#supernatural's fancy combination of misogynistic writers who can't write a woman and obnoxious need to reinforce sam and dean as heroes

[raspberryjellybrains]

Stargazing

Tags: minor character POV, Ruby-centric, samruby, one-shot, between season 3 and 4

Trigger warnings: mentions of blood and violence.

Author's Note: so. samruby. really quite insane if you're willing to think about it, right? there's so much to be explored, especially given that demons are just twisted human souls, which is SUCH a cool concept! which, of course, they barely explored. so here is my exploration of both samruby and this aspect of canon :)

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Sam went stargazing with Ruby, once.

Though, to say "went" implies that they weren't already out in the middle of nowhere. It just happened. One moment they were laying on a shitty mattress, relaxing into the softness of after, the next they were stumbling out into the field outside and falling into the grass. It was night, so the sweat on their bare skin cooled in place and chilled them but it was also summer, so they didn't mind it much. No one was there to complain about the mostly naked couple in the field, and both were too loose to really care.

The grass around them was soft and green with fresh growth, little bugs crawling up the dewy stalks that ended in wildflowers of all kinds. The beauty was not lost on Ruby, but all Sam's eyes registered was a sea of cool almost-black reaching like a thousand fingers up into the night sky. The sky itself was smoothly black but for the million billion pinpricks spread across, with the moon hanging achingly bright above. It was silent, for a moment, before Ruby spoke up.

"I missed this," She said it quietly, reverent and tentative and everything a demon shouldn't be. "There aren't any stars down there. It's just... redness and black smoke over top of it all. Just another way they try to break us."

She turned to see Sam's reaction, not really caring but looking to see anyway. Some soft, squishy part of her said she deserved to see the flinch as he thought about his brother. It was the same part that screamed she deserved whatever said brother would do to her for what she was doing to Sam. He didn't flinch; just turned to her with gentle eyes that shone black in the night, spangled with stars, just like hers. For a moment Ruby let herself feel as if they were equals, a righteous child being unwittingly prepared for a dark destiny and a demon reveling in and mourning her lost humanity, both laid low under the prairie's night sky.

"There's so many things. Things no one thinks about, that you take for granted that they use against you. Y'know... y'know the smell of rain? Petrichor, I think it's called? I missed it so badly. It rains down there. But... it's boiling or-or worms or blood, if they're feeling old fashioned, I guess." She looks to the side, reaches out to pluck something off the end of one of the stalks. It's a Black Eyed Susan which feels a little too on the nose, and besides. It's not hurting her. So she leaves it be and feels more words pouring from her, unbidden and tearing her up as they flow out, so she knows them to be true.

"And flowers. They have flowers but it's... they're not right, Sam, flowers aren't supposed to look like monsters and smell like corpses. It's... It's... they make you... they make you forget. All the tiny, beautiful things and they twist what you remember until you can't look at them the same, until you only remember that rain hurts and nature bites and the rest of the universe doesn't exist."

The tears are falling now, and for a moment her heart stops because they're hot and salty and she's facing the sky, so they must be falling from there. Her heart stops because that would mean she's back in hell and this was all a ruse, a new torture to get her in line by ripping apart her humanity, piece by piece. But it's not, she realizes, they're falling from her eyes.

She's crying.

Sam moves over, trampling grass as he does and she would be sad about that except now there's arms around her, holding her, tucking her into his chest, comforting her and fuck if that doesn't make her cry harder. This isn't sexual, nowhere close, and Ruby cannot bring herself to object because this is another one of the tiny, beautiful things they took from her. She can hear his infected heartbeat loud, solid, kind in her ear and it's a small, extra comfort Sam doesn't know he's providing. He does that, gives little pieces of himself to others as if they cost nothing, strings of kindness that just flow from every crevice uninhibited, encouraged. It's a bit warm for this, and they start sweating anew but it doesn't really matter because they stink like sex and sweat, anyway, and she can always lift her head to smell the fresh grassland air. This stench isn't oppressive, it's just human and there's nothing more beautiful than that in this moment.

"I'm sorry." Ruby feels him say it before she hears it, vibrating up his long neck and coming out deep and plaintive. She might've snapped, then, that she didn't want his pity. She didn't want to be looked at with dewy eyes and told she had been seen. But she did, so she cried harder and hoped he didn't misinterpret it.

He didn't.

"Thank you." She choked out. She didn't say "me, too", but it rang in the spaces between sounds anyway, hanging raw and bleeding between them.

They lay like that for hours, Sam drifting off at some point but Ruby stayed awake. A demon, she couldn't sleep, cursed forever with wakefulness like eyes peeled for danger, meant to protect you but it just drives you insane instead. Oddest of things, though, early in the morning in a field in Oklahoma, her eyes must've slipped closed and stayed that way because when she opened them again, the sun was rising. Ruby tried to be scared, but she knew it was just nature because in another life and another land, she was just a scared and sad little green witch, running from it all into the arms of a dark power that promised some of itself in return. She still felt connected to the earth and all its creatures, so they sung her to sleep, both of them heedless to the results of her plans. She woke up, and for moment felt human enough to watch the sunrise and think she deserved to see it and all the beautiful colors it created.

When the sun was high in the sky and she was tired of the day (which did not feel so kind as the night), she turned to her boyfriend, her savior, her job and woke him up gently.

"Rise and shine, Lazy Bones."

She shook him a bit, lightly, the pattern she knew would soothe him and he groaned a bit, something keening in the back of his throat.

"Yeah, I know. Up and at 'em."

Sam smiled a but at that, and she chose to believe it was her and not because he was thinking of Dean who seemed the kind of person that would say such a thing. She also chose to believe he wouldn't dismiss earlier out of hand as manipulation, looking at its mess as ugly and weeping, stripped bald in the light of day.

He didn't, though, is the thing. Even after Lucifer and the church, he didn't because he'd never seen a demon cry and, in the starlit night amongst flowers and cicadas, he knew his eyes had shone black, too. Even fake, that kinship felt right and even though the thought was unspeakably terrifying, he knew it to be true. He shared a moment of humanity with a demon, and it was beautiful.