fic: new york will thaw
This took a tragically long time to write. Not exactly edited (YET.) Maybe it is full of errors, maybe it is not.
New York Will Thaw
PG~, wincesty overtones, 1220~ words, post-4x14.
Title from Regina Spektor's Ne Me Quitte Pas.
Sam and Dean and lessons and love. Or... something.
+
Where you go, the snow follows.
“We could go south,” you say, without conviction. Dean grunts.
Ice is dripping onto you, from the branches overhead. You flick your bottle cap away and watch as the snow envelopes it, noiselessly. Inches by inches. Dean curses, disappearing deeper beneath the hood of the car as you watch.
“Grand Canyon?” you suggest. “Mexico?”
“’The hell’d you do to her while I was out of commission, man?” Dean says. “Did I teach you nothing?” He glances up at you as you approach, or at the sound of the ground crunching underneath your feet.
“Move over,” you say, ducking down under the hood to squash up next to him. You have to stoop. He shuffles sideways, looks up at you then back down at the wrench, until you roll your eyes. “You taught me plenty, Dean,” you add.
“Damn right I did,” he mutters. There’s a cut right at the corner of his jaw, where he nicked himself shaving.
The snow settles all around you, muffling the world.
The first time it happened, you couldn’t bring yourself to do anything, but you looked after the car when Dean was dead the second time. For real dead, no takebacks. You can change the tyres, locate mysterious rattles, wash her ‘til she gleams. You’ve learnt that things don’t stop hurting when you get them back. You’ve learnt that a few times now.
It’s like the universe is trying to teach you a lesson.
Everyone is trying to teach you a goddamn lesson.
Inside the diner, the heat is turned up high, steaming up the windows and leaving you damp and sticky. The ends of your hair are still icy cold, dripping down the back of your neck. Your wrists itch.
Dean orders pancakes and bacon. His eyes flicker in your direction as he asks the waitress for a beer. You shrug and order a coffee.
“Should eat something,” Dean says.
“I’m fine,” you say.
He looks at you, in a flat-eyed, frowning kind of way until the waitress comes back with your drinks. The coffee is too hot, but you drink it anyway. Dean huffs a breath against the window glass then squiggles on it with a finger, shapes and half-shapes running together.
Once you’ve burnt your tongue three times, Dean lowers his half-empty bottle and raises an eyebrow at you. “Just don’t blame me if you faint mid-hunt ‘cause you were trying to preserve your girlish figure,” he says.
The two of you don’t talk again until he’s halfway through his meal, when the shapes he drew have dripped together into spider-webs, bare tree branches, and faded away. He’s gotten syrup on his right knuckle.
“So this haunting,” Dean says, and then, “Hey, hey, you listening, asshole? This haunting.”
“Yeah,” you say, and you sip your coffee. It’s gone cold. “Yeah, I’m listening.”
Little things.
You wake up five seconds before you hear gunshots, or a car-alarm goes off, or your brother says your name. You can feel people sneaking up behind you. Something prickles down your spine when you drive by graveyards.
You can exorcise demons with your mind.
You spend an hour in a diner, nudging the pepper pot inch by inch across the tabletop with nothing but a frown. But not the salt.
“Goddammit,” Dean says.
He stops walking, takes a pause to rub the crick from his neck, shovel hitched over his shoulder. You can see: a streak of gravedirt on his nose, snowflakes in his hair, the blackish, purpleish bruise blossoming under one nail as his fingers scratch bluntly at his neck. You keep walking.
The sidewalk has become the imprint of one thousand snowy footsteps.
“That was your goddamn fault,” Dean adds, a couple paces behind you.
You dig your hands deeper into your pockets. “We wasted it, didn’t we,” you say - you talk to the ice-slicked street and the incandescent, street lamp glow, because you haven’t turned around. Eyes on the ground so you don’t slip.
“Eventually,” Dean mutters darkly.
He doesn’t bother catching you up.
Dean’s sitting on your bed, legs crossed at the ankles and his fingers laced around the bottle of beer on his stomach, t-shirt riding up over one hip. His eyes are closed but he isn’t sleeping.
“Shower’s free, if you wanna,” you say. Dean just shrugs.
You toss your damp towel across the back of the chair and pull a beer out of the pack on the table, before flopping down next to him. The bed creaks violently. Someone cheers on the TV. You rub the bruise just above your knee. When you glance up again, Dean’s looking at you. He blinks, and his eyes skitter away, back to the television screen.
You can wait him out.
It takes until the next commercial break.
“Okay,” Dean says. Sharp. He carefully sets his own beer down on the nightstand and wipes his thumb across his mouth. You look at him and he’s looking at the TV, wheel of fortune spinning. There’s a scratch on his chin. Another just below his eye.
“You wanna tell me what the hell you were thinking back there?” he says, at last.
I don’t have to explain myself to you, you think. “I was thinking that ghost was five seconds away from killing you,” you say.
Dean rolls his eyes. He’s glaring at a toothpaste commercial. “And you thought you’d just try and mojo it away for a change, instead of using the goddamn rocksalt?”
“I can think faster than I can pull a trigger,” you say, and that’s when Dean finally turns to look at you.
“No,” he says. “No. I don’t care. Hellhounds scratching at our door, your psychic stuff is the only way, I don’t care. You don’t use that shit for me, you hear?”
He’s scared for you as well as of you. You have to remind yourself of that.
“Dean,” you say. You speak slow, keep calm. “If hellhounds start scratching at our door again, I’ll save you any goddamn way I can.”
You learnt that lesson nine months ago.
Dean stares at you, jaw clenched. You stare right back.
A smudge of dirt beneath his ear. Dandruff in his hair. His hands, arms crossed tight, with that one bruised fingernail. Shirt riding up to expose that sliver of unscarred skin. Chest rising and falling. His boots are untied. You can keep this.
“Dean,” you say again.
The commercial break finishes. Dean sighs and drops his gaze, shifting back against the headboard with a frown. He picks his beer back up as the audience cheers. The wheel spins. There’s something clenching in your throat, pulled tighter than a cord of wire.
“Sammy,” he says, and he knocks his bottle against your own.
His feet resting against your feet.
Later, you wake up with the taste of 4am in your mouth and beer dripping slowly over your fingers from the precariously titled bottle still in your hands. The lights are dimmed and the TV’s on, volume down low. Dean’s head is pressed against your shoulder.
When you move, he moves, letting out a soft noise of protest. His hand rests loosely on your knee.
“Okay, okay,” you breathe.
And you breathe.
Frown up at the lightbulb, feel the familiar twist-and-tug rise up inside of you, and it goes out with a muted click.
You’ve learned your lessons well.
+
New York Will Thaw
PG~, wincesty overtones, 1220~ words, post-4x14.
Title from Regina Spektor's Ne Me Quitte Pas.
Sam and Dean and lessons and love. Or... something.
+
Where you go, the snow follows.
“We could go south,” you say, without conviction. Dean grunts.
Ice is dripping onto you, from the branches overhead. You flick your bottle cap away and watch as the snow envelopes it, noiselessly. Inches by inches. Dean curses, disappearing deeper beneath the hood of the car as you watch.
“Grand Canyon?” you suggest. “Mexico?”
“’The hell’d you do to her while I was out of commission, man?” Dean says. “Did I teach you nothing?” He glances up at you as you approach, or at the sound of the ground crunching underneath your feet.
“Move over,” you say, ducking down under the hood to squash up next to him. You have to stoop. He shuffles sideways, looks up at you then back down at the wrench, until you roll your eyes. “You taught me plenty, Dean,” you add.
“Damn right I did,” he mutters. There’s a cut right at the corner of his jaw, where he nicked himself shaving.
The snow settles all around you, muffling the world.
The first time it happened, you couldn’t bring yourself to do anything, but you looked after the car when Dean was dead the second time. For real dead, no takebacks. You can change the tyres, locate mysterious rattles, wash her ‘til she gleams. You’ve learnt that things don’t stop hurting when you get them back. You’ve learnt that a few times now.
It’s like the universe is trying to teach you a lesson.
Everyone is trying to teach you a goddamn lesson.
Inside the diner, the heat is turned up high, steaming up the windows and leaving you damp and sticky. The ends of your hair are still icy cold, dripping down the back of your neck. Your wrists itch.
Dean orders pancakes and bacon. His eyes flicker in your direction as he asks the waitress for a beer. You shrug and order a coffee.
“Should eat something,” Dean says.
“I’m fine,” you say.
He looks at you, in a flat-eyed, frowning kind of way until the waitress comes back with your drinks. The coffee is too hot, but you drink it anyway. Dean huffs a breath against the window glass then squiggles on it with a finger, shapes and half-shapes running together.
Once you’ve burnt your tongue three times, Dean lowers his half-empty bottle and raises an eyebrow at you. “Just don’t blame me if you faint mid-hunt ‘cause you were trying to preserve your girlish figure,” he says.
The two of you don’t talk again until he’s halfway through his meal, when the shapes he drew have dripped together into spider-webs, bare tree branches, and faded away. He’s gotten syrup on his right knuckle.
“So this haunting,” Dean says, and then, “Hey, hey, you listening, asshole? This haunting.”
“Yeah,” you say, and you sip your coffee. It’s gone cold. “Yeah, I’m listening.”
Little things.
You wake up five seconds before you hear gunshots, or a car-alarm goes off, or your brother says your name. You can feel people sneaking up behind you. Something prickles down your spine when you drive by graveyards.
You can exorcise demons with your mind.
You spend an hour in a diner, nudging the pepper pot inch by inch across the tabletop with nothing but a frown. But not the salt.
“Goddammit,” Dean says.
He stops walking, takes a pause to rub the crick from his neck, shovel hitched over his shoulder. You can see: a streak of gravedirt on his nose, snowflakes in his hair, the blackish, purpleish bruise blossoming under one nail as his fingers scratch bluntly at his neck. You keep walking.
The sidewalk has become the imprint of one thousand snowy footsteps.
“That was your goddamn fault,” Dean adds, a couple paces behind you.
You dig your hands deeper into your pockets. “We wasted it, didn’t we,” you say - you talk to the ice-slicked street and the incandescent, street lamp glow, because you haven’t turned around. Eyes on the ground so you don’t slip.
“Eventually,” Dean mutters darkly.
He doesn’t bother catching you up.
Dean’s sitting on your bed, legs crossed at the ankles and his fingers laced around the bottle of beer on his stomach, t-shirt riding up over one hip. His eyes are closed but he isn’t sleeping.
“Shower’s free, if you wanna,” you say. Dean just shrugs.
You toss your damp towel across the back of the chair and pull a beer out of the pack on the table, before flopping down next to him. The bed creaks violently. Someone cheers on the TV. You rub the bruise just above your knee. When you glance up again, Dean’s looking at you. He blinks, and his eyes skitter away, back to the television screen.
You can wait him out.
It takes until the next commercial break.
“Okay,” Dean says. Sharp. He carefully sets his own beer down on the nightstand and wipes his thumb across his mouth. You look at him and he’s looking at the TV, wheel of fortune spinning. There’s a scratch on his chin. Another just below his eye.
“You wanna tell me what the hell you were thinking back there?” he says, at last.
I don’t have to explain myself to you, you think. “I was thinking that ghost was five seconds away from killing you,” you say.
Dean rolls his eyes. He’s glaring at a toothpaste commercial. “And you thought you’d just try and mojo it away for a change, instead of using the goddamn rocksalt?”
“I can think faster than I can pull a trigger,” you say, and that’s when Dean finally turns to look at you.
“No,” he says. “No. I don’t care. Hellhounds scratching at our door, your psychic stuff is the only way, I don’t care. You don’t use that shit for me, you hear?”
He’s scared for you as well as of you. You have to remind yourself of that.
“Dean,” you say. You speak slow, keep calm. “If hellhounds start scratching at our door again, I’ll save you any goddamn way I can.”
You learnt that lesson nine months ago.
Dean stares at you, jaw clenched. You stare right back.
A smudge of dirt beneath his ear. Dandruff in his hair. His hands, arms crossed tight, with that one bruised fingernail. Shirt riding up to expose that sliver of unscarred skin. Chest rising and falling. His boots are untied. You can keep this.
“Dean,” you say again.
The commercial break finishes. Dean sighs and drops his gaze, shifting back against the headboard with a frown. He picks his beer back up as the audience cheers. The wheel spins. There’s something clenching in your throat, pulled tighter than a cord of wire.
“Sammy,” he says, and he knocks his bottle against your own.
His feet resting against your feet.
Later, you wake up with the taste of 4am in your mouth and beer dripping slowly over your fingers from the precariously titled bottle still in your hands. The lights are dimmed and the TV’s on, volume down low. Dean’s head is pressed against your shoulder.
When you move, he moves, letting out a soft noise of protest. His hand rests loosely on your knee.
“Okay, okay,” you breathe.
And you breathe.
Frown up at the lightbulb, feel the familiar twist-and-tug rise up inside of you, and it goes out with a muted click.
You’ve learned your lessons well.
+