One time I gave myself a prompt about post Swap Meat AU where the demon calls Lucifer before they switch back Gary and Sam
and then I decided to write that instead of my essay on Enlightenment vs. Renaissance
Sam had always had all of these plans in his life. When he was fifteen his plan was to get the hell outta dodge and make something normal of himself. When he was twenty his plan was to marry Jessica and have kids. When he was twenty two he plan was to find dad and kill a demon. When he was twenty three his plan was to break Dean’s deal. When he was twenty five his plan was to kill Lillith. When he was twenty six his plan was to stop the Apocalypse. He’d never planned on dying alone. It hadn’t ever been something he had even considered. When the cold creeped in on his bones and seized his heart in an undeniable grip, he had always thought he would be able to glance to his side and see Dean on the ground next to him, their blood swirling into a single sea of red underneath of them. He always thought that the last thing he would do in this world would be send a weak, reassuring smile to his brother and get one in return. That wasn’t how it happened. The cold was still there, licking at him like frigid fire. The ground was still cold and unforgiving underneath of him, frozen in the Seattle winter. But, as his blood seeped hot and crimson into the earth, it was alone. When he glanced to his side there was only tall, coarse grass that swayed lightly in the night breeze. Sam took a shallow breath that tasted metallic like blood and looked up at the stars. “I don’t want to die,” he whispered like a secret. “Not without Dean.”
Chad Michael Murray groped blindly at his bedside table for a few bleary moments, the ‘Ur So Gay’ ringtone telling him that for some fucking reason Jared ‘What do you mean California and Vancouver are in different timezones’ Padalecki was calling him at four in the morning.
“Waddya wan’,” Chad demanded before he even had the phone fully to his ear. he was met with the roaring sound of screaming laughter. He scrubbed at his face and contemplated to best angle from which to choke Jared’s stupid tall neck next time he saw him in person.
“Chad,” Jared gasped, voice slurring. “Chad, Chad, Chad-”
“What!” Chad envied his non-sobriety.
“Guess,” Jared panted again, giggling like no six foot four man had the right, “Guess what Jensen and I are watching.”
“Gay porn.” Chad predicted blandly.
“Close!” Jared wheezed. “A Cinderella Story.”
“Ah, Jesus.” He could hear Jensen cackling in the background and, fuck those guys, he was going to punch them both in their stupid tall faces next time he saw them.
“Ask him about the costume!” Jensen crowed and Jared barked laughter right into Chad’s ear.
“Oh, shut the hell up, New York Minute,” Chad growled before Jared could ask him about the itchy prince outfit with the collar and the ruffles. “I didn’t see you making out with Lizzie McGuire.”
“I didn’t see you getting fawned all over by the Olsen twins,” Jared rebuffed smugly. Chad frowned. It had always been one of his life’s laments…
“I guess I’ll just have to build myself a Christmas cottage and get over it.”
“Or you could go to a house of wax.”
“Hey! You were in that shitty movie, too, asshole!”
“Yeah, but you were the hero of that shitty movie. I got to sit around naked and have hot wax poured all over me.”
“Better watch yourself, all this talk of nudity and wax might give Jensen ideas.” Chad smirked before frowning again. “Tell him to stop laughing like a friggin’ hyena, I’ve seen Days of Our Lives.”
Jared laughed grandly for a moment before cutting off and swearing. “Oops, gottaa go, Jensen’s throwing up all over your bad acting.”
And Chad was holding a dead line.
“I hope Jason murders the fuck out of you,” Chad groused to himself as he rolled back over.
Dean knew he was dreaming when he opened his eyes and saw the soles of his father’s work boots propped up on the end of his bed. They were caked with mud, old and ratty, ripped seams and worn through holes in them. No matter how many pairs of boots John Winchester went through, he always came back to these muddy brown ones. Dean had always thought it was because his mother had bought them for him.
Dean smiled lightly at the thought as he followed to boots up John himself where he reclined in the desk chair he’d dragged over to Dean’s bedside. His legs were crossed at the ankle, his hands rested casually over his stomach and his head was tilted back comfortably, eyes closed. Dean had never seen the man look so relaxed.
“Hey, Dean-o,” John rumbled throatily, one eye opening in a slit to observe Dean as a honest grin curved his lips.
“Hey, Dad,” Dean breathed and a wave of relief washed over him. Life was so much easier when John was around to bare the burden, take the weight. Some boys bragged about how their fathers were superheros, how they could hold up the moon and part the seas and make it home in time for dinner, but none of themknew. Dean’s father could do anything. He could take two boys and teach them everything he knows. He could lie to them for years so that they wouldn’t have to bear the burden of knowing pain. He could sell his soul to ensure his sons survived. He could resist decades of torture. He could crawl out of Hell and avenge his wife. He could do everything that Dean couldn’t. He always succeeded where Dean failed. He was Dean’s superhero.
A small sob punched out of Dean’s throat. “Where have you been?”
John’s smile gets weary around the edges and he pulls his feet down from the corner of the mattress so he can hunch forward and prop his elbows on his knees and he scrubs at his brow. “Wandering around as a restless spirit gets a little old after a while.”
“But you’re here now?” Dean scowls.
“But I’m here now.” John smiles with appeasement before his eyes shift focus to the bed behind Dean. “He looks so tired.” He looks over Sam for a few moments longer as he fidgets and frowns in his sleep before turning back to Dean. “You both do.”
Dean shoots him a hard, bitter grin. “Always revenge to be had and monsters that need killing, right, Dad?”
John exhales softly before he stands and lays a gentle hand on the crown of Sam’s head. When he speaks, his throat is tight. “I’m so proud of you two.” He glances up at Dean again and their eyes lock. John looks ancient and ageless and everything in between. He looks every bit the man Dean thought he was as a child.
John’s lips quirk.
“Get some sleep, son. You and you’re brother have got a long way to go yet. But there’ll be peace when you’re done.”
“Stop looking at me like that.”
“Like what?”
“Like that.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Dean… I knew what I was getting into when I jumped into the cage…”
“No. You really didn’t.”
“I had an idea.”
“I just don’t understand how you can still see so much damn good in the world after everything that you… we’ve been through.”
“If I didn’t think that the world was worth saving, I wouldn’t have saved it.”
“Yeah, you would’ve.”
“Yeah. I would’ve.”
“Sam?” Dean’s voice echoes harshly throughout the warehouse, reverberating off of blank walls and empty boxes that cluttered the complex. “Sam!” he shouted again, a thin note of panic threading through the word as he jogs a few paces into the center of the cold concrete floor.
He hears the muttering before he actually sees anything. A soft, constant lull of of half a conversation that Dean follows to where Sam is, curled in on himself behind an empty crate.
“Why are you doing this?” Sam mumbles nonsensically to himself.
“Hey, Sammy?” Dean’s hand presses into Sam’s shoulder and Sam winces. “Sam, we gotta go.”
Sam’s eyes open in tired slits but his fingers tighten into a fist, tension thrumming through his body. His head cocks to the side like he’s listening to something that Dean can’t hear.
“C’mon, Sam,” Dean’s voice grows rougher with some misplaced sense of vexation. “We don’t have time for this.” His grip tightens on Sam’s shoulder as he tries to haul him up to his feet so that he can walk on his own.
Sam’s laugh is manic as he wrenches himself out of Dean’s grip, and the pull of his jacket against Dean’s fingers leaves welts. “You’re not real, you’re not Dean, you’re not here,” he gasps out between hysterics.
“Sam,” is all Dean can say because he doesn’t know how he’s supposed to fix this, he doesn’t know what the fuck he’s supposed to do anymore.
“Dean’s not here,” Sam repeats, adamant, nodding violently. “Dean’s still top side. Dean’s still safe.” And he sounds like he’s reassuring himself.
“Sam,” Dean tries again.
“Shut up!” Sam screams, but when he whirls he turns in the opposite direction of Dean, shouting at the wall. “Shut up, shut up, shut up! Liar!“
“S-…” but Dean can’t finish the word
because he doesn’t know what he’s supposed to do.
He’d been down there so long he couldn’t remember how he had even earned his one way ticket to Hell. He couldn’t remember colors outside of black and blood. He couldn’t remember if he’d ever had a name. He couldn’t remember if he ever even had a language. Sometimes the souls he had shackled to the rack screamed what he could only assume were prayers to a lord that had long since abandoned them and the words would prod at something lodged in the very back of his mind, inspiring the idea that he should know what they were begging to the heavens for.
He couldn’t care, though. He couldn’t remember how, honestly.
He couldn’t have told you the number of days had passed since the first time he’d allowed them to pry the hooks out of his flesh and press a razor into his hand before turning him to look at the miles and miles of Hell stretched out before him from an entirely new angle, but he would have guessed the number to be in the high centuries when a new soul was lashed to his little corner of Inferno.
The soul was a tall man, stretched out naked and vulnerable before the demon. His dark hair was slick and plastered to his forehead with sweat and blood, shadowing his eyes from view. The lean sleekness of his body was only interrupted by the rusty hooks skewered through his shoulder, his abdomen, his thigh, and his wrists.
Dean used to dream about Sam after The Fall. Mostly of Sam, naked in Hell, screaming for Dean as The Devil himself tore into him, flaying the meat from his bones, chewing his organs into a paste before spitting them back out, desecrating and defiling everything that Dean had been conditioned to protect with all his heart and soul. His bones splintering like dry wood, rib cage cracked open with a sound like splintering ice and claws would slice through the soft meat of his underbelly until they seized around his heart and Sam would still be screaming for Dean, Dean, always Dean.
Dean would wake up after those dreams and stumble out of bed just fast enough to keep the vomit from spattering the sheets. He’d spend the rest of the night sobbing and muttering prayers to whichever god would show the most mercy into the toilet seat between the violent purges of his stomach.
But, sometimes, perhaps when whichever asshole deity that heard his prayers decided to take pity on him, Dean would dream of standing in a clearing in a forest, leather jacket settled warm and familiar across his shoulders and a small weight pressed against his sternum that he knew intimately to be his amulet.
Submitted by: kayter
Pairing: Sam/Dean, Jensen/Jared(sorta?)
Prompt: Character bleed. Jensen has a nightmare about hell,
