Lar ||| Supernatural

and so to soldier onward
by Lar

EMAIL: HERE
RATING: R
COUPLE: Dean/Sam
SPOILERS: None
DISCLAIMER: Kripke is like unto a God. So the boys are his, not mine.
SUMMARY: No surprise that the end comes with a whimper.
AUTHOR'S NOTE:written for cathybites for the apocalyptothon. She requested SPN, Wincest and humor. I managed two out of three. My apologies for lack of funnies and for extreme lateness.

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They shoot the old woman and it leaves them with twenty-three bullets. She takes two to go down and die, but it's a mercy really. Dean sleeps just fine that night, bonelessly sprawled on his belly in the motel bed.

Sam watches him for a long time, unable to sleep at all. It's got nothing to do with the old woman. It's got more to do with the twenty-three bullets left, and the way Dean's face looks in the sliver of moonlight that angles in across the bed. The curtains at the window don't close all the way, but Sam's not bothered enough to get up and fix them. That's his excuse; he's not bothered. Eventually he falls asleep and dreams about Dean's eyelashes curved in a black arc over his cheek. He gets lost in the shadows of them and wakes up sweating, trembling, hard.

There's no water in the bathroom but Sam's no longer too damn worried about those kinds of things. Sooner or later they'll find water and he'll take care of it then. He wanders outside, blinking in the sunlight, wondering how long they've slept this time. Finds himself a corner and takes care of business, rubbing his hands on his jeans afterwards, kicking dirt over the evidence. He goes in to wake up Dean, wondering if they'll have to shoot someone else today.

-----

Dean is bone-deep infuriated and has been for the last two months. The devastation of the world he's left with, sprawled around him like some badly rendered artist's vision of a post-apocalyptic land, has ceased to make him clench his jaw and flinch whenever some new and gut-wrenching bit of horror reveals itself. Bodies piled in the middle of towns, half burned in some insane attempt to stop the infection from spreading by people already dying of the same things have become so common that they don't even try to finish the job anymore. Just take a turn to the right or the left, walk down a couple blocks, and keep going. Straggling things that were human once and were just too damn unlucky to be immune or killed outright when it happened turn up from time to time. They're usually too slow to be dangerous but if that's not the case, then there's always a bullet to put them out of their misery. Just another day in Middle America, that's all it is.

What's settled into his gut and wrapped around his brain, though, is the idea that somewhere the people who made this all happen are locked down breathing clean air and eating themselves through a hundred years of freeze dried dinners and bitching about the hardships of their miscalculations. Worse still, he thinks sometimes that they're already dead. Already dead and beyond his reach.

That would be something he doesn't let himself linger on too very long. Because that would mean he won't get the chance to kill them himself. It's not even just for how John died, or all the people that he's had to put down between then and now. No, Dean wants to take every last one of those button pushing fuckers and beat them down, leave them bloody and broken, put every last bullet they have left when they get there right through their heads.

Dean's on the same Mission he's always been on. The face of the demon's just changed is all.

----

They cover ten miles on a good day, boots clocking on the blacktop. The clouds settle in and bring the chill in but it doesn't rain. That's a fortunate thing -- the cars along the road are few and far between and there are no overpasses in sight. The evidence of past rainstorms makes the road look as if it's been drilled in some random pattern, pockmarked and blurred where the runoff ate away at the surface. The grass is mostly burned down to nothing, but some splotches of an improbably bright green struggle beneath the crispy brown.

Dean decides where to turn off for the night. Sam doesn't argue. The town is called Jericho and the residents here managed a decent burning to stop the outsiders from the highway turning into their town. The pile of cars and furniture is gray ashes and scorched black metal, and at least ten feet high. They climb around it carefully, Sam pulling Dean free when his jacket snags on the edge of an old desk drawer that pokes out like a tongue. Their hands clench tight enough for Dean's fingers to go slightly numb. Sam's thumb rubs idly over his own palm where a bruise is coming up from that grip, trophy of what he's done.

They don't have to break into the market; it's been done for them. The smell of the meat and fish gone bad is high and sickeningly sweet in the store and even breathing through a wad of t-shirt doesn't cut it down by much. Sam takes one aisle and Dean another, sweeping boxes into shopping bags and hurrying out into the clean air again. They breathe, spit to clear their mouths, toss the t-shirts they were breathing through. Dinner that night is poptarts, fruit bars, slim jims. They eat it on the porch of 709 Arbor Road, in the porch swing that doesn't even creak a little when they rock on it. They wash it down with bottled water before they check the house for anyone - anything - that might still be alive. No one's there, the beds neatly made up and the kitchen clean as a whistle.

Dean strips down and falls asleep without a word. Sam watches him on the big bed with its wrought iron headboard and too many pillows as he gets his own clothes off. There's another bedroom but that's not even a consideration. His only hesitation is wondering if tonight's one of the nights that Dean will roll towards him or away when Sam's weight hits the mattress.

Dean's eyes open, his voice rough and sleepy when he asks what Sam's waiting for.

Towards him then. Sam gets into the bed and finds his place. And yes, Dean turns towards him, tugs at him, pulls him in closer. Fits his own frame to Sam's longer, leaner one with the ease born of repetition and need. Arm flung over Sam's neck, fingers in his hair. Dean's foot dragging Sam's legs towards him. Dean's belly against Sam's, hip to hip so that they fit there too, under-over with the hardness that stirs and jumps when Dean's fingers move in Sam's hair, restless. Dean's breath on Sam's neck, hot and wet like a kiss, and Sam's muffled sigh in response that tickles over Dean's ear.

Sam's hand rests under the pillow, under Dean's head, onto the flat of the mattress beyond him. The other strokes once, long-fingered and slowly, down Dean's back to rest at the vulnerable softness at the base of his spine. Holds there as his eyes close, feel and scent of Dean all around him. Sleep will come easier tonight, because he can hold onto all he has left.


-end



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