SPN Fic: Silence
Title: Silence
Characters: Castiel, Dean, Sam
Genre: Gen
Rating: PG
Word Count: 1256
Spoilers: Set early S5. Some plot elements discussed.
Summary: Sometimes all you needed was an extra hour and a half of summer. Sometimes you needed to get your hands dirty and scrub caked grease out of a pistol or two.
Disclaimer: I do not actually know anything about firearms.
“I love the smell of gun oil in the morning.”
He said it to nobody, because of course nobody was listening. Sam seemed to be busy snoring his throat out into one of the motel's lumpy pillows. Kid had a pair of lungs in him, all right, and even though he'd been at it since Dean had gotten up three hours ago, he hadn't lost any of his enthusiasm yet. If anything, he'd gotten louder. Which left Dean to chuckle at his own joke and reassemble the semi-automatic in silence.
The sun had risen an hour or so back, so Dean had finally been able to switch off the teal ceramic lamp on the table and twitch open the blinds to let in the uncertain light of the summer sunrise. It was only 7:03, and already the square of sunlight where he'd laid out their arsenal in neatly arranged parts felt noticeably warm when he reached into it. Apparently, autumn had decided to grant them one of those bonus slices of summer that sometimes wormed their way deep into October, where nobody knew quite what to do with them. Glancing out through the sun flare on the window, Dean considered smashing through the glass just to get a whiff of that misplaced late-August air. He might have, too, but there was something in the sun-warmed silence of this particular early morning that made him want to just sit a little longer and let it soak into him as he worked.
Even as his hands got blacker and grittier with the dirt and grease from the old Taurus, he could almost feel the weeks of fear and anger and worry leaching out of him, washed away in the gentle warmth of the sunrise. The knotted muscle at the back of his neck loosened a fraction as he unscrewed the pieces of the next gun and arranged them systematically across the old grease-stained towel.
He was so caught up in the calm intensity of the early morning quiet that for the first time, when his ears registered that slight and sudden suggestion of wings, he wasn't startled. Lifting his eyes to the chair opposite him, Dean took in the disheveled trenchcoat, the re-loosened tie, the blue eyes peering straight ahead as if there was nothing else in all of creation to look at but the hideous painting of a clock tower hung over the empty bed.
Well, there was nothing new there.
He waited for the angel to speak, give him the latest update in the Search for Spock podcast and explain exactly what Dean was supposed to do this time to help find the God who didn't exist. He just hoped that today's plan wouldn't involve quite so much hospital arson, because he was really getting too old for that kind of thing.
But if Castiel had come for any reason beyond staring at the garage-sale watercolor and listening to Sam's Concerto for One Uvula, he was taking his time mentioning it, and Dean didn't feel like playing Heavenly Twenty Questions just this minute. Picking up the wadded cleaning cloth, he hunted over its expanse for a fresh spot amidst the grease marks. The pieces of the gun felt hot to his touch now as he ran the cloth over them, rubbing away the dirt that had somehow accumulated over what had been an unusually maintenance-low past few months. Funny how the apocalypse could make you forget things like haircuts and dentist appointments and oiling your guns. Dad, of course, would call that a weak excuse.
Guy always had been a dick.
“I haven't found him yet, Dean.”
He looked up again. Apparently Cas had finally had his fill of Waterson Peters's Drudge County Clock Tower No. 1, because the sharp, baffled eyes were trained on him now. He waited for the angel to go on, to introduce the part where this started mattering to Dean, but he only stared in silence, as if he'd forgotten what words were and was hoping Dean might explain it to him again.
“Necklace not working out?” Dean asked. Castiel shook his head. “You wanna give it back to me then, huh?”
“No,” Castiel replied simply. Dean couldn't think of anything else to say. Castiel didn't blink, didn't move; Dean wasn't even sure if he was breathing. And the message seemed to be over. I haven't found him yet. That was all.
He figured he should remind Castiel that he was running around time and space chasing an invisible dude with a fake white beard, but the guy would probably just object that “his Father had never grown facial hair,” and for some reason Dean just wasn't in the mood to spend his morning teasing angels. He lifted the last of the guns - a Beretta Sam had picked up while the two of them had been going solo - and dismantled it carefully, noting with approval the sturdy make and solid design of the thing; his little brother knew a good gun when he saw one. He worked in silence, wiping the metal down and oiling the pieces until they glinted in the cool light, breathing in the harsh, oddly comfortable odor.
Sam would have demanded some kind of action. Sam would have shouted names and legends at him, dragged him into schemes and sent him off to a library to research the fifteen hundred freaking names of God. Sam would have huffed and argued, and Dean would have bitched right back and turned up the volume on the car stereo until the bass line nearly rattled the side mirrors off. There would have been a lot of bickering, a lot of yelling, and a lot of running around in the dark with rock salt and fire irons.
But Cas seemed content just to sit and stare at the gun laid out in pieces on the cheap particle-board table, to watch Dean's greasy fingers as they twisted and pulled and scrubbed, snapping and clicking the irregular chunks of metal into a recognizable weapon once more. Just to linger in the moment, Godless and speechless, caught like dust in the ray of sunlight cutting through the air between the ratty curtains.
A flutter, rising on the wave of a particularly loud snore from Sam's bed. Dean frowned at the gun in his hand, shoving the clip home and nodding in satisfaction at the pile of freshly oiled firearms now stacked at one end of the tiny table. Stretching backwards in the chair, he tugged at the curtain, letting another armful of summer tumble in over the tacky paisley carpet.
Some things didn't need a lot of saying. Sam had never quite figured that out, but Dean had always lived by the principle that when something was eating through your heart and your stomach and into your guts, the last thing you wanted to do perform invasive surgery. Then again, Sam had never had the medical mind in the family. He was the lawyer, and when he had questions, no matter how painful or disgusting or intrusive, he wanted answers. Dean guessed he understood that by now, although that didn't mean he liked it any.
But sometimes all you needed was an extra hour and a half of summer. Sometimes you needed to get your hands dirty and scrub caked grease out of a pistol or two. Sometimes you needed to just sit and stare at a watercolor clock.
Sometimes all it took was a little silence.
Characters: Castiel, Dean, Sam
Genre: Gen
Rating: PG
Word Count: 1256
Spoilers: Set early S5. Some plot elements discussed.
Summary: Sometimes all you needed was an extra hour and a half of summer. Sometimes you needed to get your hands dirty and scrub caked grease out of a pistol or two.
Disclaimer: I do not actually know anything about firearms.
“I love the smell of gun oil in the morning.”
He said it to nobody, because of course nobody was listening. Sam seemed to be busy snoring his throat out into one of the motel's lumpy pillows. Kid had a pair of lungs in him, all right, and even though he'd been at it since Dean had gotten up three hours ago, he hadn't lost any of his enthusiasm yet. If anything, he'd gotten louder. Which left Dean to chuckle at his own joke and reassemble the semi-automatic in silence.
The sun had risen an hour or so back, so Dean had finally been able to switch off the teal ceramic lamp on the table and twitch open the blinds to let in the uncertain light of the summer sunrise. It was only 7:03, and already the square of sunlight where he'd laid out their arsenal in neatly arranged parts felt noticeably warm when he reached into it. Apparently, autumn had decided to grant them one of those bonus slices of summer that sometimes wormed their way deep into October, where nobody knew quite what to do with them. Glancing out through the sun flare on the window, Dean considered smashing through the glass just to get a whiff of that misplaced late-August air. He might have, too, but there was something in the sun-warmed silence of this particular early morning that made him want to just sit a little longer and let it soak into him as he worked.
Even as his hands got blacker and grittier with the dirt and grease from the old Taurus, he could almost feel the weeks of fear and anger and worry leaching out of him, washed away in the gentle warmth of the sunrise. The knotted muscle at the back of his neck loosened a fraction as he unscrewed the pieces of the next gun and arranged them systematically across the old grease-stained towel.
He was so caught up in the calm intensity of the early morning quiet that for the first time, when his ears registered that slight and sudden suggestion of wings, he wasn't startled. Lifting his eyes to the chair opposite him, Dean took in the disheveled trenchcoat, the re-loosened tie, the blue eyes peering straight ahead as if there was nothing else in all of creation to look at but the hideous painting of a clock tower hung over the empty bed.
Well, there was nothing new there.
He waited for the angel to speak, give him the latest update in the Search for Spock podcast and explain exactly what Dean was supposed to do this time to help find the God who didn't exist. He just hoped that today's plan wouldn't involve quite so much hospital arson, because he was really getting too old for that kind of thing.
But if Castiel had come for any reason beyond staring at the garage-sale watercolor and listening to Sam's Concerto for One Uvula, he was taking his time mentioning it, and Dean didn't feel like playing Heavenly Twenty Questions just this minute. Picking up the wadded cleaning cloth, he hunted over its expanse for a fresh spot amidst the grease marks. The pieces of the gun felt hot to his touch now as he ran the cloth over them, rubbing away the dirt that had somehow accumulated over what had been an unusually maintenance-low past few months. Funny how the apocalypse could make you forget things like haircuts and dentist appointments and oiling your guns. Dad, of course, would call that a weak excuse.
Guy always had been a dick.
“I haven't found him yet, Dean.”
He looked up again. Apparently Cas had finally had his fill of Waterson Peters's Drudge County Clock Tower No. 1, because the sharp, baffled eyes were trained on him now. He waited for the angel to go on, to introduce the part where this started mattering to Dean, but he only stared in silence, as if he'd forgotten what words were and was hoping Dean might explain it to him again.
“Necklace not working out?” Dean asked. Castiel shook his head. “You wanna give it back to me then, huh?”
“No,” Castiel replied simply. Dean couldn't think of anything else to say. Castiel didn't blink, didn't move; Dean wasn't even sure if he was breathing. And the message seemed to be over. I haven't found him yet. That was all.
He figured he should remind Castiel that he was running around time and space chasing an invisible dude with a fake white beard, but the guy would probably just object that “his Father had never grown facial hair,” and for some reason Dean just wasn't in the mood to spend his morning teasing angels. He lifted the last of the guns - a Beretta Sam had picked up while the two of them had been going solo - and dismantled it carefully, noting with approval the sturdy make and solid design of the thing; his little brother knew a good gun when he saw one. He worked in silence, wiping the metal down and oiling the pieces until they glinted in the cool light, breathing in the harsh, oddly comfortable odor.
Sam would have demanded some kind of action. Sam would have shouted names and legends at him, dragged him into schemes and sent him off to a library to research the fifteen hundred freaking names of God. Sam would have huffed and argued, and Dean would have bitched right back and turned up the volume on the car stereo until the bass line nearly rattled the side mirrors off. There would have been a lot of bickering, a lot of yelling, and a lot of running around in the dark with rock salt and fire irons.
But Cas seemed content just to sit and stare at the gun laid out in pieces on the cheap particle-board table, to watch Dean's greasy fingers as they twisted and pulled and scrubbed, snapping and clicking the irregular chunks of metal into a recognizable weapon once more. Just to linger in the moment, Godless and speechless, caught like dust in the ray of sunlight cutting through the air between the ratty curtains.
A flutter, rising on the wave of a particularly loud snore from Sam's bed. Dean frowned at the gun in his hand, shoving the clip home and nodding in satisfaction at the pile of freshly oiled firearms now stacked at one end of the tiny table. Stretching backwards in the chair, he tugged at the curtain, letting another armful of summer tumble in over the tacky paisley carpet.
Some things didn't need a lot of saying. Sam had never quite figured that out, but Dean had always lived by the principle that when something was eating through your heart and your stomach and into your guts, the last thing you wanted to do perform invasive surgery. Then again, Sam had never had the medical mind in the family. He was the lawyer, and when he had questions, no matter how painful or disgusting or intrusive, he wanted answers. Dean guessed he understood that by now, although that didn't mean he liked it any.
But sometimes all you needed was an extra hour and a half of summer. Sometimes you needed to get your hands dirty and scrub caked grease out of a pistol or two. Sometimes you needed to just sit and stare at a watercolor clock.
Sometimes all it took was a little silence.