what a peculiar state we’re in

[pculrstate]

monstersandbrothers’ writing blog :)

ao3: peculiarstate

most recent work: back door run [23.7k; sam/dean; yearning; s14; case fic]

[pculrstate]

i actually don’t think i’m gonna finish/post the crack fic so here’s the first bit of it before it got reeeeeeal off the rails lmao

She had a solid sixty extra on her and that was a problem for him. He liked a little heft. He liked a good squeeze at the hip. He liked the idea that at any moment, if she really put her back into it, she could crush the air right from his lungs. There was a spread of calendars laid out across the bar, eight-packed and artificially tanned men in red fire helmets beaming up at him from glossy cardstock, and she was leaning her chin on his shoulder, pointing with a plastic fingernail at the 2006-2007 edition, saying, “Now this one’s a real treat, we got all kinda ethnic fellas inside. What’s your preference? Yellow, red, brown? Not easy gettin’ this one up the chain, tell you the truth. But we had to, see. There was an organization claiming dis-crim-in-ation, threatening a lawsuit if we didn’t—how did Elwood put it? Diversify. Not my preference, but I’m just the sales gal! Ain’t up to me to judge what dampens the drawers, now is it?” She smelled like milk and cherries. She bought him three shots and five beers and a tray of onion rings and he bought out her remaining stock of 2006-2007 hunky firemen calendars. All the colors of the rainbow, he thought, why not. Later on, after some asshole puked all over his shoes, she’d given him a pair of unflattering white sneakers from the trunk of her ’84 Datsun and then they’d gone back to her place, where he’d come thrillingly close to experiencing a full measure of erotic asphyxiation. Later still, as he slept, she’d snuck out of the apartment with most of her belongings jammed into a rolling suitcase and no apparent intention of ever returning.

The kid woke him up with her screaming. He stumbled into the room, half-convinced he was in a lucid dream. Milk and Cherries hadn’t said one word about a kid. The girl was gripping the bars of her crib, face red and wet with furious tears. There was a note pinned to her chest. i can’t do it anymore she’s wrong she’s got the devil in her her name’s hannah please take her i know your a good man and thank you for buying my calendars.

***

The shoes were a size too small, fucking figured. He’d get Sam to clean the chuck from his boots once everything was settled. But at present Sam was sitting in the backseat of the car, holding the kid on one knee and whining about it like a little bitch.

“Would you slow fucking down?” he said. “She’s squirming all over the place. Where are we even going?”

“Put her in the seatbelt.”

“That’s not safe.”

“Well then I guess you’re out of options.”

Sam shook his head; Dean clocked it in the rearview. “You just had to, didn’t you. Couldn’t hold off for one night. Goddamn chubby chaser. We were supposed to be in Bemidji tomorrow, Bobby’s waiting for us.”

“Woah there, Stanford. Not very PC of you. Make me regret telling you things.”

The girl had started up crying again.

“We have no idea how to take care of a baby, Dean. Why didn’t you call the cops?”

Dean pressed harder into the pedal, watched the speedometer creep past ninety. “Yeah, I’m gonna pretend you didn’t just ask me the world’s stupidest fucking question.”

“Anonymous tip? You could’ve been gone way before they showed up. How long have you been doing this?”

The main issue was Dean didn’t know where he was going and he didn’t want to admit that he had no plan. “You read the note.”

Long beat of silence from Sam, more whimpering from the kid. Then Sam said shh shh shh and he said it’s okay, sweetie, you’re okay and the kid said mama, which was the first intelligible thing to come out of her mouth since Dean had lifted her from the crib.

“Oh, shit, Dean,” Sam said, suddenly sounding very afraid. “Dean. What are we gonna do?”

Dean veered over to the shoulder and put the car in park and climbed into the backseat next to Sam and the girl. He put a hand on his brother’s cheek and drew his face up. “Listen to me. We’ll figure it out. When have we ever not figured it out?”

Sam looked at him, unblinking, and then he nodded. “Okay.”

“I said, when have we ever not figured it out?”

“Never. We always have.”

Dean pinched Sam’s cheek. It left a red mark on his skin. “Goddamn right.”

He palmed the girl’s head of dark brown curls, thought he’d never in his life felt a thing so soft.

***

One a.m. when he pulled up to the Roadhouse, on the frayed edge of his last nerve. Blood pulsed at his temple, the nape of his neck. Once Dean had decided that their best course of action was to bring the kid to Ellen, Sam had relaxed a bit, and when Sam relaxed Hannah relaxed too. Before long they were both asleep and had remained so for the rest of the two-hour drive to Nebraska.

“We’re here,” Dean said loudly. Sam didn’t stir. He always slept heavier in the car. Dean reached back and jostled his knee. “Sam.”

The girl, who was sheltered between Sam’s gigantor body and the sticky leather of the backseat, poked her head up. She had crease marks on her forehead and chin and she was a little sweaty.

“Wake that kid up for me, will ya?” Dean said. Hannah giggled. Well, she wasn’t screaming, at least. She whacked Sam’s stomach with her tiny hand. Sam jolted upright, knocked his head against the door handle.

“Fuck,” he said. Hannah giggled again, and at that Sam seemed to come back to himself, seemed to remember where they were and exactly the shit Dean had gotten them into. “Oh. Hi.” He waved at Hannah, then threw a dirty look to Dean.

“You wanna go prep the gang?” Dean asked.

“I thought you called.”

“I did. Still.”

“Why can’t you do it?”

“I’ll stay here with her. You have a more delicate touch.”

Sam scoffed. “You just don’t wanna get ass-beat by Ellen. Coward.”

“Maybe,” Dean said with a shrug. “I just drove six hours on a barely healed hangover. Toss her up here.”

“Toss her?”

He made grabby hands at Sam. “Whatever. Give her to me.”

Sam sighed, took the girl in his arms and carried her outside of the car and around to the passenger seat. He set her down gently and crouched so they were at eye-level. “I’ll be right back, okay? This man is nice. He’s crazy, but he’s nice. I’ll be right back.” She let out a half-hearted whimper as he walked away.

Dean stared down at the girl. Hannah. “You gotta take a pee?” He thought about how easily she’d gone with him back at the apartment. He’d ripped the note off her pajama shirt, tucked it into his pocket because he figured it’d be evidence or something, somewhere far down the line when their involvement in this situation had been terminated. Then he’d reached down and grabbed the kid, expecting some sort of protest—he was a strange man in her room, after all—but she’d given none. Dean didn’t really wanna think about why that was. The crying hadn’t started until the three of them were in the car heading north on 35. “You use the toilet or what?”

“Mama,” the girl said.

“Yeah, okay,” Dean said, and turned his attention back to the entrance of the Roadhouse.

Fifteen minutes later Sam leaned out the front door and gestured for them to come inside. Dean thought it’d be good to offer to let the girl walk, stretch her legs a bit, but as soon as he put her down on the gravel she lifted her arms toward him. “Up,” she said.

“It’s like twenty steps,” Dean said.

“Up.”

“If you say so, your highness.” He picked her up and set her on his hip. A dampness seeped into his shirt. “Naturally,” he muttered. He hadn’t thought to grab anything from the girl’s room before leaving the apartment. Not a change of clothes, not a bottle. Did kids this age still use bottles? He recalled some sort of ratty stuffed animal that had been in the crib with her. Maybe she’d like something to hold. He circled back to the car, grabbed one of the calendars he’d stashed in the trunk and handed it to her. She held it in front of her face, wide-eyed. The thing was practically bigger than she was.

“Mama,” she said.

Dean laughed. She must’ve seen them laying around Milk and Cherries’ apartment. “Damn. That’s right.”

[pculrstate]

having a Blast

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wrote 2.4k words in one sitting of a brand new fic that came to me in a harried vision yesterday 👍🏼

[nondelphic]

writing is 10% storytelling and 90% rearranging three sentences for an hour like you're trying to solve an ancient curse

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NOVEL THINGS R HAPPENING!!!!! just had such a good brainstorm sesh with my irl writing buddy 🥹 she motivates me so much i love her

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i’ve gotta write a crack fic i be taking shit too serious

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plus i think it would be Fun

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i’ve gotta write a crack fic i be taking shit too serious

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swore to myself i was gonna take a break from writing fic after i finished back door run so i could focus all my energy on my novel. but i just opened a wip that i haven’t touched in months/kinda fkrgot about and it’s. kinda good…….. :/

[pculrstate]

friday night, holy ghost

The rollout laminate floor didn’t reach all the way to the back of the tent where he was sitting so his chair sunk down into mud and his shoes sunk down into mud. In his lap he held the Gideon Bible he’d taken from the motel room. Leather and gold, pages crisp like they’d never been turned. A mosquito landed on his arm and he watched it for a second before flicking it away, smear of blood left behind. He put it back into himself with his tongue. There was a piano going and a tambourine and the two played out of sync with each other. A woman with red hair down to her waist spoke into a microphone, jumble of syllables and fast-moving consonant sounds that did not gather to form words. Her hand was raised, her eyes closed, and around him everyone else seemed to understand perfectly. He closed his eyes and raised his hand as if this might be the key. He laid open the Bible, palm down flat on the page. He knew how to pray, or thought he did, thought maybe prayer was just an opening of oneself. He opened himself. In his mind he said Here I am. He’d read the story of Samuel, how he’d offered himself to Eli, and then to God, this way. Here I am. There was not much of him to give. The woman continued speaking her language and then she started singing and then everyone started singing. All sorts of songs, none the same. The clatter of so many voices and so many songs like nothing he’d ever heard. Beside him a man with red and blistered skin stuttered out On a hill far away stood an old rugged cross. Sam didn’t know any songs that felt worthy so he stayed silent and tried to hold himself open and tried to listen for a voice speaking back. He looked up at the ceiling of the tent, swarming with moths and mosquitoes.

Things went on and on. The woman called a man to the front of the tent and she touched his forehead and he fell backwards and there were people there to catch him like they’d known exactly what was going to happen. She called another and then another and each of them fell back, never forward, which was evidently the best possible thing. Ceaseless clapping, ceaseless shouting. This collapse must be what people were here for, this rebirth. The piano got louder, the tambourine more frenetic. Something in Sam’s chest shifted. He didn’t think he was afraid. This wasn’t the black suffocation of fear. This felt like electricity. He stood up to see above the heads of those in front of him. The woman was now down on her knees. She stopped talking and the crowd stopped clapping and the musicians stopped playing and over the whole tent fell a silence so complete and immediate the crickets outside became a roar flooding in. It wasn’t fear. Sam squeezed the Bible in both hands. The woman stood up and opened her eyes and let them rove over the sea of faces and then they found Sam and locked on. He hadn’t tried to hide but neither had he tried to be seen. He stood still under her gaze, piercing even from such great distance, something burning passing through his body, and he thought if she called him up he would go.

[pculrstate]

me when i get to the writing the case part of the case fic

[pculrstate]

Your brother tells you he’s leaving and you punch him in the face.

Well, it’s more like he tells you he’s leaving and you think you must’ve misheard him. You say What? What?

But you didn’t mishear him.

Your brother says he got into Stanford and he didn’t know how to tell you and he didn’t mean to keep it a secret so long and he says Can you be there when I tell Dad? He says he’s leaving tonight. He asks you to drive him to the bus stop. He says Come with me.

That’s when you punch him.

You punch him and you expect him to punch back and he doesn’t. He just holds his cheek and looks and looks at you.

A little while later you’re there when he tells Dad but you don’t stand next to him. You stand next to Dad, so close your arms touch. You know your brother knows what it means.

There’s yelling. There was always yelling between the two of them but this is different. Your dad says horrible things you never dreamed you’d hear him say and you almost consider moving over to stand beside your brother. But then your brother says things equally horrible, maybe worse. He says I don’t know how to be happy here. I promise I tried. He cries like a child. You’ve never seen him cry like this. You’ve only heard, across years, his muffled whimpers in the middle of the night.

Later still he turns around at the door and his face is blotchy and his eyes find yours and they beg. Say something. Take my side. He gestures at you to come on. Come on Dean come on.

You say nothing. You don’t move. You think this anger is the only thing you’ve ever known.

[pculrstate]

you can actually write anything you want as out of character as you want btw

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being in the document is sooooo sexy i love being in the document

[pculrstate]

of the intestate earth.

Their end of things was a white church on a mountain and down the trail a cabin still standing older than any living person on earth twice over. Once these had been places for tourists to visit and take pictures and shake their sunburned heads at the primitive ways of life which at the time had seemed to them unfathomable, untenable.

For long weeks they’d wandered aimless speaking hardly at all, silent agreement that they’d know it when they found it, wherever and whatever. This was not easy. They were strangers to living without purpose or plan or destination. Often, huddled shoulder to shoulder around a small smokeless fire off the main road, one or the other would lose the strength to go on. Full up of lament and self-pity and he into the unforgiving night would say we tried so hard and for nothing and for now what? They never allowed themselves to be weak at the same time. That was death, that was something they’d learned forever ago and so the other would lean in hard and say for us which was its own fortification against despair.

It was a beautiful place of high green trees and flowing water, a pocket miraculously unstained by the end of things. They walked the land and didn’t find it occupied but for deer and prancing rabbits and turkey and mountain lions and black bears and squirrels and owls. Long accustomed to the clumsy tromp of men through their wood and when they came through cutting away with machetes the animals regarded them, disinterested, and went back to eating, to sleeping, to hunting.

Along Cades Cove Loop Road they found Elijah Oliver Place, so named by a placard on the doorframe, log and stone, dogtrot cabin with a breezeway and a spring for water. For a long time they stood and stared and breathed in sweet quiet air and when they went at last inside they set down their load and looked at each other eyes brimmed with tears.

***

A few mornings a week Sam trekked down to the church in the pre-dawn whisper and he sat in the pews holding a hymnal open to his chest. Leftover from centuries, pages oiled thin. The sanctuary wood and windows to let in light and there were bibles too which he left alone. He sat and let the silence seep into him and sometimes when that was too much he read the ancient poems out loud. When I look down from lof­ty mount­ain gran­deur, and hear the brook and feel the gen­tle breeze. The words rang through, leftover from centuries, balm to even those who weren’t looking. Behind the church a small cemetery whose stones Sam came to learn. He walked slowly past each one and pressed fingers to the names and he said thank you, thank you.

***

Plentiful fish in the river and they hunted for game and used the book for plants good to eat. The water from the spring clear and clean. They sat together nights in the glow of an oil lamp and they didn’t talk about what had been. They read to each other or made up stories or else just laved in presence. Warm, familiar. Hand finding hand and they’d move to the wooden frame bed set up with their sleeping bags and blankets and they would hold so close there was never room left for breathing. Forehead to forehead. They’d remember the waste of years they hadn’t allowed themselves this. Afraid, how afraid. How foolish, they’d think. You were always right there and I too and us both blind to it. Well. None of it mattered anymore. We found each other at the end of things.

***

Dean took to fishing like he’d once taken to the belly guts of a car. Fling of the line, whir against his palm. Rivers to choose from. He sang out where there was no one to hear him. Zeppelin and Aerosmith and Bon Jovi, songs that had carried him through. Although sometimes there was someone to hear him, sometimes he’d reel in and head for the bank and Sam would be sitting with his pants rolled and knees up and eyes closed and his face a wonder of peace. More he’d say. Many an afternoon run out like that and nothing they were missing beyond. Ease on to dark, the stars above more numerous than he’d known. He thought at the night sky us too, us too, we’re not so different. Continuing despite.

***

How long, do you think?

How long what?

Can this last.

Forever. What do you mean? Forever.

Others might come. All the land. There’s food, clean water.

Don’t talk like that.

It’s all I can think about some days.

Look at me. We’re safe. You and me. Hear? It’s never been any other way.

I guess. I know.

Say it.

You and me.

***

They made friends with a wounded elk that limped to the edge of the Elijah Oliver property one day and collapsed forward onto its front leg. A moan that reverberated through the trees. Bleeding from the shoulder. Sam hurried out to the porch, Dean behind and they froze before the animal still somehow regal in its pain. It looked at them beseeching, antlers pointed ever toward the sky. Towels, Sam said, first-aid kit on the table. Unwise perhaps to waste their materials this way. The elk let them do what they needed to do and after it didn’t get up but stayed there on the ground with them and nudged its snout against Dean’s leg.

It’s thanking you.

It’s a wild animal.

Then it was back, early morning and again at dusk. It stood and watched the door until they spied it through the front window and came out. If they had food to spare but they didn’t and they knew it was used to fending for itself anyway. Two more days. It seemed the elk wasn’t after anything except a bit of benevolent attendance at the end of things. They could give it that.

It’s a wild animal Dean said and Sam said are we now so different?

***

Days they put twenty miles on the boot. Every trail they could find, everything theirs. They’d come upon crumbling signs dividing the wild from the tamed and they’d forge ahead, pioneers of the new ancient world. Dean would ask Sam about the first settlers to this place and Sam would tell him how they had fought and taken what wasn’t theirs. Is that what we’re doing? he asked and Sam said it’s not like that anymore and it was easy to believe that was true. They’d swim naked in the river, silt on their skin and they would laugh and laugh and examine every inch of their bodies glistening wet in the light. They were boys they’d once been and boys they’d never gotten to be. Everything and nothing theirs.

***

Cold months. All their energy spent gathering wood and chopping wood and tending a fire determined to snuff. It snowed and snowed, ground under hard as cement and icicles hanging from the rafters sharp like teeth. Almost overnight the game disappeared. Hungry months. Hard to see through. Finally they said I wonder about the rest of the world because it was getting on that they couldn’t help it anymore, thinking about what was out there beyond their mountain. What they had caused. The darkness and the burning and everything after so quickly gone. We did this. Because of? Because of what. For what. Back then every motivation had been sharp and well-set: we did this for us, for you and me. Cold and hungry months and their minds closing in on them. So with what reserves left them at the end of the day they pressed hard and slow into each other and cried their names and felt the beating of their hearts under tongue and after they lay warmth to warmth and said we did this for us, for you and me.

***

They asked the question: Was that reason enough?

***

At the church Dean went to his knees though what he was after he couldn’t have said. He lifted his palms up. Bite of the wood. He welcomed the hurt. He tried to feel the people who’d once been here or he tried to think of them and what they had believed in. If at their end it had made a difference. He said out loud into the silent empty space and into the silent empty mountain I don’t know if I have ever done the right thing. He walked back afraid and alone, wind kicking around his feet. The brush rustled with animals unseen. Sam had water boiling over the fire and after that a squirrel which they ate quickly and pleasurelessly and then went to bed and Sam didn’t ask.

***

Gathering wood when he saw it, tiny blade of green thinner than ribbon. Another one next to it. He dropped the wood into the snow and he ran inside and he said Sam, Sam and they crouched down around it like children. The wood on the ground now damp and useless but they couldn’t make themselves care. For at last the push of spring.

***

I need you to understand something.

There’s nothing to understand.

Yes there is. There is. I was afraid. My head was so screwed up.

I know.

Stop. You don’t. Don’t excuse me, okay, not now. In that moment I couldn’t see anything beyond. Not the consequences, nothing. Not the world. It was just what was right there in front of me and what was in front of me was you. My little boy, okay? Just my little boy. How was I—

It wasn’t just you there. I was a part of it, don’t excuse me either.

You say that.

Because it’s true.

Sam.

You could’ve done anything. Asked me for anything and I would’ve let you. My whole life.

Sammy.

Are you sorry?

Don’t ask me that. Please.

***

Sunrise pink above the trees and the first tentative calls of the Carolina wren echoing through. They hiked up to the top of a ridge and stood and looked out over the purple layers of mountain. It was their end of things or else always it had been their beginning. They stood and looked and put their hands to each other’s necks and held there. Silent steady tears for the morning.

I never used to cry this much. Shit. At everything.

Goin’ soft.

You too.

Yeah. Guess so.

They felt the changedness of the world and they felt too that it was not much changed. If it kept on turning and the stars above still shone and if the water flowed fast and free below. Not all ruin. Their brother beside. Was that reason enough? And they answered yes, yes.

[pculrstate]

Thank you!!! For writing everything you've ever written 🥰

i love you 😘😘😘😘💖💖💖💖💖

[pculrstate]

it’s literally so cute when people comment “thank you for writing this” like 🥹🥹🥹🥺🥺🥺😭😭😭😭🥺😢🥺😢😢😢 you’re welcome 🥹🥹🥺😭😢🥺🥹🥹🥺🥺😭🥹