Two Supernatural Ficlets

[aisalynn]

obsidianglass posted a link to a Supernatural gen comment fic meme (found here!) yesterday, and I answered a few prompts. I like what came out, so I'm posting them here.

Title: Not Hell
Characters: Sam, Dean
Rating: PG13
Prompt: Somewhere during Season 4. Dean is afraid of sleeping, because of his nightmares about hell.



He wakes up fast, body jerking forward before collapsing against the stiff hotel mattress. He doesn’t scream, but gasps, a harsh, broken attempt for air that’s muffled against the pillow and he bites down on it, letting the scratch of the cheap cotton on his tongue ground him, forcing himself to take deep breaths through his nose as his body calms down, stops shaking.

He’s sweat through his shirt, can feel the moisture under his arms and on his back, the patches of wet cloth beneath him cooling against the cold air the hotel AC is pumping out from beneath the window. The air in the room is cool enough to fight off the remaining summer heat, but not the humidity and the whole room is sticky and uncomfortable.

He can hear Sam breathing from the other bed three feet away.

This is not Hell.

With a quiet, frustrated huff he sits up, flinging the sheets back and quickly getting to his feet. The sweat slicked skin on the back of his neck gets goose bumps at the touch of cold air and his mouth has a sour taste from sleep, dry from the cotton of the pillow case.

He changes his shirt. Gets a drink from the faucet in the bathroom. Splashes some water on his face, letting it drip down his neck and into the collar of his fresh t-shirt. He watches the fabric darken in the mirror and shivers.

There’s a half empty bag of stale potato chips they picked up at a Gas Mart two days ago, but even though he’s hungry, he doesn’t eat. The crackle of the bag and the crunch of the chips could wake Sam up, and he’s trying to be careful about that: stepping lightly on the hotel floor, moving through his bag carefully, even watching his breathing, keeping it slow and even and most importantly, quiet.

There was a time when Sam could sleep through anything. When Dean would literally have to drag him out of bed, a sleepy, grumpy thirteen year old who wanted nothing more than to bury himself back into the covers and pretend like he could spend his summer vacation sleeping in rather than getting up at dawn to hunt things that weren’t even supposed to exist. Dean would let him sometimes, if they were alone, but most of the time their dad was there and he’d shake Sam awake, calling his name a dozen times before finally pulling him right up out of bed. Sam would lean against him, still half asleep and completely sure that Dean would hold him up.

That was years ago, over a decade and it felt like an eternity. Time moved a lot slower in Hell.

Now, the second he flicks the TV on, hurrying to adjust the volume so that he can barely hear it, Sam shifts on the bed. “Dean?” he croaks out, sleepy, confused eyes peering at him from the pile of blankets.

“Yeah.” He says it casually, flipping through the channels.

“What are you doing up?”

“Can’t sleep.” He doesn’t say that he doesn’t want to, doesn’t mention nightmares or Hell or needing the soft light and muffled noise from the television to remind him that this is real and that the pain, the phantom sensation of heat and dark and sharp, metal hooks sinking into his skin and muscle and bone and the empty echo of his own voice in the darkness that he experiences when he closes his eyes is not.

He doesn’t mention it, but Sam looks worried anyway, brows furrowing as he lifts the blankets away, scooting down to sit on the edge of his bed, parallel to Dean.

Dean settles on an infomercial, tossing the remote aside and leaning down on his thighs, hands dangling between his knees. This is familiar, the wheeze of the AC from the left and the bad television and Sam just a few feet beside him--this isn’t something an eternity could make fade away, and he relaxes for the first time since he woke up.

“I’m thinking of buying a Sham-wow.”

Sam looks at him, a startled movement in the corner of his eyes. “What? Why?”

“For the next time you have one of your girly little breakdowns. I’m tired of getting snot and tears and shit all over my clothes simply because you cry like an over dramatic teenage girl. I’m thinking the Sham-wow could do the trick.”

“Shut up.” Sam tosses a pillow at Dean and he catches it, wrapping his arms around it and resting his head on it as he hold in it his lap.

“Mine now, bitch,” he mutters and he can see Sam roll his eyes in the blue light from the TV.




Title: Turning the Other Cheek
Characters: John, Wee!Dean and Wee!Sam
Rating: PG
Prompt: John,Wee!Sam,Wee!Dean:Sammy really doesn't like this new haircut!He climbs on the tree and he surely won't come down easily!



Dean hated it when his hair was long. Just couldn’t stand it. As soon as he felt his hair starting to reach past his ears he’d save his money for a week or so, scrounging the leftover change from whatever money Dad gave him to buy food for him and Sammy while he was away until he had enough to go to the local barber shop of whatever town they were in. Sammy would sit in the waiting area, kicking his feet back and forth as he waited for Dean to get finished and Dean would force a smile as he handed over the money because the person taking it would always look over Dean’s shoulder, as if expecting an adult to walk in and take care of everything.

Dean was thirteen years old. He knew how to handle a knife, a gun and a crossbow, and he’d hunted things these people didn’t even know existed. He could get a freaking haircut by himself, thank you very much.

Sammy was the opposite of Dean. He hated getting his haircut. When he was little he would scream and cry as Dad tried to cut in the bathroom of the motel, and as he got older he would just cross his arms and say “no,” in a firm, defiant voice that pissed John Winchester off far more than any childish tantrum ever could. By the time Sam was nine he’d given up, and Sam’s hair grew past his ears, curling at the nape of his neck and falling in front of his eyes.

That was until Sam had gotten into a fight at school. A fight with a girl who had, at the end, spit her gum right into the back of Sam’s hair. Dad, finally exasperated with the whole thing, had wrestled Sam into the bathroom of the rundown apartment they were renting and hacked off most of Sam’s hair, gum and all.

The whole situation was something Dean was sure he was never going to let Sam live down, once he calmed down enough for Dean to tease him about it.

Except, it didn’t seem like Sam was going to calm down any time soon.

“Sam,” their father growled, “Come down right now.”

From above their heads there was a rustle of leaves as Same shifted on the tree branch, and stubborn, angry voice floated down to them. “No.”

“Sam!” Dad barked. “You come down right this instant or you are in serious trouble.”

Dean shifted uneasily beside him because he knew that tone of voice, and he knew that Sam already was in serious trouble, whether he jumped down that second or not, and he knew that Sam knew it too. That didn’t stop Sam from climbing higher in the tree and saying, “No. I’m not coming down. Ever.”

Dad sighed and ran a frustrated hand through his hair. “I don’t have time for this,” he muttered, and Dean knew it was true. Just a few minutes ago Dad had gotten a call about a hunt and he needed to leave, soon.

“I’ll get him down, Dad. Don’t worry, he won’t stay up there forever.”

“You sure, son?” Dad asked, staring hard at Dean and ignoring Sam’s loud “Yes I will!”

Dean nodded. “Yeah.” Because Dean was thirteen and he could shoot at monsters and get his own haircut and he’d been dealing with Sam’s bratty tantrums since he’d been born and it wasn’t anything he couldn’t handle.

Dad nodded and clapped a hand on his shoulder. “I should be home in a few days, but I’ll call, let it ring once, hang up and call again. Don’t pick up unless you know its me.”

Dean nodded again. He knew the drill.

He waited until Dad’s car had driven away before he leaned his back against the tree, shoving his hands in his jacket and hiking one knee up so he could rest his foot against the trunk. They were quiet for a minute, the only noise a soft shuffling and the creak of the branch as Sam moved above him.

“Your hair doesn’t look that bad, Sammy.”

“I hate it,” Sam muttered above him, pulling a few leaves off the branch and throwing them down. “It makes my ears look stupid.”

“Your ears always look stupid.”

“Dean!” Sam yelled and Dean didn’t say anything else, because right after Dean heard a quiet, little snuffling noise followed by a little whimper and crap Sam was crying and now Dean knew he could never tease Sam about this incident, girl fighting with gum or no.

“You know,” he said casually, leaning his back against the bark and peering up at Sam, trying to get a look at his head. “Your haircut kind of looks like mine.”

There was a pause and then small sniff. “Really?”

“Well, not as awesome, but almost like it.”

Sam was looking down at Dean now. His face was red and wet from crying, and there was dirt smeared on it from where he wiped away tears. His hair was a little uneven and his ears were big on the side of his head and yeah, they kind of looked stupid, but when Sam asked in pathetic, tear choked voice, “You’re not just saying that?” Dean shook his head.

“Nah, I’m serious. And you know what? It’s short enough now, we could probably spike it, like I do.” He ran a hand over the top of his own perfectly styled hair. “But only if you come down.”

There was another pause, a few minutes of shuffling and then finally a quiet “Okay,” floated down to Dean. A second later Sam swung down from the branch he was sitting on and landed in front of Dean. “Can we do it now?” he asked, looking up at Dean, tears replaced by excitement.

“Yeah. Let’s go.” As they made their way back across the small yard to the apartment Dean finally asked about what he’d been wondering for hours. “What was the fight with that girl about anyway?”

Sam’s face scrunched up in anger. “She didn’t believe me when I told her our Dad was like a superhero, like you said. She told me I was stupid for believing it, that you were lying.”

“Oh.” Dean could understand fighting over that. Not that Sam should be telling people about anything that Dad did, it was a secret and Dean would have to talk to Sam about that, but still, if someone had said that to Dean he would have gotten into a fight too, girl or no girl. It would probably be a little more serious than getting gum in his hair though. “What are you going to do to get her back?” he asked, because Sam was a Winchester, and they didn’t do any of that turn the other cheek crap.

“I’m gonna take one of Dad’s screwdrivers to school tomorrow and unscrew the legs of her desk during recess.”

Dean laughed and clapped Sam on the shoulder. “Thatta boy, Sammy.”

Sam grinned up at him, pleased.