a subtle sort of brilliance (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
theladyscribe) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
avandell2007-08-27 04:59 pm
theladyscribe) wrote in avandell2007-08-27 04:59 pm
Entry tags:
Desolation Angels (One-shot)
Title: Desolation Angels
Characters: Dean, OFC
Rating: PG
Word Count: 839
Summary: She slides into the passenger seat and shuts the door as he throws the car into drive. He speeds down the empty highway, deftly avoiding the dead cars dotting the asphalt.
Notes: AU starting at the end of AHBL Part One. Title is from the Bad Company album of the same name.
Characters: Dean, OFC
Rating: PG
Word Count: 839
Summary: She slides into the passenger seat and shuts the door as he throws the car into drive. He speeds down the empty highway, deftly avoiding the dead cars dotting the asphalt.
Notes: AU starting at the end of AHBL Part One. Title is from the Bad Company album of the same name.
Desolation Angels
She tells him her name is Jamie and she’s from Tulsa, Oklahoma, originally, but her parents moved her to Indy when she was about eleven and she’s not been to the Midwest since. It’s mostly true; she spent a week at her grandparents’ farm the summer she was fifteen. She had a fling with the boy from the next farm over, and they went to a party at the reservoir the night before she was supposed to go home. No one in her family knows it, but she left her virginity in the back of that boy’s cherry-red pick-up truck. The irony is not lost on her.
She doesn’t know why she thinks of all this as she throws her bag into the back seat of his car. After all, the world’s ended (she’s pretty sure), and her family is gone, and that boy is probably gone too. This guy with his beast of a car is the first person she’s met in weeks who actually looks like he can handle the end of the world. Everyone else is just a ghost of their former selves, lost without interstate highways, fast food, electricity. She wonders if maybe that’s why he pulled over in the first place – because maybe he can tell she’s actually secretly enjoying the silence of the desolate roads she’s been wandering.
She slides into the passenger seat and shuts the door as he throws the car into drive. He speeds down the empty highway, deftly avoiding the dead cars dotting the asphalt. Music is playing – it’s a cassette player, which is practically a foreign concept to her – and Jamie doesn’t recognize it. It has a soothing rhythm, though, and soon she finds herself humming along a little. He glances at her, cracks a smile, and then she realizes, “You never told me your name.”
His smile disappears. “It’s Dean,” he says quietly, as though if he says it too loudly, someone will take it from him.
“Like James Dean?” she asks, and his smile returns immediately.
“Something like that,” he answers.
*
She isn’t fully conscious of when she comes to love him, only that she does. She supposes it was bound to happen; after all, they’ve been traveling the empty highways for months with almost no other human contact (and those they meet are terrified of the man and the girl who come barreling down the interstates, oblivious to the bleakness of the rest of the world).
There isn’t much beyond driving to do or say – utter freedom until all the cars still scattered across the roads are emptied of their fuel, and when that happens, who knows where they’ll be?
They don’t have a mission, though Dean refuses to stop anywhere for more than a couple days. She doesn’t quite understand his reticence, but she doesn’t mind it. If she wanted to stay stationary, she wouldn’t have climbed in his car.
*
“Who is she?” Jamie asks one morning as they’re driving nowhere on an abandoned backroad.
Dean frowns at her. “Who is who?”
“The girl in your nightmares. Sam.”
He pales. “No one,” he says. “Sam is no one.” Which means that Sam is the world, and she turns away so he won’t see her disappointment.
*
A few nights later, Dean says to the dark above his bed, “I had a brother. His name was Sam.” He doesn’t say anything else, and Jamie is a little ashamed at the relief that washes over her, that she’s not competing with a ghost.
*
“I had a brother. His name was Sam.” And he launches into a tale of nightmares – a fire in the nursery followed by a twenty-year crusade against the darkness that ultimately ended in tragedy. “Sam died in Cold Oak,” he whispers hoarsely, and Jamie can hear the tears in his voice. “And then, the man who killed him, he unleashed Hell. It’s my fault. I’m sorry.”
Jamie wants to tell him that he’s wrong, that he couldn’t have stopped the end of the world anyway, no matter what happened to his brother, but she isn’t sure that she wouldn’t be lying. Instead she slips out of her bed and moves across the room to his. Softly, she slides in next to him, putting her arms around him. He tries to move away, but she pulls him closer, resting her head on his chest.
He stiffens and then removes her arms from around his torso, deftly sliding out of her grip. He gets out of the bed and pulls on his jeans and boots before stepping outside, shutting the door decisively behind him.
She shifts in the bed, pressing into the warmth left by his body, and she lets her tears fall to the pillow that still smells like the shampoo in his hair.
*
When she wakes in the morning, he’s sitting on the bed opposite, watching her. She turns away, blushing slightly.
He stands and begins throwing his clothes in his duffle. “Come on,” he says.
So Jamie goes.
She tells him her name is Jamie and she’s from Tulsa, Oklahoma, originally, but her parents moved her to Indy when she was about eleven and she’s not been to the Midwest since. It’s mostly true; she spent a week at her grandparents’ farm the summer she was fifteen. She had a fling with the boy from the next farm over, and they went to a party at the reservoir the night before she was supposed to go home. No one in her family knows it, but she left her virginity in the back of that boy’s cherry-red pick-up truck. The irony is not lost on her.
She doesn’t know why she thinks of all this as she throws her bag into the back seat of his car. After all, the world’s ended (she’s pretty sure), and her family is gone, and that boy is probably gone too. This guy with his beast of a car is the first person she’s met in weeks who actually looks like he can handle the end of the world. Everyone else is just a ghost of their former selves, lost without interstate highways, fast food, electricity. She wonders if maybe that’s why he pulled over in the first place – because maybe he can tell she’s actually secretly enjoying the silence of the desolate roads she’s been wandering.
She slides into the passenger seat and shuts the door as he throws the car into drive. He speeds down the empty highway, deftly avoiding the dead cars dotting the asphalt. Music is playing – it’s a cassette player, which is practically a foreign concept to her – and Jamie doesn’t recognize it. It has a soothing rhythm, though, and soon she finds herself humming along a little. He glances at her, cracks a smile, and then she realizes, “You never told me your name.”
His smile disappears. “It’s Dean,” he says quietly, as though if he says it too loudly, someone will take it from him.
“Like James Dean?” she asks, and his smile returns immediately.
“Something like that,” he answers.
*
She isn’t fully conscious of when she comes to love him, only that she does. She supposes it was bound to happen; after all, they’ve been traveling the empty highways for months with almost no other human contact (and those they meet are terrified of the man and the girl who come barreling down the interstates, oblivious to the bleakness of the rest of the world).
There isn’t much beyond driving to do or say – utter freedom until all the cars still scattered across the roads are emptied of their fuel, and when that happens, who knows where they’ll be?
They don’t have a mission, though Dean refuses to stop anywhere for more than a couple days. She doesn’t quite understand his reticence, but she doesn’t mind it. If she wanted to stay stationary, she wouldn’t have climbed in his car.
*
“Who is she?” Jamie asks one morning as they’re driving nowhere on an abandoned backroad.
Dean frowns at her. “Who is who?”
“The girl in your nightmares. Sam.”
He pales. “No one,” he says. “Sam is no one.” Which means that Sam is the world, and she turns away so he won’t see her disappointment.
*
A few nights later, Dean says to the dark above his bed, “I had a brother. His name was Sam.” He doesn’t say anything else, and Jamie is a little ashamed at the relief that washes over her, that she’s not competing with a ghost.
*
“I had a brother. His name was Sam.” And he launches into a tale of nightmares – a fire in the nursery followed by a twenty-year crusade against the darkness that ultimately ended in tragedy. “Sam died in Cold Oak,” he whispers hoarsely, and Jamie can hear the tears in his voice. “And then, the man who killed him, he unleashed Hell. It’s my fault. I’m sorry.”
Jamie wants to tell him that he’s wrong, that he couldn’t have stopped the end of the world anyway, no matter what happened to his brother, but she isn’t sure that she wouldn’t be lying. Instead she slips out of her bed and moves across the room to his. Softly, she slides in next to him, putting her arms around him. He tries to move away, but she pulls him closer, resting her head on his chest.
He stiffens and then removes her arms from around his torso, deftly sliding out of her grip. He gets out of the bed and pulls on his jeans and boots before stepping outside, shutting the door decisively behind him.
She shifts in the bed, pressing into the warmth left by his body, and she lets her tears fall to the pillow that still smells like the shampoo in his hair.
*
When she wakes in the morning, he’s sitting on the bed opposite, watching her. She turns away, blushing slightly.
He stands and begins throwing his clothes in his duffle. “Come on,” he says.
So Jamie goes.
no subject
no subject
I have to admit it is a pretty good story for no beta and the earliest part I wrote of it being in my head when I woke up one day.
no subject
Are you planning on continuing this somehow? :D
no subject
And yes, Dean's POV on the next part of the story is in the works already. :)
no subject
no subject
no subject
(Anonymous) 2007-08-27 10:18 pm (UTC)(link)Also doesn't hurt that you chose Desolation Angels as your title as Desolation Angel became my favorite Bad Company CD shortly after "She Brings Me Love" became my favorite song which happened the minute they played it during the Dean/Cassie love scene. And yes I like Cassie. But it was mostly because I look a good bit like her and could oh sooo easily picture myself in that scene. Ahhh, think it's time I pulled out that dvd again.
no subject
I must admit, I didn't choose the title exactly for the Bad Company album - I only know "She Brings Me Love," and that was definitely not the music I'd had in mind when writing the story. The title popped in my head as I was writing, and I just knew I had to use it (the imagery of "desolation" was very important to me in the writing).
Thank you so much for your review!
no subject
Thanks for the read. I look forward to reading Dean's POV.
no subject
no subject
no subject
Thank you! I wasn't quite sure where I was going when I wrote that scene - I initially ended it with her putting her arms around him. And then I realized that, even though they've been traveling together for months, this is the first time he's ever let her actually get to know him. And Dean, being Dean, would have wanted her to just leave well enough alone - to essentially ignore his outburst. But Jamie isn't Sam and wouldn't have realized that, and so she tries to comfort him, but what he needs is to just be alone with his confession.
Err, I talk too much. :)