ultraviolet9a | Kaleidoscope

>> Kaleidoscope

TITLE: Kaleidoscope
AUTHOR:

ultraviolet9a
SPOILER: A lot possibly. Throughout all seasons, but not overt. Overt for season 4, up to 4.05.
GENRE: Gen (small het parts don’t count. Nope.)
CHARACTERS: John Winchester, Dean Winchester, Sam Winchester, Mary Winchester, Jess, Castiel
SUMMARY: Kaleidoscopes and the Winchester life.
RATING: PG-13.
FEEDBACK: Dude…duh.
DISCLAIMER: Don’t own, no profit, don’t sue.
NOTES: for shiny

irnan. She wanted John/Mary, and it starts out like that. Honestly.
BETA: by very lovely

pdragon76

Shift

On their first-year wedding anniversary, Mary bought John a kaleidoscope. He quirked his eyebrows as he looked at her, and asked if that was a new sex toy because as far as the shape was concerned, she’d been had. John was much, much better. Not to mention bigger.

Mary laughed, small streaks of blood rushing to her cheeks, and told him it was a kaleidoscope, you over-confident smartypants, and John asked her if that was anything as exotic as Kama Sutra.

She rolled her eyes, called him incorrigible, but his oh-so-clever-in-his-humble-opinion innuendos had resulted in both of them trying to find their way to the bedroom while taking their clothes off. And though they did manage the clothes-off part, they never made it to the bedroom. John thought that the staircase was one place they had dreadfully neglected in that aspect, and they should rectify this in the name of equality.

Or something.

Mary told him he had had a wee bit too much to drink, which he was more than happy to admit, when in his heart he knew that intoxication was Mary, not liquor.

God, he loved that woman.

Hours later, finally in bed, basking in a sweaty, bruised, slightly dizzy afterglow, Mary had walked to the living room naked to fetch his gift. John was pretty convinced she walked that way just to make his toes curl, because the glorious sight of her naked tight body moving was just… ah. Which, of course, had resulted in another round of loving, that left them in the same kind of afterglow (except more panting). Mary, face on his shoulder, giggled and blessed her luck that she had married a man with stamina.

“Show me that gift of yours, then,” John said, kissing her hair, and Mary handed it to him, and John looked through and shook the little crystals around, till all the world seemed to explode in colours and shapes.

“It’s beautiful,” he said as Mary took it from his hand. She moved and light streamed through the windows, and made shadows on her face, and she smiled and more shadows moved, and John thought that she was a kaleidoscope too; shifting, moving, with every expression, so much beauty that his chest ached.

“I just thought,” she said. She shrugged. “Just saw it and couldn’t resist, John. Because, you know.”

“Know what?”

“Can’t you feel our world change?”

John looked at her and she drew his hand on her belly and he knew and the world exploded in colours without even moving.

The kaleidoscope got lost in the Fire.

Shift

The first years after he took to the roads, one infant son strapped in the child seat, another toddler strapped in the back but un-strapping every ten or twenty minutes or so till John told him to stop moving please, the real struggle had been trying to make the kids be still. He remembered endless tapes with fairytales played over the Impala, or the Smurfs singing Christmas carols, endless magnetic board games after Sam grew old enough that he wouldn’t swallow the pieces, getting Dean his first walkman, electronic games just to keep them still, soft teddy bears.

Whenever they lived somewhere, Dean was the kid with the greatest ideas on how to spend a rainy afternoon.

They were patient kids, all things considered, though John knew even back then what a mule Sam would grow into. They grew up driving, and the more their age increased, so did the miles and the times spent on the road, and John’s knowledge of what the world really was about.

But sometimes even Dean would get restless and nothing would cut it. So John bought them each a kaleidoscope.

Dean spent hours fascinated with it, cradling it gently, sometimes pushing the shapes into new fragments of colours, more often than not simply looking through it, as if he was trying to memorize the pattern, trying to find a way to keep the pretty shapes in his mind. To hold the beauty, hold something steady.

“You’re supposed to shake it, you know,” John said once. “One small push, new colours, son.”

Dean looked at it thoughtfully.

“I remember, Dad,” he quietly said.

“What?” Sam piped up.

Dean looked uncertainly at his brother, then father.

“Mom had one, too.”

They stayed quiet for a long time.

Shift

The day they moved in together, Jess bought Sam a kaleidoscope. He laughed softly as he held it in his hands, fascinated by her smile, all love and concern and hope and worry at the same time, shifting and blending and morphing into each other.

“You said you used to have one when you were a kid,” Jess said, and between the lines, just there, a soft accusation. As if Sam was to blame that he couldn’t tell her what the past had been like. He supposed in a way it was his fault. But the woman squeezing next to him on the sofa, smelling of strawberry and vanilla, this woman was too radiant, and Sam, Sam didn’t want any more changes. He just wanted to be still, caught in that moment, caught in that woman forever.

He kissed her, full of love and a sliver of worry he couldn’t shed. Then he got up and fetched the gift he had bought for her, a cook book for decadent sweets, because her mouth seemed to consist of sweet teeth only. She laughed and laughed and told him she’d be baking a new one every week.

The kaleidoscope and the cook book got lost in the Fire.

Shift

After the Rugaru, after the movie-lover shapeshifter, everything seems back to normal. As normal as Winchester normal can be anyway; Ruby is nowhere to be seen, and Sam has made his choices, and Dean believes him. The Apocalypse may be afoot, but he has Sam back and he has the hunt back (and he got laid too) so Dean can breathe again. He wishes they could stay like this forever.

When Castiel appears as noiselessly as a shooting star, it’s almost dawn. Sam’s fast asleep, wrapped up in a cheap paisley duvet. Everything seems to be paisley in this motel room, as if some paisley madman has decorated it, small designs so closely interwoven that in the half light they seem to move and twist like tiny serpents. Or so Dean thinks, quietly putting his shoes on. He’s hungry. He’s thinking of donuts and black coffee and pecan pie and his mouth waters.

When he closes the motel door behind him, Castiel is leaning against the hood of his car. Dean sighs.

“Cas,” he says.

Castiel looks at him for a long time.

“Castiel,” the angel finally says sitting up straight. There is no anger. He looks tired. His palms leave small prints on the dewed surface of the hood.

“You’re up early,” Dean says. “Hey, do angels even sleep?”

“Dean.”

“Right, I get it.” Dean shoves his hands in his pockets. “Too early for small talk. Any new seals that got broken? Any leads on Lilith? Anything I should know about?”

“Sam.”

Dean’s fists tighten, hidden in fabric.

“Sam’s alright. Sam’s made his choices. No dangerous roads, nothing of the sort. He’s clean, Castiel.”

Castiel’s hands are in his pockets, too, as he looks over Dean’s shoulder to the room Sam’s asleep in. And Dean’s unnerved. Unnerved by all this.

“He’s not walking the same road,” he concedes. “Not for now.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

Castiel looks at the dirty ground.

“Have you ever seen a kaleidoscope, Dean?”

“Yeah, so?”

Castiel shifts the full force of his gaze on him. Dean doesn’t blink.

“That’s your brother,” he says. “He’s walking the straight and narrow now, Dean, but all it takes is one push, one shake, and the whole pattern might change.”

“I thought all roads lead to the same destination.”

“Nevertheless. Not all roads are the same. And there’s a lot that we cannot see. Keep a close eye on your brother, Dean. That’s what I’m here to tell you.”

“Don’t I always?”

But Castiel’s already gone. Dean turns on his heels, looks at the motel room for a long time.

There will be no roads that will get Sam hurt, Dean tells himself. No push, no shift, no turn that will change the pattern.

He starts the car. He goes to get breakfast.

There will be no shift. No shift at all.

He’ll make sure of that.

-The End.