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spn fic: signal to noise (sam, dean, bobby; pg13)
That awkward moment when you intend to write Dean/Cas shmoop but end up writing Sam POV gen instead.
Sort of.
Signal To Noise
Supernatural. Sam, Dean, Bobby. PG13. Spoilers through 6x20.
Missing scenes from 6x20, on the way to and at Ellsworth's. ~1900 words
They're on the way to Ellsworth's when Dean says, "You remember last year when you were a barwench in Oklahoma and I was hunting on my own?"
Sam looks up from the road map. "Yeah."
"Cas was with me for some of those hunts."
It's been like this all morning.
"And shit got pretty fucking nasty, man, and I mean nasty," Dean continues. "It's like all the creepy-crawlies knew it was the apocalypse and decided to throw a party. There was this, uh, nest of ghouls in Akron? Fucking hate those sons of bitches."
"Ghouls are trouble," Bobby agrees helpfully from the backseat.
"And whatever, right? Ghouls are ghouls, I can take out three in my sleep, no problem. Well, there were like eight of them. Fucking family reunion. I ganked a couple, but they started swarming up on me. I mean, I thought I was toast."
Fingers tapping on the steering wheel. Eyes focused on the road. There's that muscle in Dean's neck that twitches when he gets tense; Sam knows it well.
"And Cas was going in through the back," Dean says. "He was supposed to get those kids out. They were the priority, right?" He makes a scoffing sound. "Man, I had to twist the guy's arm, come on, take a couple of hours from a wild goose chase and save a couple of lives, you know?"
"Right," Sam says, looking down at his map again. He can think of a dozen arguments off the top of his head, none of which would alleviate the situation, not when Dean's like this. Let the guy talk himself out.
"I had like one ghoul twisting my arm and two more scratching me up, I mean you could see them salivating." Dean grins. "I'm a sweet piece of meat, what can I say. Thing is I thought I was gonna be dead meat."
"And Cas saved you," Bobby sighs.
Dean smacks the steering wheel. "Fucking right! Last-second, 'cos he's a damn show-off – but the ghouls ate fire and brimstone, man. Cas zapped the kids out there and he came back for me."
Sam has seen Dean act like this about Dad to him, and for that matter, about Sam to their father. The effect of loyalty straining under the burden of evidence. "Look, I don't want to be thinking this either," Sam had said, and it was the truth. "He's our friend too," Bobby had said, but it all somehow led to the second shouting match (okay, second and a half) that they've had about this, and Sam had to cut in and proclaim, "We're gonna get to the bottom of this and that's that."
"Good," Dean snapped.
One upside to this whole thing is how Sam and Bobby are getting better at holding entire conversations in raised eyebrows and dubious looks.
I am going to be a grumpy old man, Sam thinks, because all I ever hang out with is grumpy old men.
He supposes there are worse fates.
+
They stop for lunch at some diner off the highway because out of all the lessons their father has ever taught them, "don't kill things on an empty stomach" has remained in the top five.
Bobby's off making a phone call outside, and Sam and Dean are staring at the menus. Is there time to get a cobbler? Maybe if they take it to-go. Sam can't remember the last time he had a cobbler. Didn't he used to love them when he was a kid? Or was that Dean?
Dean says, "Cas took me to Indonesia one time."
"Indonesia?"
"Yeah, it was... I guess he was looking for God there. Or he did, and He wasn't there, but anyway... This was after Carthage."
Sam raises his eyebrows. "You mean after Ellen and Jo—"
"Do you know any other Carthage?" Dean retorts, and Sam files through his memories. What did they do after Carthage? Mostly they did one long hangover at Bobby's and lost a little under a week. As was their habit when grief struck, they detached and retreated inside themselves, close enough to feel comforted by proximity, but self-contained. Bobby barely left his bedroom, Dean wandered the grounds, and Sam became a permanent fixture in the library, going through Bobby's books for something, anything, trying to escape the memory of Lilith's smile before he killed her, Jo bleeding out before his eyes. Castiel would flit in and out every once in a while, updating them on how there were no updates to be had.
Mostly Sam just made sure no one died of alcohol poisoning.
So yeah, come to think of it, Dean and Castiel could have teleported to Indonesia at some point, if that was the case. It's amusing to him for reasons he finds difficult to articulate without sounding petty. Going to Scotland with Dean was at different points a pain and hilarious, and the whole time they were over the Atlantic, Dean kept on muttering, "Never again, Sammy, never again," knocking back beer after beer until the stewardess refused to serve him any more. Sam wouldn't peg Dean for a world-traveler, but maybe that's because he assumed that world-traveling would involve airplanes.
"It was, uh..." Dean licks his lips. "It was a hard night that night, I don't know, and we—I mean we were just talking, then Cas, he looks at me and says he's going to Indonesia and do I want to come?" He chuckles. "I was blasted, man, and I mean I was hammered, I was like fuck it, okay why not. Take me to fucking Indonesia, so he like—he does the head-touching thing." He mimes it. "And bada bing bada boom."
The waitress, name-tag 'Julia', asks them what they'll be having. Sam goes for the chicken cordon bleu. Dean orders roast beef subs for him and Bobby. Three coffees, black.
"Which part of Indonesia?" Sam asks.
"Outside of Jepara. In Java?" Dean shrugs. "He said it was his favorite beach, I dunno."
"Oh." Sam nods carefully, looking for his brother's tells. "Cool."
"I mean we just hung out. Talked some more. It was a change of scene. I think we both just needed to get away." He pauses, worrying his bottom lip, then adds as if in afterthought, "I can see why he likes it there."
"Yeah?"
"It was nice." Dean clears his throat. "Uh, someday, Sammy, you and me, we gotta hit that place up." He smiles. "Drink coconut juice out of real coconuts – which tastes nothing like what Mounds have led me to believe, by the way. Hell, just go around the world. Maybe we can go international, huh, branch out? Hunt ghosts in like Korea?"
"So like, what, Cas would just zap us to a different country every week?"
Dean doesn't reply to that and instead reaches into his jacket pocket and digs out a pen and a 7-11 receipt. He scribbles something on the back of it, then pushes it across the table to Sam.
Sam picks it up and examines the writing. "What's this?" Is it Hindi? Maybe Sanskrit.
"It's your name in Javanese," Dean beams. "Cas taught me. Here's mine."
He can't find another receipt, so he writes it in a corner of the menu above the appetizers. Sam notices the flicker of pride on Dean's face, the flash of fondness.
Julia comes with the coffees.
"What does Cas's name look like?" Sam asks.
"I don't know," Dean says, holding the mug in his hands. "I didn't ask."
+
On the road again.
"Did I tell you about the time I took him to the brothel?" Dean asks.
Bobby and Sam, immediately and in unison: "Yes."
Dean chuckles to himself. "You shoulda been there."
+
Castiel flies off, leaving a cloud of silence behind him.
Sam can't say he is surprised at this point. Hurt, maybe, but he has been putting up his emotional defenses since Oregon and he is well-prepared. Sam just wanted two things: 1) the truth, 2) a plan. Dean maintains an opposite habit: he flays himself to get to the bottom of things. Every strategy is underlined with an edge of desperation and the impression of falling, the way he went after their father when he went missing in Jericho, the way he protected Sam from himself when the psychic thing started to manifest. Even the way Dean fought him as he sided with Ruby and drank demon blood, aggression with intent to bring his little brother back to him. And now this. Every plan of attack a wayward plea.
If I were still soulless, Sam muses, would I make a Marvel vs. DC joke?
Even when Castiel wins the pop culture references, he loses them.
Sam attempts to have another silent conversation with Bobby, but Bobby is 'talking' over him and it just looks like they're making faces at each other. Dean just stares at the floor, jaw clenched, neck muscle twitching.
"Okay," Dean rasps, nodding as if to himself. "Okay."
Sam puts a hand on his brother's shoulder and it gets shrugged off. "Dean—"
"We're gonna have to get rid of these bodies," Dean says, and his voice doesn't quite crack. He meets no one's eyes. "We're gonna have to—" He turns away, rubs a hand over his face.
Bobby says, "I'll get the shovels."
+
"Guess Ellsworth won't be needing this anymore," Dean says when he finds the bottle, and then he pours them all drinks.
Sam doesn't want a drink. Bobby looks hesitantly at his glass before he takes a sip, but Dean throws his down the hatch and then pours himself another.
"Take it easy with that stuff," Sam says.
"Your face takes it easy," Dean retorts.
Okay.
To both Sam and Bobby's relief, it was Dean who suggested the plan. "There's holy oil in the trunk," Dean said, and Sam asked if they should get the herbs and other stuff for the angel summoning, but Dean shook his head no.
No one says 'I told you so'. No one offers assurances.
Dean says, "Let's do this." When he snatches up the amphora of holy oil, Bobby steps forward and says, "Let me—" and Dean says, "Fuck off." Bobby and Sam exchange glances, and Sam nods.
For a few seconds Dean just stands awkwardly in the middle room. Then he uncorks the amphora. He pours the oil in a perfect circle, then stands there some more, maybe checking the circumference, maybe waiting for the fire to rise up and consume him too.
"Dean," Sam says gently. "Come on, man."
"Why's it gotta be a circle anyway?" Dean wonders aloud, stepping out of it. "Why not a triangle or a square, or like a nice trapezoid?" He goes for the bottle again, but Bobby beats him to it, taking it from his reach. "Trapezoids are sexy," Dean decides.
He sets the amphora down behind the armchair with a loud clunk and catches Sam's eye, and something wavers in his gaze, the kind of wild hope that shines when you know there isn't any. Soon you will give me a reason not to do this, it says. Sam has no such reason to give. He wishes he does, but Dean has his blind spots, and Sam will not enable them.
"Look, let's just..." Sam looks down and sighs. "Whatever happens, we'll deal with it. Okay? Let's just get through this."
Dean plops himself down in a chair and looks at Bobby, who pours more drinks. He looks at Sam again, deer in headlights, and Sam nods. You can do this.
Dean bows his head and prays.
Sort of.
Signal To Noise
Supernatural. Sam, Dean, Bobby. PG13. Spoilers through 6x20.
Missing scenes from 6x20, on the way to and at Ellsworth's. ~1900 words
They're on the way to Ellsworth's when Dean says, "You remember last year when you were a barwench in Oklahoma and I was hunting on my own?"
Sam looks up from the road map. "Yeah."
"Cas was with me for some of those hunts."
It's been like this all morning.
"And shit got pretty fucking nasty, man, and I mean nasty," Dean continues. "It's like all the creepy-crawlies knew it was the apocalypse and decided to throw a party. There was this, uh, nest of ghouls in Akron? Fucking hate those sons of bitches."
"Ghouls are trouble," Bobby agrees helpfully from the backseat.
"And whatever, right? Ghouls are ghouls, I can take out three in my sleep, no problem. Well, there were like eight of them. Fucking family reunion. I ganked a couple, but they started swarming up on me. I mean, I thought I was toast."
Fingers tapping on the steering wheel. Eyes focused on the road. There's that muscle in Dean's neck that twitches when he gets tense; Sam knows it well.
"And Cas was going in through the back," Dean says. "He was supposed to get those kids out. They were the priority, right?" He makes a scoffing sound. "Man, I had to twist the guy's arm, come on, take a couple of hours from a wild goose chase and save a couple of lives, you know?"
"Right," Sam says, looking down at his map again. He can think of a dozen arguments off the top of his head, none of which would alleviate the situation, not when Dean's like this. Let the guy talk himself out.
"I had like one ghoul twisting my arm and two more scratching me up, I mean you could see them salivating." Dean grins. "I'm a sweet piece of meat, what can I say. Thing is I thought I was gonna be dead meat."
"And Cas saved you," Bobby sighs.
Dean smacks the steering wheel. "Fucking right! Last-second, 'cos he's a damn show-off – but the ghouls ate fire and brimstone, man. Cas zapped the kids out there and he came back for me."
Sam has seen Dean act like this about Dad to him, and for that matter, about Sam to their father. The effect of loyalty straining under the burden of evidence. "Look, I don't want to be thinking this either," Sam had said, and it was the truth. "He's our friend too," Bobby had said, but it all somehow led to the second shouting match (okay, second and a half) that they've had about this, and Sam had to cut in and proclaim, "We're gonna get to the bottom of this and that's that."
"Good," Dean snapped.
One upside to this whole thing is how Sam and Bobby are getting better at holding entire conversations in raised eyebrows and dubious looks.
I am going to be a grumpy old man, Sam thinks, because all I ever hang out with is grumpy old men.
He supposes there are worse fates.
+
They stop for lunch at some diner off the highway because out of all the lessons their father has ever taught them, "don't kill things on an empty stomach" has remained in the top five.
Bobby's off making a phone call outside, and Sam and Dean are staring at the menus. Is there time to get a cobbler? Maybe if they take it to-go. Sam can't remember the last time he had a cobbler. Didn't he used to love them when he was a kid? Or was that Dean?
Dean says, "Cas took me to Indonesia one time."
"Indonesia?"
"Yeah, it was... I guess he was looking for God there. Or he did, and He wasn't there, but anyway... This was after Carthage."
Sam raises his eyebrows. "You mean after Ellen and Jo—"
"Do you know any other Carthage?" Dean retorts, and Sam files through his memories. What did they do after Carthage? Mostly they did one long hangover at Bobby's and lost a little under a week. As was their habit when grief struck, they detached and retreated inside themselves, close enough to feel comforted by proximity, but self-contained. Bobby barely left his bedroom, Dean wandered the grounds, and Sam became a permanent fixture in the library, going through Bobby's books for something, anything, trying to escape the memory of Lilith's smile before he killed her, Jo bleeding out before his eyes. Castiel would flit in and out every once in a while, updating them on how there were no updates to be had.
Mostly Sam just made sure no one died of alcohol poisoning.
So yeah, come to think of it, Dean and Castiel could have teleported to Indonesia at some point, if that was the case. It's amusing to him for reasons he finds difficult to articulate without sounding petty. Going to Scotland with Dean was at different points a pain and hilarious, and the whole time they were over the Atlantic, Dean kept on muttering, "Never again, Sammy, never again," knocking back beer after beer until the stewardess refused to serve him any more. Sam wouldn't peg Dean for a world-traveler, but maybe that's because he assumed that world-traveling would involve airplanes.
"It was, uh..." Dean licks his lips. "It was a hard night that night, I don't know, and we—I mean we were just talking, then Cas, he looks at me and says he's going to Indonesia and do I want to come?" He chuckles. "I was blasted, man, and I mean I was hammered, I was like fuck it, okay why not. Take me to fucking Indonesia, so he like—he does the head-touching thing." He mimes it. "And bada bing bada boom."
The waitress, name-tag 'Julia', asks them what they'll be having. Sam goes for the chicken cordon bleu. Dean orders roast beef subs for him and Bobby. Three coffees, black.
"Which part of Indonesia?" Sam asks.
"Outside of Jepara. In Java?" Dean shrugs. "He said it was his favorite beach, I dunno."
"Oh." Sam nods carefully, looking for his brother's tells. "Cool."
"I mean we just hung out. Talked some more. It was a change of scene. I think we both just needed to get away." He pauses, worrying his bottom lip, then adds as if in afterthought, "I can see why he likes it there."
"Yeah?"
"It was nice." Dean clears his throat. "Uh, someday, Sammy, you and me, we gotta hit that place up." He smiles. "Drink coconut juice out of real coconuts – which tastes nothing like what Mounds have led me to believe, by the way. Hell, just go around the world. Maybe we can go international, huh, branch out? Hunt ghosts in like Korea?"
"So like, what, Cas would just zap us to a different country every week?"
Dean doesn't reply to that and instead reaches into his jacket pocket and digs out a pen and a 7-11 receipt. He scribbles something on the back of it, then pushes it across the table to Sam.
Sam picks it up and examines the writing. "What's this?" Is it Hindi? Maybe Sanskrit.
"It's your name in Javanese," Dean beams. "Cas taught me. Here's mine."
He can't find another receipt, so he writes it in a corner of the menu above the appetizers. Sam notices the flicker of pride on Dean's face, the flash of fondness.
Julia comes with the coffees.
"What does Cas's name look like?" Sam asks.
"I don't know," Dean says, holding the mug in his hands. "I didn't ask."
+
On the road again.
"Did I tell you about the time I took him to the brothel?" Dean asks.
Bobby and Sam, immediately and in unison: "Yes."
Dean chuckles to himself. "You shoulda been there."
+
Castiel flies off, leaving a cloud of silence behind him.
Sam can't say he is surprised at this point. Hurt, maybe, but he has been putting up his emotional defenses since Oregon and he is well-prepared. Sam just wanted two things: 1) the truth, 2) a plan. Dean maintains an opposite habit: he flays himself to get to the bottom of things. Every strategy is underlined with an edge of desperation and the impression of falling, the way he went after their father when he went missing in Jericho, the way he protected Sam from himself when the psychic thing started to manifest. Even the way Dean fought him as he sided with Ruby and drank demon blood, aggression with intent to bring his little brother back to him. And now this. Every plan of attack a wayward plea.
If I were still soulless, Sam muses, would I make a Marvel vs. DC joke?
Even when Castiel wins the pop culture references, he loses them.
Sam attempts to have another silent conversation with Bobby, but Bobby is 'talking' over him and it just looks like they're making faces at each other. Dean just stares at the floor, jaw clenched, neck muscle twitching.
"Okay," Dean rasps, nodding as if to himself. "Okay."
Sam puts a hand on his brother's shoulder and it gets shrugged off. "Dean—"
"We're gonna have to get rid of these bodies," Dean says, and his voice doesn't quite crack. He meets no one's eyes. "We're gonna have to—" He turns away, rubs a hand over his face.
Bobby says, "I'll get the shovels."
+
"Guess Ellsworth won't be needing this anymore," Dean says when he finds the bottle, and then he pours them all drinks.
Sam doesn't want a drink. Bobby looks hesitantly at his glass before he takes a sip, but Dean throws his down the hatch and then pours himself another.
"Take it easy with that stuff," Sam says.
"Your face takes it easy," Dean retorts.
Okay.
To both Sam and Bobby's relief, it was Dean who suggested the plan. "There's holy oil in the trunk," Dean said, and Sam asked if they should get the herbs and other stuff for the angel summoning, but Dean shook his head no.
No one says 'I told you so'. No one offers assurances.
Dean says, "Let's do this." When he snatches up the amphora of holy oil, Bobby steps forward and says, "Let me—" and Dean says, "Fuck off." Bobby and Sam exchange glances, and Sam nods.
For a few seconds Dean just stands awkwardly in the middle room. Then he uncorks the amphora. He pours the oil in a perfect circle, then stands there some more, maybe checking the circumference, maybe waiting for the fire to rise up and consume him too.
"Dean," Sam says gently. "Come on, man."
"Why's it gotta be a circle anyway?" Dean wonders aloud, stepping out of it. "Why not a triangle or a square, or like a nice trapezoid?" He goes for the bottle again, but Bobby beats him to it, taking it from his reach. "Trapezoids are sexy," Dean decides.
He sets the amphora down behind the armchair with a loud clunk and catches Sam's eye, and something wavers in his gaze, the kind of wild hope that shines when you know there isn't any. Soon you will give me a reason not to do this, it says. Sam has no such reason to give. He wishes he does, but Dean has his blind spots, and Sam will not enable them.
"Look, let's just..." Sam looks down and sighs. "Whatever happens, we'll deal with it. Okay? Let's just get through this."
Dean plops himself down in a chair and looks at Bobby, who pours more drinks. He looks at Sam again, deer in headlights, and Sam nods. You can do this.
Dean bows his head and prays.