Fanfic - SPN: Sam/Dean. 026. Determined.
Title: Wherein Sam Explains His Decision
Author: eboniorchid
Fandom: Supernatural
Characters: Sam/Dean
Prompt: 026. Determined. For 100moods, challenge table here.
Word Count: ~980 words
Rating: PG-13
Warnings/Spoilers: Wincesty UST. Foul language. Slight spoiler for "Home" maybe.
Disclaimer: I don't own anything and I don't get paid for this.
Summary: Sam decides to stop running, from himself, and from Dean. Here's why. ( Smutty sequel located here.)
Author's Notes: Character study. Unbetaed. May be edited later.
It's been building up to this. Sam knows it and Dean would know it, if he stopped turning away every time the truth settled anywhere near the tip of his nose. They're good together, right, in a way that no proscriptive norms can wholly make wrong. They've always had this thing, this chemistry, between them. It may sometimes be strained, more than it used to be, but it has also grown so much, even during all the years spent apart, when they were searching for selves and seeking substitutes.
Sam sees things more clearly now. So does Dean, or so he thinks.
Dean hears the whispers of his heart and just adds them to the lengthy tally by which he gauges just how fucked up he is. He's not sure how many ticks are enough to classify him as a serious danger to the people he tries to protect, but he hopes that someone will put him down fast if it truly comes to that.
Sam actually listens to the fragmented yearnings that prod him, waking and sleeping. He's learned how horribly it can backfire when he tries to ignore messages from the Powers That Be and he's pretty sure that this is one of their hints to the big question. Maybe even multiple big questions. Life, the universe, and everything? Perhaps. Good guys win how? Definitely. Why it took so long for him to realize, he doesn't know, but he and Dean are so strong together, now more than ever. He's sure, somehow, that pretending their dark desires don't exist is precisely the wrong answer to the question. He can feel it deep and he knows that their bonds both ground and fuel each of them.
Besides, Sam has eyes, ears, hands, a nose, and Dean is a feast for every single sense.
There are just too many arrows pointing in the same damn direction.
At some point in his swimming upstream, Sam asks himself two simple questions: what am I running from, and what am I running to? In answer to number one, he decides that he is running from the notion of an "inappropriate" love affair between two consenting adults who happen to be male and related. The answer to number two, though, takes a long time to construct, even vaguely, in his mind and it still seems to fall apart every time he tries to bring it into focus.
Normal. He’s running to Normal, with a capital N. The kind of normal that is almost the exact opposite of his family life. The kind of normal that he sees on reruns of TV sitcoms. Normal like staying in the same town for a whole school year. Normal like prom nights spent in motel rooms without your parents. Normal like learning to use a calculator before learning to use a gun. Normal like apple pies on windowsills and lemonade on front country porches.
Normal like Jess.
But really, when he gets down to the brass tacks of actually doing Normal, he has to wonder what the fuck normal could mean for someone with excruciatingly intense psi abilities. Howling into your suit-cuffed fists at the onset of a violent vision-induced migraine probably wouldn't seem very professional for a defense attorney. Even if he could explain it away somehow, could he really just shut out the calls to save innocents? Could normal even be, if blood and screams flash like lightning behind his eyelids at every blink? Could normal bring comfort like the arms of his brother when dreams tear him to shreds with the pain of victims far beyond his reach?
He wants Normal. Probably always will. It still sits like the ache in his chest when he almost, almost, but doesn't quite let himself cry. His desire to just be some kind of average guy, striving to fulfill the American Dream, still weighs heavy in his throat as if he swallowed an ice cube and it stuck. Yes, he still wants to live out his days in the wholly unglamorous haze of normal, but fuck if the Fates don't have other plans for him.
Hence, the giving up.
No, giving up isn't the right way to say it, he doesn't mean it like that. He's not just going wherever the wind blows. No, he's facing up to reality in the twisted section of the universe where he apparently resides. He is, finally, begrudgingly, admitting to himself, and any higher beings listening in to Sam-Thought Radio, that it maybe, just might, be okay if he decides to aid, rather than hinder, his fated future. It might even be best, not just for the Greater Good, but also for himself, if he chooses to follow the path laid out for him by the cosmos, instead of having to be dragged, clawing after the supposedly greener grass on the safer side of the fence.
The first step to recovery is admitting you have a problem.
Sam's problem is Dean. He's always thought his problem was Dad or Dean or some combination of the two, and they certainly didn’t help anything, but a lot of Sam’s problem was actually Sam. Now that he's got at least half a clue, though, Sam realizes that his current problem isn’t Dean's inflexible heroic mission, because Sam is starting to accept his own part in the family business. No, Sam’s real problem is the blinders that Dean has erected to block the nature of their joint destiny from view.
Just to be clear, that would be the destiny where they are bonded as more than brothers and brothers-in-arms.
This all explains why Sam has to peel away Dean's defenses, strip him, emotionally, and help him see beyond Sam as a boy to protect and himself as a sword and shield. They are meant to belong to each other and tonight Sam is going to prove it.
Author: eboniorchid
Fandom: Supernatural
Characters: Sam/Dean
Prompt: 026. Determined. For 100moods, challenge table here.
Word Count: ~980 words
Rating: PG-13
Warnings/Spoilers: Wincesty UST. Foul language. Slight spoiler for "Home" maybe.
Disclaimer: I don't own anything and I don't get paid for this.
Summary: Sam decides to stop running, from himself, and from Dean. Here's why. ( Smutty sequel located here.)
Author's Notes: Character study. Unbetaed. May be edited later.
It's been building up to this. Sam knows it and Dean would know it, if he stopped turning away every time the truth settled anywhere near the tip of his nose. They're good together, right, in a way that no proscriptive norms can wholly make wrong. They've always had this thing, this chemistry, between them. It may sometimes be strained, more than it used to be, but it has also grown so much, even during all the years spent apart, when they were searching for selves and seeking substitutes.
Sam sees things more clearly now. So does Dean, or so he thinks.
Dean hears the whispers of his heart and just adds them to the lengthy tally by which he gauges just how fucked up he is. He's not sure how many ticks are enough to classify him as a serious danger to the people he tries to protect, but he hopes that someone will put him down fast if it truly comes to that.
Sam actually listens to the fragmented yearnings that prod him, waking and sleeping. He's learned how horribly it can backfire when he tries to ignore messages from the Powers That Be and he's pretty sure that this is one of their hints to the big question. Maybe even multiple big questions. Life, the universe, and everything? Perhaps. Good guys win how? Definitely. Why it took so long for him to realize, he doesn't know, but he and Dean are so strong together, now more than ever. He's sure, somehow, that pretending their dark desires don't exist is precisely the wrong answer to the question. He can feel it deep and he knows that their bonds both ground and fuel each of them.
Besides, Sam has eyes, ears, hands, a nose, and Dean is a feast for every single sense.
There are just too many arrows pointing in the same damn direction.
At some point in his swimming upstream, Sam asks himself two simple questions: what am I running from, and what am I running to? In answer to number one, he decides that he is running from the notion of an "inappropriate" love affair between two consenting adults who happen to be male and related. The answer to number two, though, takes a long time to construct, even vaguely, in his mind and it still seems to fall apart every time he tries to bring it into focus.
Normal. He’s running to Normal, with a capital N. The kind of normal that is almost the exact opposite of his family life. The kind of normal that he sees on reruns of TV sitcoms. Normal like staying in the same town for a whole school year. Normal like prom nights spent in motel rooms without your parents. Normal like learning to use a calculator before learning to use a gun. Normal like apple pies on windowsills and lemonade on front country porches.
Normal like Jess.
But really, when he gets down to the brass tacks of actually doing Normal, he has to wonder what the fuck normal could mean for someone with excruciatingly intense psi abilities. Howling into your suit-cuffed fists at the onset of a violent vision-induced migraine probably wouldn't seem very professional for a defense attorney. Even if he could explain it away somehow, could he really just shut out the calls to save innocents? Could normal even be, if blood and screams flash like lightning behind his eyelids at every blink? Could normal bring comfort like the arms of his brother when dreams tear him to shreds with the pain of victims far beyond his reach?
He wants Normal. Probably always will. It still sits like the ache in his chest when he almost, almost, but doesn't quite let himself cry. His desire to just be some kind of average guy, striving to fulfill the American Dream, still weighs heavy in his throat as if he swallowed an ice cube and it stuck. Yes, he still wants to live out his days in the wholly unglamorous haze of normal, but fuck if the Fates don't have other plans for him.
Hence, the giving up.
No, giving up isn't the right way to say it, he doesn't mean it like that. He's not just going wherever the wind blows. No, he's facing up to reality in the twisted section of the universe where he apparently resides. He is, finally, begrudgingly, admitting to himself, and any higher beings listening in to Sam-Thought Radio, that it maybe, just might, be okay if he decides to aid, rather than hinder, his fated future. It might even be best, not just for the Greater Good, but also for himself, if he chooses to follow the path laid out for him by the cosmos, instead of having to be dragged, clawing after the supposedly greener grass on the safer side of the fence.
The first step to recovery is admitting you have a problem.
Sam's problem is Dean. He's always thought his problem was Dad or Dean or some combination of the two, and they certainly didn’t help anything, but a lot of Sam’s problem was actually Sam. Now that he's got at least half a clue, though, Sam realizes that his current problem isn’t Dean's inflexible heroic mission, because Sam is starting to accept his own part in the family business. No, Sam’s real problem is the blinders that Dean has erected to block the nature of their joint destiny from view.
Just to be clear, that would be the destiny where they are bonded as more than brothers and brothers-in-arms.
This all explains why Sam has to peel away Dean's defenses, strip him, emotionally, and help him see beyond Sam as a boy to protect and himself as a sword and shield. They are meant to belong to each other and tonight Sam is going to prove it.