Archive of Our Own ^beta

First ficlet, for adora_spintriae (Down to the End 'verse, 500 words):


Prompts: Sam likes fire, zombies, the metallicar


Dean likes the great outdoors, in its place. He can appreciate a landscape with the best of them; he'd just prefer not to sleep in one. The dirt, the mosquitoes, the lurking danger that's not even properly supernatural -- he'll be damned before he'll let something as pathetically mundane as nature kill him off. Give him a bed or, hell, the back seat of the Impala, every time.

But he likes the quiet, for all that, the still of the air, the heavy darkness city-dwellers never see. Sam built a fire while Dean set up the tent, and they roasted hot dogs and marshmallows, Sam laughing clear and bright as he sucked sticky sweetness from Dean's fingers. They're fucking camping, and they're no closer to finding the sad little herd -- and what brain-donor came up with the idea for zombie sheep in the first place? Glowing eyes notwithstanding, just how menacing can fluffy herbivores be? -- but it could be a lot worse.

Not that he has any intention of letting Sam know that.

His brother is stretched out across from him. It's not cold, not really, but Sam is huddled in close, staring into the flames with a blank, unfocused expression on his face.

Sam always loved fire. At three, sitting on a headstone with one chubby hand lodged comfortably in Dean's larger, stronger one, he'd pointed at the pile of bones Dad was burning and gravely pronounced, "Pretty." It sent a chill down Dean's spine -- such a soft little word for something so powerful, something that burned and devoured and left only emptiness -- but no amount of warning could convince Sammy. Even as a teenager, the only hunts he didn't bitch about where the ones that involved burning something.

Dean wonders if he played with fire at Stanford, if he'd cajoled his safe, placid little friends into beach bonfire parties, midnight drives along roads glowing red with nearby wildfires, or if he'd ruthlessly excised that part of himself along with Dad and Dean and everything else that made up the first eighteen years of his life. He wonders if Sam finally understood, as he watched Jessica burn.

Sam's an arm's length and a million miles away, and Dean thinks, Come back. He's struck with the sudden urge to yank Sam away, bring him back with his hands and mouth and cock and then hold him down, bind him to the world with the solid weight of his own body.

He says, "Earth to Sammy," instead, and Sam blinks slowly, looking dazed. The flames are reflected in his eyes, making them oddly yellow, and they cast weird flickering shadows across his face.

"Sorry," he says thickly. "Just got a little lost." He sits up slowly, moves closer to Dean, but when Dean reaches for him, he's already staring into the fire again.

The moon is rising, and the sky is a rich, dusky color that never fails to remind Dean of his mother's eyes. He shivers.