Fic: Dulce et Decorum Est [the mustard gas remix]
Title: Dulce et Decorum Est [the mustard gas remix]
Author: Britomart_is
Original Story: Always by hunters_retreat
Rating: R
Pairing: Sam/Dean
Notes: 2600 words. Written for kamikazeremix. Evil-ish!Winchesters, character death, blood and gore.
Summary: Sam saves Dean. Dean saves Sam.
The table is a door, taken off the hinges and propped on sawhorses. The door once belonged to a cottage in the nearest town, with chipped white paint and dead roses climbing a trellis. When they were done with the houses, Sam's army burned them down to blackened skeletons. That town will provide no shelter for the enemy. Whoever planted the roses is long fled. No one left to take in the hunters, who by now are hungry, weary, wounded, jumping at shadows after weeks of staring down their own mortality. They'll be tripping over their own feet, snapping at each other. No transfusions, no hospitals, just heat and dehydration and suppurating wounds that attract the flies. Sam's slipped through their camp at night, seen how the hunters stink and rot already, though their hearts still beat-and Sam can see the dead men that they'll become. Their bodies wear out faster than those of Sam's army-Sam's soldiers will wear these bodies down to the bone before they discard them. Sam's seen it before, and managed to get to privacy before he vomited up his breakfast.
Sam's stomach is stronger now.
Sam has maps spread over the makeshift table, troop movements scribbled in oil pencil. Turning a cloud of demons into an organized army is like herding cats. Like herding bloodthirsty, half-insane, mutinous cats. But Sam's done it. Spilled blood and black smoke, took all the demons strong enough to challenge him and sparked and crackled them out of existence before they ever got the chance. The generals who hunch over Sam's maps now are weaker, afraid. They are all they need to be-the scythe in Sam's hand. They've been reviewing tomorrow's plans for hours now, though Sam knows it's not really necessary. The hunters are brave, but tomorrow will be a bloodbath.
There should be no doubt in Sam's mind, but he lingers over the papers, slaps away an unseen biting insect, sweats in the sultry heat. Sam strains his eyes in the lamplight, and his generals speak in low voices. He can see the lights of the hunters' camp over a far hill. Sam will win. And yet. So long as Sam hesitates here, on the threshold of this day and the next one, he can close his eyes, listen to the crackling fire, and imagine that he's out on a hunt with Dad and Dean. He's just wandered away to collect kindling for the fire, and when he gets back he'll tuck himself under Dean's arm and put powdered cocoa in hot water and nod as Dad lectures them. When Sam wakes with the dawn tomorrow, there'll be no time to pretend.
It's the eve of victory. Sam closes his eyes and listens to the future whispering, and for a moment he's a condemned prisoner on his last night, wide-awake in his cell listening to the wooden creak and moan of the gallows. Dreading the grey light of morning. Tomorrow, when he stands over the corpses of his former friends, Sam will finally let go of the person he can no longer afford to be. Sam takes a deep breath, but the humid air chokes him.
Sam's gaze strays from the maps, flicking over to the dark hunched form silhouetted by firelight. Dean is sitting alone on a stump. The demons don't go near him, and though of course Dean prefers that, it hurts Sam to see it. Always has. Dean can charm a mark in an instant, talk a woman into bed in minutes, but he's also the outsider, the suspicious stranger near the scene of a crime, the girlfriend stealer, the brash lonely new kid. Painfully unwelcome.
Above the fire, the heat distortion makes the forest dance and shimmy, all twisty shadows and hidden things. Sam thinks about someone standing on the other side of the fire, looking back at him and seeing the writhing, frightening darkness there. Sam isn't afraid of the dark.
Sam knows that Bobby's in the hunters' camp, sitting awake just like they are, dreading what he will be asked to do when dawn comes. Jo, Ellen, others. He can hear them thinking, smell the fear in their sweat. He hasn't told Dean.
Bobby was thinking after dinner that if he has to kill the boys, he'll take their ashes back to Kansas.
It was good, hearing that. It reminded Sam why he has to do this.
No hunter will ever stop Dean's heart, burn his body and call it respect. They can't have him. At the end of time, when the world is quiet and empty and Sam and Dean are dust, the wind can catch their ashes and plant them together all over the scorched earth. At the end of time, but not tomorrow.
If Sam could afford to have regrets, he might wonder what would've happened if the demons hadn't come gunning for Dean, if Sam hadn't taken control to protect him. If the hunters had seen it as an opportunity, a man on the inside, instead of a betrayal. If Sam could take Dean, get in the Impala, drive away and have no one follow them. But the demons did, Sam had, the hunters didn't, and Sam and Dean can't. So Sam no longer has the luxury of regrets.
By the fire, Dean is eating beans out of a can with a fork. Sam smiles. He wants to go to Dean, open his mouth and be fed a bite. Sam lets that future play out in his mind-he can taste the syrupy beans, feel the fork scrape against his teeth.
Sam's looking at the river and thinking about poisoning the hunters downstream when he feels Dean stand and leave the firelight.
"You all right, Dean?" For all his outside stillness, inside Dean's been pacing anxiously. Sam doesn't-won't-enter Dean's thoughts, but he doesn't need to. Never has, not since they were kids: a jerk of the head for going left, cover me; a firm jaw for I'm about to piss Dad off and I need you by my side. A smile or an irritable elbow or a sucker punch for I do, I am, me too, always, brother.
Dean just smiles and nods, and Sam frowns. Dean still gets embarrassed in front of the demons and Sam's tried to explain that he doesn't have to worry-they're demons, they don't know what love is, it's like performing Waiting for Godot for a puppy, they don't even understand what they're seeing-but Dean persists. And Sam maybe likes it a little. That Dean thinks what they have is too sacred for the thousand glittering black eyes to see.
"I'm fine, Sammy." Sam studies him. Dean looks tired. "I just hate the waiting. Gonna catch a few before anything starts happening."
The waiting is hard on them all. For a moment, Sam desperately wants to just send Dean to bed and take care of it. He could slip alone into the hunters' camp at night and kill them in their sleep. Merciful, a tap from his mind to their brainstems and they'd just be - gone. So much easier, so much cleaner. But that is not how legends are made. Sam needs to let his demons thrash and tear and grind. He needs to let the hunters try and fail, make a lesson of them. He needs to climb the pile of their corpses and plant a flag there for all the world to see.
And then-what? That's the question. And then what?
Dean stands half in the firelight, half in the darkness. "You should come to bed, too. Everyone knows what they’re supposed to do, Sammy. Rest before it begins." Dean has never wavered, not once. Sam's hands open and shut and he doesn't quite know what to do with himself, because if there were any justice in the world, a man like him would never know a love like this.
Sam leaves his generals hunched over the maps and goes to Dean. Dean's cheekbone is proud beneath the stroke of Sam's thumb. "I will. Give me a few minutes and I’ll come to you, Dean." Sam kisses Dean's cheek, like he did when he was a little boy. Dean turns his head in and Sam brushes their lips together. He leans into Dean. For a moment, Sam is just a person in love.
He pulls away. Time to save the world. Or destroy it. Save Dean, at the very least, the rest is less clear.
When he goes to wrap things up with his generals, one of them is thinking about Sam Winchester's toy. About all the things he'd like to do to that toy before he killed it, before he killed Sam and ruled in a palace of bones. Sam takes the demon out behind the supply tent and kills him quietly. He regrets it a moment later when he realizes that the demon's screams would have shattered the hunters from sleep, kept them up and thinking about the sound for the rest of the night. Sam looks at the battered body of a middle-aged man that the demon leaves behind. Doesn't know the man's name-Sam'd kept a list, at first, before he learned better. You name your pets, not the livestock waiting to go to the slaughterhouse.
Sam considers taking a lamp, but thinks better of it. He can find his way to Dean in the darkness, closing his eyes and breathing the thick air (the air is struggling, doing its best, knowing it will be the last air ever breathed for so, so many) as he follows the tug that leads him unerringly to Dean.
Sam finds his brother with the Impala, and for a moment he sees them as they once would have been: on the eve of battle, Dean visits his steed in the stables, smoothes a hand over her flank, whispers to her, says "Ride true and fierce." And in the morning: Dean will dress Sam, solemnly buttoning his shirt like lacing him into his armor.
Home, at the moment, is a big green army surplus tent pitched in the field, far enough from the psychic stench of the demons that Sam doesn't have to feel their presence all night. Sam holds back the mosquito netting for Dean as they enter and ties the flap shut behind them. It's quiet, crickets and cicadas and the rustle of cloth as he undresses Dean. To be honest, they're both more than a little ripe; showers and deodorant are a distant memory.
There's a cloth and a bowl of water-a precious commodity, one of a few material privileges afforded the leader of Hell's armies. Sam dunks the cloth, wrings it out, feels the lukewarm streams running down his forearms as he swipes the cloth over Dean's skin, clearing away only the most superficial layer of dirt. He kisses the freckled nape of Dean's neck.
Dean turns, takes the cloth and goes to town on Sam's skin with a bullying care, scrubbing roughly behind his ears. Sam smiles at the memory of toddlerhood baths, Dean trying to control a wriggling Sam as the bathwater splashed out on the floor. He nips at Dean's wrist, steals the cloth from him, and lets the weight of his body push Dean down. The cot, barely adequate to hold both their weight, creaks in distress.
But tonight isn't the night for bed-breaking, scream-the-house-down fucking. Sam keeps Dean underneath him, spreads Dean's legs and pushes in slowly, takes his time. Enjoys being exactly where he's meant to be, here inside of Dean. The moment is all the sweeter for being hard-won, for all the suffering and striving they've both endured and inflicted to be here, together, breathing each other's breath.
Sam finds the knife before he finds orgasm, his hand shifting beneath the pillow as his arms brace him above Dean. His fingers trace the sharp edge and Sam feels the briefest moment of disappointment, oh, Dean. He's proud too, though, proud of his brother for his seamless performance. He kisses Dean to cover his astonishment, frowning a little as he quickly thinks back over the last six months of bloodshed, of Dean standing unflinching at his side, while apparently all the while Dean still suffered from the delusion that the hunters - the angels, even, manipulative bastards - had the moral authority in this war.
The certainty that his brother is going to assassinate him in the night isn't enough to stop Sam from coming. He curls into Dean's body as he regains his breath and considers his options. He brushes his nose against Dean's neck, chews lightly at his collarbone.
Sam feels Dean's anxiety mounting and perversely wants to ease it, wants to whisper shhhhh it's okay, take Dean's hand and wrap it around the knife. Dean straddles Sam's hips.
"I need to do something. I just want you to sit back and keep your eyes closed, all right? Trust me, Sammy."
And God help him, he does. Sam thinks about the creaking gallows, thinks about and then what. And he thinks, all right, maybe. Maybe it's time to be done with the stinking, rotting, fleshbound fear-sweat of human life.
Sam certainly knows better by now than to think that death is a rest, a release. Maybe he needs to let the demons and hunters kill each other off without the Winchesters to do their dirty work for them. And when Sam and Dean climb back up to Earth, they'll live together for a thousand years, refusing to fight on anybody's side but each other.
Sam lies back, so full of love. Even though Dean doesn't know it, doesn't understand the brilliant gift he's just given Sam, somehow Dean knows what's best. "Always, Dean."
The pain in Sam's chest is sharp and quick.
Sam doesn't die easily. Let go, just let go, he tells himself, but his body fights for breath against the blood in his lungs. His mouth gapes open, but he can't take any more air in, and the feeling of suffocation triggers a primal panic in him. Sam's muscles ache as his body thrashes under Dean's weight, and then he's trying, really trying to buck Dean off because he just needs to breathe. Sam shuts his eyes tight and tries to smooth the grimace from his face but he can't because it goddamn hurts, it hurts.
His hands clutch spasmodically at Dean's thighs as Sam begins to lose his strength. Dean is crying and bleeding, and then Dean is slumping forward onto Sam. He looks so sad, so surprised at the pain, and Sam would like to kiss him, to soothe him, to say I know, I know, but see, soon it won't even hurt anymore. But all he can do is cough red onto Dean's face and then choke.
"I said if it was the last thing I'd do, I'd save you Sammy." Dean's voice is right in Sam's ear, his blood running warm over Sam and joining Sam's own where it soaks into the sheets.
"You did," Sam says, but then he's too busy dying, slow and messy and undignified, to finish - even if you don't know it now.
Sam loses the sight of the tent roof first, then the smell and taste of coppery blood, then the feel of Dean's body above him, then the sound of Dean's voice, indistinct and echoing. Sam lets out the last of his breath and waits for what comes next.
Author: Britomart_is
Original Story: Always by hunters_retreat
Rating: R
Pairing: Sam/Dean
Notes: 2600 words. Written for kamikazeremix. Evil-ish!Winchesters, character death, blood and gore.
Summary: Sam saves Dean. Dean saves Sam.
The table is a door, taken off the hinges and propped on sawhorses. The door once belonged to a cottage in the nearest town, with chipped white paint and dead roses climbing a trellis. When they were done with the houses, Sam's army burned them down to blackened skeletons. That town will provide no shelter for the enemy. Whoever planted the roses is long fled. No one left to take in the hunters, who by now are hungry, weary, wounded, jumping at shadows after weeks of staring down their own mortality. They'll be tripping over their own feet, snapping at each other. No transfusions, no hospitals, just heat and dehydration and suppurating wounds that attract the flies. Sam's slipped through their camp at night, seen how the hunters stink and rot already, though their hearts still beat-and Sam can see the dead men that they'll become. Their bodies wear out faster than those of Sam's army-Sam's soldiers will wear these bodies down to the bone before they discard them. Sam's seen it before, and managed to get to privacy before he vomited up his breakfast.
Sam's stomach is stronger now.
Sam has maps spread over the makeshift table, troop movements scribbled in oil pencil. Turning a cloud of demons into an organized army is like herding cats. Like herding bloodthirsty, half-insane, mutinous cats. But Sam's done it. Spilled blood and black smoke, took all the demons strong enough to challenge him and sparked and crackled them out of existence before they ever got the chance. The generals who hunch over Sam's maps now are weaker, afraid. They are all they need to be-the scythe in Sam's hand. They've been reviewing tomorrow's plans for hours now, though Sam knows it's not really necessary. The hunters are brave, but tomorrow will be a bloodbath.
There should be no doubt in Sam's mind, but he lingers over the papers, slaps away an unseen biting insect, sweats in the sultry heat. Sam strains his eyes in the lamplight, and his generals speak in low voices. He can see the lights of the hunters' camp over a far hill. Sam will win. And yet. So long as Sam hesitates here, on the threshold of this day and the next one, he can close his eyes, listen to the crackling fire, and imagine that he's out on a hunt with Dad and Dean. He's just wandered away to collect kindling for the fire, and when he gets back he'll tuck himself under Dean's arm and put powdered cocoa in hot water and nod as Dad lectures them. When Sam wakes with the dawn tomorrow, there'll be no time to pretend.
It's the eve of victory. Sam closes his eyes and listens to the future whispering, and for a moment he's a condemned prisoner on his last night, wide-awake in his cell listening to the wooden creak and moan of the gallows. Dreading the grey light of morning. Tomorrow, when he stands over the corpses of his former friends, Sam will finally let go of the person he can no longer afford to be. Sam takes a deep breath, but the humid air chokes him.
Sam's gaze strays from the maps, flicking over to the dark hunched form silhouetted by firelight. Dean is sitting alone on a stump. The demons don't go near him, and though of course Dean prefers that, it hurts Sam to see it. Always has. Dean can charm a mark in an instant, talk a woman into bed in minutes, but he's also the outsider, the suspicious stranger near the scene of a crime, the girlfriend stealer, the brash lonely new kid. Painfully unwelcome.
Above the fire, the heat distortion makes the forest dance and shimmy, all twisty shadows and hidden things. Sam thinks about someone standing on the other side of the fire, looking back at him and seeing the writhing, frightening darkness there. Sam isn't afraid of the dark.
Sam knows that Bobby's in the hunters' camp, sitting awake just like they are, dreading what he will be asked to do when dawn comes. Jo, Ellen, others. He can hear them thinking, smell the fear in their sweat. He hasn't told Dean.
Bobby was thinking after dinner that if he has to kill the boys, he'll take their ashes back to Kansas.
It was good, hearing that. It reminded Sam why he has to do this.
No hunter will ever stop Dean's heart, burn his body and call it respect. They can't have him. At the end of time, when the world is quiet and empty and Sam and Dean are dust, the wind can catch their ashes and plant them together all over the scorched earth. At the end of time, but not tomorrow.
If Sam could afford to have regrets, he might wonder what would've happened if the demons hadn't come gunning for Dean, if Sam hadn't taken control to protect him. If the hunters had seen it as an opportunity, a man on the inside, instead of a betrayal. If Sam could take Dean, get in the Impala, drive away and have no one follow them. But the demons did, Sam had, the hunters didn't, and Sam and Dean can't. So Sam no longer has the luxury of regrets.
By the fire, Dean is eating beans out of a can with a fork. Sam smiles. He wants to go to Dean, open his mouth and be fed a bite. Sam lets that future play out in his mind-he can taste the syrupy beans, feel the fork scrape against his teeth.
Sam's looking at the river and thinking about poisoning the hunters downstream when he feels Dean stand and leave the firelight.
"You all right, Dean?" For all his outside stillness, inside Dean's been pacing anxiously. Sam doesn't-won't-enter Dean's thoughts, but he doesn't need to. Never has, not since they were kids: a jerk of the head for going left, cover me; a firm jaw for I'm about to piss Dad off and I need you by my side. A smile or an irritable elbow or a sucker punch for I do, I am, me too, always, brother.
Dean just smiles and nods, and Sam frowns. Dean still gets embarrassed in front of the demons and Sam's tried to explain that he doesn't have to worry-they're demons, they don't know what love is, it's like performing Waiting for Godot for a puppy, they don't even understand what they're seeing-but Dean persists. And Sam maybe likes it a little. That Dean thinks what they have is too sacred for the thousand glittering black eyes to see.
"I'm fine, Sammy." Sam studies him. Dean looks tired. "I just hate the waiting. Gonna catch a few before anything starts happening."
The waiting is hard on them all. For a moment, Sam desperately wants to just send Dean to bed and take care of it. He could slip alone into the hunters' camp at night and kill them in their sleep. Merciful, a tap from his mind to their brainstems and they'd just be - gone. So much easier, so much cleaner. But that is not how legends are made. Sam needs to let his demons thrash and tear and grind. He needs to let the hunters try and fail, make a lesson of them. He needs to climb the pile of their corpses and plant a flag there for all the world to see.
And then-what? That's the question. And then what?
Dean stands half in the firelight, half in the darkness. "You should come to bed, too. Everyone knows what they’re supposed to do, Sammy. Rest before it begins." Dean has never wavered, not once. Sam's hands open and shut and he doesn't quite know what to do with himself, because if there were any justice in the world, a man like him would never know a love like this.
Sam leaves his generals hunched over the maps and goes to Dean. Dean's cheekbone is proud beneath the stroke of Sam's thumb. "I will. Give me a few minutes and I’ll come to you, Dean." Sam kisses Dean's cheek, like he did when he was a little boy. Dean turns his head in and Sam brushes their lips together. He leans into Dean. For a moment, Sam is just a person in love.
He pulls away. Time to save the world. Or destroy it. Save Dean, at the very least, the rest is less clear.
When he goes to wrap things up with his generals, one of them is thinking about Sam Winchester's toy. About all the things he'd like to do to that toy before he killed it, before he killed Sam and ruled in a palace of bones. Sam takes the demon out behind the supply tent and kills him quietly. He regrets it a moment later when he realizes that the demon's screams would have shattered the hunters from sleep, kept them up and thinking about the sound for the rest of the night. Sam looks at the battered body of a middle-aged man that the demon leaves behind. Doesn't know the man's name-Sam'd kept a list, at first, before he learned better. You name your pets, not the livestock waiting to go to the slaughterhouse.
Sam considers taking a lamp, but thinks better of it. He can find his way to Dean in the darkness, closing his eyes and breathing the thick air (the air is struggling, doing its best, knowing it will be the last air ever breathed for so, so many) as he follows the tug that leads him unerringly to Dean.
Sam finds his brother with the Impala, and for a moment he sees them as they once would have been: on the eve of battle, Dean visits his steed in the stables, smoothes a hand over her flank, whispers to her, says "Ride true and fierce." And in the morning: Dean will dress Sam, solemnly buttoning his shirt like lacing him into his armor.
Home, at the moment, is a big green army surplus tent pitched in the field, far enough from the psychic stench of the demons that Sam doesn't have to feel their presence all night. Sam holds back the mosquito netting for Dean as they enter and ties the flap shut behind them. It's quiet, crickets and cicadas and the rustle of cloth as he undresses Dean. To be honest, they're both more than a little ripe; showers and deodorant are a distant memory.
There's a cloth and a bowl of water-a precious commodity, one of a few material privileges afforded the leader of Hell's armies. Sam dunks the cloth, wrings it out, feels the lukewarm streams running down his forearms as he swipes the cloth over Dean's skin, clearing away only the most superficial layer of dirt. He kisses the freckled nape of Dean's neck.
Dean turns, takes the cloth and goes to town on Sam's skin with a bullying care, scrubbing roughly behind his ears. Sam smiles at the memory of toddlerhood baths, Dean trying to control a wriggling Sam as the bathwater splashed out on the floor. He nips at Dean's wrist, steals the cloth from him, and lets the weight of his body push Dean down. The cot, barely adequate to hold both their weight, creaks in distress.
But tonight isn't the night for bed-breaking, scream-the-house-down fucking. Sam keeps Dean underneath him, spreads Dean's legs and pushes in slowly, takes his time. Enjoys being exactly where he's meant to be, here inside of Dean. The moment is all the sweeter for being hard-won, for all the suffering and striving they've both endured and inflicted to be here, together, breathing each other's breath.
Sam finds the knife before he finds orgasm, his hand shifting beneath the pillow as his arms brace him above Dean. His fingers trace the sharp edge and Sam feels the briefest moment of disappointment, oh, Dean. He's proud too, though, proud of his brother for his seamless performance. He kisses Dean to cover his astonishment, frowning a little as he quickly thinks back over the last six months of bloodshed, of Dean standing unflinching at his side, while apparently all the while Dean still suffered from the delusion that the hunters - the angels, even, manipulative bastards - had the moral authority in this war.
The certainty that his brother is going to assassinate him in the night isn't enough to stop Sam from coming. He curls into Dean's body as he regains his breath and considers his options. He brushes his nose against Dean's neck, chews lightly at his collarbone.
Sam feels Dean's anxiety mounting and perversely wants to ease it, wants to whisper shhhhh it's okay, take Dean's hand and wrap it around the knife. Dean straddles Sam's hips.
"I need to do something. I just want you to sit back and keep your eyes closed, all right? Trust me, Sammy."
And God help him, he does. Sam thinks about the creaking gallows, thinks about and then what. And he thinks, all right, maybe. Maybe it's time to be done with the stinking, rotting, fleshbound fear-sweat of human life.
Sam certainly knows better by now than to think that death is a rest, a release. Maybe he needs to let the demons and hunters kill each other off without the Winchesters to do their dirty work for them. And when Sam and Dean climb back up to Earth, they'll live together for a thousand years, refusing to fight on anybody's side but each other.
Sam lies back, so full of love. Even though Dean doesn't know it, doesn't understand the brilliant gift he's just given Sam, somehow Dean knows what's best. "Always, Dean."
The pain in Sam's chest is sharp and quick.
Sam doesn't die easily. Let go, just let go, he tells himself, but his body fights for breath against the blood in his lungs. His mouth gapes open, but he can't take any more air in, and the feeling of suffocation triggers a primal panic in him. Sam's muscles ache as his body thrashes under Dean's weight, and then he's trying, really trying to buck Dean off because he just needs to breathe. Sam shuts his eyes tight and tries to smooth the grimace from his face but he can't because it goddamn hurts, it hurts.
His hands clutch spasmodically at Dean's thighs as Sam begins to lose his strength. Dean is crying and bleeding, and then Dean is slumping forward onto Sam. He looks so sad, so surprised at the pain, and Sam would like to kiss him, to soothe him, to say I know, I know, but see, soon it won't even hurt anymore. But all he can do is cough red onto Dean's face and then choke.
"I said if it was the last thing I'd do, I'd save you Sammy." Dean's voice is right in Sam's ear, his blood running warm over Sam and joining Sam's own where it soaks into the sheets.
"You did," Sam says, but then he's too busy dying, slow and messy and undignified, to finish - even if you don't know it now.
Sam loses the sight of the tent roof first, then the smell and taste of coppery blood, then the feel of Dean's body above him, then the sound of Dean's voice, indistinct and echoing. Sam lets out the last of his breath and waits for what comes next.