I wrote 400 flashcards today; I deserve this.

I know most of you, unlike me, have lives. It's a friday night. You are probably doing delightful things, delightfully lively things, but, as maikegotchi so eloquently put it, "You forgot the gay in your posts about Supernatural." Indeed, I did.

There is no gay in this post about Supernatural, either. (Well, that's not entirely true.) But it is fic, written for angstslashhope because she suggested it and I, being weak of heart and mind, followed these directions. Also the Devil's Trap idea was hers.

Spoilers for the finale, obviously.







needs must when the devil drives, or, five ways the Winchesters do (or don’t) wake up

i.

There’s worse things than dying. That doesn’t mean Dean really, really doesn’t want to die, ‘cause Dean really, really doesn’t.

Of course, their line of work? Sometimes you’re driving along and a giant fucking truck comes outta nowhere, demon behind the wheel, and rams you side on, off the road—you’ve gotta be prepared for that kind of shit to happen. Jesus, hasn’t there been enough tonight? But sometimes it just goes down like that and there’s no time even to think oh, man, fuck this shit because demons really know how to step on the gas and that truck comes at you. It comes fast.

Comes with the territory.

Doesn’t mean anybody’s ready to die. One second there’s Sammy, Sammy’s eyes, the rearview mirror. It means something; Dean is dizzy with loss of blood, something hard and cold in his chest. He can’t put a finger on what it means, but it feels solid. A whole lot’s changed tonight.

And then, bam. Truck. Like a bat out of hell. Too fast to be human, and you’re too human to do anything about it. You don’t think at all, you know? Your whole life doesn’t flash before your eyes. A life’s a long thing, even when you’re twenty six, and a second’s not enough god. damn. time.

ii.

The first thing a dad’s supposed to teach you is, keep your eyes on the road while you’re driving, especially on the interstate.

Sam lets out a ragged sound, kind of like a laugh, lost in the cut and crunch of metal, the jolt of his bones and the shock that comes too slow.

Then: he can’t see Dean anymore; he can’t see anything.

*

At Stanford, Sam was interested for a while in science, even though he came at it with a puzzled kind of determination, probably to prove what he already knew; these days, most of the time, he’s too tired to think about why he did it or why he really did it, either. He took an astronomy class and learned about the solar system and then the galaxy and then the universe; Kepler’s Laws, Hubble’s Constant, all those calculations that say ‘It’s a big world and we don’t really know what’s out there, but sometimes it moves like this.’ It was pretty damn funny to get the same feeling from science that he got from poltergeists and it wasn’t what Sam was expecting at all, and if Dean’d been there it would have cracked his shit up.

But he had to have that rebellious phase; every normal teenager has that rebellious phase.

‘Sammy, you’re a normal teenager like I’m Xena, Warrior Princess.’ ‘Shut up, Dean. Just shut up.’

There was only Dad, though, and Sam was just like Dad only he couldn’t see it. So Dad made sense. Sam had Dad to go off on. Dean wasn’t like that, and Sam always assumed, he just always figured, that it was because Dean didn’t have the guts for that sort of thing even if he did have the guts and then some for almost anything else. Jesus Christ, you couldn’t even explain it to a normal person if you wanted to, the things Dean was willing to do.

‘Man, leather boob-plates look good on a woman. I’m just sayin’.’ ‘Seriously, Dean, I said shut up.’

Only then everything changes, somewhere between salting up and heading out, and Sam realizes what Dean’s willing to do is what Dean does, and even Dad’s not strong like that.

Even Dad’s not.

Even Dad.

Bam, like a sixteen-wheeler streaking fast, silver, through the night.

iii.

What time is it, Dean asks. Only he doesn’t actually say anything; it’s just the first thing he thinks, What time is it. How deep is that? Yeah, pretty deep. There’s some serious disconnect going on here between the mind and the body and when the pain starts Dean thinks, Oh, yeah, so that’s why. Fucking. Ow.

Then Dean thinks, Sam. Not the word but the instinct, the brotherness of him, his face all torn up and not the color of his eyes but the color of the shadows in ‘em when he looks Dean’s way and shit if he didn’t look beat to hell when they—

Then Dean thinks, Dad. Man, is Dad gonna be pissed; he’s probably pissed already, if the truck didn’t kill them.

Oh, yeah, they were hit by a truck.

Sonova, Dean says. Only he doesn’t actually say anything; it’s kind of possible that he’s dead.

*

‘Dean,’ Sam says. What the hell are they going to do now, call 911? So some demon can jump inside a surgeon in the middle of the operating room? Who’s that going to help? Dad started this fight and Sam has this memory like maybe, maybe it’s Dean who knows the right way to finish it. Maybe. Maybe not.

Sam keeps calm, lists all that he knows, a kind of inventory, one of the ways to cope Dad never exactly taught him. Sam just learned.

One: he can’t move. Two: he can’t find his cell phone. There’s no one they can trust, they’re lucky the car didn’t blow up, Sam doesn’t even know why his throat hasn’t been slit open yet while he was unconscious. Three, four, five.

‘Dean,’ Sam says, and: no answer from the back.

Sam takes physical inventory, something warm and wet at his side, flannel and blood and an unmoving pressure, maybe the car or part of the seat or something. Where’d the truck come from? The right, the truck came from the right. And Dean was on the left and Sam was on the left and Dad was riding shotgun, and shotgun’s on the right.

They’ve done worse, Sam thinks. They’ve pulled through worse. He thinks of Dean saying things like ‘No, he’s not dead,’ and ‘No, he can’t be,’ like somehow that’s going to make a difference, and figures it’s the same thing only Dean says it out loud. Sam wouldn’t. Not even if he could move his jaw. Sam wonders if he’s the only one alive in this car, Dean’s smashed up car, Dean’s gonna be so pissed, he’s going to torch those sonsofbitches.

If Sam’s not the only one alive in this car. Maybe he is. There’s a whole lot of maybe weighing on him now, he can feel it—it’s possible. Everyone dies, Sam thinks. They just get in the way of whatever I am.

Man. I really am a selfish bastard.

‘Dean,’ Sam says. ‘Dean, please, Dean.’

‘What time is it,’ Dean says.

*

It’s 6:21 am, says Dean’s watch, but Dean’s watch might have stopped. It’s gray enough for 6:21 am. It smells like smoke everywhere, Dean’s mouth and chin are crusted all over with dried blood. Dad isn’t moving. Sam isn’t moving, either. Dean doesn’t want to move but hell, somebody has to.

‘OK, Sammy,’ he says. ‘Talk to me, Sam. Tell me what time it is.’

‘Dean, are you OK?’

‘I’m talking, aren’t I? Now tell me what time it is.’

‘I don’t know. Car’s kind of broken, Dean.’

‘You’ve got a watch, don’t you?’

‘Can’t move my arm.’

‘Right. Gimme a second.’ Dean’s a little trapped, up against the door and his foot stuck underneath some seriously rearranged metal, and he is so pissed off right now, only not really, what the hell, he loves this car but it’s a car, and he’s got some perspective, he just doesn’t want to think about the sort of shit that gives a guy perspective, or whether they fucked things up royally this time, since he was the one who kept saying no, don’t do it, don’t do it Sam, just trying to save Dad, like it meant something, like maybe there was a world to live in where your little brother didn’t have to shoot his father, your father, to kill the goddamn sonovabitch demon that took almost everything, almost everything, can’t they just hold onto this? There’s got to be a way so that all the crap you go through, all the pain you feel, all the demons you look square in the eye and all the shit you see done to your brother actually maybe stops one day, or at least doesn’t get any worse than it already is, the usual scrapes and cuts but being able to smile at the end of the day, too. Not having to shoot anyone. Not having to shoot Dad, oh, Jesus. But don’t think about that, Dean, just get your foot free.

‘Dean, Dad’s not—’

‘I don’t want to hear it, Sammy. Just gimme a second. Fuck.’

His foot’s stuck real good and every time he pulls on it he feels like maybe his chest is going to split in two, right down the middle of his ribcage.

Then he’s out and he falls forward and his forehead knocks against Sam’s shoulder and Sam grunts, winces, lets out this sound. Jesus Christ, don’t sound like that, Sammy.

‘Talk to me, Sam,’ Dean repeats. ‘Why ain’t we dead yet?’

‘I don’t know, Dean,’ Sam says.

‘Course you know,’ Dean says. ‘Think about it. Think real hard. Tell me. How come no demon’s come in here, slit our throats while we were sleeping, huh?’

Sam’s quiet for a long time; Dean can hear the shallow beat-up rhythm of his breathing. Sounds like there might be some blood in his lungs. Then, he says, ‘Devil’s trap. It’s the devil’s trap, Dean. Like a,’ his breath comes out in a long, low whoosh, ‘like a lock-box.’

Dean remembers. They didn’t know anything then and they don’t know anything now. ‘OK,’ Dean says. ‘But don’t make this some kinda excuse to draw on my car all the time, you got that?’

‘Dean,’ Sam says.

‘I said I don’t want to hear it, Sammy.’

‘It’s been a second, Dean.’

A second’s not enough.

iv.

Dad’s dead and they’re stuck here. They’re stuck in a fucked up car in the middle of nowhere and probably any time now there’s going to be another truck—maybe this one will have two hundred wheels and Beelzebub himself will be driving, Belial riding shotgun and god only knows who else whooping it up inside—that’s going to run them over, smash them flat. Dean’s pretty sure he’s got no blood left and is on his way out the door, too, only he can’t let Sam know that.

There’s a whole lot a man wants to say when it comes down to it; a whole lot he should have been saying all along. But all of that, like now, doesn’t mean he has even half an idea of how to start saying any of it.

‘Sam,’ Dean says. He sure as hell hopes he doesn’t look as beat as he sounds.

Sam moves, looks at him half-way over his shoulder. Say something, Sam, Dean thinks. You’re the talker. Just say something.

Sam doesn’t say anything. Before Dean dies, he thinks of something, something like Sammy saying, ‘Hey, Dean, man, I just want you to know, coupla big words here that aren’t necessary, anyway, what I want you to know is—’ and then Dean saying ‘Aw, save it for the angels, Sammy,’ and then Sam laughs and Dean laughs and Dean can go out like that, you know? That would be nice.

Before Dean dies, what Dean really wants to know is, why the hell does he imagine this crap if they don’t say anything then, either?

v.

It’s 6:21 am, says Dean’s watch, but Dean’s watch has definitely stopped. Outside it sort of looks like it’s 8:30, maybe 9 in the morning. Dean’s got blood in his eye. He’s not so sure.

Dad’s phone was working and they called 911 and now they just gotta hope the pickup that comes to get them isn’t manned by some psycho demon, but there’s never been an assurance that it wasn’t to begin with.

Sam catches Dean’s eye in the rearview mirror, Sam all blurry ‘cause Dean’s eyes still have blood in ‘em, and his head hurts like hell.

‘Sam,’ Dean says, ‘you look like crap.’

Dad’s gonna be pissed off, maybe for years. Dean likes to think that deep down Dad knows what’s important, and he’s glad they’re alive, and trying to find their second chance will eat him up just like trying to find their first.

We almost died tonight, Dean thinks, eyes locked with Sammy’s through the angle of the mirror and whatever else they share in between; Dean’s head hurts, not right now. We’re just people. Even almost dying can’t make a guy say some things.

And some things never change.