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Medium: movie
Fandom: Supernatural
Subject: curtainfic! (namely, Sam and Dean stop hunting and settle down)
Title: Winchesters Rising
Notes: 22 songs, and oh holy shit (1) this is a Supernatural fanmix? Bet you thought I'd forgotten that fandom! and (2) it is a ficmix (drabble per song) so. You know. That's. A thing. (So, you know, don't give up on me yet?) 8tracks is being dumb, so stream link will hopefully be up soon.
download | stream
.shake it out.florence and the machine.
I am done with my graceless heart
So tonight I'm gonna cut it out and then restart
'Cause I like to keep my issues drawn
It's always darkest before the dawn
--
In the end it wasn’t something big or serious or life changing. In the end it was Sam with a concussion (again) and Dean with a cracked rib and the two of them looking at each other and Dean saying, “You want to think about stopping for a while?”
So they did. It wasn’t a picket fence or a nice neighborhood or – much at all, really. But it was something.
It was them, finally agreeing without saying a word, that they were done.
--
.how far we’ve come.matchbox 20.
I believe the world is burning to the ground
Oh well I guess we're gonna find out
Let's see how far we've come
Let's see how far we've come
--
Within the first week, their toilet got clogged.
Dean looked at it, eyes narrowed, as if he could stare it back into submission.The attempt was unsuccessful. “Dude,” he called over his shoulder, “Toilet’s not working.”
“You know how to fix it, don’t you?”
“Yeah, of course, it’s just…” It felt more real, suddenly. This was their life. This was going to be their life. These little things, little problems, nothing hanging in the balance but their own comfort. Dean smiled crookedly. “Huh. Think we’ve come down in the world, Sammy?”
There was a moment’s silence, and when Dean looked over his shoulder Sam was standing there watching him, mouth a little frown. The moment Sam saw him looking, he pulled out a smile and pasted it on. “Just unclog the damn toilet, Dean.”
--
.when the time comes.the classic crime.
When the time comes put my hands on the table,
they are examined for that they are
A long life line that's been cut short,
by the road, the time, the battle scars
Would I would give to be back home,
where the sun sets over the water
--
Dean woke up in the middle of the night too cold, the blankets kicked off by his feet, and realized he could hear someone moving around out in the kitchen. After a moment, he rolled out of bed and padded out. “If I were a little more paranoid you would have a baseball bat to the back of the head right now,” Dean said. “What are you doing?”
“Rearranging the spice cabinet in alphabetical order,” Sam said. Dean blinked, and he turned around and flashed a quick smile. “I’m kidding.”
“Yeah, well, I wouldn’t be surprised. What time is it, three in the morning?”
“Four thirty.”
“Have you slept at all?”
Sam stilled, his hands dropping to his sides from where he’d been fidgeting with his shirt. “—I can’t. Dean, I should be- I should be out there.”
“No,” said Dean, firmly. “We paid our dues. That’s it.”
Sam’s eyes were wide like wounds. “That’s never it. It’s never just…”
“No,” said Dean more firmly. “That’s it.”
--
.foot of the mountain.a-ha.
But we could live by the foot of the mountain
We could clear us a yard in the back
Build a home by the foot of the mountain
We could stay there and never come back
--
He found Sam sitting at a table staring blankly at a piece of paper, coming back from a grocery run, the look on his face positively morose. “What,” he said, “Did it call you a nasty name?”
“No,” said Sam, and turned his head. “It’s a job application. Only I just realized – who the fuck am I going to put down as a reference?”
“…huh,” said Dean. And then, “Job application?”
“Yeah, Dean,” Sam said. “We have to pay the rent somehow. That means getting a paying job. And that means applying for one.” Which meant documentation and taxes and…they’d been skating under the radar so far by paying for their little apartment with cash. That wasn’t going to last.
“We should have just lived in the woods somewhere,” Dean groaned. Sam chewed on his pen and looked back down at the application.
“You’d never survive without your telenovelas,” he said. Dean scowled at the back of his head.
--
.never let me go.florence + the machine.
And the arms of the ocean are carrying me
And all this devotion was rushing out of me
In the crushes of heaven for a sinner like me
But the arms of the ocean delivered me
--
“D’you ever think we’re lucky?” Sam asked, feet kicked up on the table and playing with his bottle of beer more than drinking it. Dean glanced at him sidelong.
“Lucky? Us? Sam and Dean ‘what’s the world throwing at us next’ Winchester?”
“Yeah,” Sam said, and turned his head to look at Dean, a little wrinkle between his eyebrows. “I mean…all of that, and here we are. Roof over our heads and something like a life coming up the rails.”
“I think you have low standards,” Dean said, tipping his head back, and Sam laughed a little, soundlessly.
“Yeah,” he said. “Maybe.” He was silent for a moment, and then said, “I still think, though…”
“You think too much,” Dean said, “Is what you do,” and was pretty sure he cut Sam off because if either of them said too much about this it was going to go away. That was just how it worked. If you looked at a nice thing too long or too close, it’d go wrong, and a big part of Dean desperately didn’t want this one thing to go wrong.
--
.brother stand beside me.heather dale.
Brother stand beside me – brother lend your arm
Let a world too tired to sing
Relearn its song
Let them sing our praises when we’ve gone
--
“You ever think about the people we’ve saved?” Sam said, voice a little slurred. He wasn’t quite drunk. On his way there, though. Dean congratulated himself on a job well done.
“Um,” he said, a little bewildered by the question. “Sometimes. I guess.”
“I mean,” Sam said. “It must be…it must be crazy. We crashed in and out of their lives like a runaway train. Dragging this whole goddamn mess with us. D’you ever wonder…I dunno. It’s like…there are hundreds of people out there that we’ve met and it’s…weird, you know? All those people and none of them know each other and we don’t really know them but they’ve all got this – thing in common, yeah?”
“I forgot how rambly you get when you’re drunk,” Dean murmured, but he was thinking about it, suddenly. About those people from way back when things had been so easy. About Cassie and Angela Barr and that kid Michael and his little brother. “Yeah,” said Dean, finally. “Yeah, sometimes. I think about how they probably all wish they’d never met us.”
“Yeah,” Sam said after a moment. “Yeah, pretty much.”
--
.shine.vienna teng.
In this desert land
I know some rain must fall
See where we began
We've come so far
On this harbor shore
We hear the ocean call
In our minds at war
We have so far to go
--
So it turned out you didn’t just leave the life behind. It followed you. Shouldn’t have surprised Dean, he’d known that, he’d done his year with Lisa, but somehow he’d thought with Sam it’d be different. For either of them. It was nightmares and restlessness and the automatic reach for a gun when you heard footsteps on the sidewalk behind you. Sam remarked it was a good thing they didn’t carry anymore or they’d have shot their next door neighbors six times over by now.
He’d meant it as a joke but it wasn’t really funny, and they both knew it.
--
.shiola.murder by death.
I live alone more or less
I summon wife, child and happiness
Build them up from the dirt and clay
I have to believe that all will be forgiven
--
Sam came home from his job at the grocery with a funny look on his face just as Dean was putting on his shoes to head out for his shift. “—what is it?”
“It’s…” Sam made a face. “Nothing, really, just. I just realized that this girl I work with’s been hitting on me for like a week.”
“Wow,” said Dean. “Someone’s oblivious. She hot?”
“N- well, I guess, but that’s not the point.” Sam looked flustered. “She asked me out.” Dean pulled his hands away from his laces and leaned back.
“You sound really happy about it.”
“I couldn’t think of what to say so I told her I wasn’t sure but – I can’t, Dean.” Sam’s expression was suddenly pleading, like he expected Dean to argue. “I can’t.”
“Um,” Dean said. “Okay. But you should probably tell her that, not me.”
Sam went limp. “Yeah,” he said, “Yeah, okay. I’ll call her.”
It was only later, at work, that Dean registered why Sam had been freaking out. Neither of them had dated for a while, but Dean could boast more than one living ex.
The thought made him weirdly sad.
--
.look no further.dido.
I can stop and catch my breathe
And look no further for happiness
And I will not turn again
'Cause my heart has found it's home
--
By mutual agreement, they didn’t read the newspaper. If they got the newspaper, both of them knew, it would be too easy to flip to the obits, to look for the weird accidents, to fall into those old instincts and old habits and see something they couldn’t ignore.
Part of Dean felt a little guilty about that. About willfully ignoring the shit that was still going on without them to stop it.
The rest of him just thought that they’d given their lives three or four times so there was still a world for shit to go on in, and that was enough.
--
.the atheist christmas carol.vienna teng.
It's the season of grace coming out of the void
Where a man is saved by a voice in the distance
It's the season of possible miracle cures
Where hope is currency and death is not the last unknown
Where time begins to fade
And age is welcome home
--
“We’re having Christmas,” Dean said boldly, defiantly, and fully expecting a fight. Sam looked up from his book (something about environmentalism, Jesus) and eyed him for a moment, and then nodded.
“Yeah,” he said. “Okay.”
Dean blinked. “That’s it? ‘Yeah, okay?’” Sam’s eyebrows lifted a little.
“You were expecting a fight?”
“Yeah,” Dean admitted after a second. “A little.”
Sam closed his book and eyed Dean for a while. “Try to get me to wear antlers and I will shoot you, Dean. Other than that…sure. Let’s go for it. Do you want your present to be a surprise?”
“Ooh,” said Dean, “Presents,” to cover for his internal very girly squeal of glee. And made a mental note to get Sam some antlers. Just because he’d mentioned it.
--
.hope for the hopeless.a fine frenzy.
Cold in a summer breeze
Yeah, you're shivering
On your bended knee
Still, when your heart is sore
And the heavens pour
Like a willow bending with the storm, you'll make it
--
Their first Christmas was a little weak.
But it was okay.
They got a tree, though it had to be small and a little pathetic. Decorated it with cheap white lights. They made dinner a step up from their usual and drank egg nog afterwards, watched It’s A Wonderful Life on Sam’s laptop (Sam’s idea). Sam’s mouth turned up a little at the corner as the credits rolled.
“I think I like this better than our last Christmas,” he said, and Dean had to take a minute to remember what their last Christmas even had been. Before the apocalypse and leviathans and angels and everything, he thought. Before Dean had gone to Hell. What seemed, sometimes, like the turning point for everything, the big before and after of their lives.
“Yeah,” Dean said after a moment. “Me, too.”
--
.two of us.aimee mann and michael penn.
You and I have memories
Longer than the road that stretches out ahead
--
Dean was restless. “We should go on a road trip,” he said. Sam looked at him from where he was doing a crossword, curled up on their ratty couch.
“Where?”
“I don’t know. I don’t care. Somewhere.” Sam crossed off another clue and his eyes slid back down. “I’m just…I’m restless.”
“Well,” Sam said. “Better find someone to rent this place, if you want to be gone for any amount of time. At the very least I’ll have to call in to get time off work, and so will you, and-”
“Okay, okay, I get it, it’s a hassle,” Dean said, cutting him off. “I just…I want to go somewhere. Drive somewhere.”
Sam looked up at him again, eyebrows raised. “Putting down roots means making it harder to just take off like that,” he said. “And that’s what we’re doing, isn’t it?”
In the end, they drove ten miles out of town and found a picnic table on the side of the road. They sat there and talked about nothing in particular until it got dark.
--
.homecoming.vienna teng.
I switch off the lights and imagine that waitress outlined in the bed
Her hair falling all around me
I smile and shake my head
Well we all write our own endings
And we all have our own scars
But tonight I think I see what it's all about
--
Dean was taken aback the first time he and Sam bought groceries and the woman behind the counter greeted them with a cheerful, “Good afternoon, Sam and Dean!” He almost looked over his shoulder to see if she was talking to someone else.
For so long, their job had relied on their invisibility. On being just another anonymous face. Having someone recognize them briefly made his heart beat faster, and by the quick flash on Sam’s face, he wasn’t alone in that.
“Hey, Jenny,” Sam said after a moment, and carried on a smooth conversation until they packed up their groceries and left.
“Huh,” said Dean, eloquently.
“Yeah,” Sam said, and after a moment, smiled. “You’d think we live here or something.”
--
.hunter.heather dale.
I have no illusions to think that I know what will come
I laugh at the concept of life as a simple result of the sun
I just want to hold you, and share with you all of this life
With the stars in the darkness, and love in the light, and its dizzying height
--
It snowed in late February. Heavy snow, building up fast and deep.
Sam and Dean looked at each other and then called in sick. They’d meant to just go for a walk, build a snowman or something, but then Sam crammed a handful of snow down the back of Dean’s jacket and before they knew it they had ended up in a full on snowball war. (Which Dean won. Of course.)
They didn’t troop inside until it was dark and they were both shivering and soaked and Dean’s face almost hurt from grinning.
“God,” he said, once they were dry and huddled under blankets. “I hope it never melts.”
“Stop global warming,” Sam said flippantly, and Dean mimed throwing a snowball at his head.
For once, they both slept through the night.
--
.carry on my wayward son.kansas.
Carry on my wayward son
There'll be peace when you are done
Lay your weary head to rest
Don't you cry (don't you cry no more)
--
“Do you ever wish,” Sam asked, on one of the nights when neither of them could sleep and so they just stayed up and watched dumb movies Sam jacked off the internet.
“No,” Dean answered immediately, without waiting for the rest.
“You don’t even know what I was going to say.”
“I don’t need to,” Dean said evenly. “I’m done wishing, okay? It never got us much of anywhere, far as I can tell. I’m just going to…go with it. With this. See what happens, you know?”
“I know,” Sam said, after a moment. “I know, I was just going to…I was going to ask you what you think Bobby would think, seeing us like this.”
Dean swallowed hard, and then said, quietly, “I think he’d be damn proud.”
--
.the best years of our lives.evan taubenfeld.
So many things I should've,
Said when I had the chance,
So many times we took it all for granted.
--
It was the stupidest thing. Seriously. Some asshole ran the red light, Dean got out of the way just in time but he landed wrong and broke his fucking wrist. So of course they had to call Sam to get him home because Dean was still groggy and out of it and seriously, why couldn’t people just look for red lights?
Sam came barging in wild eyed and frantic. His eyes landed on Dean, who blinked at him obligingly, and all of the tension ran out of him like water. “Oh god,” he said, dropping into the chair next to his bed. “Oh – god. They told me you’d been in an accident, and I thought-”
Dean could guess what Sam had thought. “Dude,” he said, blurrily. “I’m fine.” Sam dropped his face into his hands and shook his head, shoulders trembling a little. Dean reached out and patted his arm with the hand not encased in a cast.
“God, Dean,” Sam said, into his hands. “You’re the only thing that makes this worth doing.”
It wasn’t the kind of thing they were supposed to say. But Dean got it. He remembered when Sam had been gone and all of the things he’d thought of that he should have said before – I’m proud of you, I’m sorry. He cleared his throat.
“Yeah,” he said, quietly, roughly. “You too.”
--
.anniversary.voltaire.
And they said this feeling fades
It gets stronger everyday
And they say that beauty fades
You're more beautiful than ever
They said we'd drift away
We're still standing here
--
Grocery shopping with Sam was a nightmare. Dean would make covetous eyes at something salty or greasy or delicious in any way and Sam would just look at it and say, “No.”
Nothing else. Just: “No.”
Dean took to sneaking things into the shopping cart. Which resulted in awkward moments at the checkout where Sam would pull out something Dean’d dropped in and give him a withering look but be too embarrassed to put it back.
Or else he’d notice before then and make Dean put it back.
“I swear you’re like a five year old,” Sam muttered, eyeing a stack of organic-natural-special-vegetables covetously. Sam claimed there was a difference in taste. Dean was pretty sure he was making that up.
He grinned. “Makes things more fun.”
Sam had his revenge by eating all of Dean’s Pop Tarts. Which Dean still thought was a low blow.
--
.livin’ on a prayer.bon jovi.
She says we've got to hold on to what we've got
'Cause it doesn't make a difference
If we make it or not
We've got each other and that's a lot
For love - we'll give it a shot
--
Sam had his pinched, stressed look on. That didn’t bode well. “We’re coming up short on our budget,” he said, looking at the spread of bills on the table with the same expression he’d once had when he was facing down some fugly. Dean paused and then wandered over to look down at them as well.
“We’ll figure it out,” he said, with confidence he didn’t really feel. They were fumbling their way along. Whoever’d said that this thing was easy was a goddamn liar. If anyone had ever said that.
“Yeah?” Sam looked up. “And if we don’t?”
“We will,” Dean repeated. “We’ve figured out a whole lot worse.” Sam breathed out through his nose.
“Yeah,” he said finally. “Yeah, I guess.” He rubbed his temples. “Want to help me go over this again?”
“For you, baby,” Dean drawled, “Anything,” and was rewarded by a quick smile out of Sam, the line between his eyebrows easing a little.
--
.falling slowly.glen hansard and marketa irglova.
Take this sinking boat and point it home
We've still got time
Raise your hopeful voice you have a choice
You'll make it now
--
They had their bad days. They had more than a few bad days. They had the kind of days where Dean thought everyone could see through his skin to what he felt like underneath and Sam didn’t want to leave the house or open his eyes because of whatever was going on in his head. They had brutally awful days where Dean paced back and forth for hours and wondered what the fuck they thought they were doing, this wasn’t…
Sam said it was PTSD, which made Dean want to snort. Soldiers got PTSD.
“Yeah?” said Sam, curled up on the couch with his knees to his chest in a way that didn’t look comfortable at all. “What do you think we were?”
--
.when it hurts.david usher.
When it hurts
Don't let go
Give up hope
As we're falling back down to the earth
Lightning fails
We all know
That no one can lead us back home
--
“Everyone else is dead,” Sam said, one night, over dinner. Dean stopped eating and looked at him. Sam set down his fork. “You ever think about that?”
“No,” said Dean, which was a lie. He thought about it a lot. About all the people they’d lost getting here. Sometimes thought back to job applications and Sam: who am I going to ask for a reference?
“You ever think, what if we’d stopped before now? Would things be different?”
“We did the best we could,” Dean said, after a moment, though it didn’t sound nearly as sure as he meant it to. Sam’s smile was a little tired, a lot bitter.
“Did we really?”
“Dammit,” Dean said, feeling his temper stretch. “We did good enough.”
--
.overture.patrick wolf.
It's wonderful what a smile can hide
If the teeth shine bright and it's nice and wide
It's so magical all you can keep inside
And if you bury it deep no one can find a thing, no
So come on now, open wide, open up now
Don't you think it's time
--
Their lives had a funny kind of rhythm. It was funny, Dean thought, how easily you could settle into something. And how hard the little things still were.
“So I’m thinking we should rewatch Buffy,” Sam said, feet up on their table as he did the crossword, like he did every morning. “It’s been a while.”
“Jesus,” Dean said. “Yeah. I guess it has.”
How easily you could settle into something, and how much the little things could still sometimes seem a little like miracles. Like time to rewatch dumb TV shows. Like time to do a little living before the inevitable crash and burn. Like time to relearn your brother and actually remember why you’d done this for so long.
And why you were done now.
--
.welcome home.radical face.
Sheets are swaying from an old clothesline
Like a row of captured ghosts over old dead grass
Was never much but we made the most
Welcome home
--
They didn’t have a back porch. So they went to the roof and watched the Fourth of July fireworks from there. “Eight months,” Sam said, sounding a little awed.
“Yeah,” said Dean. Drawled, “My name is Dean Winchester, and I’ve been out of hunting for eight months.” Sam hit him in the back of the head.
“Shut up. Ever thought we’d make it this far?”
“In fairness,” Dean said, “We didn’t. Not really.” Sam chuffed a laugh.
“Whatever. Close enough.” Dean leaned over and bumped Sam with a shoulder, looked up and watched a shower of green sparks shatter the night sky. Give us another year like this, he thought. Give us another year of clogged toilets and grocery shopping and minimum wage menial labor. That’ll be enough.
“This far?” he said, after a moment. “Sam, you know what I think?”
“Mmm?”
Dean turned his head and grinned as wide as he could. “I think we ain’t done nothing yet.”
Fandom: Supernatural
Subject: curtainfic! (namely, Sam and Dean stop hunting and settle down)
Title: Winchesters Rising
Notes: 22 songs, and oh holy shit (1) this is a Supernatural fanmix? Bet you thought I'd forgotten that fandom! and (2) it is a ficmix (drabble per song) so. You know. That's. A thing. (So, you know, don't give up on me yet?) 8tracks is being dumb, so stream link will hopefully be up soon.
I am done with my graceless heart
So tonight I'm gonna cut it out and then restart
'Cause I like to keep my issues drawn
It's always darkest before the dawn
--
In the end it wasn’t something big or serious or life changing. In the end it was Sam with a concussion (again) and Dean with a cracked rib and the two of them looking at each other and Dean saying, “You want to think about stopping for a while?”
So they did. It wasn’t a picket fence or a nice neighborhood or – much at all, really. But it was something.
It was them, finally agreeing without saying a word, that they were done.
--
.how far we’ve come.matchbox 20.
I believe the world is burning to the ground
Oh well I guess we're gonna find out
Let's see how far we've come
Let's see how far we've come
--
Within the first week, their toilet got clogged.
Dean looked at it, eyes narrowed, as if he could stare it back into submission.The attempt was unsuccessful. “Dude,” he called over his shoulder, “Toilet’s not working.”
“You know how to fix it, don’t you?”
“Yeah, of course, it’s just…” It felt more real, suddenly. This was their life. This was going to be their life. These little things, little problems, nothing hanging in the balance but their own comfort. Dean smiled crookedly. “Huh. Think we’ve come down in the world, Sammy?”
There was a moment’s silence, and when Dean looked over his shoulder Sam was standing there watching him, mouth a little frown. The moment Sam saw him looking, he pulled out a smile and pasted it on. “Just unclog the damn toilet, Dean.”
--
.when the time comes.the classic crime.
When the time comes put my hands on the table,
they are examined for that they are
A long life line that's been cut short,
by the road, the time, the battle scars
Would I would give to be back home,
where the sun sets over the water
--
Dean woke up in the middle of the night too cold, the blankets kicked off by his feet, and realized he could hear someone moving around out in the kitchen. After a moment, he rolled out of bed and padded out. “If I were a little more paranoid you would have a baseball bat to the back of the head right now,” Dean said. “What are you doing?”
“Rearranging the spice cabinet in alphabetical order,” Sam said. Dean blinked, and he turned around and flashed a quick smile. “I’m kidding.”
“Yeah, well, I wouldn’t be surprised. What time is it, three in the morning?”
“Four thirty.”
“Have you slept at all?”
Sam stilled, his hands dropping to his sides from where he’d been fidgeting with his shirt. “—I can’t. Dean, I should be- I should be out there.”
“No,” said Dean, firmly. “We paid our dues. That’s it.”
Sam’s eyes were wide like wounds. “That’s never it. It’s never just…”
“No,” said Dean more firmly. “That’s it.”
--
.foot of the mountain.a-ha.
But we could live by the foot of the mountain
We could clear us a yard in the back
Build a home by the foot of the mountain
We could stay there and never come back
--
He found Sam sitting at a table staring blankly at a piece of paper, coming back from a grocery run, the look on his face positively morose. “What,” he said, “Did it call you a nasty name?”
“No,” said Sam, and turned his head. “It’s a job application. Only I just realized – who the fuck am I going to put down as a reference?”
“…huh,” said Dean. And then, “Job application?”
“Yeah, Dean,” Sam said. “We have to pay the rent somehow. That means getting a paying job. And that means applying for one.” Which meant documentation and taxes and…they’d been skating under the radar so far by paying for their little apartment with cash. That wasn’t going to last.
“We should have just lived in the woods somewhere,” Dean groaned. Sam chewed on his pen and looked back down at the application.
“You’d never survive without your telenovelas,” he said. Dean scowled at the back of his head.
--
.never let me go.florence + the machine.
And the arms of the ocean are carrying me
And all this devotion was rushing out of me
In the crushes of heaven for a sinner like me
But the arms of the ocean delivered me
--
“D’you ever think we’re lucky?” Sam asked, feet kicked up on the table and playing with his bottle of beer more than drinking it. Dean glanced at him sidelong.
“Lucky? Us? Sam and Dean ‘what’s the world throwing at us next’ Winchester?”
“Yeah,” Sam said, and turned his head to look at Dean, a little wrinkle between his eyebrows. “I mean…all of that, and here we are. Roof over our heads and something like a life coming up the rails.”
“I think you have low standards,” Dean said, tipping his head back, and Sam laughed a little, soundlessly.
“Yeah,” he said. “Maybe.” He was silent for a moment, and then said, “I still think, though…”
“You think too much,” Dean said, “Is what you do,” and was pretty sure he cut Sam off because if either of them said too much about this it was going to go away. That was just how it worked. If you looked at a nice thing too long or too close, it’d go wrong, and a big part of Dean desperately didn’t want this one thing to go wrong.
--
.brother stand beside me.heather dale.
Brother stand beside me – brother lend your arm
Let a world too tired to sing
Relearn its song
Let them sing our praises when we’ve gone
--
“You ever think about the people we’ve saved?” Sam said, voice a little slurred. He wasn’t quite drunk. On his way there, though. Dean congratulated himself on a job well done.
“Um,” he said, a little bewildered by the question. “Sometimes. I guess.”
“I mean,” Sam said. “It must be…it must be crazy. We crashed in and out of their lives like a runaway train. Dragging this whole goddamn mess with us. D’you ever wonder…I dunno. It’s like…there are hundreds of people out there that we’ve met and it’s…weird, you know? All those people and none of them know each other and we don’t really know them but they’ve all got this – thing in common, yeah?”
“I forgot how rambly you get when you’re drunk,” Dean murmured, but he was thinking about it, suddenly. About those people from way back when things had been so easy. About Cassie and Angela Barr and that kid Michael and his little brother. “Yeah,” said Dean, finally. “Yeah, sometimes. I think about how they probably all wish they’d never met us.”
“Yeah,” Sam said after a moment. “Yeah, pretty much.”
--
.shine.vienna teng.
In this desert land
I know some rain must fall
See where we began
We've come so far
On this harbor shore
We hear the ocean call
In our minds at war
We have so far to go
--
So it turned out you didn’t just leave the life behind. It followed you. Shouldn’t have surprised Dean, he’d known that, he’d done his year with Lisa, but somehow he’d thought with Sam it’d be different. For either of them. It was nightmares and restlessness and the automatic reach for a gun when you heard footsteps on the sidewalk behind you. Sam remarked it was a good thing they didn’t carry anymore or they’d have shot their next door neighbors six times over by now.
He’d meant it as a joke but it wasn’t really funny, and they both knew it.
--
.shiola.murder by death.
I live alone more or less
I summon wife, child and happiness
Build them up from the dirt and clay
I have to believe that all will be forgiven
--
Sam came home from his job at the grocery with a funny look on his face just as Dean was putting on his shoes to head out for his shift. “—what is it?”
“It’s…” Sam made a face. “Nothing, really, just. I just realized that this girl I work with’s been hitting on me for like a week.”
“Wow,” said Dean. “Someone’s oblivious. She hot?”
“N- well, I guess, but that’s not the point.” Sam looked flustered. “She asked me out.” Dean pulled his hands away from his laces and leaned back.
“You sound really happy about it.”
“I couldn’t think of what to say so I told her I wasn’t sure but – I can’t, Dean.” Sam’s expression was suddenly pleading, like he expected Dean to argue. “I can’t.”
“Um,” Dean said. “Okay. But you should probably tell her that, not me.”
Sam went limp. “Yeah,” he said, “Yeah, okay. I’ll call her.”
It was only later, at work, that Dean registered why Sam had been freaking out. Neither of them had dated for a while, but Dean could boast more than one living ex.
The thought made him weirdly sad.
--
.look no further.dido.
I can stop and catch my breathe
And look no further for happiness
And I will not turn again
'Cause my heart has found it's home
--
By mutual agreement, they didn’t read the newspaper. If they got the newspaper, both of them knew, it would be too easy to flip to the obits, to look for the weird accidents, to fall into those old instincts and old habits and see something they couldn’t ignore.
Part of Dean felt a little guilty about that. About willfully ignoring the shit that was still going on without them to stop it.
The rest of him just thought that they’d given their lives three or four times so there was still a world for shit to go on in, and that was enough.
--
.the atheist christmas carol.vienna teng.
It's the season of grace coming out of the void
Where a man is saved by a voice in the distance
It's the season of possible miracle cures
Where hope is currency and death is not the last unknown
Where time begins to fade
And age is welcome home
--
“We’re having Christmas,” Dean said boldly, defiantly, and fully expecting a fight. Sam looked up from his book (something about environmentalism, Jesus) and eyed him for a moment, and then nodded.
“Yeah,” he said. “Okay.”
Dean blinked. “That’s it? ‘Yeah, okay?’” Sam’s eyebrows lifted a little.
“You were expecting a fight?”
“Yeah,” Dean admitted after a second. “A little.”
Sam closed his book and eyed Dean for a while. “Try to get me to wear antlers and I will shoot you, Dean. Other than that…sure. Let’s go for it. Do you want your present to be a surprise?”
“Ooh,” said Dean, “Presents,” to cover for his internal very girly squeal of glee. And made a mental note to get Sam some antlers. Just because he’d mentioned it.
--
.hope for the hopeless.a fine frenzy.
Cold in a summer breeze
Yeah, you're shivering
On your bended knee
Still, when your heart is sore
And the heavens pour
Like a willow bending with the storm, you'll make it
--
Their first Christmas was a little weak.
But it was okay.
They got a tree, though it had to be small and a little pathetic. Decorated it with cheap white lights. They made dinner a step up from their usual and drank egg nog afterwards, watched It’s A Wonderful Life on Sam’s laptop (Sam’s idea). Sam’s mouth turned up a little at the corner as the credits rolled.
“I think I like this better than our last Christmas,” he said, and Dean had to take a minute to remember what their last Christmas even had been. Before the apocalypse and leviathans and angels and everything, he thought. Before Dean had gone to Hell. What seemed, sometimes, like the turning point for everything, the big before and after of their lives.
“Yeah,” Dean said after a moment. “Me, too.”
--
.two of us.aimee mann and michael penn.
You and I have memories
Longer than the road that stretches out ahead
--
Dean was restless. “We should go on a road trip,” he said. Sam looked at him from where he was doing a crossword, curled up on their ratty couch.
“Where?”
“I don’t know. I don’t care. Somewhere.” Sam crossed off another clue and his eyes slid back down. “I’m just…I’m restless.”
“Well,” Sam said. “Better find someone to rent this place, if you want to be gone for any amount of time. At the very least I’ll have to call in to get time off work, and so will you, and-”
“Okay, okay, I get it, it’s a hassle,” Dean said, cutting him off. “I just…I want to go somewhere. Drive somewhere.”
Sam looked up at him again, eyebrows raised. “Putting down roots means making it harder to just take off like that,” he said. “And that’s what we’re doing, isn’t it?”
In the end, they drove ten miles out of town and found a picnic table on the side of the road. They sat there and talked about nothing in particular until it got dark.
--
.homecoming.vienna teng.
I switch off the lights and imagine that waitress outlined in the bed
Her hair falling all around me
I smile and shake my head
Well we all write our own endings
And we all have our own scars
But tonight I think I see what it's all about
--
Dean was taken aback the first time he and Sam bought groceries and the woman behind the counter greeted them with a cheerful, “Good afternoon, Sam and Dean!” He almost looked over his shoulder to see if she was talking to someone else.
For so long, their job had relied on their invisibility. On being just another anonymous face. Having someone recognize them briefly made his heart beat faster, and by the quick flash on Sam’s face, he wasn’t alone in that.
“Hey, Jenny,” Sam said after a moment, and carried on a smooth conversation until they packed up their groceries and left.
“Huh,” said Dean, eloquently.
“Yeah,” Sam said, and after a moment, smiled. “You’d think we live here or something.”
--
.hunter.heather dale.
I have no illusions to think that I know what will come
I laugh at the concept of life as a simple result of the sun
I just want to hold you, and share with you all of this life
With the stars in the darkness, and love in the light, and its dizzying height
--
It snowed in late February. Heavy snow, building up fast and deep.
Sam and Dean looked at each other and then called in sick. They’d meant to just go for a walk, build a snowman or something, but then Sam crammed a handful of snow down the back of Dean’s jacket and before they knew it they had ended up in a full on snowball war. (Which Dean won. Of course.)
They didn’t troop inside until it was dark and they were both shivering and soaked and Dean’s face almost hurt from grinning.
“God,” he said, once they were dry and huddled under blankets. “I hope it never melts.”
“Stop global warming,” Sam said flippantly, and Dean mimed throwing a snowball at his head.
For once, they both slept through the night.
--
.carry on my wayward son.kansas.
Carry on my wayward son
There'll be peace when you are done
Lay your weary head to rest
Don't you cry (don't you cry no more)
--
“Do you ever wish,” Sam asked, on one of the nights when neither of them could sleep and so they just stayed up and watched dumb movies Sam jacked off the internet.
“No,” Dean answered immediately, without waiting for the rest.
“You don’t even know what I was going to say.”
“I don’t need to,” Dean said evenly. “I’m done wishing, okay? It never got us much of anywhere, far as I can tell. I’m just going to…go with it. With this. See what happens, you know?”
“I know,” Sam said, after a moment. “I know, I was just going to…I was going to ask you what you think Bobby would think, seeing us like this.”
Dean swallowed hard, and then said, quietly, “I think he’d be damn proud.”
--
.the best years of our lives.evan taubenfeld.
So many things I should've,
Said when I had the chance,
So many times we took it all for granted.
--
It was the stupidest thing. Seriously. Some asshole ran the red light, Dean got out of the way just in time but he landed wrong and broke his fucking wrist. So of course they had to call Sam to get him home because Dean was still groggy and out of it and seriously, why couldn’t people just look for red lights?
Sam came barging in wild eyed and frantic. His eyes landed on Dean, who blinked at him obligingly, and all of the tension ran out of him like water. “Oh god,” he said, dropping into the chair next to his bed. “Oh – god. They told me you’d been in an accident, and I thought-”
Dean could guess what Sam had thought. “Dude,” he said, blurrily. “I’m fine.” Sam dropped his face into his hands and shook his head, shoulders trembling a little. Dean reached out and patted his arm with the hand not encased in a cast.
“God, Dean,” Sam said, into his hands. “You’re the only thing that makes this worth doing.”
It wasn’t the kind of thing they were supposed to say. But Dean got it. He remembered when Sam had been gone and all of the things he’d thought of that he should have said before – I’m proud of you, I’m sorry. He cleared his throat.
“Yeah,” he said, quietly, roughly. “You too.”
--
.anniversary.voltaire.
And they said this feeling fades
It gets stronger everyday
And they say that beauty fades
You're more beautiful than ever
They said we'd drift away
We're still standing here
--
Grocery shopping with Sam was a nightmare. Dean would make covetous eyes at something salty or greasy or delicious in any way and Sam would just look at it and say, “No.”
Nothing else. Just: “No.”
Dean took to sneaking things into the shopping cart. Which resulted in awkward moments at the checkout where Sam would pull out something Dean’d dropped in and give him a withering look but be too embarrassed to put it back.
Or else he’d notice before then and make Dean put it back.
“I swear you’re like a five year old,” Sam muttered, eyeing a stack of organic-natural-special-vegetables covetously. Sam claimed there was a difference in taste. Dean was pretty sure he was making that up.
He grinned. “Makes things more fun.”
Sam had his revenge by eating all of Dean’s Pop Tarts. Which Dean still thought was a low blow.
--
.livin’ on a prayer.bon jovi.
She says we've got to hold on to what we've got
'Cause it doesn't make a difference
If we make it or not
We've got each other and that's a lot
For love - we'll give it a shot
--
Sam had his pinched, stressed look on. That didn’t bode well. “We’re coming up short on our budget,” he said, looking at the spread of bills on the table with the same expression he’d once had when he was facing down some fugly. Dean paused and then wandered over to look down at them as well.
“We’ll figure it out,” he said, with confidence he didn’t really feel. They were fumbling their way along. Whoever’d said that this thing was easy was a goddamn liar. If anyone had ever said that.
“Yeah?” Sam looked up. “And if we don’t?”
“We will,” Dean repeated. “We’ve figured out a whole lot worse.” Sam breathed out through his nose.
“Yeah,” he said finally. “Yeah, I guess.” He rubbed his temples. “Want to help me go over this again?”
“For you, baby,” Dean drawled, “Anything,” and was rewarded by a quick smile out of Sam, the line between his eyebrows easing a little.
--
.falling slowly.glen hansard and marketa irglova.
Take this sinking boat and point it home
We've still got time
Raise your hopeful voice you have a choice
You'll make it now
--
They had their bad days. They had more than a few bad days. They had the kind of days where Dean thought everyone could see through his skin to what he felt like underneath and Sam didn’t want to leave the house or open his eyes because of whatever was going on in his head. They had brutally awful days where Dean paced back and forth for hours and wondered what the fuck they thought they were doing, this wasn’t…
Sam said it was PTSD, which made Dean want to snort. Soldiers got PTSD.
“Yeah?” said Sam, curled up on the couch with his knees to his chest in a way that didn’t look comfortable at all. “What do you think we were?”
--
.when it hurts.david usher.
When it hurts
Don't let go
Give up hope
As we're falling back down to the earth
Lightning fails
We all know
That no one can lead us back home
--
“Everyone else is dead,” Sam said, one night, over dinner. Dean stopped eating and looked at him. Sam set down his fork. “You ever think about that?”
“No,” said Dean, which was a lie. He thought about it a lot. About all the people they’d lost getting here. Sometimes thought back to job applications and Sam: who am I going to ask for a reference?
“You ever think, what if we’d stopped before now? Would things be different?”
“We did the best we could,” Dean said, after a moment, though it didn’t sound nearly as sure as he meant it to. Sam’s smile was a little tired, a lot bitter.
“Did we really?”
“Dammit,” Dean said, feeling his temper stretch. “We did good enough.”
--
.overture.patrick wolf.
It's wonderful what a smile can hide
If the teeth shine bright and it's nice and wide
It's so magical all you can keep inside
And if you bury it deep no one can find a thing, no
So come on now, open wide, open up now
Don't you think it's time
--
Their lives had a funny kind of rhythm. It was funny, Dean thought, how easily you could settle into something. And how hard the little things still were.
“So I’m thinking we should rewatch Buffy,” Sam said, feet up on their table as he did the crossword, like he did every morning. “It’s been a while.”
“Jesus,” Dean said. “Yeah. I guess it has.”
How easily you could settle into something, and how much the little things could still sometimes seem a little like miracles. Like time to rewatch dumb TV shows. Like time to do a little living before the inevitable crash and burn. Like time to relearn your brother and actually remember why you’d done this for so long.
And why you were done now.
--
.welcome home.radical face.
Sheets are swaying from an old clothesline
Like a row of captured ghosts over old dead grass
Was never much but we made the most
Welcome home
--
They didn’t have a back porch. So they went to the roof and watched the Fourth of July fireworks from there. “Eight months,” Sam said, sounding a little awed.
“Yeah,” said Dean. Drawled, “My name is Dean Winchester, and I’ve been out of hunting for eight months.” Sam hit him in the back of the head.
“Shut up. Ever thought we’d make it this far?”
“In fairness,” Dean said, “We didn’t. Not really.” Sam chuffed a laugh.
“Whatever. Close enough.” Dean leaned over and bumped Sam with a shoulder, looked up and watched a shower of green sparks shatter the night sky. Give us another year like this, he thought. Give us another year of clogged toilets and grocery shopping and minimum wage menial labor. That’ll be enough.
“This far?” he said, after a moment. “Sam, you know what I think?”
“Mmm?”
Dean turned his head and grinned as wide as he could. “I think we ain’t done nothing yet.”
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