[Fic] dear_tiger: Tornado Warning
[ invited: Sam/Dean ]
Title: Tornado Warning
Writer: dear_tiger
Alternate links: AO3
Status of work: Complete
Characters and/or pairings: Sam/Dean
Rating: R
Warnings, kinks & contents: None
Length: 28K
Summary: A failed attempt to restore Sam’s soul leaves roboSam with a demonic infestation. He and Dean set off across the country, searching for a way to reverse the damage. Elsewhere, an amnesiac ex-con lands a job at the Winchester Meat butcher shop, gets harassed by local monsters and falls in love with the sheriff. There are two stories that develop independently, and the connection is a name, and the name is a memory, and memories are hard to come by. But what you gotta remember first and foremost, sonny, is to watch out for the tornado.
Reccer's notes: The dazzling imagery alone -- the scenes in the butcher shop, the threatening skies, the wax-reading at the witch's house, -- makes this fic worth reading. And then comes the really good part -- the story itself. From beginning to end, "Tornado Warning" is an intricately constructed, brilliant little psychological puzzle and I am absolutely in awe of how well dear_tiger plotted out all the tiny bits, then linked everything together. The author drops clues and hidden meanings like breadcrumbs, but they're so smoothly woven into the story fabric, so wonderfully hidden-in-plain-sight, you won't consciously notice them until it all pulls together at the end. Think of a well-crafted and expensive analog watch, with all the gears fitting together just . . . so . . . perfectly.
It's a beautiful thing.
[Short excerpt]Dean watches her hobble around the room with a cigarette stuck in the corner of her mouth. Periodically, she pulls it out, erupts in a series of thunderous coughs, fans the smoke around her head and puts the cigarette back in. She looks close to sixty years old, with wrinkles that seem to break up her severe face into islands. The most prominent feature of her body is her watermelon breasts locked in an unyielding brassiere. Dean wonders if it hurts - the strain they put on her skin when she undresses.
She catches him watching, pulls out her cigarette and raises her eyebrows. Dean salutes her with the coffee mug. She snorts, fans the smoke, and sticks the cigarette back in.
“You have money?” she says. Her accent is strong, prominent like every other thing about her, and unmistakably Eastern European.
She was addressing Dean, but Sam reaches into his pocket first and hands her a few folded bills. The hostess - Maria Petrovna, a respectful address of first and paternal names, and don’t you dare call her Maria, she’s twice your age and not your girlfriend - the hostess licks her fingertips and counts the money twice before tucking the bills away in her skirt pocket and giving them a loving pat.
“Okay,” she says. “Which one of you needs…” she frowns over an elusive word and waves her hands in the air, “hockity-pockity?”
Sam gives Dean one quick unreadable look before stepping forward. “I do, ma’am.”
Maria Petrovna claps her hands and drags a chair from her shawl-covered table to the center of the room, inviting Sam with a gesture to sit. He does so, carefully. The witch pats his head like she’s looking for something in his hair and Sam makes a little displeased face but doesn’t squirm away. Dean almost snorts coffee out of his nose. Sam is almost unrecognizable sometimes with his calm, calculating look, and other times he does these things, these little grimaces and gestures that go straight to Dean’s heart. The problem with doppelgangers is that you can never be sure how much of the original person is hiding in there.
“You, boy.” Dean snaps out of his thoughts. The witch is standing by Sam’s side with a bowl of water. “You hold this.”
Dean puts down his coffee and takes the bowl from her. The water is so cold it numbs his fingertips through the porcelain. He holds it up over Sam’s head like Maria Petrovna wants him to, and when she’s happy with the position, she hobbles off into the kitchen. Sam twists his head around to watch her go, obviously noting the roll of her solid buttocks under the skirt. He looks up at Dean.
“What?” Dean whispers. “What’s wrong with you?”
Sam snorts and, hearing the witch’s creaking footsteps approach from the kitchen, sits straight again, with the top of his head under the bowl Dean is holding. Maria Petrovna comes back with a little pot emanating the smell of hot wax. She apparently replaced her burnt-out cigarette with a fresh one while in the kitchen.
“You hold still,” she says, though Dean is unsure whether she’s talking to him or Sam. He freezes, just in case.
Even sitting down, Sam is too tall for her, and the bowl in Dean’s hands is at her eye level. She pulls out a short stool from under the table with her foot and, with a sigh, rests a hand on Dean’s shoulder, unasked, to help her climb up. The ancient piece of furniture moans under her weight, and for a second Dean is afraid she’ll tumble down, two hundred pounds of Slavic witch plus a bowl of hot wax, but she balances herself out. “You worry too much,” she says, catching his eyes. “Now be quiet.”
Dean hasn’t said anything, but he bites his tongue nevertheless. He can feel his heart beating a little too fast, a small fluttering in his chest. He studies the back of Sam’s neck, the curls of hair there and the line of tan visible just under his shirt collar. Let this one work.
The witch moves her cigarette from one corner of her mouth to another with her tongue and starts pouring the wax. It solidifies as soon as it touches the cold water, makes an uneven pool that freezes instantly, with air bubbles breaking through the surface and freezing half-torn. When all the wax is poured, Maria Petrovna nods, seemingly satisfied, and grabs Dean’s shoulder again to climb down.
“That’s it?” he says.
She sets her pot aside and gestures for the water bowl. “Give here.”
The island of frozen wax, relatively smooth on the surface, has formed bizarre whorls and figures on its underside. The witch pulls it out and blows on it to shake off water droplets. She ignores Sam and Dean as they move closer to look. Squinting at the shapes, she turns the piece of wax in her hands to try out different angles. The most obvious figure in the center of the whole strange sculpture is a twisted cone, wide at the surface of the island and tapering to a pointy end. Its body is twisted on itself, too, and it looks like a gnarled dead tree stripped of branches. There are more incomprehensible shapes around it that Dean would’ve dismissed, except that when Maria Petrovna turns the piece of wax just so, one formation resolves into a face.