#fics tag

[wilsonthemoose]

Warning Signs

John doesn't mind that they play so much basketball. It lends itself quite naturally to their training.

Whumptober Day 10: Blow to the Head

Teen and Up | John, Sam, and Dean | Pre-series | Sports | Head Injury

.

Sam is four days old the first time John thinks he might lose him— the jaundice sets in fast in the middle of the night and they don't notice till next morning. They're told they did the right thing bringing him into the hospital and in the same sure tone of voice assured that it's quite common and Sam should pull through by day seven.

They bring him back in a gift shop romper with 'World's Greatest Basketball Player' printed on the front. John has mixed feeling about the romper but Dean insists on saving it when they're sorting through clothes Sam has grown out of.

Sam is two months old when he's gifted his first basketball— it's a plush toy with a long tag that Sam tries to use to fling the ball around. He's five months old the first time he manages to clear the top of the crib and Dean yells with delight.

Sam is six months old the second time John fears for his life and after that, no matter how much he may try to temper that fear, it never quite goes away. John doesn't try very hard, and then not at all.

Sam is a few weeks short of three years old when he manages to copy Dean and bounce the ball up and down twice; Dean proudly declares that Sam will make a fine dribbler the way he's going and John agrees as he lifts him up into the air, shrieking.

John doesn't mind that they play so much. It lends itself quite naturally to their training— Sam at eight is fast, a sprinter off the blocks, a rabbit leading a chase, changing direction quicker that John can think to suggest it, and Dean is strong, puts his weight quite naturally into his punches without John ever having to say a word about proper technique.

Sam is 14 when John is forced to admit— not in so many words— that he's afraid for Sam's life. Sam sneaks away behind John's back and gets tested to see if he's a match for donating part of his liver to the wife of one of John's friends, Laura, who took care of the boys when they were younger. John yells and shouts when he finds out, threatens and punishes, forbids. "You're fourteen which means I have to okay this thing and I'm not okaying shit!" he yells, flinging a ceramic mug into the wall next to where Sam is standing. Later, when Sam is sitting on the steps outside, arms around his knees, shivering, John goes out and puts an arm around him. "How am I supposed to protect you from dying on an operating table, Sammy?" he asks and hopes it answers a lifetime of doubts.

John will stop the car outside basketball courts or on empty backroads in the middle of the night when cabin fever is likely, otherwise, to provoke a fight, and let the two of them out for a game or two. He doesn't encourage rough play but he does turn a blind eye to it. They get rowdy as they get older.

Sam, at fifteen didn't quite know what to do with his long limbs, awkward as a doe on ice, but at sixteen he seems to have grown into them. He'll dodge out in front of Dean, snatch the ball right out of the air and dribble away. He's good, in his way. He doesn't make as many baskets as Dean but he's good at making Dean not make as many baskets as Dean. He provokes Dean into taking risks and forces him to make stupid mistakes. Dean ends up angry, Sam ends up smug. John recognizes the tune of their lives but decides to use this too as training: he yells at Dean from the sidelines to keep calm, to not be so stupid. He yells at Sam about proper technique, ("Get low if you want to jump high, Sam") and just to wipe the smug look off Sam's face, steps in himself. He walks away impressed.

If circumstances were different, Sam might've made a hell of a college player, maybe even a decent pro.

They stop playing so much. Dean provokes Sam instead into sparring with him. It's almost a shame.

They get good at taking care of their own scrapes and bruises. Sam will fish out bits of gravel from his elbows under a flickering light. Dean will wait till John turns his back to take a furtive swig of the whiskey he's supposed to be using to clean his wounds. John wonders if it's possible to pinpoint exactly when they stopped playing. Was it on the broken court in Colorado with a camping lamp for light or was it in the parking lot of the motel in Indiana when Sam stumbled back and Dean didn't stop to let him get up again?

John tires them out by putting them through a mini boot camp every time he comes back from a hunt, or by making them do drills in the early hours of the morning when they're with him.

Sam is seventeen when John thinks this time he really is dead. The gunshot echoes in his head, his heart stops in his chest, tumbles to his knees, his lungs feel suddenly empty, and he hurtles through the door, trips down the stairs, and throws himself out of the house to where he stationed Sam to keep watch. This wasn't supposed to happen— he was supposed to be safe out there. He was supposed to be—

Sam takes a ragged breath, his face shines pale in the darkness. The bullet's torn into his side. John holds his hands over the wound, presses down, whispers "Sorry, Sam," when Sam bites down on a yelp, and presses harder. Dean lead-foots them to the hospital with John on his knees in the backseat holding firm pressure on the wound.

In the waiting room, John paces like a caged animal and Dean sits hunched over in a chair.

They're allowed in to visit when Sam comes out of surgery but they're told he might not wake up for a few hours yet.

The gift shop is near empty when John goes in to re-check, see if there's anything Dean missed. Surely, surely, there has to be something in Sam's size sitting around there somewhere. He's shown the same white shirt with the large orange basketball emblazoned on the front that Dean's already bought for Sam. John wonders if he can convince Sam to wear one of the unwashed shirts lying in the trunk instead but then thinks better of it.

Confined to bed for days, Sam reaches an arm out from under the covers and dribbles the ball on the carpeted floor. When the man in the room opposite bangs on the door and tells John to put a stop to the racket, John tells him to go to hell.

Sam bounces back pretty fast. He always does.

Sam was seven the first time he came to John with his head all bloody, swaying where he stood until John looked up from his journal, then he stumbled into John's lap. He was nine the first time John felt he was getting past Dean without Dean letting him. He was ten the first time John had to break up a fight between his sons. He was fourteen when an errant fist crashed into John's arm instead of Dean and Sam froze in horror, genuinely apologetic, earning himself a hard left hook to the jaw from Dean before Dean had a chance to check his blow. He was sixteen the first time he ended up with a concussion bad enough to have John worried. He complained every single time John tried to check up on him that weekend. He's nearly eighteen and John doesn't take it seriously for a long moment as Sam's arms flail, one almost reaching up to his face. John almost dismisses the gesture as reflex. The ball seems to float in limbo, one bright speck of fresh red imprinted just under a black rib of the ball. John sees Sam's pupils, pinpricks, blow out. Or maybe he imagines the detail. The ball thumps to the ground and rebounds thrice, rolling away. "You okay?" Dean calls over his shoulder as he moves to get the ball, then turns around again, confused. It starts to rain, softly. A drop falls to Sam's face, joins the tiny rivulet of blood dripping out of his nose. There's very little of it. Hardly any at all.

John feels himself move forwards, registers pain as the concrete crashes up into his knees, he leans over Sam, takes his shoulder, gently for some reason when he should be shaking Sam, telling him to get up, get in the car. Telling him he doesn't want the two of them taking damp clothes into the car so skedaddle. A drop of blood splatters on the faded grey-blue concrete of the court. John moves his hand under Sam's head— he doesn't remember lifting to cradle it but he must have— and finds a small wound. Small enough that it doesn't even need stitching. Not even a bandage.

"Okay kiddo?" he asks like he honestly expects an answer. Dean's still standing where he stopped, fingers bunched in his hair, palms pressed against his temples. He looks somewhat crazed.

John gathers Sam up, snaps at Dean to help him and they get Sam into the car, make it, somehow, to the hospital. John doesn't want to let go when they tell him they need to take Sam in for a CT, some insane part of him protesting that it's futile, but he signs the form they give him and signs again later— hemorrhage? half listening when the doctor explains about the surgery.

Dean's at Sam's bedside, trying to apologize and trying not to cry, garbling his words so he achieves neither objective.

"Sir? Do you understand?"

"Yes."

They wheel him away.

He can tell by the long walk along the corridor from the elevators, by the way the doctor looks at him for a fleeting moment and then lowers his eyes for the rest of the way until he reaches the chairs, knows it before the man opens his mouth to break the news. "We did everything we could—" and so on.

Actually, he's still alive, in a technical, not-really-there sort of way. They didn't let him go, when his body gave out. "I'd like to talk to you about organ donation." A new voice this time. Sympathetic tilt of the head, hushed tone, muted, sober clothes like this is the exact conversation they keep her around for. He should never have let them cut him open. His head is bandaged as if it makes a difference. John thinks maybe he should shout and tell them to leave him alone but he can't bring himself to do it.

"Sir?" She asks, gently.

He looks up. "No," he growls. "And fuck off," he adds.

Behind him, for the first time since the court, Dean speaks up. "Yes," he says and clears his throat. "He's a match for Laura," he says "She needs a liver—" this to the woman. "He promised her."

"Shit happens." John hears himself reply. "She can find her own liver." The kind of flippancy that Sam always hated.

"He's eighteen in a few hours," Dean's voice cracks. It's probably that, John thinks, that makes him walk out of the room and let Dean sign away Sam's organs.

"He might not have liked hunting but he liked saving people, Dad," Dean tells him later. The woman tells him about a man with cystic fibrosis who will live another several years because of Sam, a little girl who won't need dialysis anymore, a woman who can plan for more than the next few weeks and for more than hospital visits and bills, a firefighter just four beds down who just might make it now. John can't be bothered with saying he wishes them all a speedy death and he supposes, someday, he won't think it either.

They bury him— what's left of him— in the same graveyard as Mary. They never visit.

Laura tries to get into contact, leaves him tearful messages, "He was like a son to me too, John." John blocks her number. When Dean strikes off on his own for the odd hunt here and there, John doesn't object. He tosses the basketball into a storage unit and doesn't bother to go in and look when it bounds into something and breaks it.

Days and weeks muddle past. One day suddenly Sam is nineteen years old except that he never even got to eighteen. They've stopped talking about him.

Given what he knows— what he's learnt about Sam— it might be all for the best, except that he doesn't believe in that kind of thing and since when has fate dealt him a kind hand anyway? At least he died innocent, John thinks sometimes, usually at the bottom of a bottle.

Weeks and months turn into another year, then two, and three. John will stop the car sometimes outside basketball courts and stand there for hours, remembering the squeak and scuffle of shoes on asphalt, the huffing of breaths, cut-off curses, the snatch of a laugh.

Given what he knows— what he'd learnt about Sam— he really should have seen it for what it was. When he hears about the man in Oregon, the little girl with the half-familiar name, the woman, the firefighter, Laura— he doesn't do anything. When he gets a call from a payphone in Illinois and hears Sam's voice, panicked, "Dad?" John realizes it shouldn't come as too much of a surprise.

[voidstilesplease]

zenith

word count: <1000 words | tags: lovers to enemies; mancers or magic users Stiles and Theo. Theo is a Necromancer (a magician of death), while Stiles is a Dismancer (a magician of discord/chaos). Based from this tumblr post. Complete AO3 chapters here.

after years, i finally completed this au series. phew!

—-

Stiles has waited years for this day. He’s fantasized dozens of scenarios for when he and Theo cross paths again but somehow never imagined it happening this way. It was always some version of Stiles waltzing into the den of the Dread Doctors – the supernatural scientists responsible for taking Theo away from them almost two years ago – saving Theo and bringing him home.

Despite the initial distrust they had of Theo – the only Necromancer to be born in the last three centuries – once Theo proved himself and his loyalty to the House of Magic by bringing Kira back to life, endangering himself, and fighting the hunters, they couldn't deny anymore that he was one of them. Despite the type of dark magic he had – the darkest magic that every single magic user in existence fears – he belonged with them.

And he was Stiles’. Before those Dread Doctors came and disappeared with Theo in the shadows, he and Theo were discussing the lives they could and would like to have someday outside the House of Magic, outside Beacon, outside their ability.

But now, it is evident that those fantasies will never come to pass. 

“Was this your plan all along?” Stiles quietly asks, kneeling in a pool of blood. He can’t even tell whose blood it is mostly – just that it’s a mix of everyone he loves. Every one of their friends who wanted to get Theo back just as much as Stiles did. And now everyone Stiles may not get back.

Were any of those plans he made with Stiles even real for Theo? Even a little?

Theo steps forward, gesturing at the chamber, healthy and seeping with power, not at all the magic-depraved, sickly, and tortured man they were worried he would be. 

“What do you think of it, Stiles? The walls, floor, and ceiling are heavily infused with iron and lead, enough to incapacitate even a powerful magician.” When he looks at Stiles, he grins. “You know, like that one that we planned to build in the House as an isolation room? Of course, I made it ten times worse and added a little touch of fatality, but yeah. As envisioned.” He sweeps his hands around proudly like he expects Stiles to applaud his genius.

He can’t if he wants to since Theo has his arms and wrists bound in poison iron.

“I think,” Stiles replies, throat raspy from misuse, “you’re a piece of shit.”

The smile doesn’t slide off Theo’s face. He shrugs easily like the weight of what he’s done to his friends is not weighing down on him at all. “I guess, I deserve that after this... poor reception.”

No, Stiles disagrees. What he deserves is pain. An endless flow of it. Stiles has a lot of it from his friends; from himself, even more. If only he could inflict it on Theo.

“Was this your plan all along?" he asks again, looking at Theo, willing him to tell the truth. Willing him to stop his lies, for once. "Lure us in, slowly kill us to feed your magic, and then give us to the Dread Doctors to be their plaything as you were? Why wait years, then? Why didn't you let us find you right at the beginning? Why were you so confident we wouldn't just give up on you?" Quieter, he adds. “I guess that's where I come in: this stupid magician who makes a habit of upsetting the balance just to keep the people he loves. Was none of it real?” Was anything between us real?

The smile does drop, then. All charades gone. In place is a cold look. Theo shrugs again, “Does it matter now?”

Stiles exhales shakily, “It does.”

Theo frowns at his reply, “I don’t know, why don’t you tell me, Stiles?” He steps forward, suddenly enraged. “You’re the expert in creating illusions inside people’s heads, aren’t you? So, you tell me. Was any of it real?” 

Stiles scoffs. “When have I ever pretended with you? I'm here, am I not, as you knew I would be? My magic feeds off of pain. I create nightmares, Theo, not fantasies.”

“But when those fantasies fall, what is left, Stiles?”

Against his better judgment, Stiles’ eyes begin to prickle. “I’m not the one who betrayed us. We came here to save you. I came to get you back, you worthless son of a bitch.”

Theo stands abruptly, hands tightly fisted at his sides. “I don’t need saving,” he spats, turning and making for the exit. Then he stops and looks over his shoulder to say, “You never should have trusted me.”

“No,” Stiles says, hollow voice above a whisper. “I never should have.”

For a moment, Theo only stands there, looking at Stiles, at the unconscious and bloody bodies of their friends. The only reason Stiles knows they’re not dead is because he can taste their pain. He cannot use their pain, not inside this room, but he can still feel it in the prickling of his fingertips.

“I can feel your pain, too, you know?” says Stiles a moment later. His eyes meet Theo’s. “That’s how I know some of it was real for you. In a perfect world, we can still escape and live the life of our dreams.” Stiles watches the hard way Theo swallows and hears his sharp exhale of breath. “But we’re done living in that fantasy.”

Theo tears his eyes away, moves past the entrance, and presses a button to close the chamber's mechanical doors. 

For a moment, their eyes meet one last time as Stiles and Theo, the magicians who fell in love and dreamed of getting out. There’s no getting out after this.

“Welcome to your nightmare, Theo.”

And the door shuts.

—-

steo a-z: part 26

[spnorwhatever]

Chapters: 12/12 Fandom: Supernatural Rating: Explicit Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence Relationships: Castiel/Dean Winchester Characters: Castiel (Supernatural), Dean Winchester, Benny Lafitte, Bobby Singer, Victor Henriksen, Alastair (Supernatural), Crowley (Supernatural), Lucifer (Supernatural), Asmodeus (Supernatural), Ash (Supernatural), Charlie Bradbury, Gadreel (Supernatural), Sam Winchester, Ruby (Supernatural), Kevin Tran, Pamela Barnes (Supernatural) Additional Tags: Alternate Universe, FBI Agent Castiel (Supernatural), Criminal Dean Winchester, Manipulation, Psychopathology & Sociopathy, Sex for Favors, Prison Sex, Fic Facer$ Charity Auction 2019 (Supernatural), Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Switching, Top Castiel/Bottom Dean Winchester, Bottom Castiel/Top Dean Winchester, Minor Character Death, Anal Fisting, Anal Gaping, Felching, Panty Kink, Graphic Descriptions of Noncon Underage Sex/Prostitution, Urination, Urolagnia, Watersports, Sounding, Urethral Play, Serial Killer Castiel (Supernatural), Suicidal Thoughts, Serious Injuries, Hurt/Comfort, Disabled Castiel (Supernatural), Rehabilitation, Physical Therapy, Snowballing, Choking, Murder Husbands Summary:

In exchange for conjugal visits, Dean Winchester gives FBI Supervisory Special Agent Castiel Novak all the dirt he needs to bring down national crime rings. It’s a tit-for-tat situation; primal, animalistic, and probably ten kinds of illegal.

When a case is revealed to be closer to Castiel than what he considers safe, he and Dean must work together to make sure that Crowley goes down for good. Will Castiel be able to keep Dean at arm’s length, or will the charming convict finally get what he’s been asking for all along? What lengths will Castiel go to… at Dean’s behest?

–

Reading this rn (only about halfway through) and 😳

[mycroftrh]

Far worse, in my opinion, than the famous “he wouldn’t fucking say that” is “he WOULD fucking say that, as part of his facade, but you seem to think he would mean it genuinely”

[frankierotwinkdeath]

Y’all want Taylor Swift to be gay so bad but you won’t even write femslash about her

[noelledeltarune]

EVERY SINGLE DAY there are MILLIONS of characters in their late 20s who get falsely accused of being father figures to teenagers when in reality the description of "weird older cousin" or "step-sibling that moved out before you were born" is 1000000x more apt

[ao3-anonymous]

What in the fanfic hell is this?? 😂😂

[emberfaye]

You know what?

I love you, fics that take months to update. I click on the newest chapter and have no memory of this place and get to go back some chapters and rediscover how much i love everything about this story.

I love you, fics that take years to update. I think of you fondly, and know your names, go search for you and see an update from this year and scream, diving in uncaring of any missed details (i will finish the update and read you in reverse because this is a treat you have bestowed)

I love you, fics that probably will never update again. Thank you for being a roman empire for my mind, thank you for teaching me about the ephemeral fandom experience, for inspiring a thousand million what if-s, for being a comfort read and a nostalgia read and a reread.

I love you fic writers, who jump into projects and stories with enthusiasm. I love you when you succeed in pumping out those chapters and that love doesn't go away when you stop.

I love you fic writers who post and then get in your own head and never feel confident enough to update, whether it's at all or whether it's just that one story.

I love you fic writers, who have a fandom or media hurt you to the point of abandoning or having a hard time with their WIPs.

I love you fic writers, who lose interest or have life changes or illness or bad memory. Thank you for being part of the fandom, a core part of the fandom. Thank you for the time spent in the fandom.

I love you, fic writers who try out something new and then stop. You're so valid.

I love you, WIP fics that may or may not ever get finished. Thank you for brightening my day in the way only you could have.

[finleycannotdraw]

we need all types of art in fandoms

[everwalldigan]

I love the idea of all the robins kinda being clones of each other with just a few differences and a concussed Bruce not being able to tell who he’s squinting at so he just says generic statements and avoids saying any names

Bruce (sitting at the breakfast table): so… how’s the weather… dick?

Jason (grinning): you do know I’m gonna hold this against you for like, the next 2 months right

Bruce: (groans into his hands)

Bruce (walking into the living room): hey have you read through the files I gave you yesterday?

Dick: (confused cause he took a day off to surprise Bruce) ?

Bruce: so?

Dick: er… no?

Bruce: Dick?? What are you doing here?

Bruce (walks into the kitchen with a fresh concussion): Jason? I thought you were on a mission with the outlaws?

Tim: (frozen through mid fridge raid, having assumed they were past Bruce calling him Jason since yk. He’s a shit brickhouse now and Tim is, well, obviously not): uh?

Bruce: *turns around and leaves*

Bruce: Oh hey Cass, when did you arrive from Babs’?

Damian: (slowly turns around in the black hoodie he’s wearing) we’re not even the same gender

Bruce: (under his breath) yeah but the same height

[wilsonthemoose]

and if i swallow anything evil

Sam gets taken by hunters and used as a weapon to fight demons.

Alternatively:

He thinks of it like recompense. Like he deserves it.

Set at the start of season 5.

Teen and up audiences. Demon blood, detox, withdrawals, canon-typical violence, canon-typical drinking, hallucinations

For this prompt (spoilers)

It's like the first breath of fresh air after being underground for weeks. Like the first sip of water in a desert under the midsummer sun. It's a sudden calm, like a shot of morphine, pain lifts out of each limb like it was never there, the bands of pressure around his brain disappear, his mind clears.

He never thought it would work out too well. Far enough down the path, he'd be lost, but we lie to ourselves to get by. Things work out in the end, don't you know? Haven't they always? Not really. This time though. You'll see.

He thinks of it like recompense. Like he deserves it. Like it's just. Maybe. Almost.

It's what he wanted, at the start. Kill the demons, save the hosts. Turn the curse into a blessing, make something good out of something evil. Make amends. Things work out in the end and maybe it never quite feels right, when he drinks blood, but no one said this was going to be easy.

He's learnt though. It's not what he wants now. A monster can do better but a curse is still a curse and some things are best left alone. Day late, dollar short. Timing all wrong, always.

He takes a deep breath in, closes his eyes and opens them slowly, steps through the door and into the bar, takes in the smell of blood and sweat, alcohol and smoke, leather and wood. He sees the demons, four of them, snarling, sneering, a dead man behind the bar, blood spilling out around him, seeping into the wood floor, a woman pinned against a table, hysterical, a man with knives and darts in his arms and torso, eyes closed against tears.

Reflex and instinctive hatred pull his arm up, palm held out like a shield that it isn't. It's almost thoughtless, he wants the demons dead and in twisting, writing, screaming obedience, they die.

Sam collapses to his knees with them. It's a calculated dose, the demon blood, no more and a little less than what he needs to get the job done. He could do without, usually, he thinks, he has to believe. These days, not so much.

-

He wakes up out of the blood warm waters of a silent nightmare that's gone before he's aware of himself, aware of the searing headache jack-hammering in his brain, the spasming hands, aching chest.

He thinks of it like recompense. Isn't that what you're supposed to do? Assign meaning to the suffering. Yes, things were difficult for a moment there, but didn't you learn so much though? He has to believe. Everything that's happened to you, hasn't it made you stronger?

He's shaking all over by the time his father walks up to his cot in the corner. Heavy black boots treading slow and precise across the floor, stopping half a pace from his nose. Sam looks at the torn leather on the tip of the right boot, one long scratch from some errant nail sticking out of the footbar of a chair, perhaps, or a friendly dog's nail cutting into the shoe as he plays. Sam doesn't know.

It takes him a while to look up at his father. John stays silent. He always knew how to wait him out. He stands at ease in a way Sam has never managed. One hand hanging by his side, the other thumb hooked through a belt loop. "How're you holding up, Sam?" he asks.

Sam chokes on a bitter laugh and raises a hand to indicate see for yourself.

His father sighs. "I'm sorry, Sam," he says.

The ground sways side to side like a raft in a storm. Sam tries to hold onto the floor, braces an arm against the wall and shuts his eyes against the vertiginous motion.

His father hands him the bucket, kneeling down to rest on a knee. Conditions are shoddy but his father has never flinched at that. Nor at much else. Sam throws up in the bucket and lies back down, clutching his cramping stomach. He'd like a sip of water, anything to soothe his throat. He coughs a little to clear his throat, then instantly regrets it, flinching at the pain. "Why're you sorry?" he asks, voice a hoarse whisper.

"I should have known you wouldn't be strong enough— smart enough, to resist."

Funny, Sam thinks, the things you regret. He twists to lie on his back and puts an arm over his head.

"I should have known, Sam." He sighs, pained. "Guess I wasn't smart enough either."

-

He'd like to say he gets used to it. He'd like to say it gets easier. What he'd really like to say is that he gets away. Or that he's rescued by his brother. That's how this story usually goes: one of them gets taken and the other comes in guns blazing, kicks the door down, shoots the bad guys. They run out to the car. Usually.

It's been a few months.

-

Dean works alone these days. He's almost honest when he says he prefers it this way. Don't examine anything too closely and it looks just fine. He leaves a voicemail or two for Sam. Gives him a vague location, coded. He doesn't hear back.

It feels like he's putting tape on a collapsing wall, climbing out onto the shaking, dead branch of a dead tree to save a dying leaf, throwing half a cup of water onto a burning building. It's no use thinking like that. If he does nothing he'll hate himself a little bit more.

The phone rings. "Dean?"

"Hey, Bobby." He rubs his eyes, looks at his watch, seven-thirty.

"Finish that job in Wichita?"

"Yes," he says before Bobby's stopped talking.

Yeah. No, I'm close. Yeah. 2 hours. Ok. Yeah.

It gives him a reason not to blow his brains out, if nothing else.

-

Here's what he knows: he's in an abandoned building somewhere near the coast. The place probably used to be, or was supposed to be, an apartment building. The area of the wall filled with rough cement probably used to be a window but the people holding him captive haven't done him the disservice of underestimating him and the window is gone, as is the one in the bathroom. The people who captured him are hunters, but that was a given.

They've changed location five times, they've changed vehicles three times.

By his less than reliable count, it's been over four months.

To no avail, Sam tries to tell them that he can do the job well enough without the blood. "Demon-bitch thinks we're dumb enough to get ourselves killed," they say when he brings it up. Sam tries not to dwell on the nicknames.

Lucifer doesn't let him not dwell on the nicknames.

Sam wakes up, or thinks he wakes up, in the quiet of night, and Lucifer is sitting on the floor by his head, back against the wall, knees drawn up to his chest, hands resting on his knees. As Sam becomes aware of him, he starts to talk. It's almost soothing and if Sam weren't forewarned, it might be entirely believable. "I can take you out of here Sam," he says, "It doesn't have to be like this. You don't have to suffer so much."

Sam flinched away the first time Lucifer touched him so he doesn't repeat the gesture. Stays close, but doesn't close the distance. In his weaker moments, Sam sometimes wishes he would. He misses being treated like a person.

He leans his head against the wall and looks up at the ceiling but Sam doesn't think that's what he's looking at, he suspects he's seeing the sky beyond it. Or maybe heaven. "We didn't deserve the things that were done to us, you and I," he says.

Sam turns away.

-

He still puts up a fight. Catches Mousy, the brown-haired one that bites his nails and smells perpetually like orange lozenges, with a hard left hook. Kicks out at the tattooed one and manages to catch him in the shin before the bag goes over his head, a punch lands hard on his nose and someone kicks him in the stomach, leaving him gasping for air through the potato-smelling bag over his head.

Dust catches in his throat and he coughs as his hands are cuffed behind his back. Then hands grab him by the arms and pull him up, push and drag him stumbling down the stairs. They lock him in the trunk and start the truck, acrid exhaust seeping through the sack and into his nose. He screws his eyes shut, head knocking against carpeted metal with the motion of the car until he loses himself.

It's bright daylight when the trunk lifts open on a scraping hinge, Mousy grabs hold of the bag and a handful of Sam's hair and yanks upward. Sam groans and ducks his head lower under the blare of the sun. The girl pinches his nose and Sam winches at the pain that shoots sharp across his face and into his brain. He keeps his mouth shut as long as he can and when he opens it to breathe, she upends a flask of blood into his mouth and clamps a hand across his face to stop him spitting it out.

He wouldn't, anymore, he doesn't think.

Warmth spreads through his aching muscles, soothing, like an embrace. He steps nimbly out of the trunk, mind clearing, focusing. His chest, aching mere seconds ago, feels light. He breathes in deep and lifts his face to the warm sun.

They're parked off the side of a road leading into a town. There's another car parked next to the truck, a 70s Buick, silver and scratched. Mousy, supporting a new shiner, Sam notices with satisfaction, is leaning over the front window talking to someone inside. Two men, Sam guesses, trying to see through the glare over the windows.

Civilian of the day is an old man, middle sixties, sitting uncomfortably on the bonnet of the Buick. The girl holds a gun to his head, casually like she's holding out an ice cream for a child. ("Insurance," they call it, "Make sure you don't bite the hands that feed you, Sammy.") He wonders if someday it won't be enough to hold him back.

He's filled with hate. He wants to kill them, all of them. He wants to rip Mousy's dirty hair out of his scalp.

The men step out of the car, grimly checking their weapons. It's routine for a hunter but something in the gesture makes Sam think they're nervous. They look at him warily. One of them, the older man, looks vaguely familiar. He quickly looks away from Sam and turns away before Sam can place him.

They look at each other in silence, the six of them, shifting uncomfortably, waiting for someone to speak. For a minute, it looks like they're going to keep loitering. Delay. Decide they're ill-prepared. Decide to come back another day. Then, like they want to get it all over with, they hoist their duffle bags, check their weapons once again, and still without a word spoken, start walking.

Crabby, the big dumb-looking one, nudges Sam in the back with his gun and he follows behind the rest of them. It's a small town, Sam can tell as soon as the first store-front appears (Gale's Grocers with a faded blue awning), suburban, the kind of place most people picture in their picket-fence dreams. It's empty. They walk past shuttered windows and parked cars, closed doors. Children should be playing in the streets.

A hip-flask full of blood when usually it's tiny sips shot into his mouth with a syringe. Sam wonders what they're in for. He looks over his shoulder at the woman walking along with the gun pointed at the old man, looking up and down the street. Worry has wiped the arrogant, disgusted look from her face for the first time since he's seen her, Sam realizes.

They see the first body in the middle of the street, crawling with flies. It looks like she's been run over from the way her chest is crushed, the angle of her broken legs, but there are no screech-marks on the road, no one tried to stop.

They stop for a few minutes there, then move on. The bodies become more frequent. There's dozens at the fire station, most burned, as if in irony. Even the flies avoid those. It's demons celebrating, Sam realizes and as he does, he becomes aware of hatred emanating from his companions. He's as culpable as any demon.

Crabby hits him hard in the back with the muzzle of his gun, making him stagger. They don't stop again. They pass the school with their faces turned the other way. It's the sort of place people would gather in an emergency and no one has the stomach to see what the demons made of them.

"Here," Sam murmurs, nodding down a street. The rest of them exchange glances and he waits for them to decide whether to trust him or not. In the end, they do.

They walk, instinctively closing together, the old man's breathing becoming laboured, whether in fear or fatigue, Sam can't tell. He gives him an apologetic look as they stop in front of the post office. Sam doesn't need to say anything, they can hear the noise for themselves, see the spilt blood, dragging scuff marks, the broken windows.

The hunters check their weapons again, compulsively. "Stay here and keep quiet." The woman tells the old man, pulling out a can of salt and drawing a circle for him in the shade.

So they're all going in, Sam thinks. It would be easy. Do nothing for just a moment too long and then it's over. It would be so easy. It's the first sin that makes you pay, the hundred others go by unthinking. Do nothing for a moment too long.

He looks at the old man trying to catch his breath. He wonders where he's from, where they found him, what arbitrary decision landed him at the mercy of these people. What door he forgot to lock, what empty parking lot he loitered in too long, what mistakes he's made. Will he live through today? And how long? A week, a month, a year? He looks down at his hands and wants to weep.

-

The weeks are a nauseous blur.

I'm sorry for what I've done but I wish I hadn't, and I won't do it again. It sounds like a generic, multipurpose apology. Sorry I broke the vase, mom. Sorry I let you down, sweetheart. Sorry I let the devil loose. Won't happen again, promise.

He has no way out.

The world is a blur of sounds and light, pain and nausea.

He has blood in his throat, metallic and sticky. His body aches from shaking but he can't seem to stop. Heartbeats fall like pounding feet on tarmac, jarring and fast, time stretches and bends and turns backwards, moments repeating. Sam curls up, arms braced in front of his face and prays for it all to be over.

-

Dean passes through town on a whim, it's not too far out of his way. He uses an attitude of casual arrogance and a fake badge (Springsteen) to pass through the roadblocks. He walks down streets littered with chalk outlines, stops at the police station to look in, then quickly ducks out when he sees a slew of suits. Too many agents, too many agencies, and the case is closed as far as his expertise goes anyway.

At the post office, he sees a policeman take a sample from a ring of salt, sees more chalk outlines, and talks to the deputy from the next county over. They think it's cult-related violence. It's been happening all over.

"You have no idea," Dean mutters. The deputy agrees about how terrible it all is and Dean's about to leave when one of the survivors, a young nervous-looking woman, comes in through the door, escorted by her mother and a couple of policemen.

Dean decides to stick around, maybe offer some consolation since the hunters who cleaned up this mess never bothered to stick around and explain to the survivors what had happened to them. He hangs back, watches the mother ask questions about when her daughter can get her belongings back from evidence, and waits for a moment alone. When they're leaving, Dean offers to escort them to the police station and they agree.

He positions himself next to the girl as they step out of the doors and into the street. He gives her a reassuring smile. Sam would be better at this but Dean's had to manage before. He starts by asking how she's doing, listens patiently to the stuttering response, then moves on to ask how much she remembers. "Officer, my daughter doesn't need to relive the whole ordeal for you," the mother intercedes.

"Of course not," Dean smiles, practiced. "Annie," he continues, "I've seen this kind of thing more often than you might think." He's rewarded with fleeting eye contact. "Those people— the ones who stopped it all—"

"I don't remember anything more," she cuts him off. "Just what I already told them. "That man came and—" she takes a shuddering breath and her step falters.

Dean grabs her elbow to steady her, then lets go as they walk on, the setting sun in their eyes. "Let me guess," he says, "He spoke something that sounded like an incantation, something in a different language?" Dean prods gently.

"What?" she stops in her tracks. The mother clucks disapprovingly at Dean. "No. Nothing— nothing like that. He didn't say anything. He just, he held his hand out and we all started screaming. And then—" she falls quiet.

The mother starts haranguing him in between soothing her daughter but Dean's not listening anymore.

"Annie— just— just one more thing," this last to the livid mother. "Tall guy? Needs a haircut?"

She nods.

-

He's outnumbered. There's seven of them, at least seven of them. Large, vicious, dark. Little paws scrabbling around his cot in the dark, keeping their distance, at first, then growing bolder at his feeble movements. Sam nods off and jerks awake immediately, snatching his hand back from the edge of the cot. He examines his finger for bite marks.

Strenuously, he maneuvers his leg up and pulls off a boot, holding it in his hand as a weapon he can just about wave, not swing. He fades in and out of sleep. For a while, somewhere in the night, his father comes and patrols along the edge of his cot and Sam sleeps a little better.

-

Dean finally manages to reach the phone the seventh time Bobby calls. He sinks down to the dirty floor, ignores the questionable stains on the carpet and slurs slow answers to Bobby's questions. "You ain't the only one with something to drink about," is the stellar advice Bobby gives him. Dean snaps the phone shut and decides he can try to make it back to bed in a few minutes.

"Why would he do this?" he asks the empty room and stares at his phone like he expects Bobby to call him back and give him an answer.

-

They work non-stop for a while and Sam starts to feel not quite his old self, but at least somewhat like a person again. He welcomes the break from repeated withdrawals and tries not to dwell on the fact that it means there are more and more demons around.

If he'd ever managed to keep tentative count of how many he's exorcised, he completely loses it now between rushing into buildings, breaking in through windows, driving cars into garages, being pulled to his feet and dragged back to the trunk.

Most hosts live, he reminds himself. It means something.

They change locations again, move to another state, set up at someone's abandoned farm. Sam gets a small, drafty room with creaking floorboards and a creaking bed with musty bedding. Crabby fits bars on the windows and sets up bear traps around the property. If Sam wasn't too weak to even think of running, he might take offence.

The silence is a relief, Sam finds.

Enough time passes and you'll get used to anything.

Mornings, when he's strong enough, he spends stalking the room with his boot held ready to throw but the rats don't come out in daylight. There's fewer here though and he's got a bed to keep him off the ground. He doesn't mind so much.

-

Bobby hears it from an old hunting buddy. In the interest of insulting them both against disappointment, Bobby keeps his tone mildly skeptical but Dean has no doubts, when he hears. The world decides to veer a little off course, spin a little faster. "It's Sam," Bobby says into the silence. "Remember the panic room?" he asks like Dean might've forgotten. "Sam can't be held" he says, "Not unless he wants to be."

Dean's skittering train of thought rams to a halt. Can't he?

And what if you're wrong?

-

A stab of pain in his chest wakes him and dizziness follows though he hasn't moved. His body feels like it's moving though, like it's trying not to crash. He realizes he's in the trunk again and can't remember how he got there. The last thing he remembers is the bathroom sink flying up towards his forehead. He groans.

When the trunk lifts open, he obediently opens his mouth for the blood. Mousy squints at him, shortsighted and suspicious, then tips the flask into Sam's mouth. He swallows the warm, coagulated blood. It makes him feel worse, these days. Clouds his head, makes him feel too clammy, too worked up, nerves on edge. He wants it all the same.

There is something broken in him.

-

It takes a few phone calls, that's all. Dean almost wishes it were harder because then there'd be something they could dress up as an excuse.

Dean drives up to the farm, parks off the driveway behind a tree, treads his way through the lawn, and breaks a window to enter the house. The noise draws a pallid, jaundiced-looking man into the hall to investigate, tuna-sandwich in hand. Dean strides forward and hits him over the head with the butt of his gun before he has a chance to react. He's out cold but Dean still checks him for weapons and finds nothing on him.

The other man is sitting by a loud police scanner and spinning his phone on the table. He never sees the mantle-piece come at him.

Dean sits down on the couch, rubs his forehead. If there were anyone else in the house, the noise would've drawn them out. There was no car so presumably the others are out— Dean was told there'd be four at least. Two less-than-spry men with no weapons on them.

Sam can't be held. Not unless he wants to be, Bobby's gruff voice taunts him and Dean buries his head in his hands. He considers leaving.

A dull thud, like something falling, makes him spring to his feet and he slowly moves into the hallway, pistol at the ready. He checks the rooms, one by one, opening each to find it empty until one doorknob refuses to twist. Dean raises his gun and kicks the door in, blinking until he adjusts to the darkness of the room, relieved only by the hall-light coming in through the door.

He's stunned to the spot and then the guilt crashes down, making him stumble forward.

Sam looks up at him, smiles bitter and faint, and puts his arm over his head.

"Sammy?" Dean grabs his jacket and shakes him, pulls his arm down from his face. His cheeks are gaunt and grey, eyes red and sunken in the sockets as if Dean's looking at a fresh corpse in a grave, tendons stand out on the backside of his hand, and he's tolerant of Dean, letting him turn and prod him, check for wounds. It unnerves him.

"C'mon, let's get you out of here," Dean tries for a comforting tone as he hauls Sam out of bed. Sam makes a noise, somewhere between confusion and pain, but doesn't resist as Dean pulls his arm over his shoulder and half carries him out of the house. "It's okay, Sam," he says, and "It's not far," and a dozen other reassurances that Sam doesn't seem to notice in the slightest but the silence is too much for Dean and he thinks if he doesn't fill it with meaningless nothings, one of them will say something real. Like perhaps don't you know who I am? Why won't you say anything?

They're near the car when Dean hears the noise behind him and whips round, letting Sam drop to the soft ground beside him, hand flying for the pistol in his belt but before he's even drawn it, there's a sound like a snap and a man screams, falling to the ground in agony. Bear-trap, Dean realizes. He picks Sam up, deposits him in the car and goes back. It takes two bullets to do the job but Dean comes back with an empty clip and the two men's wallets. He'll come back for the others later.

-

Sam wakes up in the Impala, warm for the first time in months. Sun shining on his face. He turns to look at Dean, offers him a faint smile, then closes his eyes.

He wishes it were real.

[voidstilesplease]

yearn

word count: >800 words | tags: Mob Boss!Theo (but vague), Powerful!Stiles, this is in the same verse and directly after this eros x thanatos ficlet.

Hi! I'm back with a little steo :))) Been a while.

----

“Congratulations, Eros.” Gerard’s voice drawls as soon as the call goes through. “You have once again evaded me and disposed of some of my best men while at it.”

Theo’s fists clench, his jaws flexing, and his nose flaring. “Touch him again, and you will find your throat torn open by the vengeful end of my claws, you old bastard.”

“Oh, is that contempt I hear?” taunts Gerard. The malicious grin he must be sporting is clear in Theo’s head. It makes his blood boil. “But nothing ever fazed you before. Here I thought your heart was made of stone.”

“And yours will be made of bloody ribbons.”

Gerard chuckles, “My, my. What an improvement this is. You don’t usually make direct threats to me.” 

Theo could hear him lighting up a smoke on the other side, inhaling, and blowing. His claws dig in his palm, and he wants nothing more than to smash Gerard’s face and mark him with the epithet Stiles gave Theo with his own filthy blood.

“All this rage for a stripper, Theodore? It seems I have succeeded in finding your weakness.”

Theo sharply looks up, flashing his cold blue eyes and snarling when the door opens. He explicitly instructed Josh not to disturb him while he was seething in rage inside his office. But the sound immediately dies in his throat when it’s not Josh who enters, but Stiles, pale as ever and reeking of dried blood. His clothes and hands are covered in it as well.

Stiles smiles at the sight of Theo, closing the door and crossing the distance to Theo’s large mahogany desk, walking around it to stand right in front of him.

Lowly, Theo growls, eyes on Stiles the entire time. “You have succeeded in nothing but expediting your own demise.”

Gerard laughs, clicking his tongue, but Theo couldn’t care less now that Stiles is back home to him. He couldn’t care less – not when Stiles sinks to his knees and lays his head on Theo’s lap. His fingers run through Stiles’ sweat and blood-matted hair, curling gently at the tips. Slowly, Stiles turns his head to look directly at Theo.

“You foolish dog,” Gerard jeers. “Of all the monsters in the world, you chose to love a fragile human. Do you see how easy this will be now?”

Stiles blinks at him and smiles again while Theo wipes the little bloodstain on his cheek. He inhales, smelling one, two, three, four different types of blood on him – and four varied lingering scents of fear clinging to Stiles’ skin. Theo knows he must have enjoyed this one from the proud look on Stiles’ face.

“Did you ever wonder if they begged for their lives?” Theo asks, pressing the phone close to his lips, answering Gerard’s taunt with one of his own. “The countless poor men you sacrificed because you were too coward to seek me out yourself?”

There’s a short pause, then a hiss. “You best believe I am coming for you, dog. It’s going to be my wolfsbane bullet that kills you.”

“They couldn’t,” Theo continues, ignoring the threat. Theo has received numerous threats from endless lines of enemies – it’s nothing novel now. He has worse enemies than Gerard, who is but a petulant old bastard who can’t accept that humans aren’t the only creatures crawling on God’s green earth. But giving credit where it’s due, Gerard has been the first to touch Stiles. Everyone turns their nose up on Stiles, hired in his club to entertain his guests – friends and enemy spies alike. Rumor has it Theo offers his human bitch to his business partners, letting them fuck him on top of a table in the VIP booth alongside lines of wolfsbane and coke, surrounded by the smoke of cannabis. Of course, Theo would sooner claw his eyes out than give Stiles to anyone that way. 

“They couldn’t because their tongues had already retreated down their throat in fear. They had no idea what was coming for them.”

Stiles quietly giggled, rubbing his cheek on Theo’s palm.

Gerard snaps in outrage, “Yes, they did. They all deserved to die dirtied by the brand of a psychotic monster for their incompetence in putting one werewolf down. I buried my men without washing the name Eros on their skin to remind me of the disgrace they brought to me and the ever-growing spite that keeps me eager to end you.”

He looks into Stiles’ eyes, and an understanding passes between them without words. Stiles’ eyes glaze in excitement. “Pity. Who’s going to bury you, Gerard? Because you’re next. You’re next.”

Theo hangs up and crushes the phone into debris with his hand.

Stiles nods, grins, kisses the open palm of Theo’s other hand, and buries his head on his lap again.

Gerard will be disappointed to know that Theo has no weakness – he only has Stiles, his little angel of death.

---

steo a-z: part 25

[littlelightfish]

This... this is a whole different kind of psychic damage here. When nightmares got Marcille, we get to knew that her's biggest fear is outliving her friends. This isn't even canon probably, but look at this. This isn't a "I don't want my friends to die" kind of dream. This is a "I'm terrified of loosing my daughters, of something killing them, and being incapable of stopping it" kind of dream. It's so simple yet it explains perfectly the whole of chilchucks character. He loves, he cares, deeply. But he, or doesn't acknowledges, or doesn't know what to do with that knowledge.

Besides that. Someone had to wake him up after this. Imagine the devastation in this man after he wakes up. He just saw his three little babys murdered corpses (or maybe he saw them die, wich isn't better). He would possibly not talk about it, and that would worry the hell out of the party, because we'll, they see him all down and only one of them knows what he saw. Imagine being the one to pull him from that nightmare. Seeing this man, usually so composed, fuking staring with tears and terror in his eyes to the composes of what you can only assume are his daughters. It would be heartwrenching.

Idk, I love this man so much...

[cozymodeonpoint]

senshi fans: learning how to make nutritious meals for themselves

laios fans: down bad

marcille fans: lesbianism

chilchuck fans: putting that man in situations

[charlotlie]

bitches be like “this is the best piece of literature i have ever read” and it’s either a book that took them six weeks to finish or a fanfic they read at 3 AM