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stephanometraI WROTE AN EPISODE CODA. IT IS 2100 WORDS OF GEN. AND IS ALSO NOT AT ALL THE CODA I WANTED TO WRITE, WHICH INVOLVES FILTHY D/s PORN.
...*hands*
Title: my soul to keep
Pairing: Gen
Rating: PG13
Summary: He thought they were beyond secrets, but apparently he was wrong. In which Sam does a little dreamwalking.
Warnings: Nothing scarier than the episode, haha.
Notes: Coda to 310, "Dream a Little Dream." Thanks to![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
clex_monkie89, who transcribed the first 600 words from chatlog to txt file (because I was lazy and said I wouldn't finish the fic if she didn't, and she knew I was lying but she did it anyway) and provided the title, to hegemony for the encouragement, and to waterofthemoon for the beta. 2100 words.
***
"So, when are you going to tell me what actually happened in your dream?"
"I already—"
"Dean."
And Dean gives Sam the "damn it, Sammy, let it go" look, the one that Sam's seen a hundred thousand times, the one that Dean learned out of self-defense as soon as Sam was old enough to ask questions.
He says, "Half past never sounds about right, Sam."
And no, it doesn't, not to Sam. He presses, "Was it about the deal? Was I there?"
Dean snorts, says, "Contrary to popular belief, the world does not actually revolve around you, princess."
And the weight of the lie is heavy between them, crushing like a stone, like running into a wall, and Sam's chest aches with the mere effort of breathing.
Ruby shows up again a month later, saying she wants to talk to them, but what she means is that she wants to talk to Dean.
Sam asks him about it later, when they're home from the bar where she happened to run into them, and then happened to spend hours cozied up to Dean in a corner booth while Sam clamored for the bartender's attention along with the rest of the Friday night horde. Dean shrugs him off, gives him a cocky smirk, and says, "What do you think we were up to?"
And Sam knows that isn't Dean, knows that no matter how pretty the packaging, Dean would never forget that Ruby's dragging a scared, pretty blonde girl around on her bizarro crusade to...do whatever she's trying to do. That fucking Ruby would be nothing so much as rape, and that for all his faults, Dean has never ever had sex with anyone who was anything less than willing.
He thought they were beyond secrets, but apparently he was wrong.
She comes around more often after that, always quick with a snide comment for Sam and a meaningful look for Dean, a new tidbit of information for Sam to dissect and obsess over and a silent demand to talk to Dean, and only Dean.
And Dean grows more and more distant, in a way that Sam would love to blame on Dean's impending damnation. But he can't.
It gets to the point where he doesn't want to watch them together, where he makes an early night of it and goes back to the motel to sharpen his knives and pore over his books, cold panic sweeping over him like a winter wind.
And one of those nights—when he's alone and angry and terrified because Dean is out consorting with demons instead of spending what precious little time he has left with Sam—he finds, nestled innocently among the rest of the arsenal, the tiny packet of herbs, the power to crawl inside Dean's head lying aromatic and quiescent in his hand.
And he maybe knows he shouldn't—no, he definitely knows he shouldn't—but he does. He can't help it.
Dean restless at night these days—fuck, they both are; Sam doesn't even know why they bother shelling out for beds when all they do is lie awake pretending that they're not staring at each other all night—but he still leaves hair on his pillow even when he doesn't sleep. It's easy for Sam to grab one the next morning, stowing it in his pocket with the dream root, and it's even easier to beg off breakfast, saying he's not feeling well enough to hit the diner up the block after the stomach problems the place gave him the previous night. Dean calls him a prissy bitch, but he leaves, goes off alone.
Sam makes the tea in one of their flasks of holy water, smiling bitterly at the almost-irony of it.
And Dean's none the wiser when he gets back, pushing an apple turnover and a cup of too-sweet, too-white coffee at Sam across the bathroom counter when he finds Sam shaving.
"Dude," Sam says, glaring, and Dean grins, slaps his back and tells him that he's had a lot worse than soap in his coffee before.
And Sam pulls a face, but he drinks it anyway. The cream coats his throat, and the saccharine hurts his teeth.
After that, it's just a matter of waiting until night falls.
Dean's dream is a bleak place, dark, cold. Sam can hear dogs keening in the distance.
You can't have him yet, he thinks, snarling, but this dream isn't what he's interested in, isn't why he's here.
The fabric of the dream surrounds him, thick and foreboding like any good nightmare ought to be, but Sam can see through it, can tear a Sam-sized hole in it and step through.
He goes deeper.
Somehow it doesn't surprise him that Dean's mind resembles nothing so much as a motel, a dimly-lit series of clapboard corridors that twist and turn back on one another without warning. But for all its seediness, it's neatly compartmentalized: memories of Dad on the right, Sam on the left, Cassie through that door. Bobby, Caleb, Pastor Jim, all down that hallway, bleeding back into Dad's rooms, reeking of gunpowder and salt.
Doors open for Sam like they're nothing, no keys or lockpicks required. He sees himself at three, thirteen, twenty-three, feels the weight of Dean's regret for the years he can't remember and the years he wasn't there. It makes Sam uncomfortable, upset, and he backs out the door the way he came.
Show me where the demons are, he thinks, surprised when he hears the words out loud in Dean's voice, like there's a PA system in Dean's brain, and when he turns the next corner he feels eyes watching him out of stained brass peepholes.
Yellow. Black. Red. Poisons for the picking, mocking voices muffled behind paper-thin doors.
Sam takes a deep breath, sucking in the still, illusory air, and makes a choice.
Black eyes stare at him from every corner, each gaze like a filthy caress, like he's a commodity to be consumed. There are so many of them, too many to count, a whole room in Dean's head that's nothing but black eyes.
He looks around, searching for Ruby, listening for the sound of her voice. "Where are you?" he asks, turning around.
She's standing right behind him, materializing from the background of hostile black stares.
"Shortbus," she says, flicking her hair over her shoulder. Her eyes switch from blue to black every time she blinks, and it's really fucking distracting. Disconcerting.
"What do you want with my brother?" Sam demands, pinning her to the spot, feeling the crackle of power under his skin.
Ruby looks down at her feet, which fade into nothingness in the dark of the room. "Sam has to be ready," she says, meaningfully, like there's some great and powerful truth there. Like she's saying something he's meant to understand.
He grits his teeth, shakes his head. "God, I hate it when you do this. Would it kill you not to be such a cryptic bitch?"
"Don't call me a bitch!"
"You were never going to help us, were you?" Sam's vibrating with frustration, his tone hard. "You keep saying that you can get him out of the deal, but there was never any way, was there?"
She sounds sad when she says, "Nope."
Sam turns and runs when a demon wearing Dean's face steps out from the shadows beside her, grinning smugly.
Reeling, he stumbles back into the hallway, walking blindly to the next door, the one that pulses blood-red behind walls too thin to contain its malevolence.
He pushes through the memories of the first deal like they're cobwebs, intent on what he's looking for, but he isn't prepared to watch himself die, doesn't want to see his body lying still and cold on the table in that house where he woke up after the first act of the nightmare ended. Doesn't want to see Dean crying over him, drinking Wild Turkey like it's water, looking so fucking lost.
"Dean," Sam says, reaching tentatively for him, but it's just a memory. Instant replay, high-definition, he thinks, Azazel's voice ringing in his ears as Dean peels off towards the crossroads.
The way she plays Dean, plays with him, makes Sam glad he killed her. It goes on forever, a litany of Dean's sins, all the reasons Dean thinks he has to hate himself, and Sam swears he can hear Dean's voice overlaid with hers, ragged with pain.
"Back to rotting meat in no time," she purrs, staring over Dean's shoulder at where Sam's standing. She's talking to him when she says, "One year, and one year only."
Christ, Sam's going to be sick, his vision bleary, nausea slamming into him like blunt-force trauma. He clutches at his stomach, totally ignoring the fact that he's dreamwalking in Dean's head and he can't possibly throw up. "Dean," he moans again, looking away from that fucking vulture trying to crawl into his brother's mouth.
And from nowhere, he hears Dean call back: "Sam!"
Sam pulls back, out of the memory, out of the room, out of the labyrinthine corridors of Dean's mind. Back to the dream.
It hasn't gotten any prettier since he first saw it, dusty soil dancing on the wind, dogs growling menacingly. Hellhounds, Sam thinks, and without thinking he takes off for the source of the noise.
Dean stands inside a Devil's Trap, ringed double with salt, penned in by massive black dogs. He's in a fighting stance, a sawed-off clutched in his right hand, the left wrapped tight around the amulet at his neck. "Sam!" he calls again, whirling around, waving the shotgun wildly at the hounds like he doesn't even see them, but Sam knows that he knows they're there.
Sam can smell his terror, and from the way the hellhounds are circling—snapping at the boundary like it's only a matter of time before they break through—they can, too.
"No," he says, hands balling into fists at his side, and the hellhounds barely have time to look at him before he's attacking them, throwing them aside, leaving them like broken dolls where they land. This dream is Sam's sandbox, not theirs, not the demonic bastards who sent them, like it isn't enough that this stupid fucking deal is a shadow on Dean's face every single minute he's awake.
He steps across the salt, watches it burn into nothingness as he passes, watches the ground swallow up the neatly chalked lines of the trap.
Dean looks up at him, still terrified, still waiting for the fight that's already over. "They're coming for me, Sam," he says, his voice thin with fear, white like his grip on his shotgun.
Sam reaches for Dean's hand, curling his fingers around Dean's forearm, feeling the clammy heat of Dean's skin even through the armor of his jacket, and chokes out, "Not tonight."
They both sit bolt upright in bed, Sam's heart beating in his throat, Dean looking wildly around the room.
"Sam?" he demands.
Sam can't move fast enough; he almost falls out of bed when he can't disentangle his legs from the bedclothes quickly enough, tripping over himself like he's fourteen instead of twenty-four and his brain hasn't caught up with his new growth. He throws himself onto Dean's bed, throws his arms around Dean, feeling the cold sweat soaking through his t-shirt. "Dean," he says, splaying a hand on Dean's chest, feeling desperately for that adrenaline-fueled heartbeat.
"What did you do?" Dean whispers, shaking his head slowly, holding himself rigid in Sam's arms, his posture screaming with tension.
Sam just shakes his head, buries his face against Dean's shoulder the way he used to when he was tiny and Dean was who he ran to for every skinned knee, every nightmare, every broken heart. "Not tonight, not tonight," he murmurs.
Dean sighs. "Sam," he says, awkwardly petting Sam's hair, touching Sam's back.
"Not tonight," Sam says again, fiercely, clinging harder, squeezing shut his eyes against the memory of the demon's delight in Dean's pain, against Ruby's vague revelations, against the hopeless, total inevitability of everything. "Not any night, you hear me? She can't have you."
And Dean finally relaxes a little, defeated. "Yeah, Sam, I hear you."
It's just another lie. Not even a particularly good one, as far as lies go.
But they both manage sleep that night, tangled chaste and close in the cheap motel sheets, and it's enough.
***
*looks around accusingly, searching for her porn muse*
...*hands*
Title: my soul to keep
Pairing: Gen
Rating: PG13
Summary: He thought they were beyond secrets, but apparently he was wrong. In which Sam does a little dreamwalking.
Warnings: Nothing scarier than the episode, haha.
Notes: Coda to 310, "Dream a Little Dream." Thanks to
clex_monkie89, who transcribed the first 600 words from chatlog to txt file (because I was lazy and said I wouldn't finish the fic if she didn't, and she knew I was lying but she did it anyway) and provided the title, to hegemony for the encouragement, and to waterofthemoon for the beta. 2100 words."So, when are you going to tell me what actually happened in your dream?"
"I already—"
"Dean."
And Dean gives Sam the "damn it, Sammy, let it go" look, the one that Sam's seen a hundred thousand times, the one that Dean learned out of self-defense as soon as Sam was old enough to ask questions.
He says, "Half past never sounds about right, Sam."
And no, it doesn't, not to Sam. He presses, "Was it about the deal? Was I there?"
Dean snorts, says, "Contrary to popular belief, the world does not actually revolve around you, princess."
And the weight of the lie is heavy between them, crushing like a stone, like running into a wall, and Sam's chest aches with the mere effort of breathing.
Ruby shows up again a month later, saying she wants to talk to them, but what she means is that she wants to talk to Dean.
Sam asks him about it later, when they're home from the bar where she happened to run into them, and then happened to spend hours cozied up to Dean in a corner booth while Sam clamored for the bartender's attention along with the rest of the Friday night horde. Dean shrugs him off, gives him a cocky smirk, and says, "What do you think we were up to?"
And Sam knows that isn't Dean, knows that no matter how pretty the packaging, Dean would never forget that Ruby's dragging a scared, pretty blonde girl around on her bizarro crusade to...do whatever she's trying to do. That fucking Ruby would be nothing so much as rape, and that for all his faults, Dean has never ever had sex with anyone who was anything less than willing.
He thought they were beyond secrets, but apparently he was wrong.
She comes around more often after that, always quick with a snide comment for Sam and a meaningful look for Dean, a new tidbit of information for Sam to dissect and obsess over and a silent demand to talk to Dean, and only Dean.
And Dean grows more and more distant, in a way that Sam would love to blame on Dean's impending damnation. But he can't.
It gets to the point where he doesn't want to watch them together, where he makes an early night of it and goes back to the motel to sharpen his knives and pore over his books, cold panic sweeping over him like a winter wind.
And one of those nights—when he's alone and angry and terrified because Dean is out consorting with demons instead of spending what precious little time he has left with Sam—he finds, nestled innocently among the rest of the arsenal, the tiny packet of herbs, the power to crawl inside Dean's head lying aromatic and quiescent in his hand.
And he maybe knows he shouldn't—no, he definitely knows he shouldn't—but he does. He can't help it.
Dean restless at night these days—fuck, they both are; Sam doesn't even know why they bother shelling out for beds when all they do is lie awake pretending that they're not staring at each other all night—but he still leaves hair on his pillow even when he doesn't sleep. It's easy for Sam to grab one the next morning, stowing it in his pocket with the dream root, and it's even easier to beg off breakfast, saying he's not feeling well enough to hit the diner up the block after the stomach problems the place gave him the previous night. Dean calls him a prissy bitch, but he leaves, goes off alone.
Sam makes the tea in one of their flasks of holy water, smiling bitterly at the almost-irony of it.
And Dean's none the wiser when he gets back, pushing an apple turnover and a cup of too-sweet, too-white coffee at Sam across the bathroom counter when he finds Sam shaving.
"Dude," Sam says, glaring, and Dean grins, slaps his back and tells him that he's had a lot worse than soap in his coffee before.
And Sam pulls a face, but he drinks it anyway. The cream coats his throat, and the saccharine hurts his teeth.
After that, it's just a matter of waiting until night falls.
Dean's dream is a bleak place, dark, cold. Sam can hear dogs keening in the distance.
You can't have him yet, he thinks, snarling, but this dream isn't what he's interested in, isn't why he's here.
The fabric of the dream surrounds him, thick and foreboding like any good nightmare ought to be, but Sam can see through it, can tear a Sam-sized hole in it and step through.
He goes deeper.
Somehow it doesn't surprise him that Dean's mind resembles nothing so much as a motel, a dimly-lit series of clapboard corridors that twist and turn back on one another without warning. But for all its seediness, it's neatly compartmentalized: memories of Dad on the right, Sam on the left, Cassie through that door. Bobby, Caleb, Pastor Jim, all down that hallway, bleeding back into Dad's rooms, reeking of gunpowder and salt.
Doors open for Sam like they're nothing, no keys or lockpicks required. He sees himself at three, thirteen, twenty-three, feels the weight of Dean's regret for the years he can't remember and the years he wasn't there. It makes Sam uncomfortable, upset, and he backs out the door the way he came.
Show me where the demons are, he thinks, surprised when he hears the words out loud in Dean's voice, like there's a PA system in Dean's brain, and when he turns the next corner he feels eyes watching him out of stained brass peepholes.
Yellow. Black. Red. Poisons for the picking, mocking voices muffled behind paper-thin doors.
Sam takes a deep breath, sucking in the still, illusory air, and makes a choice.
Black eyes stare at him from every corner, each gaze like a filthy caress, like he's a commodity to be consumed. There are so many of them, too many to count, a whole room in Dean's head that's nothing but black eyes.
He looks around, searching for Ruby, listening for the sound of her voice. "Where are you?" he asks, turning around.
She's standing right behind him, materializing from the background of hostile black stares.
"Shortbus," she says, flicking her hair over her shoulder. Her eyes switch from blue to black every time she blinks, and it's really fucking distracting. Disconcerting.
"What do you want with my brother?" Sam demands, pinning her to the spot, feeling the crackle of power under his skin.
Ruby looks down at her feet, which fade into nothingness in the dark of the room. "Sam has to be ready," she says, meaningfully, like there's some great and powerful truth there. Like she's saying something he's meant to understand.
He grits his teeth, shakes his head. "God, I hate it when you do this. Would it kill you not to be such a cryptic bitch?"
"Don't call me a bitch!"
"You were never going to help us, were you?" Sam's vibrating with frustration, his tone hard. "You keep saying that you can get him out of the deal, but there was never any way, was there?"
She sounds sad when she says, "Nope."
Sam turns and runs when a demon wearing Dean's face steps out from the shadows beside her, grinning smugly.
Reeling, he stumbles back into the hallway, walking blindly to the next door, the one that pulses blood-red behind walls too thin to contain its malevolence.
He pushes through the memories of the first deal like they're cobwebs, intent on what he's looking for, but he isn't prepared to watch himself die, doesn't want to see his body lying still and cold on the table in that house where he woke up after the first act of the nightmare ended. Doesn't want to see Dean crying over him, drinking Wild Turkey like it's water, looking so fucking lost.
"Dean," Sam says, reaching tentatively for him, but it's just a memory. Instant replay, high-definition, he thinks, Azazel's voice ringing in his ears as Dean peels off towards the crossroads.
The way she plays Dean, plays with him, makes Sam glad he killed her. It goes on forever, a litany of Dean's sins, all the reasons Dean thinks he has to hate himself, and Sam swears he can hear Dean's voice overlaid with hers, ragged with pain.
"Back to rotting meat in no time," she purrs, staring over Dean's shoulder at where Sam's standing. She's talking to him when she says, "One year, and one year only."
Christ, Sam's going to be sick, his vision bleary, nausea slamming into him like blunt-force trauma. He clutches at his stomach, totally ignoring the fact that he's dreamwalking in Dean's head and he can't possibly throw up. "Dean," he moans again, looking away from that fucking vulture trying to crawl into his brother's mouth.
And from nowhere, he hears Dean call back: "Sam!"
Sam pulls back, out of the memory, out of the room, out of the labyrinthine corridors of Dean's mind. Back to the dream.
It hasn't gotten any prettier since he first saw it, dusty soil dancing on the wind, dogs growling menacingly. Hellhounds, Sam thinks, and without thinking he takes off for the source of the noise.
Dean stands inside a Devil's Trap, ringed double with salt, penned in by massive black dogs. He's in a fighting stance, a sawed-off clutched in his right hand, the left wrapped tight around the amulet at his neck. "Sam!" he calls again, whirling around, waving the shotgun wildly at the hounds like he doesn't even see them, but Sam knows that he knows they're there.
Sam can smell his terror, and from the way the hellhounds are circling—snapping at the boundary like it's only a matter of time before they break through—they can, too.
"No," he says, hands balling into fists at his side, and the hellhounds barely have time to look at him before he's attacking them, throwing them aside, leaving them like broken dolls where they land. This dream is Sam's sandbox, not theirs, not the demonic bastards who sent them, like it isn't enough that this stupid fucking deal is a shadow on Dean's face every single minute he's awake.
He steps across the salt, watches it burn into nothingness as he passes, watches the ground swallow up the neatly chalked lines of the trap.
Dean looks up at him, still terrified, still waiting for the fight that's already over. "They're coming for me, Sam," he says, his voice thin with fear, white like his grip on his shotgun.
Sam reaches for Dean's hand, curling his fingers around Dean's forearm, feeling the clammy heat of Dean's skin even through the armor of his jacket, and chokes out, "Not tonight."
They both sit bolt upright in bed, Sam's heart beating in his throat, Dean looking wildly around the room.
"Sam?" he demands.
Sam can't move fast enough; he almost falls out of bed when he can't disentangle his legs from the bedclothes quickly enough, tripping over himself like he's fourteen instead of twenty-four and his brain hasn't caught up with his new growth. He throws himself onto Dean's bed, throws his arms around Dean, feeling the cold sweat soaking through his t-shirt. "Dean," he says, splaying a hand on Dean's chest, feeling desperately for that adrenaline-fueled heartbeat.
"What did you do?" Dean whispers, shaking his head slowly, holding himself rigid in Sam's arms, his posture screaming with tension.
Sam just shakes his head, buries his face against Dean's shoulder the way he used to when he was tiny and Dean was who he ran to for every skinned knee, every nightmare, every broken heart. "Not tonight, not tonight," he murmurs.
Dean sighs. "Sam," he says, awkwardly petting Sam's hair, touching Sam's back.
"Not tonight," Sam says again, fiercely, clinging harder, squeezing shut his eyes against the memory of the demon's delight in Dean's pain, against Ruby's vague revelations, against the hopeless, total inevitability of everything. "Not any night, you hear me? She can't have you."
And Dean finally relaxes a little, defeated. "Yeah, Sam, I hear you."
It's just another lie. Not even a particularly good one, as far as lies go.
But they both manage sleep that night, tangled chaste and close in the cheap motel sheets, and it's enough.
