Interrupted, PG-13, Gen fic, for![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
found_fic_spn, Prompt#19
Sep. 30th, 2007 11:19 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ht_murrayTitle: Interrupted 1/1
Author:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-syndicated.gif)
tru_faith_lost
Genre: Humor/angst
Characters/Pairings:Dean and Sam, Gen
Rating:PG-13 for LANGUAGE
Words:~2500
Summary:Life with Dean is never dull, and neither is death.
Disclaimer: Don't own, don't sue. 'ts all lies.
A/N: I'm trying to keep my muse occupied for a couple days before I start "Fireflies." Saw this prompt, then logged onto AOL and saw a news story, and voila, instant ficlet. It's prompt #19 atfound_fic_spn. Also part of my Pain Without Plot series, which is a rather futile attempt for me to write just anything in an effort not to take writing seriously. Read as: It's total crap, lol. I can only write so much schmoopy angst before my muse says, "Hey, bitch, these boys almost die everday. I'm sure it's rather a non-event at this point."
Thanks:To![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
mlebayre for awesomesuperfast beta.
Interrupted
For all their Eagle Scout, ex-Marine, BFE survivalist training, it never ceases to amaze Sam how death catches them completely unaware. Every. Fucking. Time. He’d’a thunk the bitch would at least give Dean a break, considering he’s kinda on the accelerated track already. There’s no logical reason why a dude who’s spent his life with a gun at his hip and a knife at his wrist should just drop over dead in the middle of a grassy field. Big brothers hell-bent on spending their last breath looking out for their gigantic little brothers just don’t do that.
Except when they totally do.
The bastard.
Five Hours Earlier
“Dean, that girl is like sixteen.”
Dean quirks an eyebrow and stuffs his mouth full of the drowning-in-yellow-something-that’s-definitely-not-butter popcorn it took him nearly twenty minutes to get from the blonde at the concession stand and shrugs dismissively. “I wouldn’t be so sure. Popcorn was four bucks…” He shoves in another mouthful “…I gave her twenty plus a dollar for, ya know, gratuity.” A waggle of eyebrow, and a nudge to Sam’s elbow. “Betcha didn’t know I knew any four-syllable words, didja? Anyway, she gave me two tens and three ones change. Counted it four times, too. Anyone that dumb’s gotta be working on at least her fourth trip through summer school. She’s eighteen, or I’m a virgin.”
Sam coughs into his hand with a sideways glance at the pep band geeks ogling them from the grandstand a few feet away. Gotta love high school football games. “So the twenty minutes you spent researching the case by talking to her breasts was pretty much just you looking for a hookup.”
“No, actually, it wasn’t. Though, I did manage to hook you up. She’s got a friend, into guys with big feet.”
“Dean!”
Dean grabs another handful of popcorn but waves a pinky finger at some giggling girls from the cheerleading squad. Sam doesn’t bother telling him he has a hull in his teeth, and grins with only the side of his mouth that Dean can’t see as he rubs the back of his neck and looks at his feet.
“And for your information, I wasn’t talking to her breasts,” Dean sniped. “I was ogling them. Or, at least, I was until I realized she was wearing a number nine football jersey over them. “
“Wait, you mean…”
“I mean our dead dude’s football jersey. Seems she knew him pretty well.” He cocks his head. “In a biblical sense even.”
Suddenly interested, Sam moves in front of Dean and grabs the tub of popcorn out of his hands. “Well?”
“Well, what?” Sam’s pretty sure the shower of white popcorn snowflakes that sprays out onto his jacket isn’t accidental.
“Did you find out anything about our spirit?”
“Oh. Yeah. Hey, did you know the sophomore class has won the Homecoming Spirit Stick the last three years in a row? Kinda ironic, don’tcha think?”
Okay, now that totally makes the kind of sense that doesn’t. Not even a little. “Not really. Sounds more like coincidence than irony, Alanis.”
Dean blinks back at him in a way that makes Sam want to tweeze out those ridiculously long eyelashes one at a freaking time. Sometimes, he swears the arts and entertainment community has erected a wall of cultural ineptitude around his brother that’s permeable only to A-list actresses with big boobs and B-movie trivia, with a strong lean toward A-list actresses slumming in B-horror movies on hiatus from their ‘real’ projects. “You know,” Sam exasperates, “Alanis Morissette, the naked girl in the video with that really long hair.”
“Ooh, yeah. A-LAN-is.” Dean’s eyes go blissfully to half-mast, presumably under the influence of MTV flashbacks. “How could I forget?” He snaps out of his reverie when a cymbal crashes in the grandstand, and he glares at the band geek responsible much the way he glares at Sam when he orders salad at a McDonald’s drive-up. “Actually, I was thinking it’s ironic our ghost shows up around Homecoming, and his ex-girlfriend just happens to have been in the class that’s won the Spirit Stick every year since his untimely death. A little too coincidental to be coincidence, don’t you think?”
“Still not ironic,” Sam harrumphs.
“Close enough for horseshoes. Long story short, the Stick trades hands at half-time, and after the Homecoming dance, it’s locked in the trophy case until next year. We just hang around for a couple hours, and snag it after everyone’s gone home. Little salt and burn, no more ghost.”
Famous last words.
Present
Seems like Winchester plans are never as well-laid as Dean. And that’s exactly what Sam would tell him, excepting for the part, where, oh yeah, Dean’s dead on the ground.
Maybe Sam’s jumping to conclusions. It’s entirely possible Dean’s just unconscious, but Sam’s pretty sure their luck doesn’t swing that way. Never has. If it started now, when Dean’s only got a couple months left on his proverbial demon contract? Now that would be ironic. Not that he’d put it past Luck to be as hard-assed as a demon.
“Dean!”
Sam’s long legs should probably not be able to do the run and slide without dislocating a kneecap or at least busting wide open. There’s plenty of truth to the adage, ‘the bigger they are, the harder they fall.’ Plus his legs don’t have that convenient bowed shape to better distribute the force of impact. Sam does it anyway, pretty much without a hitch. He had a good teacher, after all. He barely even registers the sharp jolt in his hips or the painful pinch as the tongues of his boots roll back.
Dean’s eyes are half-open, mouth slack, whatever smartass comment he’d been about to lash out at Sam with still swallowed in his throat—his non-air-moving, non-swallowing, pasty-white, clammy-skinned throat.
“Oh, God.” Sam’s hands shake like the tail of a terrier with its head in a rat hole. The fact that Dean’s expression borders on sexed-out could probably pass for ironic. Little death was always just a colorful metaphor ‘til now.
Sam slips his long fingers around Dean’s head and over his pulse point, knowing full well there’s no pulse to find.
Sam knows what to do when there’s no flutter beneath his fingertips, knows how to proceed when there’s no breath against his ear, but maybe knowing and doing are for people who aren’t cradling their dead brother in their arms while they write the friggin’ ABC’s of CPR on those oh-so-handy little cards. Or maybe Sam just really is a stubborn bastard who refuses to believe what A and B are telling him and takes step C, make sure victim is unconscious and unresponsive, a little too seriously.
At any rate, what’s supposed, according to the first aid gurus, to be a shout and a subtle shake turns into Sam making some weird keening noise that resonates behind his eyes while he shakes Dean hard enough to give him whiplash.
Maybe Dean deserves a little whiplash. Him and his stupid ideas.
Ten minutes earlier
“Hey, Sam, look at this!”
Sam knows better than to look. That phrase has never gotten him anything but trouble, but of course, he looks.
The smoke from the burning Spirit Stick wafts across the baseball diamond where they’d torched it, hopefully releasing the spirit of Anthony Burns in the process. Sam’s ready to call it a night. Who knew high school dances were allowed to go until eleven o’clock, and that it took another forty-five minutes for the custodian to lock up the place afterward? He hadn’t been so bored in the hallowed halls of education since he’d been forced to take freshman algebra during his junior year because the friggin’ school he transferred to didn’t recognize the text he’d learned from at his previous school.
“Sam! Hey Sam, man, toss me a couple.”
Dean’s found himself a baseball and an old wooden bat in the grass, and Sam turns to find him lofting the bat over his head and crouching into a batter’s stance. Dean rests the bat on his shoulder for a second and stoops to pick the ball up off the ground. He under hands it to Sam, who catches it, if for no other reason than to protect his nuts, because there’s no doubt in his mind as to the vector of that ball, and no inkling that it’s lined up with his crotch by coincidence. Not by irony either, if that matters.
“Dean, I hate baseball.”
“Dude, you begged Dad to let you play Little League that year we were in Beaumont for the summer. You were their star pitcher.”
Sam tosses the ball idly in the air. He supposes he could just throw the damned thing, let Dean hit over the fence just like Dean always did when they were kids, and be done with it. But then, it’s baseball Sam hates. Debate, he kinda likes. “That was only because all the other kids on our street were playing, and they didn’t have enough to make a team without me.”
“So.” Dean hoists the bat up again and starts doing that annoying crouch-bounce ball players always do right before they take a swing or adjust their jocks. “You were still good at it. Don’t’cha wanna re-live your glory days?”
Sam laughs but settles into a pitcher’s stance, right toe planted and left knee starting to raise across his body. “Winchesters don’t have glory days. We have momentary lapses in destiny.”
Sam curls his knuckles around the ball in his right hand and covers it with his left as he raises it over his head and coils his body like a spring to throw it. Just as he starts his wind up, Dean interrupts with a, “Hey, Sam? What time is it?”
Balancing on one leg, he glances at his watch. “12:13.” Then, he takes a deep breath and starts his wind-up again.
“Seriously? It’s after midnight?”
Sam pauses again, annoyed. “Yeah, Dean it’s after midnight.”
Dean eyes the bat appreciative with a crooked grin and raises it again. “Guess that makes this…”
Sam doesn’t hear Dean speak. He’s onto his brother, and he’s not going to be distracted into throwing like a girl for Dean’s cheap amusement. By the time Dean opens his mouth, Sam’s finished his wind up and launches the ball as hard as he can.
Dean’s words reach Sam’s ears a split second before the dull thud that’s definitely NOT a ball being knocked over the fence.
Another beat passes before Dean finishes his sentence. “…morning…wood.”
Everything happens in slow motion after that. The Louisville Slugger drops from Dean’s hands and falls to the ground like an icicle off a rooftop. Dean makes a dazed stagger-sway-turn toward Sam that only moves him far enough out of his balance to send him crumbling in a heap.
“Dean!”
Present
Sam somehow manages to dial 9-1-1 on the first try, then shouts, “High school ball diamond. Hurry!” He drops the phone into the grass without ending the call.
“Dean!” He tries one last time, something in his voice he recognizes as desperatesorryafraid.
Those fucking half-open hazel eyes just gleam back at him with nothing more than the reflection of the security lights in the parking light at his back.
“C’mon! C’mon!” Sam puts a hand behind Dean’s neck, tries to tell himself the way Dean’s mouth just falls open as his head tilts back is convenient and not nauseating, doesn’t make his stomach try to claw its way out whichever opening is closest.
Pinching Dean’s nose, Sam lowers his head and puffs two breaths into Dean’s lungs, watching the way his chest raises so he knows it’s going all the way down. He listens intently, then breathes again. Two breaths.
He doesn’t remember starting compressions, but his arms burn with exhaustion by the time he realizes he’s counting with memories instead of numbers. All the things they’ve done since Dean sold himself down the hole, all the first times Sam promised wouldn’t be the last, come flooding to the surface with every compression.
Seven, eight, nine…
Laughed until milk came out their noses, sang along to classic rock with the windows down like no one could hear, saw the sun rise over the Grand Canyon.
Seventeen, eighteen…
Patched a tire together, saw Car Henge, reached a truce with a dancing elephant.
Twenty-six, twenty-seven…
Rode a bike, taught Dean to ride a bike, got drunk together.
Two more breaths, and Sam barely has them to spare. He feels like he’s been at this for hours already, though he knows it’s minutes, at best. This isn’t just Dean’s breath he’s moving with his lungs, not just Dean’s blood he’s pumping with his hands, Dean’s life he’s playing in his mind. It’s Sam’s whole world inside a cracked snow globe seeping out onto the ground.
Sam doesn’t ever know when the ambulance gets there. He’s still keeping count in his head when hands latch onto his shoulders and pull him away.
“It’s all right, son. That’s got it, now.” A beat. “I’ve got a pulse!” Someone shouts too close to his ear, but Sam doesn’t turn to see who’s speaking. He can’t take his eyes off Dean’s, searches for something to convince himself what they say is true.
It’s small at first, just a butterfly flutter of eyelashes over the twinkling eyes. Like the first puff of steam from a kettle, the pressure blows the top off the boiler in Sam’s chest as Dean takes a gasping breath in and tries to lurch to a sit. Strong arms press him into the ground as Sam takes one of his hands and leans closer. Maybe it’s selfish or girly, but he wants to be the first one Dean sees.
Dean’s eyes flutter open and shut a few times, then roll toward Sam’s face. His eyes lock on Sam for what turns into an uncomfortably long beat before his face grimaces with disgust.
“What the fuck are you looking at?” Dean asks, ripping his hand out of Sam’s grip.
Sam laughs and collapses, heaving with exhaustion, to the ground as the paramedics deal with his oh-so-grouchy-when-injured big brother.
“Sir, you appear to have suffered an event called commotio cortis. An impact to your chest has interrupted your heart’s rhythm and caused a momentary cardiac arrest, but…”
“Wait. Coitus interruptus, what? No way. Sammy! Sammy, you throw like a fucking girl, you little bitch!”
Yup, that’s Dean, all right—Dean Winchester, walking suspense thriller, though if any of the girls Dean’s been with are to be believed, he can do that lying down, too—every day a little death and a giant eff you.
Winchesters may not have glory days, and Luck might be an irony-loving demon bastard, but whoever handed out second chances must really like having Dean around.
Sam thinks that makes about two of them.
He can’t help but laugh, as the paramedics wrestle Dean onto a stretcher, whether it’s real laughter or hysterical, he doesn’t know, doesn’t really care. A couple days in ICU and a couple months of light duty should have Dean in tip-top shape again right about the time the hounds come for him.
Sam sighs and starts walking back to the car.
Now, that’s ironic.
Author:
tru_faith_lostGenre: Humor/angst
Characters/Pairings:Dean and Sam, Gen
Rating:PG-13 for LANGUAGE
Words:~2500
Summary:Life with Dean is never dull, and neither is death.
Disclaimer: Don't own, don't sue. 'ts all lies.
A/N: I'm trying to keep my muse occupied for a couple days before I start "Fireflies." Saw this prompt, then logged onto AOL and saw a news story, and voila, instant ficlet. It's prompt #19 at
found_fic_spn. Also part of my Pain Without Plot series, which is a rather futile attempt for me to write just anything in an effort not to take writing seriously. Read as: It's total crap, lol. I can only write so much schmoopy angst before my muse says, "Hey, bitch, these boys almost die everday. I'm sure it's rather a non-event at this point."Thanks:To
mlebayre for awesomesuperfast beta.Interrupted
For all their Eagle Scout, ex-Marine, BFE survivalist training, it never ceases to amaze Sam how death catches them completely unaware. Every. Fucking. Time. He’d’a thunk the bitch would at least give Dean a break, considering he’s kinda on the accelerated track already. There’s no logical reason why a dude who’s spent his life with a gun at his hip and a knife at his wrist should just drop over dead in the middle of a grassy field. Big brothers hell-bent on spending their last breath looking out for their gigantic little brothers just don’t do that.
Except when they totally do.
The bastard.
Five Hours Earlier
“Dean, that girl is like sixteen.”
Dean quirks an eyebrow and stuffs his mouth full of the drowning-in-yellow-something-that’s-definitely-not-butter popcorn it took him nearly twenty minutes to get from the blonde at the concession stand and shrugs dismissively. “I wouldn’t be so sure. Popcorn was four bucks…” He shoves in another mouthful “…I gave her twenty plus a dollar for, ya know, gratuity.” A waggle of eyebrow, and a nudge to Sam’s elbow. “Betcha didn’t know I knew any four-syllable words, didja? Anyway, she gave me two tens and three ones change. Counted it four times, too. Anyone that dumb’s gotta be working on at least her fourth trip through summer school. She’s eighteen, or I’m a virgin.”
Sam coughs into his hand with a sideways glance at the pep band geeks ogling them from the grandstand a few feet away. Gotta love high school football games. “So the twenty minutes you spent researching the case by talking to her breasts was pretty much just you looking for a hookup.”
“No, actually, it wasn’t. Though, I did manage to hook you up. She’s got a friend, into guys with big feet.”
“Dean!”
Dean grabs another handful of popcorn but waves a pinky finger at some giggling girls from the cheerleading squad. Sam doesn’t bother telling him he has a hull in his teeth, and grins with only the side of his mouth that Dean can’t see as he rubs the back of his neck and looks at his feet.
“And for your information, I wasn’t talking to her breasts,” Dean sniped. “I was ogling them. Or, at least, I was until I realized she was wearing a number nine football jersey over them. “
“Wait, you mean…”
“I mean our dead dude’s football jersey. Seems she knew him pretty well.” He cocks his head. “In a biblical sense even.”
Suddenly interested, Sam moves in front of Dean and grabs the tub of popcorn out of his hands. “Well?”
“Well, what?” Sam’s pretty sure the shower of white popcorn snowflakes that sprays out onto his jacket isn’t accidental.
“Did you find out anything about our spirit?”
“Oh. Yeah. Hey, did you know the sophomore class has won the Homecoming Spirit Stick the last three years in a row? Kinda ironic, don’tcha think?”
Okay, now that totally makes the kind of sense that doesn’t. Not even a little. “Not really. Sounds more like coincidence than irony, Alanis.”
Dean blinks back at him in a way that makes Sam want to tweeze out those ridiculously long eyelashes one at a freaking time. Sometimes, he swears the arts and entertainment community has erected a wall of cultural ineptitude around his brother that’s permeable only to A-list actresses with big boobs and B-movie trivia, with a strong lean toward A-list actresses slumming in B-horror movies on hiatus from their ‘real’ projects. “You know,” Sam exasperates, “Alanis Morissette, the naked girl in the video with that really long hair.”
“Ooh, yeah. A-LAN-is.” Dean’s eyes go blissfully to half-mast, presumably under the influence of MTV flashbacks. “How could I forget?” He snaps out of his reverie when a cymbal crashes in the grandstand, and he glares at the band geek responsible much the way he glares at Sam when he orders salad at a McDonald’s drive-up. “Actually, I was thinking it’s ironic our ghost shows up around Homecoming, and his ex-girlfriend just happens to have been in the class that’s won the Spirit Stick every year since his untimely death. A little too coincidental to be coincidence, don’t you think?”
“Still not ironic,” Sam harrumphs.
“Close enough for horseshoes. Long story short, the Stick trades hands at half-time, and after the Homecoming dance, it’s locked in the trophy case until next year. We just hang around for a couple hours, and snag it after everyone’s gone home. Little salt and burn, no more ghost.”
Famous last words.
Present
Seems like Winchester plans are never as well-laid as Dean. And that’s exactly what Sam would tell him, excepting for the part, where, oh yeah, Dean’s dead on the ground.
Maybe Sam’s jumping to conclusions. It’s entirely possible Dean’s just unconscious, but Sam’s pretty sure their luck doesn’t swing that way. Never has. If it started now, when Dean’s only got a couple months left on his proverbial demon contract? Now that would be ironic. Not that he’d put it past Luck to be as hard-assed as a demon.
“Dean!”
Sam’s long legs should probably not be able to do the run and slide without dislocating a kneecap or at least busting wide open. There’s plenty of truth to the adage, ‘the bigger they are, the harder they fall.’ Plus his legs don’t have that convenient bowed shape to better distribute the force of impact. Sam does it anyway, pretty much without a hitch. He had a good teacher, after all. He barely even registers the sharp jolt in his hips or the painful pinch as the tongues of his boots roll back.
Dean’s eyes are half-open, mouth slack, whatever smartass comment he’d been about to lash out at Sam with still swallowed in his throat—his non-air-moving, non-swallowing, pasty-white, clammy-skinned throat.
“Oh, God.” Sam’s hands shake like the tail of a terrier with its head in a rat hole. The fact that Dean’s expression borders on sexed-out could probably pass for ironic. Little death was always just a colorful metaphor ‘til now.
Sam slips his long fingers around Dean’s head and over his pulse point, knowing full well there’s no pulse to find.
Sam knows what to do when there’s no flutter beneath his fingertips, knows how to proceed when there’s no breath against his ear, but maybe knowing and doing are for people who aren’t cradling their dead brother in their arms while they write the friggin’ ABC’s of CPR on those oh-so-handy little cards. Or maybe Sam just really is a stubborn bastard who refuses to believe what A and B are telling him and takes step C, make sure victim is unconscious and unresponsive, a little too seriously.
At any rate, what’s supposed, according to the first aid gurus, to be a shout and a subtle shake turns into Sam making some weird keening noise that resonates behind his eyes while he shakes Dean hard enough to give him whiplash.
Maybe Dean deserves a little whiplash. Him and his stupid ideas.
Ten minutes earlier
“Hey, Sam, look at this!”
Sam knows better than to look. That phrase has never gotten him anything but trouble, but of course, he looks.
The smoke from the burning Spirit Stick wafts across the baseball diamond where they’d torched it, hopefully releasing the spirit of Anthony Burns in the process. Sam’s ready to call it a night. Who knew high school dances were allowed to go until eleven o’clock, and that it took another forty-five minutes for the custodian to lock up the place afterward? He hadn’t been so bored in the hallowed halls of education since he’d been forced to take freshman algebra during his junior year because the friggin’ school he transferred to didn’t recognize the text he’d learned from at his previous school.
“Sam! Hey Sam, man, toss me a couple.”
Dean’s found himself a baseball and an old wooden bat in the grass, and Sam turns to find him lofting the bat over his head and crouching into a batter’s stance. Dean rests the bat on his shoulder for a second and stoops to pick the ball up off the ground. He under hands it to Sam, who catches it, if for no other reason than to protect his nuts, because there’s no doubt in his mind as to the vector of that ball, and no inkling that it’s lined up with his crotch by coincidence. Not by irony either, if that matters.
“Dean, I hate baseball.”
“Dude, you begged Dad to let you play Little League that year we were in Beaumont for the summer. You were their star pitcher.”
Sam tosses the ball idly in the air. He supposes he could just throw the damned thing, let Dean hit over the fence just like Dean always did when they were kids, and be done with it. But then, it’s baseball Sam hates. Debate, he kinda likes. “That was only because all the other kids on our street were playing, and they didn’t have enough to make a team without me.”
“So.” Dean hoists the bat up again and starts doing that annoying crouch-bounce ball players always do right before they take a swing or adjust their jocks. “You were still good at it. Don’t’cha wanna re-live your glory days?”
Sam laughs but settles into a pitcher’s stance, right toe planted and left knee starting to raise across his body. “Winchesters don’t have glory days. We have momentary lapses in destiny.”
Sam curls his knuckles around the ball in his right hand and covers it with his left as he raises it over his head and coils his body like a spring to throw it. Just as he starts his wind up, Dean interrupts with a, “Hey, Sam? What time is it?”
Balancing on one leg, he glances at his watch. “12:13.” Then, he takes a deep breath and starts his wind-up again.
“Seriously? It’s after midnight?”
Sam pauses again, annoyed. “Yeah, Dean it’s after midnight.”
Dean eyes the bat appreciative with a crooked grin and raises it again. “Guess that makes this…”
Sam doesn’t hear Dean speak. He’s onto his brother, and he’s not going to be distracted into throwing like a girl for Dean’s cheap amusement. By the time Dean opens his mouth, Sam’s finished his wind up and launches the ball as hard as he can.
Dean’s words reach Sam’s ears a split second before the dull thud that’s definitely NOT a ball being knocked over the fence.
Another beat passes before Dean finishes his sentence. “…morning…wood.”
Everything happens in slow motion after that. The Louisville Slugger drops from Dean’s hands and falls to the ground like an icicle off a rooftop. Dean makes a dazed stagger-sway-turn toward Sam that only moves him far enough out of his balance to send him crumbling in a heap.
“Dean!”
Present
Sam somehow manages to dial 9-1-1 on the first try, then shouts, “High school ball diamond. Hurry!” He drops the phone into the grass without ending the call.
“Dean!” He tries one last time, something in his voice he recognizes as desperatesorryafraid.
Those fucking half-open hazel eyes just gleam back at him with nothing more than the reflection of the security lights in the parking light at his back.
“C’mon! C’mon!” Sam puts a hand behind Dean’s neck, tries to tell himself the way Dean’s mouth just falls open as his head tilts back is convenient and not nauseating, doesn’t make his stomach try to claw its way out whichever opening is closest.
Pinching Dean’s nose, Sam lowers his head and puffs two breaths into Dean’s lungs, watching the way his chest raises so he knows it’s going all the way down. He listens intently, then breathes again. Two breaths.
He doesn’t remember starting compressions, but his arms burn with exhaustion by the time he realizes he’s counting with memories instead of numbers. All the things they’ve done since Dean sold himself down the hole, all the first times Sam promised wouldn’t be the last, come flooding to the surface with every compression.
Seven, eight, nine…
Laughed until milk came out their noses, sang along to classic rock with the windows down like no one could hear, saw the sun rise over the Grand Canyon.
Seventeen, eighteen…
Patched a tire together, saw Car Henge, reached a truce with a dancing elephant.
Twenty-six, twenty-seven…
Rode a bike, taught Dean to ride a bike, got drunk together.
Two more breaths, and Sam barely has them to spare. He feels like he’s been at this for hours already, though he knows it’s minutes, at best. This isn’t just Dean’s breath he’s moving with his lungs, not just Dean’s blood he’s pumping with his hands, Dean’s life he’s playing in his mind. It’s Sam’s whole world inside a cracked snow globe seeping out onto the ground.
Sam doesn’t ever know when the ambulance gets there. He’s still keeping count in his head when hands latch onto his shoulders and pull him away.
“It’s all right, son. That’s got it, now.” A beat. “I’ve got a pulse!” Someone shouts too close to his ear, but Sam doesn’t turn to see who’s speaking. He can’t take his eyes off Dean’s, searches for something to convince himself what they say is true.
It’s small at first, just a butterfly flutter of eyelashes over the twinkling eyes. Like the first puff of steam from a kettle, the pressure blows the top off the boiler in Sam’s chest as Dean takes a gasping breath in and tries to lurch to a sit. Strong arms press him into the ground as Sam takes one of his hands and leans closer. Maybe it’s selfish or girly, but he wants to be the first one Dean sees.
Dean’s eyes flutter open and shut a few times, then roll toward Sam’s face. His eyes lock on Sam for what turns into an uncomfortably long beat before his face grimaces with disgust.
“What the fuck are you looking at?” Dean asks, ripping his hand out of Sam’s grip.
Sam laughs and collapses, heaving with exhaustion, to the ground as the paramedics deal with his oh-so-grouchy-when-injured big brother.
“Sir, you appear to have suffered an event called commotio cortis. An impact to your chest has interrupted your heart’s rhythm and caused a momentary cardiac arrest, but…”
“Wait. Coitus interruptus, what? No way. Sammy! Sammy, you throw like a fucking girl, you little bitch!”
Yup, that’s Dean, all right—Dean Winchester, walking suspense thriller, though if any of the girls Dean’s been with are to be believed, he can do that lying down, too—every day a little death and a giant eff you.
Winchesters may not have glory days, and Luck might be an irony-loving demon bastard, but whoever handed out second chances must really like having Dean around.
Sam thinks that makes about two of them.
He can’t help but laugh, as the paramedics wrestle Dean onto a stretcher, whether it’s real laughter or hysterical, he doesn’t know, doesn’t really care. A couple days in ICU and a couple months of light duty should have Dean in tip-top shape again right about the time the hounds come for him.
Sam sighs and starts walking back to the car.
Now, that’s ironic.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
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Date: 2007-09-30 04:30 pm (UTC)Love it, it's crack, but it still is so entirely Winchester. It's .. realistic crack? Am I making sense? *lol*
Last sentence is brilliant!
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Date: 2007-09-30 04:36 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-09-30 04:42 pm (UTC)Forgot to say that I like Alanis, so it was cool to have that song in the story!
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Date: 2007-09-30 04:45 pm (UTC)And somehow, my fics just always seem to end up with a soundtrack of some sort. Dunno how that one happend.
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Date: 2007-09-30 04:48 pm (UTC)Same here!
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Date: 2007-09-30 04:50 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-09-30 04:32 pm (UTC)buah-ha-ha. What a way to die.
laughs-cries-laughs-cries...
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Date: 2007-09-30 04:38 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-09-30 05:02 pm (UTC)He can’t help but laugh, as the paramedics wrestle Dean onto a stretcher, whether it’s real laughter or hysterical, he doesn’t know, doesn’t really care. A couple days in ICU and a couple months of light duty should have Dean in tip-top shape again right about the time the hounds come for him.
Sam sighs and starts walking back to the car.
Now, that’s ironic.
Ouch!
Love this. I adore your Dean! Thanks for sharing :)
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Date: 2007-09-30 05:07 pm (UTC)*cookies for you*
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Date: 2007-09-30 05:12 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-09-30 05:16 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-09-30 05:17 pm (UTC)*g*
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Date: 2007-09-30 05:20 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-09-30 05:53 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-09-30 05:56 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-09-30 07:16 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-09-30 07:19 pm (UTC)Tracy
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Date: 2007-09-30 07:28 pm (UTC)"Winchesters don’t have glory days. We have momentary lapses in destiny.”
Bravo, you!
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Date: 2007-09-30 08:33 pm (UTC)And glad you liked that line. It actually kinda stumped me for a minute. I knew Sam was gonna say, Winchesters don't have glory days, but it took me a good ten minutes staring into space to get that rest. Thanks for catching it. Makes me feel like it was worth it.
And thanks for reading. Woohoo
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Date: 2007-09-30 08:16 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-09-30 08:35 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-09-30 09:47 pm (UTC)Wow and then some!
Exceptionally well written fan fic, such a joy to read.
thank you.
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Date: 2007-09-30 09:51 pm (UTC)*smish*
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Date: 2007-09-30 09:59 pm (UTC)Loved the humour in it too :-)
>> Seems like Winchester plans are never as well-laid as Dean.
*snort*
Thanks Tracy!
xx.
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Date: 2007-09-30 10:14 pm (UTC)And it wouldn't be SN fic without humor in it. Thanks for reading.*smish*
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Date: 2007-09-30 10:14 pm (UTC)Favorite lines:
Big brothers hell-bent on spending their last breath looking out for their gigantic little brothers just don’t do that.
Except when they totally do.
The bastard.
*g* The opening paragraphs of this story work so well, grabbing the reader right away.
popcorn it took him nearly twenty minutes to get from the blonde at the concession stand
It’s amazing how slow movie concession stands are.
Though, I did manage to hook you up. She’s got a friend, into guys with big feet.
LOL!
“And for your information, I wasn’t talking to her breasts,” Dean sniped. “I was ogling them.
ROTFLOL! At least he’s honest. *snickers*
Seems like Winchester plans are never as well-laid as Dean.
LOL!
At any rate, what’s supposed, according to the first aid gurus, to be a shout and a subtle shake turns into Sam making some weird keening noise that resonates behind his eyes while he shakes Dean hard enough to give him whiplash.
Oh, Sam. This image breaks my heart.
Sam knows better than to look. That phrase has never gotten him anything but trouble, but of course, he looks.
*g*
“Winchesters don’t have glory days. We have momentary lapses in destiny.”
*snickers* Sam’s not exactly glass-half-full, is he?
It’s Sam’s whole world inside a cracked snow globe seeping out onto the ground.
Great analogy.
“What the fuck are you looking at?” Dean asks, ripping his hand out of Sam’s grip.
LOL! This is so Dean.
A couple days in ICU and a couple months of light duty should have Dean in tip-top shape again right about the time the hounds come for him.
Sam sighs and starts walking back to the car.
Now, that’s ironic.
It is, it really is.
Oh, boys.
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Date: 2007-09-30 10:20 pm (UTC)Thanks so much for reading.
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Date: 2007-10-01 06:28 pm (UTC):) :) :)
I'm always afraid to write teh funny in this fandom, because the angst just sells so well, but it wouldn't be SN without snark and banter,
Yeah, there is a lot of angst in the fandom, but I think snark and banter (and outright humor) are highly appreciated, too. And you definitely did a good job with teh funny. *g*
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Date: 2007-09-30 10:22 pm (UTC)*Loved* this line:
Seems like Winchester plans are never as well-laid as Dean.
Hee.
This line was wonderfully descriptive:
Sam’s hands shake like the tail of a terrier with its head in a rat hole.
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Date: 2007-09-30 10:29 pm (UTC)And my hubby so did not get the terrier simile. I told him it was clear as day to me, lol. I'm glad at least one other person thought it worked.
Thanks so much fo reading.
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Date: 2007-09-30 11:13 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-09-30 11:17 pm (UTC)*smishes you so hard*
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Date: 2007-10-01 01:42 am (UTC)Good job girl! You knows I loves it!
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Date: 2007-10-01 01:46 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-10-01 04:04 am (UTC)Bwahahaha! Loved it. Very funny fic. "Realistic crack" is an apt description. Should be a genre in its own right...
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Date: 2007-10-01 10:39 am (UTC)So glad you liked it, and that line, one of my faves, too.
Thanks!
my life
Date: 2007-10-01 06:52 pm (UTC)i really enjoyed the structure of this. often jumping back and forth in time can be confusing, but here it managed to intermittently tighten and loosen the tension. somehow that really works with the humor and angst combo in this piece. by the end of it i feel like i've experienced a little of the winchester lifestyle - there is no divide between the safe and the dangerous, the serious and mockable. there's a lot of scary but it's so well blended with snark and affection that in the end, it's all good.
thanks for this marvelous story!
Re: my life
Date: 2007-10-02 02:50 am (UTC)*smishes*
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Date: 2007-10-02 01:28 am (UTC)And you have some awesome sentences in there that totally should be iconed!
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Date: 2007-10-02 02:52 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-10-02 02:09 am (UTC)As for the end? I'm gonna pretend that was a loophole - since Dean died before the year was up (for however short a time), he's out of the deal, no hellhounds, and all is well.
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Date: 2007-10-02 02:54 am (UTC)Thanks so much for reading!
Tracy
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Date: 2007-10-06 02:30 pm (UTC)but maybe knowing and doing are for people who aren’t cradling their dead brother in their arms
Thanks for playing! Hope we'll see more of ya round the found_fic traps. :-)
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Date: 2007-10-07 12:25 am (UTC)I'm in the middle of some big stuff at the moment, but this one kinda wrote itself in a couple hours. Was fun. I shall keep watching the prompts. See what happens. Thanks for havin' me.