Supernatural: Kicks Like a Sleep Twitch [Part 1/3]
PART ONE
It's a slippery slope.
It wouldn't be true if Sam denied that he's curious. If he said he hadn't liked it by the end of the hunt or if he pretended he hadn't realized he was getting good at it awfully fast. The power it gave that creep Jeremy-the strength that had the guy so convinced he was a God-it was there for Sam, too. It was seductive. He would be lying if he acted like he didn't want to taste it again.
He's lying right now. He's looking his brother in the eye and saying he doesn't want to do this, because it's not right. That's not the lie, it really isn't. He wants to, though. So bad his palms are itching. Sam's curious. He's always been curious. Always wanted to learn and understand things he has no business sticking his nose into. It's the demon in him, maybe.
"We can talk to another witness," Sam says. "Figure it out on our own, the old fashioned way. We don't need this."
Sam sets the jar with what's left of the dream root down on the coffee table, away from them both.
"Need? Maybe not," says Dean with a shrug. "But it's there and it'll get us the info we do need. I don't see why we shouldn't just use it."
Sam crosses his arms over his chest. "Because we can't just go poking around in someone's brain for information."
"This guy is a murderer, Sam. He doesn't have rights." Dean huffs. "Look, I get it, I do. But it's one time, and if we don't find out where the altar is and smash it by tomorrow morning, this guy is going to kill another kid. A freaking kid!"
Sam shifts uncomfortably in his seat. "There's got to be another way."
"There's almost definitely another way," Dean replies. "But not one we're going to find in the next three hours."
Sam shakes his head. "You do it, then. I'm not touching this."
"I'm not as good at it as you are. You can find out quicker. Sam, be reasonable. We don't have time for this."
There's the magic phrase. They don't have the time. 'And whose fault is that?' Sam wants to ask. They don't have time, Dean's right-not to dawdle on this hunt or to be on this hunt at all. They don't have time, not for anything. Sam could drive himself crazy listing all the things they don't have time for.
Dean's deal is going to come due in a few months. Just a few months, and he's insisting on these bullshit jobs when they should be finding a way to save him. The sooner they finish this one, that's a few extra hours for Sam to keep looking before Dean finds the next distraction and forces him to put his research aside.
"Just this once," Dean assures him, reaching for the dream root and placing it in Sam's palm.
Sam thinks of how precious those hours can be and his fingers close around the jar. Whatever trouble comes from it, Sam wants it on the record that it's Dean's idea. Dean's fault. He insisted, and Sam doesn't have the time to argue.
Sam finds the information they need in what feels like five minutes but ends up closer to 45. It doesn't matter, though, they're still in time. Thanks to the dream root, Sam is finally able to decode all the information they’ve gotten and locate the sacrificial altar before the hour arrives for it to claim its next victim. Dean finds the man who set it up before he wakes and spares Sam the details. Sometimes killing monsters means killing people; Sam has mostly accepted that, but it doesn't mean he has to like it.
As usual, Dean claims the rest of the day as a victory party and starts drinking somewhere around noon. Sam spends as long as he can doing research before Dean finally gets to the point where he needs to be babysat, when he's dangling off Sam's arm whining that he's bored and there's nothing on TV and why is Sam reading when they should be eating or watching porn or both. Sam sighs and gives in faster than usual today, because his research is leading nowhere, and Dean looks so lonely drinking on the bed across the room all on his own.
"It's an art form," Dean mutters, dangling a string of noodles over his face. "Sammy, I'm telling you. Noodles this perfect don't happen every day."
"You're so drunk you probably can't even taste anymore," Sam replies, watching as his brother slurps so many cheap takeout noodles down that he's frankly surprised Dean isn't choking.
"Yeah, well," Dean replies, sitting up. His eyes go bright as if he's about to say something really witty. "Your face is drunk."
"You're the cleverest," Sam answers. He tries to pour some sauce on his chicken and accidentally uses too much, but he pretends it was on purpose when he realizes Dean noticed.
"Because you're totally sober."
When Sam looks up, Dean is watching him with warm eyes and a knowing smile. Sam wants to punch him in the mouth a little. He's pretty sure if he actually tried he'd end up halfway across the room, hugging his brother in the most embarrassing way possible, so he's pretty glad the food is enough of an obstruction right now to stop him from moving.
Sam holds his brother's gaze when he catches it, and they sit there for what must be at least a minute, blinking across the room at each other like they're caught in a trap. Finally, Sam sees something flying at his face and he's too wasted to duck before it makes impact.
He realizes it's a fortune cookie only because Dean is tearing into his own when he opens his eyes again. "I got a bull's eye," Dean says proudly. "I hit you right in your freakish, giant forehead. I should get a prize."
Sam rolls his eyes and opens his cookie.
"Mine says I have 'an unusual equipment for success.'" Dean's hands drop to his lap with the thin slip of paper and he turns his head. "Hey, Sam, do you think it's talking about my dick?"
"I don't want to think about your dick, man," Sam mutters as he breaks past the shell and pulls his fortune out.
The road to hell is paved with good intentions, it tells Sam in obnoxious, clichéd little blue letters, and Sam drops it like a hot coal.
"What's it say?" Dean asks, his hand extending across the bed so Sam can give it to him.
Sam crumples it up and throws it in what's left of his dinner. Dean's hand looks blood red in the light pouring out of the TV, and he's not so hungry all of a sudden.
"Nothing." Sam covers the food and pushes it into the garbage bag. "It's a blank."
"That's not cool," Dean replies with indignation. "We should sue. You're a lawyer, right?"
"I'm going to throw the trash out," Sam tells him as he gathers together two large grease-stained brown bags.
Dean grins. "Or a garbage man, apparently."
He yawns and relaxes back into bed. Sam finds a dumpster around the corner from their room and stands out in the crisp air, taking deep breaths and wishing he wasn't so sober all of a sudden. By the time he gets back, Dean is sleeping like a baby. Half a bottle of whiskey is like a Benadryl to him, but Sam sleeps fitfully.
Every time he drifts off his brother ends up stained red, his hand reaching out for Sam and Sam's not there to take it or help him, and it's not a fortune he wants this time. He's begging for help, but Sam's not paying attention.
Sam can only take it for three hours before he just gives up and out comes his laptop for more research.
He keeps using the root after that night.
Sam makes a world of excuses for it at first. It really did help the last case, and who knows when it could come in handy again? Dad always said anything that can get them a leg up in a hunt is worth working on. It could be the difference between life and death. Sam is just honing his skills.
It has nothing to do with the fact that every night he gets stronger his nightmares lessen up. When the hellhounds start barking-Sam can will them away sometimes. Not always. But sometimes. And when he can't…he doesn't have to stay in his own dreams. Normal people don't spend their nights dreaming of hellhounds. Sam can't be one of them, but he can borrow the tranquility for a few hours, at least.
He practices every night, throwing in whatever DNA he finds lying around, completely blind as to whose dream he's about to wander into. It's kind of gross if he thinks about it, which he tries not to do, though it's easier on some days than others. One night he tosses a short white hair in expecting to fall into some old lady's dream and instead he finds himself in the world's largest cat toy store and realizes he drank someone's pet. Still, it's a pretty amusing night on the whole.
Sam's not actually planning to use the dreamwalking thing in any more hunts. Not unless it's absolutely necessary, and it's not like he's hurting anyone, anyway. He leaves the dream if it seems like something private, something a stranger shouldn't intrude on. He doesn't look for information or explanations or start psychoanalyzing. Most dreams are so meaningless, anyway, so random and so soon forgotten. What does it matter if one more person is there to be erased the next morning? Who would begrudge Sam the little peace he can find in someone else's sleep?
It's a confusing way to spend nights, flitting from one stranger's nonsensical dream to the next. Sam could impose order-he's already strong enough to conjure up new people and places when he starts. After a couple of weeks, he can change entire dreamscapes when he feels like it. But he doesn't. Sam doesn't touch anything major. He doesn't risk that unless he's sure it won’t hurt.
He finds a little girl having a nightmare on his sixth night using it, that's the only time he bends the rules. Not like she wouldn't thank him for turning the things chasing after her into sunshine and rainbows if she knew there was someone to thank. Anyway, Sam can't help that one, that's how he was trained. He's supposed to save innocent people from monsters, and if he's in the dream and capable, why the hell not? It's what Dean would do. Not that Sam is feeling terribly supportive of Dean and his stupid impulse to fix everything whether it wants to be fixed or not.
He doesn't change anything else. And when the root runs out, which it will in a couple of days, Sam's not going to look for another jar of it. He could never explain wanting more to Dean, and he's gotten as good, probably better, at dreamwalking as he'll need to be for any hunt. The root is expensive and rare, and Bela is not exactly on their list of allies right now.
Sam would do just about anything for some of her DNA-a quick, easy map to the Colt. He shakes his head, trying to clear it of thoughts that he's spent enough time stressing about in the waking world, and fixes his attention on the conversation at hand.
"Anyway, the point is," Sam says, taking an extended sip from his coffee, "I see why you're upset, but I don't think feeding your sister to the hydra is a very practical way to deal with the situation."
The girl across the table from him, Kelsey, sighs. "I guess." Her nails drum on the table, a blinding shade of neon purple. She's probably about 14 and has bright orange hair, though Sam knows, in that way you just know things in dreams, that her hair is actually a mousey shade of brown. "But she looks so funny with her feet kicking in the air like that."
Sam gazes across the street to where one of the monster's heads is poking out of the window of a small, pink house with a girl about two years older than Kelsey dangling from its jaw. He covers his smirk by pretending to take another sip from his now empty coffee cup. She really does look kind of hilarious. Dean would love this.
"Really, though," he says once he's sure he can talk without laughing.
"It's not like the thing is really gonna hurt her," Kelsey says, flicking bitterly at her napkin. "She'll still be perfect in every way when I wake up tomorrow morning."
"No, I know. But don't you worry what it says about you that you feel you need a hydra to deal with her? I'm sure Miranda doesn't dream of feeding you to monsters."
"Of course she doesn't," says the girl. "She's so nice all the time."
Sam laughs quietly. It's kind of bizarre, sitting here talking to some teenage girl about her problems, but he likes her. At the very least, he certainly sees where she's coming from. Sometimes having perfect older siblings really is exasperating; Sam could write several books on the subject.
"Don't tell me you've never had a mean dream about Dean after a fight."
Sam flinches. He thinks of the nightmares he's been fleeing ever since the dream root came along and offered a way out. Dean with his throat torn out by strong, canine teeth. Dean burning, burning, burning forever while Sam watches and does nothing. Dean and some black-eyed demon tangled together while Sam lies in bed with his spine on the floor. No, not after fights. Every fucking night for half a year, but not because he's mad at Dean.
The sky starts to darken above him and Kelsey. Sam stands up, forcing the thoughts and the clouds that came with them out of his mind. "Talk to your sister," he urges. "You don't know how lucky you are to have one."
He ditches the dream then and doesn't try sleeping again that night. Dean wakes up looking infuriatingly well-rested, the way he has every night since he made that stupid deal, and smiles at Sam from the bed across the room. "You look like shit, Sammy," he says. "You oughta sleep more."
Sam wonders if Kelsey would let him borrow her hydra.
The root runs out on day ten. That's it, that's supposed to be game over on dreamwalking practice for Sam. But as he's drifting off that night, reaching the in-between place where he's still a little awake, he realizes that there are dreams pushing in on him from every direction. He doesn't know why. Sam does his best to ignore the part of his brain that says it’s probably the demon blood, sensing a psychic power and making it stronger just like Bobby guessed it would. Because even knowing that, he still can't resist using it to his advantage.
He finds the closest dream that isn't Dean's-Sam has sworn to stay out of Dean's dreams, and that's the only rule he made about this dreamwalking mess that he's doing a good job sticking to. Dreams are the only place Dean has to himself. Sam felt flushed and embarrassed enough just from the glimpse of Lisa Braedon he got when he was allowed to be in his brother's brain. He doesn't have the right to know what Dean's dreaming about, and, what's more, he doesn't want to know. All he can think when he looks at his brother asleep is of the picnic Dean will never go on with that woman he's never going to get to know. Because he's going to be dead soon if Sam doesn't fix things, and even if he does, Dean still won't go to her. He'll always be too busy taking care of Sam, and Sam's not good enough to let him off that hook. The least he can do is let Dean have his dreams, his one Sam-free space.
The dream he ends up in is boring. They're staying at a Days Inn, so Sam finds himself with the father of the family sleeping in the room just next to his and Dean's. He's freaking out about something he thinks he left at home, checking his pockets over and over again, tossing things out of what seems like a bottomless suitcase as he tries to find it hidden somewhere in the folds of clothing. The kids are in the corner, crying because of this thing he forgot to pack, saying that he ruined their vacation forever. His wife is laughing at him and flirting with concierge, who is wearing nothing but a Speedo and his concierge hat and looks suspiciously like Brad Pitt.
He sees Sam standing in the corner, but he doesn't act like it's strange. He pauses for a moment, hardly glancing in Sam's direction. "Have you seen my passport?" he asks.
Sam shakes his head, which makes the man turn back to the room and begin pacing nervously, apparently forgetting Sam is even there. Sam takes mercy on the guy, makes the passport materialize on the counter. The man sees it immediately, his face lights up, and he holds it over his head triumphantly before declaring that they can now go to the pool.
It's not the best dream he's crashed, but it beats the hell out of worrying about Dean's deal. Sam doesn't wait around to ask why he needed his passport to go swimming, his brother is shaking him awake.
Dean finds a job in Florida the next day, and Sam doesn't dream again for six months.
No, longer. Six months and a hundred days. He doesn't know if the whole thing was a dream or if the Trickster just didn't want him to dream. Six months, the longest of Sam's life. The most miserable. He didn't dream because he was empty. Because Dean was dead. 101 times over, but it's the last one that sticks.
Sam doesn't remember what it was like to really be dead, but he envies the state at this point. Nothing to worry about. No nightmares. No knowing he's about to wake up to another day his brother will be dying or already lost. Sam is never going to forgive Dean for taking that away from him.
To Dean-to everyone in the world except for Sam-they roll out of town just a few days after they arrive. Mission maybe not accomplished, but crisis averted. The Trickster won't be killing anyone else in Broward, technically that's a job well done. To Sam it's a loss-he wants to kill that Trickster once for every time he made Dean bleed. But Dean is all smiles and laughter and singing Asia badly at the top of his lungs. He tells Sam to rise and shine, like he did for 100 days before he didn't say anything for six months, and Sam lets him, because Dean is grating on his nerves and Sam really kind of missed that.
They stole those six months from Sam, Dean and the Trickster, and neither of them seems particularly sorry about it. Sam makes Dean drive and drive and drive until they're finally out of Florida, that never fucking ending state that chewed Sam's brother up and spit him out so many times Sam lost count.
"I'm tired, man," Dean says when they stop for gas in Jacksonville. "I've been driving for nine hours straight. You gotta take over, or we're stopping for the night."
He yawns as he finishes that, his hand coming up to cover his mouth. He really does look beat. Alive, though.
"You have to drive a bit further," Sam says. "I'll pick up when we get to Kingsland."
"Why?"
Because he'll look dead if he falls asleep in the passenger's seat with his head against the window, and then Sam will be back in Broward and all this driving will have been for nothing.
"Because I asked nicely," Sam replies, getting into the passenger's seat and slamming the door.
He sees Dean rub his eyes and shake his head as he gets in next to Sam. "Careful with my car, jackass," he says, but he indulges Sam and doesn't mention stopping again until they're well into Georgia. They get a room when Dean finally says he's done for the night. Sam agrees easily. They're out of Florida, and Sam's as tired from watching Dean as Dean is from driving.
They both pass out pretty quickly. Sam knows because he waits, lying in bed as close to the edge as he can get without falling, straining to hear his brother in the next bed over. It's psychotic maybe, but Sam's muscles all relax as soon as he hears Dean's breathing even out, slow and steady and constant. That's what Dean sounds like asleep, and that means Sam got him all the way through a day without watching him die.
He closes his eyes and drops off in minutes.
The dreams catch him off guard at first. It's been so long since the last time this happened, since before they got to Broward. But it's only been a few days in reality, and his body is still hardwired. If there were ever a chance of Sam stopping this, it's gone now. Sam's nightmares won't just be about hellhounds any more. Now Sam has to be scared of furniture falling from the sky and old men in cars and fast food and himself. He killed Dean more times than anything in that time loop, and that's not even counting the fact that every death was Sam's fault because he couldn't stop them. Sam's hands are even filthier with his brother's blood than that. He carried the axe on day two, lit the match on day ten, forgot to warn Dean about the pot hole he tripped into on day 25-he doesn’t even remember all the ways he murdered his brother, but he has no doubt that his dreams will remember for him.
Sam can't go back to that. He can't, he won't. He has an alternative; he can walk right out of his own dreams and into someone else's. Why shouldn't Sam get that one little break? All he wants is to feel human again. He seeks out the dreams around him instinctively, and there it is. Of course it's Dean's dream in front of him, shimmering bright and tempting. Dean is closest, like Dean always has been and always is supposed to be.
Sam reaches out, letting three fingers dip into it. He feels the dream pull at him, his brother wrapping around those fingers. Sam wants so badly to let it happen. Fall in and drown, enveloped in nothing but Dean. Sam hasn't spent time with him in so long without having to jump at every sound. But in the dream, Dean will be safe and happy and Sam can just sit and watch him and, God, he's missed that. He's got so little time left to do it.
Sam yanks his hand back as if burned. This deal is really making a needy freak out of him.
He moves on, pushing out further. There are dreams in both of the rooms on either side of his and Dean's, but every time Sam settles on one, he puts his hand out to touch and what he feels is…nothing. A stranger. Not Dean.
Sam can still sense Dean's dream closest to him. He moves on, one room further, then two, then three. All of the dreams he passes hover in his memory, but no matter how many he rejects, they don't drown that first one out. It drowns them instead.
Maybe, Sam thinks. Maybe Dean wouldn't mind so much anyway.
Why should he? Sam has dreams he'd rather Dean not see, sure, but not many. Not every night. He wouldn't mind if Dean came to visit. He'd welcome it. If Dean could fix his nightmares, the way Sam can fix anyone's except for his own, he would do it whether Sam wanted him or not. Dean might be having nightmares. He's the one-no, no, no he isn’t. Sam will save him. Dean just thinks he is.
Sam turns back, pulled toward his room, but he swerves before he can trip into his own head and see what horror show is going on inside. There Dean is again. Sam moves forward. He'll leave if Dean is with Lisa. He'll leave if he's not wanted. He just wants to see his brother, make sure he's not scared or lonely or bored.
Sam doesn't give himself the chance to second guess the decision before he steps into Dean's dream.
It's claustrophobic inside his brother's head. Instead of the wide-open spaces Sam is used to in dreamscapes, he finds himself closed up inside of a small brown room. The light is low and hot, flickering in and out, and it smells familiar, like wood and sweat, so pungent it's a little intoxicating.
The light is coming from an oil lamp just next to the bed, and Sam recognizes where he is. A cabin in Washington they stayed in for a week the summer he turned 16. There was no power because the damn storm that stranded them there knocked it out, and Sam and Dean were stuck there alone with no way to call Dad and tell him. It was never this warm, the rain leaked in through the roof, and the firelight was less effective at lighting even the smallest rooms than it seems now. Now it's almost romantic.
The whole place had given Sam the creeps. His room came furnished with a painting of a laughing clown on the wall nearest the bed. Dean had insisted Sam sleep there, and Sam thought at the time that he was too old to be bothered by it. He knew Dean would give him the other room if he asked, but he'd tease him the whole time they were there about being scared, so Sam had sucked it up. He would have sworn that thing was staring at him every goddamned night, though.
He looks to that wall now and is surprised to see it hanging directly across from him. Which means this is Sam's room, making an already kind of weird setting for Dean's dream even weirder.
He doesn't have to work very hard to find his brother. The bed takes up most of the room. Sam thinks that's different, but that bed is the only thing that seems to matter in the dream anyway. Dean is lying down on it, pinned to the mattress, and at first Sam thinks he's fighting.
There's the sound of skin hitting skin, and someone is hovering over Dean, pushing him roughly. Sam nearly seizes forward to grab the guy, pull him away and strangle him before he gets to make this death number 102 that Sam has to stand by idly and watch. But then Dean sits up a little, his hand caressing the man's cheek under a curtain of hair, and when he smiles, Sam feels a confused pull of anger and jealousy in the pit of his stomach.
They aren't fighting. They're fucking. And-it's not that Sam cares if Dean fucks guys, whether he only does it in dreams or not. Sam's a little hurt that his brother never felt the need to tell him something like that, but it’s the smile that's really getting to him. That's Sam's smile. Dean doesn’t even let the diner waitresses see that one. Sam thought it was his.
He closes his eyes for half a second just to check if it'll still be there when he opens them. He's been here for well over a minute, watching his brother fuck some stranger in a dream, and he feels mortified the moment it sinks in just how long ago he should have fled this or at least looked away. He should not have stood here staring, which is what he's doing, even now that he's thinking of how weird that makes him.
The man dives back down, Dean collapsing with him, and their lips catch in a kiss. Dean's hand moves slowly up the other guy's spine. It's dwarfed by the broad expanse of back. Whoever he is, he's bigger than Dean, probably bigger than Sam even. Sam takes a shaky step backward, trying to convince himself to leave, but he can feel curiosity scratching up inside of him as usual, and he wants to know who this is. Needs to-he'll go crazy.
Sam feels like the kiss goes on forever, but finally Dean breaks it, his head falling back and a moan escaping from his lips.
"Oh, God. Oh, God," he says. "That's good. Just like that."
Sam's face burns up as he listens, because he can't help thinking-that's what Dean used to sound like when he was training him. Just like that, and, man, these are not things he needs to start getting tangled up in his already twisted brain. He should not be here to see or think any of this.
The man takes advantage of the exposed throat, sucking and licking up and down, and when he pulls back, shaking his head so his hair leaves his eyes, Sam recognizes the profile immediately. He knows that pointy nose; Dean's been teasing him about it for years.
Sam tries to leave then, as if retreating fast enough is going to change the suspicion beginning to form, but then Dean opens his mouth and Sam turns, thinking he's busted.
"Sammy," Dean gasps.
Sam looks at his brother, but Dean hasn't noticed he's there. His eyes are fixed on the Sam writhing above him, both of his hands caught in long brown hair as he drags Sam in for another kiss.
"Dean," the other Sam replies, smiling against Dean's mouth.
"Don't have all year," he finishes. "C'mon, baby."
Sam's smile vanishes as he growls, tackling Dean down, and Dean laughs, fighting back, but not with any real force. Sam can't help thinking that they look pretty good, that Dean smiling like that-like Sam has never seen before-is kind of beautiful.
He feels a wave of disgust wash over him just for thinking that, as if anything he's looking at is okay just because of some smile. It's his brother dreaming about him like that, and Sam should be sick just from knowing. The fact that he isn’t is terrifying. He finally manages to pull himself out of the dream and sits up in bed, wet from sweat and shaking.
A few feet away, Sam's brother turns over, letting out a quiet groan. Sam catches his eyes drifting down, wondering if Dean's dick is as hard as his own, and just what the hell that means for both of them. Dean dreaming that was-weird, okay, given it was really weird. But people have weird dreams. Tomorrow, Dean might be grossed out by it, if he remembers at all. It's not like people always get to choose what they dream about.
That doesn't explain why Sam-who was in control of his senses and could have changed it-stood there and watched, or why he's more turned on than he has been in months, or why, of all the questions cluttering his mind right now, the only one that’s holding his attention is I wonder if I could really make him smile like that?
"I'm craving sausage."
Sam jolts awake, pulling back from his brother's touch against his shoulder. "What?"
Dean stops shaking Sam and raises an eyebrow. "You know, breakfast? Most important part of the day, Sammy."
"Oh, right," Sam says, staring at Dean and the perplexed look on his brother's face unblinkingly. "Thought you meant…"
Sam rubs a hand over his mouth and keeps the rest of that to himself. Dean is already turning his back on Sam, tossing things into his duffel the same way he does every morning before they check out. Like it's a totally regular day and he did not just spend the night having uncomfortably compelling dreams about incest.
"You planning to lie there all year, man?"
Sam shakes his head, going through the motions of getting up and dressed and packed to go. Dean is totally normal except for how he keeps giving Sam these confused, worried looks every time he catches Sam staring. And, sure, Sam is staring a whole lot, but he's just really confused and Dean is not making anything easier to comprehend. No matter how hard Sam looks, he can't find a single sign that Dean is disquieted by what was going on inside his head the night before, or that he even remembers it. He's exactly the same as always, which either means he's used to this or he forgot.
Sam flushes, wondering how a dream so vivid, so shameful and inviting at the same time, can be so easily forgotten, but that's the explanation he has to go with. It was a fluke. Sam is not equipped to handle the alternative.
"Bobby said not to get too excited, but he's pretty sure he's got a lead on Bela and the Colt." Dean waits for Sam's stilted nod before he continues, "I figure he'll call us back by the time we're done eating and then we can head in whatever direction that bitch is running."
"Yeah, that…sounds good," Sam answers slowly.
"Dude, are you okay?" Dean asks, stopping in front of Sam. His face draws close, and Sam nearly pulls back, afraid his brother is going to kiss him. Instead, Dean puts a hand on Sam's forehead, checking for fever, and Sam closes his eyes, trying to think of anything but the tender way he saw Dean touch him last night. "You seem out of it."
"I just didn't get enough sleep."
Sam coughs then, breaking away from the touch under the pretense of gathering his things up from the floor.
"You need more booze in your diet," Dean says, his head inclining toward the door after he picks up his own belongings. Sam walks in the direction indicated, not turning back so Dean can't see how red his face gets when his brother adds, "I sleep like a baby."
Babies don't have dreams like the one Dean was having last night, but Sam can't exactly bring that up. So he goes along for the rest of the day, growing more awkward with every minute Dean is not.
When he fails to find any hint of discomfort, Sam can't help looking for signs that maybe that was what Dean dreams about for a reason. But Dean doesn't act any differently than he usually does, his touches and looks don't linger, and his words are all the same obnoxious, overconfident big brother Sam's been putting up with his entire life. Sam can read his brother better than anything, there's no way Dean has been hiding something like this from him.
The only thing that's different is Sam. Sam is the one who's jumping every time Dean gets close to him, who keeps misinterpreting everything Dean says, and, Jesus, even after the dream, what kind of freak is Sam that he keeps looking for signs that his brother wants to fuck him?
When they go to sleep that night, Sam doesn't even pretend he isn't going back into Dean's head. He has to know, and this is the fastest way to put the questions to rest. He'll dip in, see that Dean is dreaming about Britney Spears in her schoolgirl getup or something, and never intrude on his brother's space again. He learned his lesson about poking into Dean's dreams. He just needs to be sure it was a one-time thing.
The dream Sam walks into is completely different from the one the night before, and Sam breathes a sigh of relief. Dean is sitting on the couch in an open living room. Sam can't place it, but he recognizes bits and pieces of it. A couch from the room they stayed in over Christmas in Michigan, white and blue walls from a haunted bed and breakfast they worked a few years back in Maine. There are other things, too, things Sam recognizes but can't recall where he saw them, but the most important thing is that there is no Sam to be seen.
"Hey," he says, walking around the couch and sitting next to Dean. "What's up?"
Dean jumps in his seat when he hears Sam's voice like he's being startled out of a dream, which is really just silly as far as Sam is concerned. "Sam?"
"Yeah," Sam says. "Me."
Dean smiles a bit, but he turns his face away before Sam can really read into it. He looks down at his lap. "You're late," he tells Sam. "I thought you weren't coming."
"Oh." Sam wants to ask what he's late for, but there's a good chance Dean doesn't even know. And it doesn't matter. He's here now, with Dean, which is all he really wanted to begin with. "Sorry?"
Dean shakes his head, looking up. "No, it's okay. I'm just glad you're here."
He leans over then, and his lips find Sam's like it's instinct, soft and expectant and opening just a bit as he makes contact. Sam puts his hands up, pushing Dean away. "What the fuck are you doing, Dean?"
"I thought…" Dean frowns, but his eyes don't leave Sam's. He doesn't look sorry. "So this is gonna be one of those dreams? You can go ahead and get started, then."
"Get started on what?" Sam asks. He's still shaking a little, holding his fingers up to his lips. Dean just kissed him and it was actually him, not some dream version of him, and fuck, that's his brother he can still feel wet against his mouth.
"You hate me," Dean says. "I disgust you. Go on, Sam, you know the script. I know you do."
"I don't hate you," Sam says, reaching out for Dean. He stops halfway there, not sure how to go about touching a brother who wants what Dean just tried to take. "I could never hate you."
Dean laughs coldly and his eyes follow Sam's hands as they hover awkwardly in the air between them. "But I sure do disgust you. Won't even touch your big brother now, huh?"
"You tried to kiss me," Sam says stupidly. He's not even sure why this is all still so shocking after last night.
"I try to kiss you all the time," Dean replies unabashedly. "I like the nights you let me better."
"But you’re my brother."
Dean smiles, but it’s sad now, nothing like the one Sam had seen on Dean's face the night before, and he feels guilty. He had control over which smile his brother was going to wear tonight, and even knowing he's the one pushing away when he's supposed to doesn't stop him from looking like the bad guy.
"I don't care what you say. Sam doesn't hate me. It's a dream. It's just a dream." Dean's voice is damn near begging. Sam hasn't heard Dean sound needy like this in years. He's pretty sure he was dead the last time Dean sounded like this. "I can't hurt him here," he says, leaning in again. He doesn't try to kiss Sam, just pushes his face into Sam's neck, and Sam's arms wrap around him before he can think about why. "I can't hurt him, he doesn't have to know. I can have you here."
Sam feels Dean pressing so close into his skin. His nose rubs against Sam's neck, and he laughs, sounding drunk. "You know I'd never hurt you out there," he promises, and yeah, Sam does know that. "But this won't hurt anyone. Who am I hurting?"
Dean pulls back, looks up at Sam with pleading eyes. Dean never asks Sam for anything. "It's not so wrong. If I can't help wanting it. It's better than-I'm not hurting my Sammy."
He wasn't. Not until Sam poked his nose where it didn't belong and now he knows what Dean's tried so hard to hide from him. He never had a right to know this. He never would have wanted to know this. It ruins everything Sam thought he knew. It's too damn much at once, and Sam can't remember being this confused in his life.
Dean moves back after a while, forcing Sam's arms away. He looks at Sam dead in the eye, an expression on his face like he's going to war and Sam's the enemy. "Say what you want," he says. "I don't care. Tell me I'm dirt. I'll dream better tomorrow."
"Do I really do that?" Sam asks. "Do you really think that I would do that to you?"
Dean shrugs. "I can't control you all the time. Not even in my dreams."
"Is that what you want? To control me?"
"I want to control myself. I want to make it through my last few months of this and finally stop having to worry I'll break one day." Dean shakes his head, smiling again as he puts his hand on Sam's cheek. "I want Sam to bury a brother he can remember fondly, not some fucking pervert who-"
"Why do you keep talking like I'm not here?"
"You're not Sam," Dean replies bitingly. "In my dreams, Sam wants to kiss me."
"So who am I, then?"
"My conscience, if I've still got one," Dean says, shrugging. "Otherwise you're just here to make me feel guilty in its absence."
Sam shakes his head. "I don't want to do that, Dean."
Dean's fingers run up the fabric of Sam's shirt and he tugs at the collar, looking like he's thinking of kissing Sam again. Sam freezes up in anticipation, but Dean just laughs at his reaction. "In that case, I think I'd better wake up now."
They sit up at the same time in their motel room. Dean looks over at Sam, his expression tense for a second before it smoothes over. He smiles, but Sam thinks it looks more strained than it usually does, and he can't help wondering if he's always seemed this forced on mornings after he had bad dreams and Sam just didn't realize.
"Rise and shine," he says, like clockwork. Same old clock running down and down. Sam is nearly out of time, and Dean just told him he was okay with that. Sam can't even fight him on it, because he's not really supposed to know. He'll blow his cover.
"You're annoying," Sam says, tossing his comforter at Dean's stupid, smiling face.
Dean snickers, yells something out about picking tampons up for him at the store, and Sam is terrified what it says about him that he almost wants to run back into the room and give Dean that kiss he asked for last night if he'll just promise to make every morning of Sam's life as insufferable as he's making this one.
Sam doesn't even know why he goes back the next night. He's run out of excuses to feed himself. He needs to see his brother. He can't sleep anymore without it. Dean is so closed off to him during the day, hiding so many things Sam never would have guessed at. Even if the things he said last night scare Sam, there was a rawness-honesty, straightforward instead of drowned in bullshit-that made Sam feel closer to Dean than he's ever been. And okay, maybe that means accepting that his brother is in love with him, or wants to fuck him, or whatever, but Sam can't care.
"Sammy, wake up," Dean reaches out, shaking a cold, limp hand. "Sam, please, you're scaring me."
Sam can feel the hairs on the back of his neck rising as he looks around the dream and recognizes where they are. Not this, he thinks. He doesn't want Dean to dream about this. He doesn't want to be reminded in here. This is the kind of thing he's running from.
"It's not funny," he says. "Please don't do this. Sammy, wake up."
Sam walks over to the chair Dean's pulled to the side of the bed and puts his hand on Dean's shoulder. "I'm awake."
Dean looks at him, and Sam makes sure the dead body is gone before he turns back for it. Dean reaches out, hands fumbling blindly on the empty mattress, and then he glares up at Sam.
"It wasn't funny," he says.
"I know, Dean. I'm sorry," Sam says, attempting to sit across from him. Dean reaches out and stops him.
He looks at the bed. "No, don't sit there. I don't want you there."
Sam wills the bed away. "Dean, what's wrong? There's nothing there."
Dean looks at him blankly, and then his eyebrows draw together. "I don't remember," he says. "Something was."
"Close your eyes," Sam tells him.
Dean obeys. Sam concentrates on finding something Dean will like, and when Dean opens his eyes again, they're in a bowling alley in East Michigan, Sam standing and Dean sprawled in one seat with his legs out over the other. Dean had loved this place when they'd been working the job, even though they'd both stunk at bowling. The girl at the counter had been cute, and they'd had to come back for four days straight before they figured out who the ghost they were hunting was. Dean loves any hunt that gets him laid regularly as a rule.
Dean looks around, his face a little surprised at first. "Are we bowling?"
"No," Sam replies. He takes the uncomfortable plastic chair next to his brother's, kneeing Dean's feet out of his space. Sam has a cold bottle of Dean's favorite El Sol brew in each of his hands and he passes one over. "We're sitting and watching other people bowl."
"You just don't wanna lose to me," Dean says, smirking as he takes a sip from his bottle.
Sam sighs and rolls his eyes and manages to resist the urge to challenge Dean to a game just because he could get a perfect score in here. The dream will go however he wants.
"Bet you couldn't play if you wanted," Dean continues, kicking his newly displaced feet up onto the table meant for scorecards. "Bet they don't rent shoes big enough for you, sasquatch."
"Bite me," Sam replies. They'd had shoes in his size. He had to squeeze a bit, sure, but not that much. "Aren't you gonna go hit on the concession girl? Come back smelling like nacho cheese?"
Dean looks over at him with bright eyes. "Jealous? I can get you free nachos too, Sammy. All you have to do is ask."
"Eww." Sam wrinkles his nose. "I don't want to be a part of your sick snack-sex trade."
Dean smiles faintly, throwing a brief glace over his shoulder toward the concession stand, and Sam follows his gaze on instinct. "She's not here," Dean says. Sam can't help wondering if he's just stating the obvious-there's no one behind the counter-or if it means something more. It sounds like it means something more, in that untraceable way Dean has of saying things that mean everything in completely trivial ways.
"I guess not," Sam replies. "She could be."
Dean huffs out a quiet laugh and hits Sam's thigh lightly with his beer. "Don't need anyone else in here."
Sam gets it then, and wishes it didn't make him feel so good to know he's all his brother needs or wants.
ON TO PART TWO
or
BACK TO MASTERPOST
It's a slippery slope.
It wouldn't be true if Sam denied that he's curious. If he said he hadn't liked it by the end of the hunt or if he pretended he hadn't realized he was getting good at it awfully fast. The power it gave that creep Jeremy-the strength that had the guy so convinced he was a God-it was there for Sam, too. It was seductive. He would be lying if he acted like he didn't want to taste it again.
He's lying right now. He's looking his brother in the eye and saying he doesn't want to do this, because it's not right. That's not the lie, it really isn't. He wants to, though. So bad his palms are itching. Sam's curious. He's always been curious. Always wanted to learn and understand things he has no business sticking his nose into. It's the demon in him, maybe.
"We can talk to another witness," Sam says. "Figure it out on our own, the old fashioned way. We don't need this."
Sam sets the jar with what's left of the dream root down on the coffee table, away from them both.
"Need? Maybe not," says Dean with a shrug. "But it's there and it'll get us the info we do need. I don't see why we shouldn't just use it."
Sam crosses his arms over his chest. "Because we can't just go poking around in someone's brain for information."
"This guy is a murderer, Sam. He doesn't have rights." Dean huffs. "Look, I get it, I do. But it's one time, and if we don't find out where the altar is and smash it by tomorrow morning, this guy is going to kill another kid. A freaking kid!"
Sam shifts uncomfortably in his seat. "There's got to be another way."
"There's almost definitely another way," Dean replies. "But not one we're going to find in the next three hours."
Sam shakes his head. "You do it, then. I'm not touching this."
"I'm not as good at it as you are. You can find out quicker. Sam, be reasonable. We don't have time for this."
There's the magic phrase. They don't have the time. 'And whose fault is that?' Sam wants to ask. They don't have time, Dean's right-not to dawdle on this hunt or to be on this hunt at all. They don't have time, not for anything. Sam could drive himself crazy listing all the things they don't have time for.
Dean's deal is going to come due in a few months. Just a few months, and he's insisting on these bullshit jobs when they should be finding a way to save him. The sooner they finish this one, that's a few extra hours for Sam to keep looking before Dean finds the next distraction and forces him to put his research aside.
"Just this once," Dean assures him, reaching for the dream root and placing it in Sam's palm.
Sam thinks of how precious those hours can be and his fingers close around the jar. Whatever trouble comes from it, Sam wants it on the record that it's Dean's idea. Dean's fault. He insisted, and Sam doesn't have the time to argue.
Sam finds the information they need in what feels like five minutes but ends up closer to 45. It doesn't matter, though, they're still in time. Thanks to the dream root, Sam is finally able to decode all the information they’ve gotten and locate the sacrificial altar before the hour arrives for it to claim its next victim. Dean finds the man who set it up before he wakes and spares Sam the details. Sometimes killing monsters means killing people; Sam has mostly accepted that, but it doesn't mean he has to like it.
As usual, Dean claims the rest of the day as a victory party and starts drinking somewhere around noon. Sam spends as long as he can doing research before Dean finally gets to the point where he needs to be babysat, when he's dangling off Sam's arm whining that he's bored and there's nothing on TV and why is Sam reading when they should be eating or watching porn or both. Sam sighs and gives in faster than usual today, because his research is leading nowhere, and Dean looks so lonely drinking on the bed across the room all on his own.
"It's an art form," Dean mutters, dangling a string of noodles over his face. "Sammy, I'm telling you. Noodles this perfect don't happen every day."
"You're so drunk you probably can't even taste anymore," Sam replies, watching as his brother slurps so many cheap takeout noodles down that he's frankly surprised Dean isn't choking.
"Yeah, well," Dean replies, sitting up. His eyes go bright as if he's about to say something really witty. "Your face is drunk."
"You're the cleverest," Sam answers. He tries to pour some sauce on his chicken and accidentally uses too much, but he pretends it was on purpose when he realizes Dean noticed.
"Because you're totally sober."
When Sam looks up, Dean is watching him with warm eyes and a knowing smile. Sam wants to punch him in the mouth a little. He's pretty sure if he actually tried he'd end up halfway across the room, hugging his brother in the most embarrassing way possible, so he's pretty glad the food is enough of an obstruction right now to stop him from moving.
Sam holds his brother's gaze when he catches it, and they sit there for what must be at least a minute, blinking across the room at each other like they're caught in a trap. Finally, Sam sees something flying at his face and he's too wasted to duck before it makes impact.
He realizes it's a fortune cookie only because Dean is tearing into his own when he opens his eyes again. "I got a bull's eye," Dean says proudly. "I hit you right in your freakish, giant forehead. I should get a prize."
Sam rolls his eyes and opens his cookie.
"Mine says I have 'an unusual equipment for success.'" Dean's hands drop to his lap with the thin slip of paper and he turns his head. "Hey, Sam, do you think it's talking about my dick?"
"I don't want to think about your dick, man," Sam mutters as he breaks past the shell and pulls his fortune out.
The road to hell is paved with good intentions, it tells Sam in obnoxious, clichéd little blue letters, and Sam drops it like a hot coal.
"What's it say?" Dean asks, his hand extending across the bed so Sam can give it to him.
Sam crumples it up and throws it in what's left of his dinner. Dean's hand looks blood red in the light pouring out of the TV, and he's not so hungry all of a sudden.
"Nothing." Sam covers the food and pushes it into the garbage bag. "It's a blank."
"That's not cool," Dean replies with indignation. "We should sue. You're a lawyer, right?"
"I'm going to throw the trash out," Sam tells him as he gathers together two large grease-stained brown bags.
Dean grins. "Or a garbage man, apparently."
He yawns and relaxes back into bed. Sam finds a dumpster around the corner from their room and stands out in the crisp air, taking deep breaths and wishing he wasn't so sober all of a sudden. By the time he gets back, Dean is sleeping like a baby. Half a bottle of whiskey is like a Benadryl to him, but Sam sleeps fitfully.
Every time he drifts off his brother ends up stained red, his hand reaching out for Sam and Sam's not there to take it or help him, and it's not a fortune he wants this time. He's begging for help, but Sam's not paying attention.
Sam can only take it for three hours before he just gives up and out comes his laptop for more research.
He keeps using the root after that night.
Sam makes a world of excuses for it at first. It really did help the last case, and who knows when it could come in handy again? Dad always said anything that can get them a leg up in a hunt is worth working on. It could be the difference between life and death. Sam is just honing his skills.
It has nothing to do with the fact that every night he gets stronger his nightmares lessen up. When the hellhounds start barking-Sam can will them away sometimes. Not always. But sometimes. And when he can't…he doesn't have to stay in his own dreams. Normal people don't spend their nights dreaming of hellhounds. Sam can't be one of them, but he can borrow the tranquility for a few hours, at least.
He practices every night, throwing in whatever DNA he finds lying around, completely blind as to whose dream he's about to wander into. It's kind of gross if he thinks about it, which he tries not to do, though it's easier on some days than others. One night he tosses a short white hair in expecting to fall into some old lady's dream and instead he finds himself in the world's largest cat toy store and realizes he drank someone's pet. Still, it's a pretty amusing night on the whole.
Sam's not actually planning to use the dreamwalking thing in any more hunts. Not unless it's absolutely necessary, and it's not like he's hurting anyone, anyway. He leaves the dream if it seems like something private, something a stranger shouldn't intrude on. He doesn't look for information or explanations or start psychoanalyzing. Most dreams are so meaningless, anyway, so random and so soon forgotten. What does it matter if one more person is there to be erased the next morning? Who would begrudge Sam the little peace he can find in someone else's sleep?
It's a confusing way to spend nights, flitting from one stranger's nonsensical dream to the next. Sam could impose order-he's already strong enough to conjure up new people and places when he starts. After a couple of weeks, he can change entire dreamscapes when he feels like it. But he doesn't. Sam doesn't touch anything major. He doesn't risk that unless he's sure it won’t hurt.
He finds a little girl having a nightmare on his sixth night using it, that's the only time he bends the rules. Not like she wouldn't thank him for turning the things chasing after her into sunshine and rainbows if she knew there was someone to thank. Anyway, Sam can't help that one, that's how he was trained. He's supposed to save innocent people from monsters, and if he's in the dream and capable, why the hell not? It's what Dean would do. Not that Sam is feeling terribly supportive of Dean and his stupid impulse to fix everything whether it wants to be fixed or not.
He doesn't change anything else. And when the root runs out, which it will in a couple of days, Sam's not going to look for another jar of it. He could never explain wanting more to Dean, and he's gotten as good, probably better, at dreamwalking as he'll need to be for any hunt. The root is expensive and rare, and Bela is not exactly on their list of allies right now.
Sam would do just about anything for some of her DNA-a quick, easy map to the Colt. He shakes his head, trying to clear it of thoughts that he's spent enough time stressing about in the waking world, and fixes his attention on the conversation at hand.
"Anyway, the point is," Sam says, taking an extended sip from his coffee, "I see why you're upset, but I don't think feeding your sister to the hydra is a very practical way to deal with the situation."
The girl across the table from him, Kelsey, sighs. "I guess." Her nails drum on the table, a blinding shade of neon purple. She's probably about 14 and has bright orange hair, though Sam knows, in that way you just know things in dreams, that her hair is actually a mousey shade of brown. "But she looks so funny with her feet kicking in the air like that."
Sam gazes across the street to where one of the monster's heads is poking out of the window of a small, pink house with a girl about two years older than Kelsey dangling from its jaw. He covers his smirk by pretending to take another sip from his now empty coffee cup. She really does look kind of hilarious. Dean would love this.
"Really, though," he says once he's sure he can talk without laughing.
"It's not like the thing is really gonna hurt her," Kelsey says, flicking bitterly at her napkin. "She'll still be perfect in every way when I wake up tomorrow morning."
"No, I know. But don't you worry what it says about you that you feel you need a hydra to deal with her? I'm sure Miranda doesn't dream of feeding you to monsters."
"Of course she doesn't," says the girl. "She's so nice all the time."
Sam laughs quietly. It's kind of bizarre, sitting here talking to some teenage girl about her problems, but he likes her. At the very least, he certainly sees where she's coming from. Sometimes having perfect older siblings really is exasperating; Sam could write several books on the subject.
"Don't tell me you've never had a mean dream about Dean after a fight."
Sam flinches. He thinks of the nightmares he's been fleeing ever since the dream root came along and offered a way out. Dean with his throat torn out by strong, canine teeth. Dean burning, burning, burning forever while Sam watches and does nothing. Dean and some black-eyed demon tangled together while Sam lies in bed with his spine on the floor. No, not after fights. Every fucking night for half a year, but not because he's mad at Dean.
The sky starts to darken above him and Kelsey. Sam stands up, forcing the thoughts and the clouds that came with them out of his mind. "Talk to your sister," he urges. "You don't know how lucky you are to have one."
He ditches the dream then and doesn't try sleeping again that night. Dean wakes up looking infuriatingly well-rested, the way he has every night since he made that stupid deal, and smiles at Sam from the bed across the room. "You look like shit, Sammy," he says. "You oughta sleep more."
Sam wonders if Kelsey would let him borrow her hydra.
The root runs out on day ten. That's it, that's supposed to be game over on dreamwalking practice for Sam. But as he's drifting off that night, reaching the in-between place where he's still a little awake, he realizes that there are dreams pushing in on him from every direction. He doesn't know why. Sam does his best to ignore the part of his brain that says it’s probably the demon blood, sensing a psychic power and making it stronger just like Bobby guessed it would. Because even knowing that, he still can't resist using it to his advantage.
He finds the closest dream that isn't Dean's-Sam has sworn to stay out of Dean's dreams, and that's the only rule he made about this dreamwalking mess that he's doing a good job sticking to. Dreams are the only place Dean has to himself. Sam felt flushed and embarrassed enough just from the glimpse of Lisa Braedon he got when he was allowed to be in his brother's brain. He doesn't have the right to know what Dean's dreaming about, and, what's more, he doesn't want to know. All he can think when he looks at his brother asleep is of the picnic Dean will never go on with that woman he's never going to get to know. Because he's going to be dead soon if Sam doesn't fix things, and even if he does, Dean still won't go to her. He'll always be too busy taking care of Sam, and Sam's not good enough to let him off that hook. The least he can do is let Dean have his dreams, his one Sam-free space.
The dream he ends up in is boring. They're staying at a Days Inn, so Sam finds himself with the father of the family sleeping in the room just next to his and Dean's. He's freaking out about something he thinks he left at home, checking his pockets over and over again, tossing things out of what seems like a bottomless suitcase as he tries to find it hidden somewhere in the folds of clothing. The kids are in the corner, crying because of this thing he forgot to pack, saying that he ruined their vacation forever. His wife is laughing at him and flirting with concierge, who is wearing nothing but a Speedo and his concierge hat and looks suspiciously like Brad Pitt.
He sees Sam standing in the corner, but he doesn't act like it's strange. He pauses for a moment, hardly glancing in Sam's direction. "Have you seen my passport?" he asks.
Sam shakes his head, which makes the man turn back to the room and begin pacing nervously, apparently forgetting Sam is even there. Sam takes mercy on the guy, makes the passport materialize on the counter. The man sees it immediately, his face lights up, and he holds it over his head triumphantly before declaring that they can now go to the pool.
It's not the best dream he's crashed, but it beats the hell out of worrying about Dean's deal. Sam doesn't wait around to ask why he needed his passport to go swimming, his brother is shaking him awake.
Dean finds a job in Florida the next day, and Sam doesn't dream again for six months.
No, longer. Six months and a hundred days. He doesn't know if the whole thing was a dream or if the Trickster just didn't want him to dream. Six months, the longest of Sam's life. The most miserable. He didn't dream because he was empty. Because Dean was dead. 101 times over, but it's the last one that sticks.
Sam doesn't remember what it was like to really be dead, but he envies the state at this point. Nothing to worry about. No nightmares. No knowing he's about to wake up to another day his brother will be dying or already lost. Sam is never going to forgive Dean for taking that away from him.
To Dean-to everyone in the world except for Sam-they roll out of town just a few days after they arrive. Mission maybe not accomplished, but crisis averted. The Trickster won't be killing anyone else in Broward, technically that's a job well done. To Sam it's a loss-he wants to kill that Trickster once for every time he made Dean bleed. But Dean is all smiles and laughter and singing Asia badly at the top of his lungs. He tells Sam to rise and shine, like he did for 100 days before he didn't say anything for six months, and Sam lets him, because Dean is grating on his nerves and Sam really kind of missed that.
They stole those six months from Sam, Dean and the Trickster, and neither of them seems particularly sorry about it. Sam makes Dean drive and drive and drive until they're finally out of Florida, that never fucking ending state that chewed Sam's brother up and spit him out so many times Sam lost count.
"I'm tired, man," Dean says when they stop for gas in Jacksonville. "I've been driving for nine hours straight. You gotta take over, or we're stopping for the night."
He yawns as he finishes that, his hand coming up to cover his mouth. He really does look beat. Alive, though.
"You have to drive a bit further," Sam says. "I'll pick up when we get to Kingsland."
"Why?"
Because he'll look dead if he falls asleep in the passenger's seat with his head against the window, and then Sam will be back in Broward and all this driving will have been for nothing.
"Because I asked nicely," Sam replies, getting into the passenger's seat and slamming the door.
He sees Dean rub his eyes and shake his head as he gets in next to Sam. "Careful with my car, jackass," he says, but he indulges Sam and doesn't mention stopping again until they're well into Georgia. They get a room when Dean finally says he's done for the night. Sam agrees easily. They're out of Florida, and Sam's as tired from watching Dean as Dean is from driving.
They both pass out pretty quickly. Sam knows because he waits, lying in bed as close to the edge as he can get without falling, straining to hear his brother in the next bed over. It's psychotic maybe, but Sam's muscles all relax as soon as he hears Dean's breathing even out, slow and steady and constant. That's what Dean sounds like asleep, and that means Sam got him all the way through a day without watching him die.
He closes his eyes and drops off in minutes.
The dreams catch him off guard at first. It's been so long since the last time this happened, since before they got to Broward. But it's only been a few days in reality, and his body is still hardwired. If there were ever a chance of Sam stopping this, it's gone now. Sam's nightmares won't just be about hellhounds any more. Now Sam has to be scared of furniture falling from the sky and old men in cars and fast food and himself. He killed Dean more times than anything in that time loop, and that's not even counting the fact that every death was Sam's fault because he couldn't stop them. Sam's hands are even filthier with his brother's blood than that. He carried the axe on day two, lit the match on day ten, forgot to warn Dean about the pot hole he tripped into on day 25-he doesn’t even remember all the ways he murdered his brother, but he has no doubt that his dreams will remember for him.
Sam can't go back to that. He can't, he won't. He has an alternative; he can walk right out of his own dreams and into someone else's. Why shouldn't Sam get that one little break? All he wants is to feel human again. He seeks out the dreams around him instinctively, and there it is. Of course it's Dean's dream in front of him, shimmering bright and tempting. Dean is closest, like Dean always has been and always is supposed to be.
Sam reaches out, letting three fingers dip into it. He feels the dream pull at him, his brother wrapping around those fingers. Sam wants so badly to let it happen. Fall in and drown, enveloped in nothing but Dean. Sam hasn't spent time with him in so long without having to jump at every sound. But in the dream, Dean will be safe and happy and Sam can just sit and watch him and, God, he's missed that. He's got so little time left to do it.
Sam yanks his hand back as if burned. This deal is really making a needy freak out of him.
He moves on, pushing out further. There are dreams in both of the rooms on either side of his and Dean's, but every time Sam settles on one, he puts his hand out to touch and what he feels is…nothing. A stranger. Not Dean.
Sam can still sense Dean's dream closest to him. He moves on, one room further, then two, then three. All of the dreams he passes hover in his memory, but no matter how many he rejects, they don't drown that first one out. It drowns them instead.
Maybe, Sam thinks. Maybe Dean wouldn't mind so much anyway.
Why should he? Sam has dreams he'd rather Dean not see, sure, but not many. Not every night. He wouldn't mind if Dean came to visit. He'd welcome it. If Dean could fix his nightmares, the way Sam can fix anyone's except for his own, he would do it whether Sam wanted him or not. Dean might be having nightmares. He's the one-no, no, no he isn’t. Sam will save him. Dean just thinks he is.
Sam turns back, pulled toward his room, but he swerves before he can trip into his own head and see what horror show is going on inside. There Dean is again. Sam moves forward. He'll leave if Dean is with Lisa. He'll leave if he's not wanted. He just wants to see his brother, make sure he's not scared or lonely or bored.
Sam doesn't give himself the chance to second guess the decision before he steps into Dean's dream.
It's claustrophobic inside his brother's head. Instead of the wide-open spaces Sam is used to in dreamscapes, he finds himself closed up inside of a small brown room. The light is low and hot, flickering in and out, and it smells familiar, like wood and sweat, so pungent it's a little intoxicating.
The light is coming from an oil lamp just next to the bed, and Sam recognizes where he is. A cabin in Washington they stayed in for a week the summer he turned 16. There was no power because the damn storm that stranded them there knocked it out, and Sam and Dean were stuck there alone with no way to call Dad and tell him. It was never this warm, the rain leaked in through the roof, and the firelight was less effective at lighting even the smallest rooms than it seems now. Now it's almost romantic.
The whole place had given Sam the creeps. His room came furnished with a painting of a laughing clown on the wall nearest the bed. Dean had insisted Sam sleep there, and Sam thought at the time that he was too old to be bothered by it. He knew Dean would give him the other room if he asked, but he'd tease him the whole time they were there about being scared, so Sam had sucked it up. He would have sworn that thing was staring at him every goddamned night, though.
He looks to that wall now and is surprised to see it hanging directly across from him. Which means this is Sam's room, making an already kind of weird setting for Dean's dream even weirder.
He doesn't have to work very hard to find his brother. The bed takes up most of the room. Sam thinks that's different, but that bed is the only thing that seems to matter in the dream anyway. Dean is lying down on it, pinned to the mattress, and at first Sam thinks he's fighting.
There's the sound of skin hitting skin, and someone is hovering over Dean, pushing him roughly. Sam nearly seizes forward to grab the guy, pull him away and strangle him before he gets to make this death number 102 that Sam has to stand by idly and watch. But then Dean sits up a little, his hand caressing the man's cheek under a curtain of hair, and when he smiles, Sam feels a confused pull of anger and jealousy in the pit of his stomach.
They aren't fighting. They're fucking. And-it's not that Sam cares if Dean fucks guys, whether he only does it in dreams or not. Sam's a little hurt that his brother never felt the need to tell him something like that, but it’s the smile that's really getting to him. That's Sam's smile. Dean doesn’t even let the diner waitresses see that one. Sam thought it was his.
He closes his eyes for half a second just to check if it'll still be there when he opens them. He's been here for well over a minute, watching his brother fuck some stranger in a dream, and he feels mortified the moment it sinks in just how long ago he should have fled this or at least looked away. He should not have stood here staring, which is what he's doing, even now that he's thinking of how weird that makes him.
The man dives back down, Dean collapsing with him, and their lips catch in a kiss. Dean's hand moves slowly up the other guy's spine. It's dwarfed by the broad expanse of back. Whoever he is, he's bigger than Dean, probably bigger than Sam even. Sam takes a shaky step backward, trying to convince himself to leave, but he can feel curiosity scratching up inside of him as usual, and he wants to know who this is. Needs to-he'll go crazy.
Sam feels like the kiss goes on forever, but finally Dean breaks it, his head falling back and a moan escaping from his lips.
"Oh, God. Oh, God," he says. "That's good. Just like that."
Sam's face burns up as he listens, because he can't help thinking-that's what Dean used to sound like when he was training him. Just like that, and, man, these are not things he needs to start getting tangled up in his already twisted brain. He should not be here to see or think any of this.
The man takes advantage of the exposed throat, sucking and licking up and down, and when he pulls back, shaking his head so his hair leaves his eyes, Sam recognizes the profile immediately. He knows that pointy nose; Dean's been teasing him about it for years.
Sam tries to leave then, as if retreating fast enough is going to change the suspicion beginning to form, but then Dean opens his mouth and Sam turns, thinking he's busted.
"Sammy," Dean gasps.
Sam looks at his brother, but Dean hasn't noticed he's there. His eyes are fixed on the Sam writhing above him, both of his hands caught in long brown hair as he drags Sam in for another kiss.
"Dean," the other Sam replies, smiling against Dean's mouth.
"Don't have all year," he finishes. "C'mon, baby."
Sam's smile vanishes as he growls, tackling Dean down, and Dean laughs, fighting back, but not with any real force. Sam can't help thinking that they look pretty good, that Dean smiling like that-like Sam has never seen before-is kind of beautiful.
He feels a wave of disgust wash over him just for thinking that, as if anything he's looking at is okay just because of some smile. It's his brother dreaming about him like that, and Sam should be sick just from knowing. The fact that he isn’t is terrifying. He finally manages to pull himself out of the dream and sits up in bed, wet from sweat and shaking.
A few feet away, Sam's brother turns over, letting out a quiet groan. Sam catches his eyes drifting down, wondering if Dean's dick is as hard as his own, and just what the hell that means for both of them. Dean dreaming that was-weird, okay, given it was really weird. But people have weird dreams. Tomorrow, Dean might be grossed out by it, if he remembers at all. It's not like people always get to choose what they dream about.
That doesn't explain why Sam-who was in control of his senses and could have changed it-stood there and watched, or why he's more turned on than he has been in months, or why, of all the questions cluttering his mind right now, the only one that’s holding his attention is I wonder if I could really make him smile like that?
"I'm craving sausage."
Sam jolts awake, pulling back from his brother's touch against his shoulder. "What?"
Dean stops shaking Sam and raises an eyebrow. "You know, breakfast? Most important part of the day, Sammy."
"Oh, right," Sam says, staring at Dean and the perplexed look on his brother's face unblinkingly. "Thought you meant…"
Sam rubs a hand over his mouth and keeps the rest of that to himself. Dean is already turning his back on Sam, tossing things into his duffel the same way he does every morning before they check out. Like it's a totally regular day and he did not just spend the night having uncomfortably compelling dreams about incest.
"You planning to lie there all year, man?"
Sam shakes his head, going through the motions of getting up and dressed and packed to go. Dean is totally normal except for how he keeps giving Sam these confused, worried looks every time he catches Sam staring. And, sure, Sam is staring a whole lot, but he's just really confused and Dean is not making anything easier to comprehend. No matter how hard Sam looks, he can't find a single sign that Dean is disquieted by what was going on inside his head the night before, or that he even remembers it. He's exactly the same as always, which either means he's used to this or he forgot.
Sam flushes, wondering how a dream so vivid, so shameful and inviting at the same time, can be so easily forgotten, but that's the explanation he has to go with. It was a fluke. Sam is not equipped to handle the alternative.
"Bobby said not to get too excited, but he's pretty sure he's got a lead on Bela and the Colt." Dean waits for Sam's stilted nod before he continues, "I figure he'll call us back by the time we're done eating and then we can head in whatever direction that bitch is running."
"Yeah, that…sounds good," Sam answers slowly.
"Dude, are you okay?" Dean asks, stopping in front of Sam. His face draws close, and Sam nearly pulls back, afraid his brother is going to kiss him. Instead, Dean puts a hand on Sam's forehead, checking for fever, and Sam closes his eyes, trying to think of anything but the tender way he saw Dean touch him last night. "You seem out of it."
"I just didn't get enough sleep."
Sam coughs then, breaking away from the touch under the pretense of gathering his things up from the floor.
"You need more booze in your diet," Dean says, his head inclining toward the door after he picks up his own belongings. Sam walks in the direction indicated, not turning back so Dean can't see how red his face gets when his brother adds, "I sleep like a baby."
Babies don't have dreams like the one Dean was having last night, but Sam can't exactly bring that up. So he goes along for the rest of the day, growing more awkward with every minute Dean is not.
When he fails to find any hint of discomfort, Sam can't help looking for signs that maybe that was what Dean dreams about for a reason. But Dean doesn't act any differently than he usually does, his touches and looks don't linger, and his words are all the same obnoxious, overconfident big brother Sam's been putting up with his entire life. Sam can read his brother better than anything, there's no way Dean has been hiding something like this from him.
The only thing that's different is Sam. Sam is the one who's jumping every time Dean gets close to him, who keeps misinterpreting everything Dean says, and, Jesus, even after the dream, what kind of freak is Sam that he keeps looking for signs that his brother wants to fuck him?
When they go to sleep that night, Sam doesn't even pretend he isn't going back into Dean's head. He has to know, and this is the fastest way to put the questions to rest. He'll dip in, see that Dean is dreaming about Britney Spears in her schoolgirl getup or something, and never intrude on his brother's space again. He learned his lesson about poking into Dean's dreams. He just needs to be sure it was a one-time thing.
The dream Sam walks into is completely different from the one the night before, and Sam breathes a sigh of relief. Dean is sitting on the couch in an open living room. Sam can't place it, but he recognizes bits and pieces of it. A couch from the room they stayed in over Christmas in Michigan, white and blue walls from a haunted bed and breakfast they worked a few years back in Maine. There are other things, too, things Sam recognizes but can't recall where he saw them, but the most important thing is that there is no Sam to be seen.
"Hey," he says, walking around the couch and sitting next to Dean. "What's up?"
Dean jumps in his seat when he hears Sam's voice like he's being startled out of a dream, which is really just silly as far as Sam is concerned. "Sam?"
"Yeah," Sam says. "Me."
Dean smiles a bit, but he turns his face away before Sam can really read into it. He looks down at his lap. "You're late," he tells Sam. "I thought you weren't coming."
"Oh." Sam wants to ask what he's late for, but there's a good chance Dean doesn't even know. And it doesn't matter. He's here now, with Dean, which is all he really wanted to begin with. "Sorry?"
Dean shakes his head, looking up. "No, it's okay. I'm just glad you're here."
He leans over then, and his lips find Sam's like it's instinct, soft and expectant and opening just a bit as he makes contact. Sam puts his hands up, pushing Dean away. "What the fuck are you doing, Dean?"
"I thought…" Dean frowns, but his eyes don't leave Sam's. He doesn't look sorry. "So this is gonna be one of those dreams? You can go ahead and get started, then."
"Get started on what?" Sam asks. He's still shaking a little, holding his fingers up to his lips. Dean just kissed him and it was actually him, not some dream version of him, and fuck, that's his brother he can still feel wet against his mouth.
"You hate me," Dean says. "I disgust you. Go on, Sam, you know the script. I know you do."
"I don't hate you," Sam says, reaching out for Dean. He stops halfway there, not sure how to go about touching a brother who wants what Dean just tried to take. "I could never hate you."
Dean laughs coldly and his eyes follow Sam's hands as they hover awkwardly in the air between them. "But I sure do disgust you. Won't even touch your big brother now, huh?"
"You tried to kiss me," Sam says stupidly. He's not even sure why this is all still so shocking after last night.
"I try to kiss you all the time," Dean replies unabashedly. "I like the nights you let me better."
"But you’re my brother."
Dean smiles, but it’s sad now, nothing like the one Sam had seen on Dean's face the night before, and he feels guilty. He had control over which smile his brother was going to wear tonight, and even knowing he's the one pushing away when he's supposed to doesn't stop him from looking like the bad guy.
"I don't care what you say. Sam doesn't hate me. It's a dream. It's just a dream." Dean's voice is damn near begging. Sam hasn't heard Dean sound needy like this in years. He's pretty sure he was dead the last time Dean sounded like this. "I can't hurt him here," he says, leaning in again. He doesn't try to kiss Sam, just pushes his face into Sam's neck, and Sam's arms wrap around him before he can think about why. "I can't hurt him, he doesn't have to know. I can have you here."
Sam feels Dean pressing so close into his skin. His nose rubs against Sam's neck, and he laughs, sounding drunk. "You know I'd never hurt you out there," he promises, and yeah, Sam does know that. "But this won't hurt anyone. Who am I hurting?"
Dean pulls back, looks up at Sam with pleading eyes. Dean never asks Sam for anything. "It's not so wrong. If I can't help wanting it. It's better than-I'm not hurting my Sammy."
He wasn't. Not until Sam poked his nose where it didn't belong and now he knows what Dean's tried so hard to hide from him. He never had a right to know this. He never would have wanted to know this. It ruins everything Sam thought he knew. It's too damn much at once, and Sam can't remember being this confused in his life.
Dean moves back after a while, forcing Sam's arms away. He looks at Sam dead in the eye, an expression on his face like he's going to war and Sam's the enemy. "Say what you want," he says. "I don't care. Tell me I'm dirt. I'll dream better tomorrow."
"Do I really do that?" Sam asks. "Do you really think that I would do that to you?"
Dean shrugs. "I can't control you all the time. Not even in my dreams."
"Is that what you want? To control me?"
"I want to control myself. I want to make it through my last few months of this and finally stop having to worry I'll break one day." Dean shakes his head, smiling again as he puts his hand on Sam's cheek. "I want Sam to bury a brother he can remember fondly, not some fucking pervert who-"
"Why do you keep talking like I'm not here?"
"You're not Sam," Dean replies bitingly. "In my dreams, Sam wants to kiss me."
"So who am I, then?"
"My conscience, if I've still got one," Dean says, shrugging. "Otherwise you're just here to make me feel guilty in its absence."
Sam shakes his head. "I don't want to do that, Dean."
Dean's fingers run up the fabric of Sam's shirt and he tugs at the collar, looking like he's thinking of kissing Sam again. Sam freezes up in anticipation, but Dean just laughs at his reaction. "In that case, I think I'd better wake up now."
They sit up at the same time in their motel room. Dean looks over at Sam, his expression tense for a second before it smoothes over. He smiles, but Sam thinks it looks more strained than it usually does, and he can't help wondering if he's always seemed this forced on mornings after he had bad dreams and Sam just didn't realize.
"Rise and shine," he says, like clockwork. Same old clock running down and down. Sam is nearly out of time, and Dean just told him he was okay with that. Sam can't even fight him on it, because he's not really supposed to know. He'll blow his cover.
"You're annoying," Sam says, tossing his comforter at Dean's stupid, smiling face.
Dean snickers, yells something out about picking tampons up for him at the store, and Sam is terrified what it says about him that he almost wants to run back into the room and give Dean that kiss he asked for last night if he'll just promise to make every morning of Sam's life as insufferable as he's making this one.
Sam doesn't even know why he goes back the next night. He's run out of excuses to feed himself. He needs to see his brother. He can't sleep anymore without it. Dean is so closed off to him during the day, hiding so many things Sam never would have guessed at. Even if the things he said last night scare Sam, there was a rawness-honesty, straightforward instead of drowned in bullshit-that made Sam feel closer to Dean than he's ever been. And okay, maybe that means accepting that his brother is in love with him, or wants to fuck him, or whatever, but Sam can't care.
"Sammy, wake up," Dean reaches out, shaking a cold, limp hand. "Sam, please, you're scaring me."
Sam can feel the hairs on the back of his neck rising as he looks around the dream and recognizes where they are. Not this, he thinks. He doesn't want Dean to dream about this. He doesn't want to be reminded in here. This is the kind of thing he's running from.
"It's not funny," he says. "Please don't do this. Sammy, wake up."
Sam walks over to the chair Dean's pulled to the side of the bed and puts his hand on Dean's shoulder. "I'm awake."
Dean looks at him, and Sam makes sure the dead body is gone before he turns back for it. Dean reaches out, hands fumbling blindly on the empty mattress, and then he glares up at Sam.
"It wasn't funny," he says.
"I know, Dean. I'm sorry," Sam says, attempting to sit across from him. Dean reaches out and stops him.
He looks at the bed. "No, don't sit there. I don't want you there."
Sam wills the bed away. "Dean, what's wrong? There's nothing there."
Dean looks at him blankly, and then his eyebrows draw together. "I don't remember," he says. "Something was."
"Close your eyes," Sam tells him.
Dean obeys. Sam concentrates on finding something Dean will like, and when Dean opens his eyes again, they're in a bowling alley in East Michigan, Sam standing and Dean sprawled in one seat with his legs out over the other. Dean had loved this place when they'd been working the job, even though they'd both stunk at bowling. The girl at the counter had been cute, and they'd had to come back for four days straight before they figured out who the ghost they were hunting was. Dean loves any hunt that gets him laid regularly as a rule.
Dean looks around, his face a little surprised at first. "Are we bowling?"
"No," Sam replies. He takes the uncomfortable plastic chair next to his brother's, kneeing Dean's feet out of his space. Sam has a cold bottle of Dean's favorite El Sol brew in each of his hands and he passes one over. "We're sitting and watching other people bowl."
"You just don't wanna lose to me," Dean says, smirking as he takes a sip from his bottle.
Sam sighs and rolls his eyes and manages to resist the urge to challenge Dean to a game just because he could get a perfect score in here. The dream will go however he wants.
"Bet you couldn't play if you wanted," Dean continues, kicking his newly displaced feet up onto the table meant for scorecards. "Bet they don't rent shoes big enough for you, sasquatch."
"Bite me," Sam replies. They'd had shoes in his size. He had to squeeze a bit, sure, but not that much. "Aren't you gonna go hit on the concession girl? Come back smelling like nacho cheese?"
Dean looks over at him with bright eyes. "Jealous? I can get you free nachos too, Sammy. All you have to do is ask."
"Eww." Sam wrinkles his nose. "I don't want to be a part of your sick snack-sex trade."
Dean smiles faintly, throwing a brief glace over his shoulder toward the concession stand, and Sam follows his gaze on instinct. "She's not here," Dean says. Sam can't help wondering if he's just stating the obvious-there's no one behind the counter-or if it means something more. It sounds like it means something more, in that untraceable way Dean has of saying things that mean everything in completely trivial ways.
"I guess not," Sam replies. "She could be."
Dean huffs out a quiet laugh and hits Sam's thigh lightly with his beer. "Don't need anyone else in here."
Sam gets it then, and wishes it didn't make him feel so good to know he's all his brother needs or wants.
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