(no subject)
Title: Singing in the dead of night
Author: queen_kiwi
Pairing: Sam / Dean
Rating: PG
Word Count: 2,130
Spoilers: None
Prompt: ‘Guitar’, for Team Schmoop in the spn_heraea challenge
Summary: Sam’s on a trip without Dean, and he finds something unexpected. Title taken from The Beatles’ "Blackbird".
*
There are two superstitions about a crossroads.
The first is a ritual, an offering with pieces of oneself, and it summons a demon from the depths of hell.
But the second goes: if you stand at a crossroads on Halloween night and shut your eyes and listen, you will hear-from the wind, from the spirits, from who knows where-all that will befall you in the next twelve months.
*
Sam finds it when he’s rummaging around in his bag, looking for his iPod; it’s wedged down between his rolled-up hoodie and an old paperback.
Half-melted snow is sleeting from an icy grey sky against the foggy windows of the bus. There are drifts slumped over by the side of the road, soggy and leaking into the sewers; the bus splashes through a pothole and sends up a spray of slush.
Pine trees and shabby houses with rickety porches and stop signs, telephone poles, someone out with plastic rain boots and an umbrella. Sam’s not watching; he’s digging through his duffel bag, fishing the thing out and holding it up to the light.
The tape’s unmarked. It’s not one of Dean’s-it can’t be, all of those are labeled. He knows because he bought a bunch of them and recorded the hamster dance song, over and over until both sides were filled on each tape, and then switched all the labels, dumped the tapes in the bin, and waited. Dean wouldn’t speak to him for two days.
But it’s the kind Dean always buys, and there’s no “The Black Album” or “For Those About to Rock We Salute You” scribbled on it in black marker.
Sam flips it over a couple of times, lost in thought. Behind him, the balding guy with cigarette breath accidentally kicks his seat as he snorts and turns over in his sleep.
*
The first time Sam heard it he was showering, scrubbing at his scalp with monster guck in his hair, and he spent most of it trying to get his bangs unstuck from a gloopy clot of something he couldn’t even identify.
Toweling off and scrubbing his hands raw in the sink-the... thing had oozed off his hair and plopped wetly into the bathtub, and he’d had to poke it to get it into the drain-he came out to the last notes, Dean picking at the guitar strings with one hand cradled around the neck.
“You’re buying,” he told Dean matter-of-factly.
“Your turn,” Dean said, without even looking up. He strummed a soft, low chord, absently, before a short ‘uff’ noise as he slid the guitar off his knees.
“I had slime in my hair,” Sam informed him. “I had vomit in my hair. I’m fairly certain I had innards in my hair-”
“So far, a major improvement on your normal style-”
“-and that means that you, Dean,” Sam finished loudly, ignoring this, “are buying. Six-pack, barbecued wings and fries with extra sauce...”
“Hey, I was the one who killed it.”
“I was the one who looked up how to do it.”
“I-” Dean trails off and scratches the back of his neck, mumbling, “don’t have any cash on me.”
“Oh, that’s right... I remember now, last night, the blonde poker player with the really low-cut shirt...”
“Yeah, yeah, shut up and give me the money.” Dean shrugs into his jacket and locks the door behind him, his footsteps clunking down the steps, and Sam perches on the edge of the bed. The guitar lies slung against the covers, forgotten, and he reaches out to pluck one string with his thumb. A low E hums in the air.
*
Sam climbs out at the rest stop and goes hunting around the town, bag slung over his shoulder and tape stuffed in his jacket pocket. He has to duck under the awnings as melted snow sluices off the roofs, dripping and puddling on the ground. A dog barks at him, tied up to a bicycle post with a leash.
Kids are running by in costumes, bundled up in their raincoats and winter boots, one girl carrying a sparkly princess wand and another wearing a Spiderman mask. He dodges a green Power Ranger and a tiny black cat with fuzzy ears, her face paint smudged, grins back at him over her shoulder as her mom grabs her hand to cross the street.
The electronics store is dusty and dingy and smells bad, and the sales clerk in his flannel shirt is greasy and oil-slick as he wipes his glasses. But Sam manages to put down a handful of cash on an old tape recorder and some batteries, and makes it back just as the bus’s engine sputters to life.
As the bus trundles out of parking and lumbers down the road, Sam fiddles with the back of the thing, gets it whirring with a click, and puts the tape in.
*
The second time Sam heard it, he was lying half-awake after a long hunt. They were sprawled out lazy and relaxed in bed and Dean was fiddling with the guitar, fingers moving over the strings hypnotically, and Sam was watching his hands and dozing off to sleep.
He blinked a bit, hazily, and frowned. “I don’t recognize that one,” he said, his voice stretching into a yawn.
Dean shrugged, sliding his left hand down on the fretboard, picking out a new chord. “Just a song.”
“Yeah, but who’s it by?” Sam persisted, tilting his head up.
His brother didn’t answer. He strummed the chords quietly, and they’d been in bed like this before, late at night, and Dean had slid his arm around Sam’s waist and draped across him, sprawling over his drowsy-warm body. They’d kissed, slow and deep and thorough, languid and gentle, lulling each other to sleep. And the song was like that now, like falling asleep with his head against Dean’s chest and listening to his heartbeat, and Sam found himself barely breathing.
Then Dean tightened up the strings again, turning the pegs, and leaned over to prop up the guitar against the wall. “C’mon, we’ve gotta be on the road by sunrise, haunting down in Tennessee.”
*
At first he doesn’t recognize it. The sound on the tape recorder is really tinny and static-crackly, he has to crank the dial and fiddle with his earbuds.
The bus smells stale, like sweaty leather and unwashed feet. The seat opposite his has duct-tape on it and a stray Coke can with a plastic straw on the floor; the guy behind him snores softly. It’s nighttime, the reflection of the neon lights from the ads glowing softly against the blackness of the windows.
Sam turns up the volume as far as it will go and slouches down in his seat, listening hard. The sound on the tape is quiet and he can just make out the sound of breathing in the background, very faintly, the sound of clothes rustling.
A guitar is playing, a tune he can’t place. He’s frowning and tapping his long fingers on his knee, humming under his breath and nodding his head to the beat, trying to figure it out, when he stops.
The bus wheezes and creaks to a stop in the darkness, its headlights gleaming in the black as it idles at the intersection; a dirt road crosses the paved one here, dusty tracks stretching off into the fields, yellow lines ticking like seconds on a clock endlessly down the highway. It’s Halloween night, and someone has their window open and cold air is gusting across the back of Sam’s neck.
Goosebumps prickle shivery across his skin, but he doesn’t notice. He’s still motionless in his seat, listening.
*
That day, so far, he’d managed to bang his head in the shower, get brain freeze from drinking a Slushie too fast, get sunburn, bruise his knee while bumping into a coffee table, and then get a vase smashed over his head by a poltergeist.
Fortunately, he’d ducked and the fragments had shattered above him, china tinkling to the floor. Dean was still fumbling for the holy water flask when the spirit-‘noisy spirit’, Sam’s ass-had decided to whip open the kitchen drawer.
The knife aimed for Dean’s left eye had missed. The one aimed for his right leg hadn’t.
“Hold still,” Sam said in the motel room, brushing hair out of his eyes as he knotted the thread. Dean flattened his lips and made no sound, lying back on the bed with his bloodied leg outstretched. He’d chugged back a couple of painkillers already, throat working around the bottle as he tilted his head back, but still flinched and fisted his hands as Sam slipped the needle in. He let out a shuddery breath, spreading his fingers flat on his knees, breathing low and hard.
Sam sat cross-legged, sewed carefully. He made small tiny stitches like their daddy showed them and huddled intently over his work with his eyebrows furrowed together. He waited for some wisecrack, some lame joke, but Dean was watching him in silence.
“Why don’t...” he had to clear his throat, “why don’t you play your guitar? Take your mind off this?”
There’s a moment’s pause and then Dean shifted in his hold, leaned over the side of the bed. “I get to play Metallica,” he said with a faint ghost of a smile.
“Two songs and then I stab you with this needle,” Sam informed him.
But Dean settled his leg back into Sam’s hands and tuned up the guitar as Sam pulled the thread tight, gently tugging, and then played as his little brother kept stitching him up. It wasn’t Metallica or anybody Sam recognized, and he opened his mouth to speak when he shut it again and listened.
The song was like the way Dean rubbed his thumb over Sam’s cheekbone when he was asleep, just under his eyelashes, or slid his fingertips down Sam’s spine. Like when Dean grabbed him when he’s having a vision or held him down after a nightmare, murmuring a husky-soft voice into his ear. Like the way he always cheated at cards and hogged the covers and kicked in his sleep, tossing and turning, and kissed Sam like he couldn’t quite believe it was happening.
Sam swallowed, as imperceptibly as possible, and cross-stitched up the wound as he fumbled around with a free hand for bandages. Dean kept his head bent over the strings, hands moving restlessly, ceaselessly.
*
Sam wakes up to a colourless dawn, working out a crick in his neck as he stares out the window. The trees are black against the sky and the world is grey, the road dull and damp. The frozen rain’s tapered off to a cold drizzle, drops sliding noiselessly down the glass.
The tape recorder is clicking and he turns it off, pulling his earbuds out. Around him people are sprawled out, heads lolling back against the seats; one person stirs in his sleep, another person lights up a cigarette and puffs out their open window. The driver turns a bend in the road and Sam can see the lights of the bus station gleaming palely up ahead.
He pulls his bag up onto his knees as the driver gets on the crackly PA system and makes the announcement, to drowsy groans and mumbled curse words. There’s no note, nothing with the tape, and side B plays a moment of empty static before snapping off.
Everyone’s sitting up all around him, drowsily stretching out, yawning and rubbing at their faces. There’s the rustle of clothes and thump-clatter of luggage racks, the thudding of boots heading down the aisle. The driver unhooks his phone and speaks inaudibly into the receiver as he turns into the station, the engine rumbling as they slowly lumber to a halt.
Sam comes out of it with a startled jerk, breath catching, and quickly jams the tape recorder into his bag, back down between the paperback and rolled-up hoodie. He zips up his bag and swings it over his shoulder, crowding into the aisle as the doors swing open, inching his way outside.
The air is freezing cold and breath drifts away in white clouds as people mill on the platform; it’s noisy and echoing and huge. Sam blinks sleepily, wincing, lost and confused and cramped and still half-awake; people jostle by him, pushing past, and someone swings their briefcase past his knees.
Then he spots a brown leather jacket, and freckles and green eyes, and the world opens up again and he’s able to stop and draw a deep breath.
It’s been two weeks.
When Dean catches his eye, finally, there’s a smile lighting up Sam’s face and he’s heading up the stairs to meet him.
*
Author: queen_kiwi
Pairing: Sam / Dean
Rating: PG
Word Count: 2,130
Spoilers: None
Prompt: ‘Guitar’, for Team Schmoop in the spn_heraea challenge
Summary: Sam’s on a trip without Dean, and he finds something unexpected. Title taken from The Beatles’ "Blackbird".
*
There are two superstitions about a crossroads.
The first is a ritual, an offering with pieces of oneself, and it summons a demon from the depths of hell.
But the second goes: if you stand at a crossroads on Halloween night and shut your eyes and listen, you will hear-from the wind, from the spirits, from who knows where-all that will befall you in the next twelve months.
*
Sam finds it when he’s rummaging around in his bag, looking for his iPod; it’s wedged down between his rolled-up hoodie and an old paperback.
Half-melted snow is sleeting from an icy grey sky against the foggy windows of the bus. There are drifts slumped over by the side of the road, soggy and leaking into the sewers; the bus splashes through a pothole and sends up a spray of slush.
Pine trees and shabby houses with rickety porches and stop signs, telephone poles, someone out with plastic rain boots and an umbrella. Sam’s not watching; he’s digging through his duffel bag, fishing the thing out and holding it up to the light.
The tape’s unmarked. It’s not one of Dean’s-it can’t be, all of those are labeled. He knows because he bought a bunch of them and recorded the hamster dance song, over and over until both sides were filled on each tape, and then switched all the labels, dumped the tapes in the bin, and waited. Dean wouldn’t speak to him for two days.
But it’s the kind Dean always buys, and there’s no “The Black Album” or “For Those About to Rock We Salute You” scribbled on it in black marker.
Sam flips it over a couple of times, lost in thought. Behind him, the balding guy with cigarette breath accidentally kicks his seat as he snorts and turns over in his sleep.
*
The first time Sam heard it he was showering, scrubbing at his scalp with monster guck in his hair, and he spent most of it trying to get his bangs unstuck from a gloopy clot of something he couldn’t even identify.
Toweling off and scrubbing his hands raw in the sink-the... thing had oozed off his hair and plopped wetly into the bathtub, and he’d had to poke it to get it into the drain-he came out to the last notes, Dean picking at the guitar strings with one hand cradled around the neck.
“You’re buying,” he told Dean matter-of-factly.
“Your turn,” Dean said, without even looking up. He strummed a soft, low chord, absently, before a short ‘uff’ noise as he slid the guitar off his knees.
“I had slime in my hair,” Sam informed him. “I had vomit in my hair. I’m fairly certain I had innards in my hair-”
“So far, a major improvement on your normal style-”
“-and that means that you, Dean,” Sam finished loudly, ignoring this, “are buying. Six-pack, barbecued wings and fries with extra sauce...”
“Hey, I was the one who killed it.”
“I was the one who looked up how to do it.”
“I-” Dean trails off and scratches the back of his neck, mumbling, “don’t have any cash on me.”
“Oh, that’s right... I remember now, last night, the blonde poker player with the really low-cut shirt...”
“Yeah, yeah, shut up and give me the money.” Dean shrugs into his jacket and locks the door behind him, his footsteps clunking down the steps, and Sam perches on the edge of the bed. The guitar lies slung against the covers, forgotten, and he reaches out to pluck one string with his thumb. A low E hums in the air.
*
Sam climbs out at the rest stop and goes hunting around the town, bag slung over his shoulder and tape stuffed in his jacket pocket. He has to duck under the awnings as melted snow sluices off the roofs, dripping and puddling on the ground. A dog barks at him, tied up to a bicycle post with a leash.
Kids are running by in costumes, bundled up in their raincoats and winter boots, one girl carrying a sparkly princess wand and another wearing a Spiderman mask. He dodges a green Power Ranger and a tiny black cat with fuzzy ears, her face paint smudged, grins back at him over her shoulder as her mom grabs her hand to cross the street.
The electronics store is dusty and dingy and smells bad, and the sales clerk in his flannel shirt is greasy and oil-slick as he wipes his glasses. But Sam manages to put down a handful of cash on an old tape recorder and some batteries, and makes it back just as the bus’s engine sputters to life.
As the bus trundles out of parking and lumbers down the road, Sam fiddles with the back of the thing, gets it whirring with a click, and puts the tape in.
*
The second time Sam heard it, he was lying half-awake after a long hunt. They were sprawled out lazy and relaxed in bed and Dean was fiddling with the guitar, fingers moving over the strings hypnotically, and Sam was watching his hands and dozing off to sleep.
He blinked a bit, hazily, and frowned. “I don’t recognize that one,” he said, his voice stretching into a yawn.
Dean shrugged, sliding his left hand down on the fretboard, picking out a new chord. “Just a song.”
“Yeah, but who’s it by?” Sam persisted, tilting his head up.
His brother didn’t answer. He strummed the chords quietly, and they’d been in bed like this before, late at night, and Dean had slid his arm around Sam’s waist and draped across him, sprawling over his drowsy-warm body. They’d kissed, slow and deep and thorough, languid and gentle, lulling each other to sleep. And the song was like that now, like falling asleep with his head against Dean’s chest and listening to his heartbeat, and Sam found himself barely breathing.
Then Dean tightened up the strings again, turning the pegs, and leaned over to prop up the guitar against the wall. “C’mon, we’ve gotta be on the road by sunrise, haunting down in Tennessee.”
*
At first he doesn’t recognize it. The sound on the tape recorder is really tinny and static-crackly, he has to crank the dial and fiddle with his earbuds.
The bus smells stale, like sweaty leather and unwashed feet. The seat opposite his has duct-tape on it and a stray Coke can with a plastic straw on the floor; the guy behind him snores softly. It’s nighttime, the reflection of the neon lights from the ads glowing softly against the blackness of the windows.
Sam turns up the volume as far as it will go and slouches down in his seat, listening hard. The sound on the tape is quiet and he can just make out the sound of breathing in the background, very faintly, the sound of clothes rustling.
A guitar is playing, a tune he can’t place. He’s frowning and tapping his long fingers on his knee, humming under his breath and nodding his head to the beat, trying to figure it out, when he stops.
The bus wheezes and creaks to a stop in the darkness, its headlights gleaming in the black as it idles at the intersection; a dirt road crosses the paved one here, dusty tracks stretching off into the fields, yellow lines ticking like seconds on a clock endlessly down the highway. It’s Halloween night, and someone has their window open and cold air is gusting across the back of Sam’s neck.
Goosebumps prickle shivery across his skin, but he doesn’t notice. He’s still motionless in his seat, listening.
*
That day, so far, he’d managed to bang his head in the shower, get brain freeze from drinking a Slushie too fast, get sunburn, bruise his knee while bumping into a coffee table, and then get a vase smashed over his head by a poltergeist.
Fortunately, he’d ducked and the fragments had shattered above him, china tinkling to the floor. Dean was still fumbling for the holy water flask when the spirit-‘noisy spirit’, Sam’s ass-had decided to whip open the kitchen drawer.
The knife aimed for Dean’s left eye had missed. The one aimed for his right leg hadn’t.
“Hold still,” Sam said in the motel room, brushing hair out of his eyes as he knotted the thread. Dean flattened his lips and made no sound, lying back on the bed with his bloodied leg outstretched. He’d chugged back a couple of painkillers already, throat working around the bottle as he tilted his head back, but still flinched and fisted his hands as Sam slipped the needle in. He let out a shuddery breath, spreading his fingers flat on his knees, breathing low and hard.
Sam sat cross-legged, sewed carefully. He made small tiny stitches like their daddy showed them and huddled intently over his work with his eyebrows furrowed together. He waited for some wisecrack, some lame joke, but Dean was watching him in silence.
“Why don’t...” he had to clear his throat, “why don’t you play your guitar? Take your mind off this?”
There’s a moment’s pause and then Dean shifted in his hold, leaned over the side of the bed. “I get to play Metallica,” he said with a faint ghost of a smile.
“Two songs and then I stab you with this needle,” Sam informed him.
But Dean settled his leg back into Sam’s hands and tuned up the guitar as Sam pulled the thread tight, gently tugging, and then played as his little brother kept stitching him up. It wasn’t Metallica or anybody Sam recognized, and he opened his mouth to speak when he shut it again and listened.
The song was like the way Dean rubbed his thumb over Sam’s cheekbone when he was asleep, just under his eyelashes, or slid his fingertips down Sam’s spine. Like when Dean grabbed him when he’s having a vision or held him down after a nightmare, murmuring a husky-soft voice into his ear. Like the way he always cheated at cards and hogged the covers and kicked in his sleep, tossing and turning, and kissed Sam like he couldn’t quite believe it was happening.
Sam swallowed, as imperceptibly as possible, and cross-stitched up the wound as he fumbled around with a free hand for bandages. Dean kept his head bent over the strings, hands moving restlessly, ceaselessly.
*
Sam wakes up to a colourless dawn, working out a crick in his neck as he stares out the window. The trees are black against the sky and the world is grey, the road dull and damp. The frozen rain’s tapered off to a cold drizzle, drops sliding noiselessly down the glass.
The tape recorder is clicking and he turns it off, pulling his earbuds out. Around him people are sprawled out, heads lolling back against the seats; one person stirs in his sleep, another person lights up a cigarette and puffs out their open window. The driver turns a bend in the road and Sam can see the lights of the bus station gleaming palely up ahead.
He pulls his bag up onto his knees as the driver gets on the crackly PA system and makes the announcement, to drowsy groans and mumbled curse words. There’s no note, nothing with the tape, and side B plays a moment of empty static before snapping off.
Everyone’s sitting up all around him, drowsily stretching out, yawning and rubbing at their faces. There’s the rustle of clothes and thump-clatter of luggage racks, the thudding of boots heading down the aisle. The driver unhooks his phone and speaks inaudibly into the receiver as he turns into the station, the engine rumbling as they slowly lumber to a halt.
Sam comes out of it with a startled jerk, breath catching, and quickly jams the tape recorder into his bag, back down between the paperback and rolled-up hoodie. He zips up his bag and swings it over his shoulder, crowding into the aisle as the doors swing open, inching his way outside.
The air is freezing cold and breath drifts away in white clouds as people mill on the platform; it’s noisy and echoing and huge. Sam blinks sleepily, wincing, lost and confused and cramped and still half-awake; people jostle by him, pushing past, and someone swings their briefcase past his knees.
Then he spots a brown leather jacket, and freckles and green eyes, and the world opens up again and he’s able to stop and draw a deep breath.
It’s been two weeks.
When Dean catches his eye, finally, there’s a smile lighting up Sam’s face and he’s heading up the stairs to meet him.
*