fic: The Long, Delirious, Burning Blue (Supernatural, Gen)

[elandrialore.livejournal.com]

Fandom: Supernatural
Spoilers: general for season 4
Rating: PG
Summary: Dean’s fear of flying isn’t groundless.
Title:

The Long, Delirious, Burning Blue
By Elandria Lore


Dean’s fear of flying isn’t groundless.

Sam was too young to remember, but Dean vividly recalls getting a phone call from Pastor Jim saying that he was coming to pick them up because their daddy’s plane had gone down.

It’d been bitter cold, so after Dean packed up all their bags he bundled Sam into long johns under his normal clothes, and a scarf, hat, and mittens on top, and parked him in the empty lot behind the motel while he went to check out.

By the time he made it back, Sam was pink cheeked and huffing out great big breaths, trying to make shapes in the air.

Pastor Jim picked them up an hour later and somehow Sam had already lost both mittens.

It took them three days to make it to Billings and dad was crabby and awake, a dark bruise on his temple, a long thin cut down his neck, and his right arm in a cast. Sam slept tucked up next to Dean in a hard plastic chair while he listened to Pastor Jim arguing with his father in heated whispers. He heard the word ‘coma’ and knew that it meant sleeping without waking up.

Ice settled in his gut because his dad always beat back monsters, but maybe there were some things he couldn’t fight.

They were in Arizona a week later and it was ninety degrees in January, but Dean never did manage to get warm that winter.

He was eight years old.
***
Dean did drugs once. Just the once.

He was sixteen at a college party and he didn’t fit in, but it didn’t matter because there was plenty of beer, and twins that had been eyeing him all evening. They came up to him ten minutes later, all long, graceful limbs in coordinated movements like they were tag team succubae.

One of them twined her arms around his neck and kissed him, while the other touched him low on his belly and high on his thigh. There was a tongue in his mouth and teeth on his neck, and he was chasing a handful of pills with a beer before he thought to protest.

Nothing bad happened, not really. It was actually quite pleasant while it was happening: a weightlessness, a relief.

It lasted until the next morning when he realized that he’d left Sammy alone all night, and sure, Sam had a shotgun and a knife, but he was Dean’s responsibility.

Dean’s to protect and care for, and the weight of that settled on his shoulders, dragging him back to earth, grounding him.

So he went home, woke his brother up and ragged on him as he got him ready for school. When the twins, eyeing him coquettishly, asked him to the next party, he said, “No can do. My brother needs me.”

And somehow that was a relief too.
***
It wasn’t the fall that Dean was afraid of. Dean had been falling his whole life. Had been taught how to take a fall tirelessly by his dad, along with how to take a punch and how to shoot a gun.

It wasn’t even the fact that it was an engine that Dean hadn’t had his hands on either, though that was some of it. A guy could trust an engine he’d helped build with his own two hands, especially over some pile of metal that had been slapped together by the lowest bidder.

Mostly it was about the fact that he was trapped in a metal box with a bunch of civilians who were more likely to panic than anything. Dean hated being trapped. Hated having to put his life in someone else’s hands when he couldn’t personally vet them to see how they would react under pressure.

But Sam was getting on that plane and Dean had always had an easier time doing whatever he was afraid of than letting Sam out of his sight. So they went in and they killed the demon and they didn’t fall.

But even if they had, Dean felt lighter in the knowledge that Sam would’ve been there to catch him.
***
Dean hadn’t expected the wings. Hadn’t expected that, for as much as he hated flying, they would feel so much a part of him.

Hadn’t expected the pang of their eventual loss.

But they were only a loaner, not his to keep. So he spread them out fully for a single breathless moment, feeling the stretch and burn and, for the first time, the freedom of flight before he floated to the ground and tucked them away.

They’d disappeared, disintegrated or something, by the time Sam woke up. Dean still had him cradled him his arms as the rain fell down around them, soaking the earth.

“Dean?” Sam said, his voice full of confusion and maybe just a little bit of awe.

“I’ve got you, Sammy,” Dean said, pulling Sam close to his chest. Feeling Sam’s heart beat steadily against his own.

Sam’s hands went around to his back, pressing against the bone and muscle and skin. Pressing against the scars that were all that was left of a gift he’d never been meant to have.

“I’ve got you.”
***
The world ended when Dean was thirty. It ended in a flash of light, a flurry of wings, and his brother falling to the ground, bleeding and broken while demons howled out their eternal torment.

It ended.

And then it began again. His name on his brother’s lips, a God who maybe wasn’t so bad after all, and Sam saying, “Dean? Why are we sitting here in the rain?”

Dean laughed and said, “I have no idea,” then stood and pulled Sammy up next to him. “What d’you say we get out of here? I’m thinking Hawaii.”

Sam stumbled after him, laughing like a drunk. “You hate to fly,” he protested, dimples creasing his cheeks.

“Nah,” he said, slinging an arm around Sam’s shoulders. “It’s not so bad.”
***

A/N: Title from ‘High Flight’ by John Gillespie Magee

Oh, I have slipped the surly bonds of earth
And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;
Sunward I've climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth
Of sun-split clouds...and done a hundred things
You have not dreamed of...wheeled and soared and swung
High in the sunlit silence. Hov'ring there,
I've chased the shouting wind along, and flung
My eager craft through footless halls of air.
Up, up the long, delirious, burning blue
I've topped the windswept heights with easy grace
Where never lark, or even eagle flew.
And, while with silent, lifting mind I've trod
The high untrespassed sanctity of space
Put out my hand, and touched the face of God.

Based on this picture: