w i n c h e s t e r

stop givin’ that cat attention and give me some instead.

no.  you have opposable thumbs - pretty sure you’re capable of getting your own damn tuna.  plus, the kitten’s being cute - you’re being grumpy.  but -- i guess... if you decided to help me out with her... him?  it... then there’d be plenty of time to give you a ton of attention too...

                           The demoness’ eyes rolled in response to his comment, because of course Crowley wasn’t here. She was sure if he were here, he would’ve wandered out of whatever dark corner he had chosen to inhabit by now. However, she was a little mad that he wasn’t here. For years she had been trying to dodge any type of confrontation with the Winchester’s. She didn’t need to be caught in one of their messes again. She needed to deal with her own issues. Meg proceeded to lower her gun fully, though still glaring at the younger Winchester.

                 “Wow, I hadn’t noticed. Wanna point out                    anything else, Captain Obvious?”

                        Meg was not happy. Then again, when was she ever happy? The last time she was happy was before her death, when she could actually trust others. Her relationship, or whatever you wanted to call it, broke down her walls that kept herself from trusting others. However, that also ended up building them back up, even stronger this time. This made her not want to stay long, and as usual, it made her want to run. Running is what she did best these days.

                    “I’m not staying long. In fact, I can’t stay long. I’ve got eyes                       on me everywhere. That’ s why Crowley needs to go. He’s                       made it open season on me.”

“yep.  crowley isn’t here - which, you apparently already know...  you’re after crowley.  so -- why are you here??”

it’s not exactly the obvious, but sam can’t figure what she’s doing skulking around in the shadows in their basement if she’s on some - literal - hell bent vendetta.  or what it has to do with him.

there’s just a small ‘tchh’ of air between his teeth.  if this whole thing was just so that she could spit some kind of acidic bitchfest before rumbling on her - not so merry way - then, kudos, she’s achieved that.  he hopes that the pithy little spat was worth the time and effort it took.  sam, for his part, is pretty much over the whole ‘i’m a mean ole demon, grr, rawr’ thing.  in fact, he’s pretty much over the demon thing - period.  so it’s with a rather impassive expression that he regards her now.

“well, you know where the door is.  y’let yourself in.  m’pretty sure y’can let yourself out again.”

he just stands back - motions that if she was ‘leaving’ then she can do that whenever she wants.  like -- right now -- would be super preferable.  he does, however, get the impression that she’s angling for something - more.  demons, after all, were pretty prone to offing each other... it was pretty much their MO.  but if she wants help - she’s going to have to vomit up the words, and probably choke on them - to ask for it.  half wondering if her pride would even get as far as allowing her to take a breath, of if it’d even cross her mind.

He shifted slightly in his seat, the beat he’d been keeping dropping and instead looking slightly embarrassed.  

“Sorry, I wasn’t trying to make it sound like that.”  A lie, but it was mostly so he could focus back on the sketches.  He pushed towards Sam a sheet littered with different symbols.  “…I study ancient languages, but one I find particularly fascinating is Enochian.  Some say it’s the language angels speak.”  He glanced up at Sam, as if trying to determine if this all sounded ridiculous to the man.  After all, some of the other sheets had occult symbols and he was sure the sketched black wings didn’t help.

“I guess the only story here is my curiosity for what I study.  I’ve thought of getting something like this, but could never decide on a design.”  Again his gaze dropped and he tilted his head.  “I’d want them all as they are.  Black, across my back.”

sam might have chuckled if his - client - had voiced any concerns about a tattoo being ‘ridiculous’.  some of the requests he’d had over the years were... rather unique choices to say the least.  this one - is interesting.  he’s not particularly religious, but iconography had cropped up in his work before ( at the request of the client ).  a fair chunk of christianity - mother mary with her hands clasped in peaceful serenity, the crucifixion in various guises, a fair chunk of angelic or demonic images - with spread white wings, or tattered and charred ones.  they still didn’t beat the time someone wanted spongebob inked on their dick...  so something like this?  really -  on the scale of ‘well thought out’ to ‘drunken impulse’ is -- not that weird.

"angels, huh?  okay, well if you can leave me these as a reference - oh, and you can email me stuff if you have anything else, i can try to sketch something up for you an we can go from there... this is gonna be -- pretty big though.  you ever had a tattoo before?”

he’s asking, not because he can’t do it - but simply because some people couldn’t take it.  something that large would be at least four or five long sessions in the chair.  he is curious though - about the symbols...

“do they... mean something?  just... if i’m doing any kind of writing i’d rather make sure that it says what it should. rather than turning out to be an order for double bacon chesseburger, y’know?”

@inkchester liked for a starter:

“ Tweedle Dumb and Tweedle Dumber - Curriculum: finding new ways to wreck the world each sunday. Biblical messes guaranteed. ”

Gabriel wasn’t yelling, all the contrary: his voice was hissed and DRIPPING with acid.

Cue to a single, sharp sounding applause.

“ I gotta’ give it to you, though. It was very creative this time, you’ve managed to outdo yourselves against all odds: no one thought that was possible after all the bullshit you’ve already pulled. ”

“the bullshit i’ve pulled--??”

there could be a veritable deluge of things that sam could toss into the air about how the majority of the chaos and bollocks he dealt with on the daily hardly had it’s origins with either him or his brother -- their twisted origins and aeon spanning family feuds.  celestial and abyssal crap that had a habit of spewing out where it shouldn’t and - they - were left cleaning up that shit.  that ‘biblical messes’ oddly enough - had ‘biblical roots’ -- aka; chuckles and the pigeon crew.  

he’s just a bit tired.  gods, demi-gods, supreme beings, denizens of the pit and things plummeting from the pearly gates in balls of rage and fire.  all clamouring for their blood, their life, their soul.  universal puppets whose strings were tugged when the next epoch ending crisis landed.  thrown into the firing line - or stepping into it - when no one else would...

[ Send “📖” and I’ll use one of my favorite quotes from a book as a starter ] - a c c e p t i n g

❝ – On a long enough time line, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero. ❞

“I’ll admit, it’s not, but that doesn’t make it any less enjoyable… Death though.  I disagree.  Death is more fair, at least when you consider it takes anyone with little regards to who they are in life.”  They were getting off topic.  The sketches of wings and sigils were still strewn on the table while his pencil beat softly on the surface.

“death takes you.  that makes it sound... sentient.  like the blue oyster cult song.”

sam’s nose wrinkles slightly.  it’s not as though he doesn’t anthropomorphise things enough as it is.  probably an occupational hazard.  making art - but making art with meaning.  something that’s more than just lines and shade, ink and colour.  something that’s felt -- deeper... by the bearer of it, or by the voyeurs.

he’s also looking at the sketches...

she’s still pouting. actually that’s the understatement of the century. john made her leave work one day because zoe was in such a bad mood she almost threw a wrench through the plate glass window at the front of the shop. it was freshly painted with this month’s special advertisement on it and john wasn’t having any of that, so off she was sent, with twenty bucks pushed into her hand and “go drink it off or somethin’” whispered into her ear as a warning.

and she did. not at ace’s. she hasn’t been there in almost two weeks. instead she’s stopping at the corner store and depositing twenty after twenty in their till in exchange for cheap whiskey and a pack or two of smokes.

she’s got her earbuds in more often now too, and not a soul would say a word if they found out she’s got that ridiculous soundtrack sam plays at the tattoo shop so often.

she might be punishing herself, a little bit, for acting so stupid. for hitting him. for hurting her best friend. she wants to think he is, at least, but their text messages have been missing that certain… something they always had before. everything is way too straight-forward. there hasn’t been a single meme or ridiculous picture sent between them in — too long.

it was just a kiss and she just… reacted. horribly. painfully. he bled. she did that. and now it’s almost all she can see. she can’t close her eyes anymore without seeing that look of — she doesn’t even know what it was. was it shame? was it … what was it? the kiss itself was… PERFECT. unexpected, but still better than any others she’s ever had. and yes, she does attribute that to the fact that it was Sam. anything with Sam is automatically a million times better than anything without him.

it’s becoming more and more apparent that her entire life, every aspect of it, is better because of him.

it’s savage garden today. and again she’s not in a great mood. realizing the difference between two weeks passing by while he’s gone to the tattoo convention she bought him tickets to for his birthday, and two weeks gone by where they’re still in the same town, she’s driving past his studio to get to work every day ( no — its not ‘out of the way’. what are you talking about? ) and she knows she could end this awkwardness by just showing up and making copies of paperwork and booking him a few sessions from the never-low stack of messages he has of people wanting appointments. things could be normal. things could be good. she could have him back.

she just doesn’t d e s e r v e him.

buried wrist deep in an engine with the gentle voice of the lead singer of savage garden crooning ‘i want you’ in her ear, it takes her a minute to realize everyone around her has gone still. 

russ isn’t welding away in his corner anymore, and taz and randall have stopped, both staring off towards the big bay door she just pulled this car in through a few minutes prior to beginning it’s disassembly. the crackle of the front office speaker pulls her full attention finally, first looking there and seeing dean about to cry from trying not to… laugh?… and john just smiling smugly from his chair and looking the same direction as everyone else. 

the music stops and her eyes follow everyone else’s — just in time to hear her name. and when she sees sam standing there in… a suit?… with sunflowers?… tugging at his collar like that…  her stomach does this swoop-drop-twist thing.

w o w.

her hands start wiping against her jumpsuit, streaks the thighs more than they already are and she blows stray hair out of her eyes, pulls her earbud out to hang from the zipper in front of her chest. 

“h-hey sam. what’s up? what’s  — uh…” she points, at the flowers then eyes him up and down, finger following, as she walks a few steps around the car and stops. “… you look…. wow.”

somewhere in the semi-functioning consciousness that seems to have ducked to the back of his mind - sam is aware that he’s just given his brother, and to a slightly lesser extent, his dad and the other guys in the garage - enough ammunition to last several decades.  he’s not going to live this down.  ever.

dean is going to crucify him. which is okay - because if this doesn’t go the way he hopes it will, sam will gladly help him along with the task.  literally.  if - by some miracle, it does - then at least sam might scrape a little dignity together.  but right now - anything along the lines of saving face or pride is waaaay out of the window ( not that he possessed either in great quantities to start with ).  this isn’t about anyone else, or anything else than zoe and sam... about maybe trying to fix this... thing.  he’s not sure it’s broken.  but he does know it’s not... right.  it’s not - them.

he has - prepared for this.  kind of.  has been talking to himself - trying to pluck words out of the air that would encompass everything he wanted to say.  funny - at times like this - language seemed like such a... limited thing.  if he could possibly take how he fels and bottle it up and hand it to her - if she could just - know... it would make this a hell of a lot easier.  as it is though, he can’t.  so he’s stuck with the words.  and those words in turn - seem to be stuck in his throat.  irony... he’s an artist.  and artists are supposed to be - creative and fluid and... all sorts of things... but he’s not a lyricist.  not a poet.  not a wordsmith of any kind.  which is probably why his jaw swings open onto silence as she turns around and gives him ‘a look’.  he’s not entirely sure what ‘the look’ is saying - so... lets just hope it’s not a bad impression ( and that the water from the flowers hasn’t left a stain on the suit )...  

and zoe?  she looks... great.  with her hair bunched up into a messy bun and a greasy coverall.  he’s pretty sure the t-shirt he can see underneath his is one of his.  and that’s - that’s not a bad thing.  besides - his shirts always looked better on her anyway.  she kinda looks - pretty much perfect.  it feels like -- forever -- since he’d seen her ( at least face to face, because there were enough photos of her in his apartment, in his shop, in his car even ).

-take a moment.  just breathe.  think about why you’re here. ....she’s pointing?  FLOWERS.  right.  you brought flowers...

his arm jerks out - the stems quite possibly crushed slightly in the tightness of sam’s slightly clammy grip.  

“i got these for you.”

super smooth.  very suave.  ten points for gryffindor. goddamnit.  pull yourself together.

“i mean - they’re an apology.  they’re... i mean... i’m... i just want to do this -- properly.”

there is another breath and somehow, he manages to peel the lid off his courage - yank it out and shove some of the nerves back in the box.

“what - i mean - is that what happened was kind of a mess.  it was wonderful.  and a little sore.  and entirely a mess.  so this is me askin’ zo...  probably long past due - will you give me another chance, and maybe i can get it right.  you’re my best friend.  and i miss you - like... crazy.”

a small pause and he takes just the smallest step forward.  she hasn’t gone for the gun in the lockbox.  and she hasn’t thrown a wrench at his head yet - so maybe it was going well?

                                   ❝ -- Our bodies were printed as blank pages                                         to be filled with the INK of our hearts. ❞

[ Send “📖” and I’ll use one of my favorite quotes from a book as a starter ] - a c c e p t i n g

❝ -- Who says life is fair, where is that written?  Life isn't fair, it's just fairer than death, that's all. ❞

[ Send “📖” and I’ll use one of my favorite quotes from a book as a starter ] -- a c c e p t i n g

❝ -- Blade with whom I have lived, blade with whom I now die, serve right and just one last time, seek one last heart of evil, still one last life of pain. Cut well, old friend, and then farewell. ❞