#but the guy at the gas station this morning gave me 3 tenders instead of 2

[spiderispunk]

Constantly caught between the feeling of complete disillusionment about the future of humanity, that things will get worse and worse so why even bother to try? But then there’s this small glimmer of something that says maybe not but it definitely won’t happen if everybody gives up.

[ravenvsfox]

I love your writing. You one of my favorite blogs! If you're still taking prompts, what if, instead of Mary being killed, Neil gets separated from her and thinks Lola got to her and then the events of the book happen. But Mary is alive and track Neil down. Thank you so much

(like a literal year later, hello! here you are!)

Sunrise is the tender red of rare meat, and there’s smoke all over it, like someone touched the stovetop sky long enough for the flesh to smoulder. Gunpowder is tangy on his lips, and there’s sweat in the corners of his eyes, burning when he tries to blink it away. Nathaniel puts a damp hand to his forehead and barely feels it.

The burner phone is still in his free hand, and when he realizes it, he lets it drop to the dirt. He can feel the strain of injury keeping him where he is, planted in the gravel and weeds in front of a gas station, freshly conscious from an hours-old blow to the head.

His mother is dead.

He waits for a minute. The sun cranks up the horizon when he’s aware enough to track it, sealing him into the first day he’s ever lived without his mother. He tries to flex the hand on his forehead and feels a brittle ache in his bones, his joints swaddled in plush bruises. He waits for the tug on his hand. Can’t slow down Abram. We don’t have time to hurt. Get your bag. Get your ID. Get your bearings. Get down.

He knows he should be moving but no one’s tugging. He can hear fire bells, feel the heat on the soles of his feet, taste the smoke, but he feels like his mom’s still inside. His mom.

He wrenches over, legs unsteady as matchsticks, and throws up in the dust. He whirls to keep his balance, a wicked tornado of grief and failure and terror, and the dirt kicks up under his skidding sneakers.

“What do I do,” he whispers.

The desert looks at him with pity in its single, scalding eye, the blood leaches from the sky, but Nathaniel’s stays drying on his face and curdling in his arteries.

He falls to his knees and his bruised bones scream, his head turns over, sick with concussion. He grabs for the phone and looks at the screen again.

Finders keepers, the screen says. Lola, with her cruelty like thunder to his father’s lightning, had sent him two messages, within 17 minutes of each other:

A picture of his mother, one of her eyes nicked out of it’s socket, her mouth lax and streaming blood. And finders keepers.

They’d tousled, Nathaniel and four of his father’s men, his legs blurring as he fought to escape, throwing whatever he could find and levelling gunfire inaccurately behind him. They’d tracked him to the rest stop in the middle of Nevada desert and started shooting as soon as he’d started running.

Earlier, in the slow third day of their having been in one place at once, his mother had hot-wired a car and driven to the nearest town for supplies, left him for forty minutes at most.

Nathaniel managed to incapacitate three of the men before he’d been knocked out on the curb. He can’t figure out why the last guy left him scraped into the parking lot, blood bubbling out on sun-baked gravel. He can’t understand why he’s alive or how he’s supposed to stay that way.

His mother’s dead.

He presses the screen of the phone down into a rock until it cracks and goes black. He gets up on his hands and knees, sweaty dark hair in his face, elbows trembling with effort. He looks at the dark shape of a truck rumbling down the road, and he’s scared enough that his adrenaline carries him to his feet.

He wipes his mouth with the back of his hand and limps until he can fake an even gait. He feels his pockets for the cash his mother gave him and comes up empty. He remembers the way she’d gripped his head by both ears and forced their foreheads together, less than twenty-four hours ago. He grieves so suddenly and violently that he stumbles.

He’s completely alone, and his mother never told him what to do, never thought that he’d be far enough away for one of them to be choked off from the other. The nearest store of money and documentation is one state over. The clothes on his back are soaked through with grimy blood, and the slash of a skidding bullet over his side is burning with early infection.

Nathaniel walks calmly to the door of the gas station, shrugs his panicked tears off twice over, and leans heavily into the door.

“You’ve gotta help me,” he cries, stumbling lightly into a display of postcards, not hard enough to damage. “I’m so sorry, I’m— he took my wallet, my keys, I don’t know. Please help me, I just wanted some gas, I’ve been driving all night, and now—“ he sobs, and the man behind the counter skirts around it, nervous, hands raised.

“You got mugged, son?”

“He-he hurt me, I think I might be bleeding out—“ Not even close, not even a litre. “My phone— I didn’t know what to do, so I just, I just handed it all over, all of it.”

“Probably the right thing. He get your ID an’ all?”

“Everything,” Nathaniel says miserably. “Everything, and I can’t go to the hospital, oh god, I don’t even know how to get there, or if there is one, or how I’d pay, I don’t, I don’t—“

“Hey, hey, calm down, how about you clean yourself up and we’ll see?”

Nathaniel nods, eyes full of tears, cradling his own side where the blood is mostly dry. “God bless you. Thank you so much. Thank you.”

The man’s head bobs, clearly proud of himself, but he can’t seem to bring himself to get any closer.

“Bathroom to the left.”

Nathaniel nods gratefully and stumbles a little bit for effect, feeling his way heavily along the aisles and swiping supplies as he goes. He can see booze behind the counter but he’s not risking it, so sterilization will have to wait.

He pushes his way into the bathroom and stalls out in the middle of the room, aware of the ways in which lies can run out and people can be uncharitable when they’re being fooled. He lifts his shirt painfully to his elbows and has to stop, panting closely into the off-white stretch of wall next to the mirror. He can see the side of an angry wound, streaking from his ribs to the small of his back.

He cleans the wound quickly, painfully, biting down on his belt for some of it. He can sense the shop-owner outside the door.

He fishes out the emergency twenty rolled in his shoe and pockets it. He splashes his face over and over again until he feels numb enough that the tears stop coming. He presses stolen gauze into the hollow heart of his wound and packs it in until his nose burns with the pain.

He asks sweetly, haltingly, through a crack in the door if there’s anything he can wear, and the guy digs up a flannel from the lost and found, something that Nathaniel has to roll the sleeves on three times. He looks in the mirror and sees mottled bruising and hair dye, but he can’t look himself in the eye. His mother is nowhere in his face.

He leaves the gas station feeling like nothing has changed as long as people can still die and the sun can still rise, and everything is waiting to be taken and gutted for your own use.

He also feels, when he hoists himself up into the stream of traffic headed for Spring Valley, and finds his way into stolen goods and borrowed survival, that it’s his responsibility to keep them together now, he and his mother, and that as long as he keeps his head down, it’ll be like she’s still dragging him through whatever life he’s got left.

He gets to their storage locker five nights later, and his fists ball when he sees the paperwork and identification for the both of them tucked into a box alongside a few guns and wads of money. His mother’s face stares up at him, docile and smiling for the camera. Her eyes are bear traps.

Norah Josten and her son, Neil Josten.

Nathaniel closes his eyes. He feels like he’s swimming laps over and over again, turning over and disorienting himself, propelling away from his latest impact. This identity is just another lap, another turn, another day with his head underwater.

Neil opens his eyes.

2 years later

“Hey Neil, do you have any good team pictures on your phone?” Dan asks, dropping into the seat across from him. “We’re updating the wall.”

“I dunno, do glamour shots of his boyfriend count?” Nicky asks sweetly.

“Well he’s on the team, isn’t he,” Dan replies, eyes bright.

“Unfortunately,” Andrew says. He’s eating skor pieces straight from the bag, and the crunching is louder than the exy tapes they’re watching on Kevin’s laptop, the tinny ruckus.

“I don’t have any pictures on my phone,” Neil says, not looking up from the game. “I use it to contact people.”

“Man, I say this with love, but there’s a fine line between practical and fucking boring and you’re walking it,” Matt says, putting his hand on the laptop to close it and getting pinched hard for his troubles.

Neil smiles privately, still watching the jumbled action of the game, undeterred. He never thought he’d get the chance to be boring.

“I can’t believe Jean’s on the bench right now,” Kevin says, ignoring them all, his eyes tracking a striker approaching goal, pushing and pulling through the defence. “They’re under-utilizing him.”

“Letting him heal,” Neil corrects. He can sense Kevin rolling his eyes beside him.

“It’s been months, his scars are all healing fine.”

“I’m not talking about his scars,” Neil says. He waits for Kevin to look at him, chastened and queasy. “You should understand that.”

“Okay, that’s interesting,” Matt says, glancing meaningfully at Dan then back to the two of them.

“I love a bitch fight in the morning,” Allison agrees, teeth flashing. “Insult his form next.”

“I’m just reminding him that some players are better left out.”

“Close enough,” Allison replies, waving her hand.

“You’ve never cared about healing before,” Kevin grumbles.

“Behave, please,” Wymack calls from the desk where he’s flipping idly through papers, pretending to get work done. “More watching, less gossiping, or you’ll all be taking notes.”

Andrew salutes sarcastically at the same time that Dan cheerfully says, “yes coach!”

The noise simmers down for a minute, and then Nicky leans in over the coffee table and says, “they’re just pissed that they have to use their brains instead of their racquets.” He points two fingers at Neil and Kevin and then mimes a headache.

“Traditionally you use both,” Aaron says, disgusted.

“Apparently not if you’re an athlete you don’t,” Wymack thunders. “Get your fuckin’ notebooks out, I want lists of plays and I want commentary.”

“Nice,” Nicky says snidely to Aaron, who gawks back at him.

“You’re the one who—“

“Excuse me.”

Neil looks up and finds Renee looking drawn near the doorway, bunching herself up in the crack between the door and the frame like she’s plugging a leak.

“There’s a woman here to see Neil,” she says tightly, and it’s all she can get out before Mary Wesninski slips past Renee, slippery as silk.

“His mother,” she corrects, voice even but clotted. If you were listening, if you knew it better than anyone else’s, you could hear the strain.

She finds his face and her mouth spasms.

He doesn’t know who to protect from who. He wants to throw out hands in between his mother and his family. He feels something loose wind back inside of him, like all of the filling in his tape had been spilling spilling spilling. It hurts, to swallow it back up, to feel his honesty sealed back inside of him.

His mother has a glass eye, a shade darker than the right. Her hair is honey blonde and damaged near the ends, bleached into petrification. Her whole body is tilted, and he knows that she is carrying herself through chronic pain, held just so for casual alleviation of constant agony.

She is his mother, and his eyes flood with tears, stinging hard like he’s been exposed to something pungent. Every time he’d ever looked at her face it had been with fear of something.

“Mom,” he says thickly. Andrew shifts closer to him, defensive.

“Time to go,” she says immediately, smiling quick, a squeeze of an expression. “I’m so sorry,” she tells the room, “but we’ve had a family emergency. I’m taking him home.”

“He is home,” Andrew says simply.

“Like hell you’re taking him,” Wymack says.

Mary looks at Neil, a lick of flame. He recoils. She knows that he’s laid roots in this soil now, that he ignored her only rules. Everything that he ever did in reckless grief and rage and set on his mother’s grave is within her reach now.

“Neil,” she says. Her tongue folds the word into the lie that it is. “We have to go. Car’s waiting.”

A stolen car with fake plates. A thief mother with a fake face. Stepping back into that life would kill him for sure. Ichirou would find them so much faster than Nathan, and his unpaid debt would beg and cry for blood.

“Dad’s dead,” Neil whispers.

“Neil Abram,” she says warningly. She crosses the room, bursting it open, gutting it with her sturdy heeled shoes and the lines around her mouth and the gun he knows is in a shoulder holster beneath her blazer.

Andrew stands up. “You touch him you lose the other eye,” he says calmly.

Mary stops short. Her mouth twitches again. “Come,” she says. Neil does, staggering to his feet, finally feeling the tug he’d been waiting for outside that gas station two years ago.

“Neil, what the hell,” Nicky says, appalled.

“I’m sorry,” Neil says, feeling all of his victories topple like he always expected they would, watching his home burn with everything inside. He looks at Andrew and tries to memorize him, fast, the sweetness in his bitter frown and his ashy hair, the tense set of his hands. He closes his eyes and sees him relaxed, rosy with sunrise, eyes low and calculating.

“I thought your mom was— you know—“ Matt starts, and Mary gathers Neil’s wrist into her grip, twisting until the seam of his armband faces the front.

“You’ve been telling stories?” she asks, face already done up to look apologetic. Neil can feel himself floating back over to her, she’s unhooked his boat from the dock. “I’m sorry for you all, for you, Mr. Wymack, he can be a bit of a problem, a pathological liar, but—“

Andrew tries to step between them, and Mary yanks Neil behind her by the arm, struggling to shield him from a perceived threat. He lets himself be moved, seeing everything at a remove, his lives before and after the foxes like lenses laid one on top of the other.

“No,” Andrew says, maybe by accident, and he produces a knife so quickly that Neil can’t decide whether or not he wants to warn his mother or let Andrew save him, like always.

Mary dodges the first swipe by nothing, by a breath, and her eye is pristinely clear when she bobs back into Neil’s line of sight.

“This is the company you’re keeping now?” she asks.

“This is the mom you ditched?” Dan retorts. “Can’t say I blame you.”

“You can’t trust them,” Mary says, leaning savagely into Neil’s ear. “You never trust. You take what you need and—“

“And run, I know.” In his head, she is pressing vodka into his wounds and putting her sweaty forehead to his. Don’t stay or you’ll get shot again. Don’t look away from me for long enough to mess up like this.

“We’ll talk about this later,” Mary says, nodding towards where Andrew’s body is an uncoiled whip and the air is singing with anticipation.

“Neil,” Andrew says, and it’s oceans away from his mother’s cattle prod voice.

“Andrew,” Neil says. “I can’t think.“

“Don’t go,” he says simply. “She does not own your life. She cannot resurface only after you’ve wiped out every threat.” He’s holding a knife the same way he holds a cigarette, loose, propped between two fingers and a thumb. Neil puts his head down.

“No reason for you to run anymore,” Wymack tells him, an arms length away now, hands spread. “Mom or not, lying your way into the room isn’t your style anymore, am I right?”

“What have you told them, hm?” Mary asks, and wrenches Neil further towards the door like she’s saving a drowning victim, so suddenly that his breath stutters.

Andrew moves fast, twisting her hand out of the way and tripping her away from Neil, taking advantage of the cocked hip from her chronic pain, probably a spinal injury. He takes her to the wall hard enough for the door to judder closed. Neil registers relief and panic in the keen glint of light from Andrew’s knife as he sinks it into Mary’s hand, pinning her palm to the wall.

There’s a commotion as Wymack rushes forward to destabilize Andrew, but he isn’t even fighting, his muscles are corded with tension but he’s waiting for Neil’s go ahead. He’s incapacitated the threat and now he’s just circling, restless.

Mary bites her pain in half, not even crying out, her body shaking hard and then stabilizing. Neil watches her blood leak down to the laminate floors and thinks about the way that she’s tracking mud through the home that he only found once he’d let her go.

Her straining eye finds Neil’s face, as exposing as when she walked into the room. “You let them put you in a zoo. You let them clip your wings.”

“I wanted it,” Neil admits, feeling revulsion in his throat but bravery at his back. “I signed up for it. Over and over. It’s the reason he’s dead. It’s the reason we’re safe.”

“Don’t be naïve,” she snaps. “We’re not safe. Everyone knows you, Abram, your blood is worth even more now. I’ve been following your tracks for months, and you have both a legacy and publicity to contend with; you’re attached to your father and the Moriyamas and this team. I can’t undo what you’ve done.”

“I haven’t run anywhere in months,” Neil argues. “I cut a deal and I’m living with it.”

“If you’re making deals with those people then you’re not living.”

“I don’t think you remember what living is,” Neil snaps. She makes a frustrated noise, and twists her hand against the pain. Andrew sneers, and Neil realizes all at once that he is furious.

His face is showing all the fingerprints of emotion that Neil left on him, and the violence was more of an instinct than a calculation.

“I can’t protect you from this,” Mary warns. “You’re too close.”

“You never protected him at all,” Andrew says. She eyes him, teeth halfway to bared, the rabid smile that is the only family resemblance that they truly all share.

“You couldn’t possibly understand, and I don’t know why Neil let you think you could.”

“He didn’t let him,” Aaron hisses unexpectedly, arms crossed tightly and knees locked together where he’s still on the couch. “You’re not the only one in the world who something bad has happened to.”

“Not by a long shot, not in this room,” Dan agrees, stepping forward. “I know this is a high stress situation for you, but Neil is here for a reason. We’ve all done drastic things to survive.”

“Difference is, these kids don’t let that be the only thing about them,” Wymack says, “and if you try to cut Neil’s losses for him and run, it’s gonna be a lot messier than you remember. Unless he wants it,” he finishes, looking at Neil.

He catches Andrew’s eyes on him too, and shakes his head quickly. “I’m not going back to that life.”

Mary’s face crumples, and the gravity of what he’s done is crushing. “But I found you. I came back for you, Nathaniel.“

His name jars him, as she had intended it to, but not in the direction she wants. “You left me, first,” Neil says. “You knew where I was all this time and you—“ he swallows, feeling like he’s fourteen again, his hands slipping over picking a pocket, his mother staring at him, furious, branding him for life with a different strain of anger from his father’s.

Andrew steps close, facing Neil and eclipsing Mary. Neil fists a weak hand in Andrew’s collar, needing the support.

“Oh, no,” Mary says, breathless and horrified, “I can’t believe you would be stupid enough to do that. Loving someone who loves knives more than you? I guess you followed my lead after all.”

Neil’s hand drops. The implication itches and burns in him like a bad reaction, and he pushes past Andrew too quickly to be caught, hot and fast as a bullet, feverish and untouchable. He pulls the knife from his mother’s hand and holds it against her throat instead. She gasps painfully and his chest is battered in, broken into, looted.

“He’s nothing like him.” He spies the narrow peachy line of a scar at the corner of her mouth and feels tears at his eyes again, remembering the way she’d smiled around the cut for him, so he wouldn’t be afraid.

Mary smiles at him now, a shadow of pride moving over her face. “Good.”

“Look, not to tell you how to manage your family reunion, but maybe there could be less stabbing?” Nicky says, a little hysterical.

Neil drops the knife, grateful for the excuse to do so, shoulders sagging. He can feel hands dragging him back from his mother, her blood sticking his shoes to the floor, and he puts his face in his hands.

“I think you’d better go,” Wymack says gravely.

He can hear her hesitate. He knows she’s never willingly walked away from him in his life, and how it must feel like failure, like the death that she was so afraid of that she slept with a gun in one hand and Neil’s fingers clenched in the other.

When he looks up again, she’s gone.

He remembers the way he felt with his knees soldered into the sand and finders keepers clanging in his head. It’s how his mother must feel now, with her son found, and kept, and unreachable.

He looks around at the faces of his teammates, hollowed out by worry and secondhand trauma. He aches with shame.

“Are you going to be okay with this?” Renee asks carefully, and he’s startled by her voice, like he thought he was looking at a photograph until it started moving. She’s holding herself in such a way that suggests that she would track his mother down if he wished it. Andrew is staggered apart from the others, but there’s an identical look in his eye.

“Yes,” he says quietly. “I just— it used to be a relief that she wasn’t here to see what I’d done.” He blinks. “And now she’s seen it all.”

“Seen what, that you’ve outgrown her? That’s a real shame,” Allison says sarcastically. Neil flinches.

“I’m still confused about the whole she’s alive thing,” Nicky says, trying to catch Neil’s eye, trying to connect.

“We are not talking about it,” Andrew says. He pulls Neil away from the group by the back of his jersey, and no one moves to stop them.

“Neil,” Wymack says, raising his chin at him. “Later, okay?”

He nods. Andrew tugs more insistently, and Neil falls into step with him, letting his weight ease just a little into his side.

He’s ushered into the hallway, and his vision swings wildly for a glimpse of his mother for a moment before he understands that he’s lost her again, on purpose this time. He knows now that every decision he’s made for two years has been in violent reaction to a lie he believed and a secret his mother kept.

He also knows, because he felt it, expected it, that his mother had slipped a cell phone into his pocket when he’d held a knife to her neck. It was all that he could feel, looking at the thatch of new and old scars, the dark eyes that he used to find in the dark when he had a nightmare. It’s all he can feel now.

Bars of overhead lights slip by as Andrew gets him physically away from the site of his panic, putting doors between Neil and his past, the tidal wave that would destroy the town, carry away the survivors until they swim themselves to death.

He found land, and he doesn’t need a lifeboat anymore. He doesn’t miss the weight on his clothes and the salt in his lungs. His mother’s life preserver is a noose.

He finds his vision blurring, and every time he tries to apologize Andrew’s hand gets tighter in his shirt.

Somehow, they’re at centre court. Andrew’s holding him, and the court is holding them both. The smells, rubber and cigarettes, brings him stuttering out of his panic attack, and Andrew clutches him through it, tight hands at his jaw, at his waist, a mouth so flat that Neil could balance his whole world on it.

“She is not worth this,” Andrew tells him, teeth gritted.

Neil shakes his head. “They barely needed to show me anything and I believed it. I hitched a ride out of the state while my mom was still with them, bleeding out. How am I supposed to— how do I deal with that kind of mistake?”

“If she was in Lola’s hands then she was as good as dead. You were sixteen. How would getting yourself killed help her?”

“I could’ve—“

“Nothing. You are both alive now, and that is only your doing.”

“Andrew,” Neil says, screwing his eyes shut.

“I would kill her,” he says, voice going runny, getting away from him, dripping all over their joined hands. “I can tell that you’re still afraid of her.”

“I don’t want to lose this.” Neil puts their foreheads together, and breathes around his fear. “I feel like— she would take it, all, if she thought that it would save my life.”

“I will not let her. Neil.” He slits his eyes open, and Andrew is still so furious, eyes and mouth dark and wet, and it steadies Neil’s pulse to see his fear feeding into anger, coal into fire. “Blood is not family.”

Family and blood were always swirling in the same drain, people hacking each other into whatever pieces were easiest to move, or track down, or swallow.

The foxes only ever wanted him whole.

“Yeah,” Neil says, nearly frantic, bringing Andrew’s hand up to his chest. “Yeah. This is.”

[deansmixtape]

The Twelve Days of Wincestmas

They had decided to forgo their typical gifts this year on Christmas Eve, instead, challenging each other to the 12 days of Christmas challenge.  Each day one would gift the other, using the song’s lyrics as inspiration.  They were each thoroughly amused to see what the other could come up with.

On the first day of Christmas, my true love gave to me:  A juicy fresh pear pie

Sam had used the last of his precious Harry & David pears, and real butter in the crust.  It was flaky, tart and perfect – tender crisp and sweet like apple with a rich salted caramel glaze.  Watching Dean take the first mouthful and make a moan of bliss was more than enough satisfaction.  But being that he was still a little brother at heart, he waited for the reaction as he turned on the Partridge Family’s Christmas album.

On the second day of Christmas, my true love gave to me:  Two chocolate turtles and Dove shampoo

Not exactly healthy chocolates, but the nuts in it earned him a genuine smile from his brother.  Dean knew he’d hit a home run when Sam opened the Peach Blast shampoo and closed his eyes though.  Sammy loved those fruity, floral, fancy shampoos and Dean figured adding in a week’s worth of scalp massages to their joint shower sessions would help.

On the third day of Christmas, my true love gave to me:  Three French Coq au Vin dinners

Well, three Cornish hens anyway.  Sam substituted bacon for pancetta because Dean, and used a Burgundy wine paired with fresh cremini mushrooms and an aged Brandy pulled from the library.  It wasn’t Julia Child’s – more like Ina Garten and some liberties, but even he enjoyed the meal.  Judging by the lack of leftovers and an adoring smile from his brother, they both had.

On the fourth day of Christmas, my true love gave to me:  Four tweets (‘calling birds’)

Oh yeah, Dean felt like he’d totally cheated.  Well, it was within the spirit of the challenge, so it fully counted.  He set up an account for Sam, then sent out four distinct tweets in Sammy’s honor, @’ing the accounts of True Crime All the Time, National Public Radio, Planet Organic and We Rate Dogs.  He had created it under the Men of Letters name, so Sam could continue to use it for research and networking, but those initial tweets had Sam grinning, dimples fully on display. 

On the fifth day of Christmas, my true love gave to me:  Five golden onion rings

The onions were supposed to be home-grown from Sam’s patch of garden, however, they hadn’t bloomed quite as Sam had hoped for.  He settled for store bought instead, and set about making home-made onion rings for Dean.  The standard buttermilk bath was spiced up with a bit of cayenne and a splash of Tabasco, but the real kick came with the dipping sauce where he used horseradish and nutmeg for a savory taste experience.  While Dean grilled burgers outside, Sam made the rings, piling them hot and fresh on a platter.  Dean’s thumbs up while stuffing his mouth had Sam chuckling as he set about to start another batch.

On the sixth day of Christmas, my true love gave to me:  Six goosedown filled pillows (and comforters)

Dean had counted and double counted.  Sammy had six – SIX – pillows on his bed alone.  Which was damn peculiar since they tended to both use Dean’s bed with his four pillows.  Occasionally Sam would sleep alone – when he was sick (and still Dean came to comfort him), when they were fighting (it happened on occasion) and when he just needed alone time (which Dean took to mean was secret code for no sex tonight.)  He had planned on getting them each a complete new comforter and pillow set, of the finest goosedown he could find.  They were going to be sleeping in soft, sumptuous heaven, no matter where Sammy’s precious, tousled head touched down. 

On the seventh day of Christmas, my true love gave to me:  Seven origami swans

Sam spent the better part of the morning learning how to make the swans, cursing under his breath at his long fingers folding tiny bits of paper this way and that until he had perfected seven delicate swans.  He then spray painted them all with a clear coat of acrylic spray paint to make them waterproof.  After a hearty lunch of tomato rice soup and grilled cheese sandwiches, Sam suggested a relaxing bath for them both before they spent an afternoon of watching Game of Thrones.  He ran an extra hot tub, added some silly bubble bath, and set the swans to float.  When Dean joined him, Sam was already naked, welcoming him with open arms for a steamy, sexy bath. 

On the eighth day of Christmas, my true love gave to me:  Eight bottles of chocolate milk

Dean had thought long and hard about including some of their previous holiday traditions into the challenge to preserve them, so he looked to the local gas station for day eight.  He’d purchased eight bottles of the official drink of their childhood on the road, chocolate Yoo-hoo.  They’d learned to love the stuff as it wouldn’t spoil with lack of refrigeration, and it was easy to grab and go without much fuss for two kids who loved chocolate milk.  Dean set the bottles to chill in the fridge, and during their movie marathon of Lord of the Rings, broke them out between DVDs to enjoy with some licorice and popcorn. 

On the ninth day of Christmas, my true love gave to me:  Nine porn DVDs with dancing ladies

Sam’s cheeks were flushed the brightest pink he thought he could ever imagine.  He’d walked into the adult toy store, intent on purchasing the first nine porn DVDs that included dancing of some form, then walking out.  Easy peasy.  However he found himself being propositioned by the cashier during the slowest checkout imaginable, caught off-guard and completely tongue tied.  When he mentioned the movies were for his brother (ok in retrospect maybe not the best answer at the time), the guy had just looked him up and down, smiled the filthiest depraved smile and winked, telling him a threesome with brothers was even hotter.  Not that Sam wouldn’t be into it if Dean were, but without Dean by his side, he just stuttered and clumsily made his way out the door. 

On the tenth day of Christmas, my true love gave to me:  Ten copies of Lord of the Flies (in various media)

It was a stretch – and a bit excessive, but Dean thought Sam would appreciate the effort and ingenuity given it was one of his top five favorite books.  He’d managed to track down Lord of the Flies in several different languages for Sam to read and brush up on his more rusty language skills; Georgian, Basque and Catalan.  He found three versions of the film on DVD, and a copy of the stage adaptation.  There was a CD of music from the innovative ballet created based on the book as well as a BBC airing of a dramatization broadcast, plus one audiobook.  Sam’s stunned (and impressed) face was exactly what Dean had been angling for.  Truth be told, the lyrics for day ten were a stumper, but a flash of brilliance had saved the day.

On the eleventh day of Christmas, my true love gave to me:  Eleven piping hot cups of coffee

Sam had no qualms about purchasing the very pricey Breville Oracle Touch Espresso Machine.  The touch screen allowed for choosing from espresso, americano, latte, cappuccino or flat white, and adjusted the coffee strength, milk temperature, and texture automatically based on the drink choice.  Of course, it also made plain ordinary coffee as it ground, dosed and tamped the beans fresh.  It was an indulgence to be sure, but they had so little in the way of worldly goods that they treasured and he knew Dean would soon worship at the altar of delicious home brewed goodness in short order.  Sam had also signed them up for a year’s worth of deliveries from Bean Box, and he was sure they’d find new favorite roasts in no time.

On the twelfth day of Christmas, my true love gave to me:  Twelve ice cream drumsticks

There was no way he was buying Sam a set of drums.  So therefore no need for personalized drumsticks.  And while the idea of a Caribbean vacation to listen to steel drums play sounded terrific, he knew they’d never leave for such a trip.  Plus, flying was a no go, if he had his druthers.  Dean was close to picking up a bucket of KFC all drumsticks and calling it good when he laughed and thought better of it.  After dinner that night, he pulled out the box of Nestle Drumsticks and surprised Sam with a cone.  Sweet licks of ice cream turned naughty quickly, as drips left Sammy sticky and Dean decided to clean him up in the best possible way.

After the twelve days challenge, neither brother would concede defeat – or claim victory.  Instead they celebrated each other’s creativity and thoughtfulness with a twelve hour kink marathon in bed.  They most definitely did not watch anything on TV and the new pillows and comforter got shoved to the floor during one of their more athletic sessions. 

(I’ve enjoyed being your anon - I hope you’ve enjoyed your gifts! <3 sammichgirl )

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Claps excitedly, oh it was you, sammichgirl! Thank you so much for being my wincestmas anon, I enjoyed everything very very much. This 12 days of Winchester Creativity was impressive, I love all the ideas they came up with for each other.