely dead, though. It’s hard to believe there are people still alive.
--
The most terrifying thing is that Sam doesn’t recognize it at first. The sign tells him he’s here, but it doesn’t feel like home. It truly feels like the movies.
The main road is cramped with cars. The houses’ doors and windows gape open like hellhounds’ mouths, and Sam is scared. He can’t tell if it’s the worry or actual fear eating at him, but it’s there. He has never felt more Dean-less.
The last few miles he walks towards their old house are agony. He imagines his knees creaking and his ankles snapping, he can practically feel his skull split open as his mind gets too loud.
The fact is, he never said I love you back. That night, he never said it. He knows he should have. He should have texted it at least. But he never did. Aimless tapping at the phone’s button in the dead of night now, the screen black, means nothing.
It takes a lot not to walk down the street with his eyes closed.
As he nears the house, the old creaky wonderful house that he does not want to file as abandoned, he takes a deep breath and spends a few seconds regretting ever getting here. He could have stayed with the girls, blissfully unaware of whether his family is dead or not. They could be dead. They probably are.
And then he sees a ghost of a silhouette pass one of the front windows, and his heart picks up a violent speed, smashing against his ribs violently.
There is someone inside. Would it be appropriate to knock?
--
“You’re here,” he whispers, the words like bullets in the silent house. He looks into the vibrant green, his fingers trace the almost-ginger stubble.
“Of course I am,” Dean says, lips chapped and bitten raw but still the prettiest as they shape around the words, still the finest and sweetest. His eyes are smiling, happier than in the photos that guard the walls.
Instead of feeling panicked or freaking out, Sam is calm, and Dean seems to be, too.
“I love you.” Sam’s voice breaks, he blames it on the fact he ran out of water just as he passed the town entrance. Dean’s fingers catch his forearms lightly and hold on, just hold on. His freckles are astounding when the sun shines on them through the window.
They drop to the floor. Sam is not quite sure whether it’s him who brings them down or the other way around.
He would swear he can hear birds chirping outside. The world seems brighter as they collapse, all Pleasantville-like, the world jumping into color suddenly as their lonely mouths find themselves in a kiss and their frowns come to rest against each other again.
The kiss is horrible, it shouldn’t be legal to feel this weightless in such a heavy world.
If it’s not real, if Dean really is just a ghost of a silhouette, Sam does not want to know.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2015-03-17 07:19 am (UTC)Lovely, lovely story.
no subject
Date: 2015-03-31 06:02 pm (UTC)