Title: There are Ghosts in the Boxes
Rating: Gen, Dean+Sam
Warnings: [open]vague mentions of past abuse, eating disorders and hurricanes
Summary: A hurricane was as good a reason as any to have Dad's stuff shipped from the Tampa storage unit.
Note: wanted to write you something for the new season. No spoilers, though (and please don't spoil me).
Also: I might keep writing up to the episode today, if you have prompts you feel like getting fast unbetaed ficlets from me for, send then over and maybe I will write them.
[On the way back from Houston, they stopped as a Gas-n-Sip]On the way back from Houston, they stopped at a Gas 'n' Sip. Sam wanted to change out of his still-damp jeans, Dean wanted a BBQ Payday. Both needed coffee, just black, just to get home. Dean had gone back into a flooded house that morning to try and salvage a woman's photo albums. The bridge of Dean's nose was sunburned, vivid against the Key Lime Pie Twizzler he held between his lips, Toothpick Charlie like. Back in the driver's seat, Dean was swirling his coffee around in its paper cup, trying to get the sugar to melt without going all the way back in for a disposable coffee stirrer. "Gotta get Dad's stuff outta Tampa ".
Sam didn't have a lot of things like that, didn't want his past up on his walls to remember. Had his drawer. Had kept the amulet, of course he did. Come on, of course he did. But that was about it.
It was still in Sam's pocket most of the time now, really. Dean hadn't worn it again, and that was a new pain and an old, comfortable one. Still wanted to have it on him. Still a comfort to carry their connection, and a burden.
A hurricane was as good a reason as any to have Dad's stuff from the Tampa storage unit shipped over. Been putting it off for years. Sam wasn't gonna go get it. But it shouldn't be floating around in a flood, o one needed another inadvertent apocalypse. They'd keep it safe, they had the space for it now. Not like the FBI was still on their asses. It's been years. Last time they visited Jody, she gave him a long look and said that wasn't going to happen.
There probably wasn't anything in that unit Sam wanted around. Most of Dad's treasures were weapons that weren't as good as what they had now, with the bunker's stashes and their friends in all sort of places. The few personal treasures weren't anything Sam wanted around. The doting father who kept Sam's soccer trophy but not Sam himself. Successes but his son. It was an uncomfortable, sort of misplaced love Sam didn't know what to do with. Would have wanted to give away, to give to Dean. Every time Dad had done something like that - Dean seemed hollow for a moment, skin transparent like he hadn't eaten in days. Then Dean would punch Sam's shoulder and call Sam a geek, and the world started up again. Dean always wanted to give Sam the better things in their life. Sam should have this, in Dean's mind, because Dean wanted it so badly.
Sam didn't want it. Didn't want the way it made Dean look, didn't want the way it made Sam feel. Didn't want this fake validation, warm around his guts like unwanted hands. Hated having not being able to protest, to Dad, to Dean - because officially, none of it happened. Didn't want that role. Didn't want Dad taking one of Sam's happy memories as his own. Being part of a team, this once not being the new boy - was twisted into a memory of helpless rage, every time Sam saw that trophy. Didn't want it in his house, didn't want any of Dad's memories there. But if they didn't keep them, who would?
Dean left Sam to go through the boxes without Dean, and Sam let him. Wasn't sure what memories they would bring up in Dean, or what flashback. Sam preferred to just do it himself, he'd be fine.
Dean was making burgers - both intended to say thank you, and sorry, and to enable Dean to hide out in the kitchen till Sam was done.
Sam went through boxes gray with dust, sticky-damp, like the hands 10 year old. Artifacts, this to contain, things to read up on. Notes for tens of unsolved cases, wait for an apparition on the Christmas of 2010, open a book to this pages in the 2017 eclipse. Sam pursed his lips. Old books, those could go in the library, Sam refused to be squeamish.
Dean seemed glad Sam had kept it. Sam sort of understood Dean not wanting to be that old person he was. If that was why. Always a fluttering unsecured to his assertion. If that was w hy.
Silver Bullets. First aid supplies. Spare ammo. Some knives. Tear gas grenades. Would have just dumped it all at Goodwill - let someone else sort through it.
Sam was opening another box, when Dean started calling for him to go eat.
This cardboard wasn't falling apart like Dean's tape box. The masking tape dusty, but not transparent strips of it rustling off the boxes, leaving behind lines of brown dried glue. Cheetos logo, not Crispy Critters and Smurfees. There were old newspapers in there, at first he though they were used as packing material, then he assumed they were for an old case. A pile of beer cans - no, a line of - a wreath of - Dad kept... OK. Some air fresheners. A gas station bag. It was something at the edge of obvious, something he should know. Something he told himself to forget, not to forget. The papers were from 1991, the funny papers. Dean was at the door, talking about fries, and buns, and would Sammy get his pretty buns over already cause Dean was hungry. A mostly empty bottle or Castillo. Busty Asian Beauties. Christmas wrapping paper. A Sapphire Barbie.
Sam looked up Dean's face, years of feeding peeled off, eyes wide skittering across the boxes. Sam wanted to say - "he was an abusive fuck, we both know it". Or "he was always closer with you, trusted you like you were a part of him. Only reason he could love me was he saw me as a different person". Or even "me, I love you, isn't that enough? Why won't you love me back?".
But Dean's eyes were already on the doll in Sam's arms, horrified but soft. "Aww, Sammy and his Barbie! Don't you let that unrealistic figure mess you up, Sammy - you are pretty just the way you are".
And they were wrestling in the wrapping paper and the room was theirs again.
