SPN FIC - The 10,227 Days of My Life
I've had this bunny in my notebook for a couple of years now, but it hasn't taken shape until now. A quiet Friday afternoon, a season finale that's left us wondering What comes next? ... That seems to call for a bit of Sam-and-Dean on the road. Stopping for some snacks, and the pondering of a simple question: "How old are you?"
Chips tucked securely (but gently) under his arm, Dean moves on to the dairy cooler, pops the door open and wraps his hand around half a dozen packages of string cheese. He won't eat them, Sam knows; Dean never eats string cheese. He shreds it, because it amuses him, the way it separates into individual threads. Or. You know. Strings.
CHARACTERS: Sam and Dean
GENRE: Gen
RATING: PG
SPOILERS: None
LENGTH: 2029 words
THE 10,227 DAYS OF MY LIFE
By Carol Davis
"So kill me," Dean says over his shoulder as he makes his way down the chips-and-soda aisle. "I need a distraction."
"Kill you," Sam echoes.
"Yeah."
"Dude. Seriously. After all the crap we've been through, you're still going to use 'kill me' as a throwaway."
Dean's right hand pauses in midair, halfway to an enormous bag of Nacho Cheese Doritos. His shoulders twitch a little - and, suddenly, it's like they've stepped into a time machine, the two of them, and maybe the entire 7‑Eleven along with them, because all of a sudden he's the Dean that Sam remembers from their teenage years: the one with the near-constant smirk. The one who felt obligated to smart-mouth anyone he encountered.
The one who couldn't spend five minutes inside a 7-Eleven without pilfering something.
Dean shifts his head just enough to ensure that Sam sees his eyes roll, then he says, quietly but firmly, "Hyoo-more me. Okay? Does that suit your easily offended sense of political correctness any better? Humor me."
"Can we just go?"
"No," Dean announces. "We cannot just go."
"Because of -"
"It's a serious question, Sam."
"And when will it ever come up? For real."
"Do I know? You can't predict these things."
That bag of Doritos won't fit in Dean's pocket. He could tuck it inside the front of his jacket, but it'd make him look six months pregnant.
"For God's sake, dude. You're thirty-two. I'm twenty-seven."
Chips tucked securely (but gently) under his arm, Dean moves on to the dairy cooler, pops the door open and wraps his hand around half a dozen packages of string cheese. He won't eat them, Sam knows; Dean never eats string cheese. He shreds it, because it amuses him, the way it separates into individual threads.
Or. You know. Strings.
"What do you want?" Dean asks abruptly, his full attention focused on Sam.
"Dropping it would be good."
And with that old smirk hovering at the corner of his mouth, Dean ponders his bag of chips and his cheese, as if he honestly thinks that's what Sam meant. For a moment, Sam expects him to do it - drop everything - like this is some old vaudeville routine, but it's a fake-out, a bad one. Typical of the Dean he remembers.
"You know something?" Sam asks.
Dean moues his lips. Shrugs.
"Couple months after I got to Stanford. My roommate wanted to pick up some munchies for the room, so I went with him down to the store. We were walking around, looking at stuff, and he was talking about - I don't know, something. I felt like getting a Three Musketeers, so I picked it up, and he kept talking. And I -"
Dean snickers softly.
"I put it in my pocket. Had no idea I was doing that," Sam says. "It was just automatic. And my roommate - Jesus."
"Your roommate's name was Jesus?"
It's like a vaudeville routine. "I thought he was gonna piss himself."
"So your roommate was some little old lady schoolteacher."
"Pretty much."
"So - did you walk out with it?"
Sam takes a long look at his brother, armed with Doritos and string cheese: the brother who taught him to shoplift. The brother who was good enough at shoplifting to carry out in one trip enough food to last them for two or three days. "They have an honor code," Sam sighs. "He saw me. It was -"
"You wussied out."
"I had to."
"Sam."
He fully expects Dean to challenge him then, dare him to choose something and walk out of the store with it, even though the clerk's been watching them in the security mirror ever since they walked in the door. Not because Dean's practically swaggering down the aisle, or because his voice carries, because that Did you walk out with it? was certainly loud enough to be heard up front, where that red-faced clerk with the comb-over is huffing and snuffling behind the racks of beef jerky and Zippos, standing frantic guard over a cash register that can't possibly contain more than a hundred bucks.
It's because being all scraped and bruised and clawed - to the point that there is blood dripping off Dean's left ear - tends to make you stand out in a crowd.
"We should go," Sam says.
Shaking his head, Dean continues his survey of the store. The rows of kids' cereal, the Cap'n Crunch and the Froot Loops, hold him in thrall for a good minute and a half.
What Dean's thinking, Sam has no idea.
He could guess.
"It could come up," Dean says finally, though he's still staring at Froot Loops.
"It will never come up. And so what if it does? If somebody asks you how old you are, you tell them thirty-two."
"Minus -"
"There is no minus."
Dean has to juggle a bit, has to shift his footing so he can get closer to the shelf so he can grab a box of cereal without losing hold of his Doritos.
"You want milk?" Sam asks him.
It was a stupid website, he thinks with a vehemence he hopes doesn't show on his face, a stupid freaking website Dean stumbled onto by accident, a calculator of sorts, and there's no telling what Dean was actually looking for. A way to figure out distances, maybe. Or maybe he was just randomly clicking things. He likes to do that: click things, particularly when he's bored. There's no convincing him that he'll ruin the laptop if he downloads a worm.
HOW OLD ARE YOU??? the stupid thing said.
Easy enough to answer, for most people.
"Gonna eat it dry," Dean muses. "Remember that? You used to sit and watch cartoons and work your way through a whole box of this crap. It's a wonder you didn't end up weighing six hundred pounds."
Sugar high, Sam thinks. It was the sugar highs that were the problem.
"Then let's go," he says.
Doritos. String cheese. Froot Loops.
How old are you?
Why Dean would want to talk about it at all is a mystery. But then, there's never been an easy way to follow the convoluted path of Dean's thought processes. You'd think the whole thing - coming anywhere near a discussion of what's happened to the two of them - would be something Dean would steer clear of. Would stay a thousand miles away from. But there it was, that damned website and its screaming blue-and-gold headline.
HOW OLD ARE YOU???
Dean was dead for four months that felt like forty years. Sam, for a matter of days.
He's tried very hard not to examine how long his time in the cage felt like. And the first go-round, the first time he died - he doesn't remember that at all.
There were other times, too.
He would really rather not remember.
To get them moving, Sam reaches out and takes the box of cereal from his brother. For no reason he can name, he's in the mood for an actual bowl of cereal, with milk, so he returns to the dairy case, plucks out a quart of milk, then walks rapidly up to the front of the store, where the combed-over clerk regards him with another round of red-faced suspicion.
"Hard to explain," he says to the man.
He pays for all of it, the cereal and milk, the Doritos and string cheese, and the pair of Zippos (one red, one yellow) that Dean pops out of the rack. The clerk is so unbreakably sullen that pilfering at least one thing would seem like an appropriate Screw you, but it's been a long day. A hot shower, crawling under the covers, and making dinner out of a big bowl of cereal while he and Dean watch some TV seems like a reasonable end to put it to.
They're back in the car when Dean says, "It's one of those things. You know."
"What is?"
"Is it a straight line, or are you supposed to deduct."
"Dean."
"Sam. Man. It's a serious question."
He will not stop, Sam thinks wearily. Unless and until something of a truly stupendous nature (or porn, perhaps) distracts him, Dean will not let go of this. He's like a hyper little dog, even without the benefit of a boxful of high fructose corn syrup, and because Dean will not rest until he has his answer - and maybe not then, maybe not ever - Sam tells him on a groan, "Straight line."
"You sure?"
"Dude. Please."
"You're sure, then."
"That thing you said before? That 'kill me'? You're treading on some seriously thin ice."
The key's in the ignition. There is, Sam thinks, a small possibility that they're going somewhere that will involve a hot shower and some rest.
There is also the possibility that he will need to beat the living shit out of his brother to shut him up.
That, he remembers.
Beating the living shit out of his brother.
It makes him squint his eyes nearly shut and turn away, turn his face toward the open window, the parking lot, the plate glass of the front of the store and the red-on-white signs advertising sales on Coke and charcoal briquets.
Something drops into his lap, and the surprise of it makes him look.
It's a Three Musketeers.
That they didn't pay for.
"Dude," he says to Dean.
There's so much in Dean's eyes at that moment: so much that Sam remembers from other places, other times. So much that's familiar. Annoying, yes. Frustrating. Infuriating, some of it. But all of it
God, Sam thinks.
All of it ALIVE.
As if he knows exactly what Sam is thinking - and for all Sam knows, maybe he does - Dean's lips shift into a smile. There's nothing cocky about it, nothing smartass. Nothing, really, that's reminiscent of the Dean who took what seemed to be a ridiculous amount of pride in shoplifting groceries and toys and sometimes absolute nonsense (a pink wallet, a jar of hair straightening gel, a bottle of calcium supplements), the Dean who loved thumbing his nose at the people who regarded him with suspicion, even though he was doing exactly what they expected him to do.
"We're gonna go with the original date of issue, then?" Dean asks quietly, with an odd note in his voice.
"What?"
"Straight line."
"What? I - yes. Dean. For crying out loud."
Dean sits there waiting as Sam picks up the chocolate bar and considers it, turning it over and over in his hands. When Sam finally surrenders to tearing open the wrapper and taking a big bite of the candy, Dean smiles at him again.
There's something in it that Sam can't put his finger on. "What?" he asks.
Instead of answering, Dean shakes his head. Turns the key in the ignition and gives the engine a little gas, apparently happy with the car's throaty rumble.
"Dean," Sam says. "What?"
"You don't know."
"I swear, man -"
"Nothing. Thought maybe you were gonna recalculate."
It's a vaudeville routine, and it's a thousand times more frustrating than Who's on first? But it's nothing new. Nothing that hasn't happened a thousand times before. And it's likely to go on happening, as long as…
"Happy birthday, bitch," Dean says as he shifts the car into gear.
That's…
Oh.
"You shouldn't have -" Sam begins.
"Why? You got an honor code?"
No, Sam thinks. Then: yes.
Because there are things he remembers. Things he would rather forget, and things he wishes had never happened in the first place. Much of it was completely out of his control, but not all of it.
Not all of it.
And as long as they're both still breathing, this isn't over.
As long as they're both still breathing, there's time to set things right.
Please, Sam thinks.
Dean takes his foot off the brake, gives the car a little gas, and reverses it out of the parking space. He's smiling, still, pleased with what he's done.
It's a Screw you, and Sam can't argue with that.
So as they return to the road - which might lead somewhere, or it might not - Sam returns his brother's smile, and says, quietly, "Jerk."
* * * * *
Chips tucked securely (but gently) under his arm, Dean moves on to the dairy cooler, pops the door open and wraps his hand around half a dozen packages of string cheese. He won't eat them, Sam knows; Dean never eats string cheese. He shreds it, because it amuses him, the way it separates into individual threads. Or. You know. Strings.
CHARACTERS: Sam and Dean
GENRE: Gen
RATING: PG
SPOILERS: None
LENGTH: 2029 words
THE 10,227 DAYS OF MY LIFE
By Carol Davis
"So kill me," Dean says over his shoulder as he makes his way down the chips-and-soda aisle. "I need a distraction."
"Kill you," Sam echoes.
"Yeah."
"Dude. Seriously. After all the crap we've been through, you're still going to use 'kill me' as a throwaway."
Dean's right hand pauses in midair, halfway to an enormous bag of Nacho Cheese Doritos. His shoulders twitch a little - and, suddenly, it's like they've stepped into a time machine, the two of them, and maybe the entire 7‑Eleven along with them, because all of a sudden he's the Dean that Sam remembers from their teenage years: the one with the near-constant smirk. The one who felt obligated to smart-mouth anyone he encountered.
The one who couldn't spend five minutes inside a 7-Eleven without pilfering something.
Dean shifts his head just enough to ensure that Sam sees his eyes roll, then he says, quietly but firmly, "Hyoo-more me. Okay? Does that suit your easily offended sense of political correctness any better? Humor me."
"Can we just go?"
"No," Dean announces. "We cannot just go."
"Because of -"
"It's a serious question, Sam."
"And when will it ever come up? For real."
"Do I know? You can't predict these things."
That bag of Doritos won't fit in Dean's pocket. He could tuck it inside the front of his jacket, but it'd make him look six months pregnant.
"For God's sake, dude. You're thirty-two. I'm twenty-seven."
Chips tucked securely (but gently) under his arm, Dean moves on to the dairy cooler, pops the door open and wraps his hand around half a dozen packages of string cheese. He won't eat them, Sam knows; Dean never eats string cheese. He shreds it, because it amuses him, the way it separates into individual threads.
Or. You know. Strings.
"What do you want?" Dean asks abruptly, his full attention focused on Sam.
"Dropping it would be good."
And with that old smirk hovering at the corner of his mouth, Dean ponders his bag of chips and his cheese, as if he honestly thinks that's what Sam meant. For a moment, Sam expects him to do it - drop everything - like this is some old vaudeville routine, but it's a fake-out, a bad one. Typical of the Dean he remembers.
"You know something?" Sam asks.
Dean moues his lips. Shrugs.
"Couple months after I got to Stanford. My roommate wanted to pick up some munchies for the room, so I went with him down to the store. We were walking around, looking at stuff, and he was talking about - I don't know, something. I felt like getting a Three Musketeers, so I picked it up, and he kept talking. And I -"
Dean snickers softly.
"I put it in my pocket. Had no idea I was doing that," Sam says. "It was just automatic. And my roommate - Jesus."
"Your roommate's name was Jesus?"
It's like a vaudeville routine. "I thought he was gonna piss himself."
"So your roommate was some little old lady schoolteacher."
"Pretty much."
"So - did you walk out with it?"
Sam takes a long look at his brother, armed with Doritos and string cheese: the brother who taught him to shoplift. The brother who was good enough at shoplifting to carry out in one trip enough food to last them for two or three days. "They have an honor code," Sam sighs. "He saw me. It was -"
"You wussied out."
"I had to."
"Sam."
He fully expects Dean to challenge him then, dare him to choose something and walk out of the store with it, even though the clerk's been watching them in the security mirror ever since they walked in the door. Not because Dean's practically swaggering down the aisle, or because his voice carries, because that Did you walk out with it? was certainly loud enough to be heard up front, where that red-faced clerk with the comb-over is huffing and snuffling behind the racks of beef jerky and Zippos, standing frantic guard over a cash register that can't possibly contain more than a hundred bucks.
It's because being all scraped and bruised and clawed - to the point that there is blood dripping off Dean's left ear - tends to make you stand out in a crowd.
"We should go," Sam says.
Shaking his head, Dean continues his survey of the store. The rows of kids' cereal, the Cap'n Crunch and the Froot Loops, hold him in thrall for a good minute and a half.
What Dean's thinking, Sam has no idea.
He could guess.
"It could come up," Dean says finally, though he's still staring at Froot Loops.
"It will never come up. And so what if it does? If somebody asks you how old you are, you tell them thirty-two."
"Minus -"
"There is no minus."
Dean has to juggle a bit, has to shift his footing so he can get closer to the shelf so he can grab a box of cereal without losing hold of his Doritos.
"You want milk?" Sam asks him.
It was a stupid website, he thinks with a vehemence he hopes doesn't show on his face, a stupid freaking website Dean stumbled onto by accident, a calculator of sorts, and there's no telling what Dean was actually looking for. A way to figure out distances, maybe. Or maybe he was just randomly clicking things. He likes to do that: click things, particularly when he's bored. There's no convincing him that he'll ruin the laptop if he downloads a worm.
HOW OLD ARE YOU??? the stupid thing said.
Easy enough to answer, for most people.
"Gonna eat it dry," Dean muses. "Remember that? You used to sit and watch cartoons and work your way through a whole box of this crap. It's a wonder you didn't end up weighing six hundred pounds."
Sugar high, Sam thinks. It was the sugar highs that were the problem.
"Then let's go," he says.
Doritos. String cheese. Froot Loops.
How old are you?
Why Dean would want to talk about it at all is a mystery. But then, there's never been an easy way to follow the convoluted path of Dean's thought processes. You'd think the whole thing - coming anywhere near a discussion of what's happened to the two of them - would be something Dean would steer clear of. Would stay a thousand miles away from. But there it was, that damned website and its screaming blue-and-gold headline.
HOW OLD ARE YOU???
Dean was dead for four months that felt like forty years. Sam, for a matter of days.
He's tried very hard not to examine how long his time in the cage felt like. And the first go-round, the first time he died - he doesn't remember that at all.
There were other times, too.
He would really rather not remember.
To get them moving, Sam reaches out and takes the box of cereal from his brother. For no reason he can name, he's in the mood for an actual bowl of cereal, with milk, so he returns to the dairy case, plucks out a quart of milk, then walks rapidly up to the front of the store, where the combed-over clerk regards him with another round of red-faced suspicion.
"Hard to explain," he says to the man.
He pays for all of it, the cereal and milk, the Doritos and string cheese, and the pair of Zippos (one red, one yellow) that Dean pops out of the rack. The clerk is so unbreakably sullen that pilfering at least one thing would seem like an appropriate Screw you, but it's been a long day. A hot shower, crawling under the covers, and making dinner out of a big bowl of cereal while he and Dean watch some TV seems like a reasonable end to put it to.
They're back in the car when Dean says, "It's one of those things. You know."
"What is?"
"Is it a straight line, or are you supposed to deduct."
"Dean."
"Sam. Man. It's a serious question."
He will not stop, Sam thinks wearily. Unless and until something of a truly stupendous nature (or porn, perhaps) distracts him, Dean will not let go of this. He's like a hyper little dog, even without the benefit of a boxful of high fructose corn syrup, and because Dean will not rest until he has his answer - and maybe not then, maybe not ever - Sam tells him on a groan, "Straight line."
"You sure?"
"Dude. Please."
"You're sure, then."
"That thing you said before? That 'kill me'? You're treading on some seriously thin ice."
The key's in the ignition. There is, Sam thinks, a small possibility that they're going somewhere that will involve a hot shower and some rest.
There is also the possibility that he will need to beat the living shit out of his brother to shut him up.
That, he remembers.
Beating the living shit out of his brother.
It makes him squint his eyes nearly shut and turn away, turn his face toward the open window, the parking lot, the plate glass of the front of the store and the red-on-white signs advertising sales on Coke and charcoal briquets.
Something drops into his lap, and the surprise of it makes him look.
It's a Three Musketeers.
That they didn't pay for.
"Dude," he says to Dean.
There's so much in Dean's eyes at that moment: so much that Sam remembers from other places, other times. So much that's familiar. Annoying, yes. Frustrating. Infuriating, some of it. But all of it
God, Sam thinks.
All of it ALIVE.
As if he knows exactly what Sam is thinking - and for all Sam knows, maybe he does - Dean's lips shift into a smile. There's nothing cocky about it, nothing smartass. Nothing, really, that's reminiscent of the Dean who took what seemed to be a ridiculous amount of pride in shoplifting groceries and toys and sometimes absolute nonsense (a pink wallet, a jar of hair straightening gel, a bottle of calcium supplements), the Dean who loved thumbing his nose at the people who regarded him with suspicion, even though he was doing exactly what they expected him to do.
"We're gonna go with the original date of issue, then?" Dean asks quietly, with an odd note in his voice.
"What?"
"Straight line."
"What? I - yes. Dean. For crying out loud."
Dean sits there waiting as Sam picks up the chocolate bar and considers it, turning it over and over in his hands. When Sam finally surrenders to tearing open the wrapper and taking a big bite of the candy, Dean smiles at him again.
There's something in it that Sam can't put his finger on. "What?" he asks.
Instead of answering, Dean shakes his head. Turns the key in the ignition and gives the engine a little gas, apparently happy with the car's throaty rumble.
"Dean," Sam says. "What?"
"You don't know."
"I swear, man -"
"Nothing. Thought maybe you were gonna recalculate."
It's a vaudeville routine, and it's a thousand times more frustrating than Who's on first? But it's nothing new. Nothing that hasn't happened a thousand times before. And it's likely to go on happening, as long as…
"Happy birthday, bitch," Dean says as he shifts the car into gear.
That's…
Oh.
"You shouldn't have -" Sam begins.
"Why? You got an honor code?"
No, Sam thinks. Then: yes.
Because there are things he remembers. Things he would rather forget, and things he wishes had never happened in the first place. Much of it was completely out of his control, but not all of it.
Not all of it.
And as long as they're both still breathing, this isn't over.
As long as they're both still breathing, there's time to set things right.
Please, Sam thinks.
Dean takes his foot off the brake, gives the car a little gas, and reverses it out of the parking space. He's smiling, still, pleased with what he's done.
It's a Screw you, and Sam can't argue with that.
So as they return to the road - which might lead somewhere, or it might not - Sam returns his brother's smile, and says, quietly, "Jerk."
* * * * *