Antifreeze - Part 1
The place Sam dreams of doesn't look like Hell. It's nothing like the woodcuts he's seen in Bobby's old books, or on torn-out leaves stuffed between the pages of his father's journal. There aren't any cauldrons bubbling away; no endless parade of macabre figures, bony fingers interlaced as they circle the flames. The place Sam dreams of has no fire in it, and doesn't look as if it ever could have harboured one.
In his dreams, everything is cold. Everything: the ground mirroring out like the surface of a frozen lake, fathoms deep and frozen to the core; the intermittent walls -- sometimes, they become bars -- like stalagmites of ice straining upward. Sam has never seen what it is they are reaching for, ceiling or sky or the dome of a cage, but he is sure that it, too, is cold.
He has determined that speech is impossible in this place. What he doesn't know is the reason for it. His dreams tend towards silence, but sounds can be heard here, and he has heard them, from time to time; faint, sharp stirrings in the stillness. When Sam breathes, he hears the soft huff of it outside of himself as well as from within his own head, even as he watches his breath break whitely from his lips. That phenomenon, too, he is tempted to count as a mystery, that any part of himself should be warm enough to make its mark on the air. His lips are numb, always, beyond the point of tingling; his fingernails are blue. It shouldn't be possible to be as cold as Sam is and survive, but then, perhaps this is not survival. When he is here, he doesn't know he's dreaming, but he does know that he isn't living. Not entirely. Not quite.
Sam can walk for hours through the whiteness, search out every secret place and watch the tundra roll onward before him, and never meet another person, but he knows, somehow, that he is not alone. Sometimes, when he wakes, he can still feel the frostbite burn of Lucifer's hand in his, a numbness spreading outward from the centre of his palm. He shivers, shoves his hands between his thighs, flattens them against the hot pulse of the femoral artery, but it doesn't do any good. In the small hours, it is as if Lucifer is still smouldering inside him like a great freeze.
He never dreamed like this before.
Obviously, he doesn't tell Dean about the dreams. Sam justifies this to himself with the fact that Dean's never been big on that kind of caring and sharing crap, never been one to wonder why he keeps dreaming of a giant floating banana, or whatever, and if it means anything. Sure, Dean was plenty interested back when Sam was still wired up to Azazel TV, but that was different. Those were premonitions, signs for which Sam was an unwilling conduit, and these -- these aren't visions; Sam doesn't even think they qualify as nightmares. These are just unsettling, and Dean wouldn't want to hear about them any more than he'd have wanted to hear about the time Sam dreamed of fucking his sexagenarian Math teacher up against her own chalkboard. This is nothing but his brain defragmenting itself in his sleep, working through all the stresses and strains of the past couple of years and rearranging them into some kind of order, and it doesn't mean anything. This is what Sam tells himself, anyway.
Naturally, the truth of the matter is more complicated than that. It always is, with them. The truth is -- well. For one thing, Sam isn't exactly desperate to talk about it. There are only so many words in English for cold, after all, and Sam isn't sure that any of them could accurately convey just how discomfiting it is to walk through that, night after night, wading through a cold so intense that it almost has form. He isn't sure, either, that he wants to think too hard about the way the chill of it eats into his bones and lingers there. Most of him is sure that it's mostly memory, something repressed snaking out from behind the broken wall, but the last, fragile part of him doesn't want to chance Dean thinking otherwise. He doesn't know if he could take it, if Dean thought it was more than that -- if Dean thought that the ache in the palms of Sam's hands stemmed from anything other than his own bruised psyche. The spectre of Lucifer is disconcerting enough; Sam has no desire to test how his weakened mind will hold up against the potential reality of him.
That's the selfish reasoning. The rest of it is more altruistic, maybe, but no less compelling. If there's one thing Sam is sure of, it's that his brother is not having his greatest month ever. Not, of course, that Dean's really managed to have even one semi-decent month at any point in the past five years -- which, frankly, is an entirely separate issue that Sam feels should really be worked on -- but this past one began with Castiel's betrayal and the destruction of Sam's wall, both falling together in one easy, horrible blow, and things haven't exactly improved since Castiel's self-deification. The last thing Dean needs, at this point in time, is to have to worry about Sam, too, especially given how relieved he was to discover that he wasn't going to have to spend the rest of his life holding the hand of a coma patient.
Sam has seen his brother in plenty of difficult situations, but rarely has he seen such a furious conflict of emotions in his eyes as in the moment when Sam plunged the angel sword into Castiel's back. There was fear there, certainly, stiff and clear under everything; hurt, too, at what Castiel had done; but above it all, holding Dean together, was the overriding note of relief at seeing Sam standing there, at seeing Sam doing anything when Dean had so obviously been unsure of ever seeing his brother open his eyes again. That was what kept Dean together on that evening, Sam knew; and it has been holding him together ever since, through all the subsequent weeks of charting and mapping and cataloguing signs, hunting out the likeliest place for a renegade angel-turned-deity to have gone to ground. Dean is still able to get out of bed in the morning -- brush his teeth; eat breakfast; hit the library; run through the routine salt-and-burns en route to the elusive final goal -- because he still has Sam, and he doesn't have to worry about him. In this, at least, if in nothing else, things have turned out better than Dean expected, and that's so damn rare, so pathetically unusual, that Sam would die before he'd take it away when Dean needs it most.
Dean needs Sam right now, to be normal and dependable and strong, to be there the way Castiel was so abruptly not. What he doesn't need is for Sam to turn around and tell him he's been dreaming of Lucifer, waking in the night feeling chilled to the bone, his mind thick with the unacceptable urge to heave himself out of his own bed and into his brother's just for the sake of the shared body heat. Dean doesn't need to hear that right now, and there's nothing Dean could do about it, anyhow. They're only dreams. They don't mean anything. Sam's wall is gone, fallen, and things aren't about to get any worse than they've gotten. If this is rock bottom, Sam thinks, it's a hell of a lot better than some of the potential scenarios he'd dared to contemplate from time to time, in his dark nights of the soul after he'd first gotten the damn thing back. Things can only improve from here, and in the meantime, he doesn't intend to put any more weight upon Dean than is necessary.
The dreams don't mean anything, Sam is almost entirely certain, except that there are too many Sams in his head; too many half-assimilated parts of himself, carrying too many memories. The pieces have been slotted back together, the jagged edges realigned and soldered into place. It only remains for time to blur the sharp edges, sandpaper them down. For the time being, there's nothing Sam can do but wait and work, keep his head up and watch his brother's back.
At night, it's cold in his bed, Lucifer-cold, but Sam has two arms -- gargantuan ones, Dean would point out. They're plenty long enough for Sam to wrap around himself, anyway, and that helps a little bit. The way things have been lately, Sam isn't about to look a little bit of anything in the eye and say it's worthless. A little bit is all he can have, and he'll take it, cling to it and wait. This, too, shall pass. It's hardly the worst they've suffered.
Life goes on. The dreams of the cold place don't diminish, not really, but Sam becomes more used to them, maybe, inasmuch as it is possible to do so. Dean is distracted, fired up for work in a way that is artificial and overbright, glowing like the bars of an electric fire. Sam knows it's only the threat of Lucifer in him that wants to curl up in that frantic heat, craving it even with its jagged edges, sharp corners that Dean doesn't usually exhibit. Dean's always run hot, always sweated early in summer, stripped off his overshirt before Sam did when they were digging or working outdoors. This isn't that, not quite, and Sam's body should recognise that, understand it for the bad sign it is, but still, it's close enough; it's something, and Sam is so cold. Dean isn't himself, but everything in him that isn't stuck on the ultimate goal of saving the world from the rise of an evil angelic dictatorship is geared towards Sam, and Sam is only human.
More than once, Dean's thrown out a casual arm along the back of the front seat while driving, and Sam's caught himself in the act of leaning towards it, tipping his head back against the curl of Dean's fingers. Sometimes, in restaurants, Dean's wound up on the same side of the booth as Sam, and his closeness was palpable, so near and yet not enough, the warmth of him just out of reach all down Sam's side. It isn't new, this craving for Dean. When Sam was a kid, he always wanted it -- wanted Dean's hand in his when they crossed the street, as much for the comfort factor as anything, and he never minded sharing a bed with him when Dad's money was running low and a room with two beds was always so much cheaper. He preferred it, even, long past the point at which he might have been expected to start getting restless about it. There was something reassuring about climbing into a bed that had Dean in it, especially after Sam discovered that there might well be monsters hiding in the dark space beneath his mattress. He was eight before he knew for sure that there were things in the dark, but he knew much earlier that, whatever was out there, Dean wouldn't let them get him. Dean was always a softly smouldering ember, a perpetual defence against the darkness, and Sam is no stranger to the desire to be close to him, to shore himself up with Dean's surety.
But that was then. That was when they were kids, when Dean was bigger than Sam as well as older; when Dean was the one with the smart mouth and the shotgun and the uncanny understanding of everything. It never went away entirely -- Dean was always, will always be, big brother -- but the impulse towards him has been far lesser lately, diminishing along with their tendency to touch each other, to express their dependence physically. This renewed whatever-it-is is as unsettling as it is deeply familiar, and Sam isn't sure what to do with it, except stop himself from giving in. Dean would know, then, that something was up. There's no way in hell or out of it that Dean wouldn't start getting worried and suspicious if Sam started grasping at his hands out of the blue, tipping his head back onto Dean's outstretched arm the way he wants to. No: Sam knows well enough that the impulse has to be resisted for as long as it decides to endure. He only wishes he knew how long that was likely to be, and that it would fuck the hell off already.
On the Cas front, they're no further forward. Some days, Dean pretends that they are, draws up lists of possible sightings, of strange natural disturbances he's turned up in local papers, but they both of them know that this is only a show for the sake of Dean's sanity, so they can feel like they've managed something at least a little productive in all this time. Bobby, not driven by the same urgency as Dean, has effectively given up. Last time they called him, Bobby said, without mincing his words, that he pretty much thought they'd exhausted all avenues other than 'wait and see', and privately, Sam is with him. Dean, though -- out of some misplaced sense of duty, doubtless; some deep-rooted guilty belief that he's somehow responsible for this, that it's his job to save the world from it, that he could have actually changed the mind of an angel of the Lord if he'd only tried a little harder -- Dean can't bring himself to drop it, and Sam understands that, understands it's too early to ask him to try. So, they go on searching, the Impala kicking up dust as they criss-cross the country, a different, creaky motel bed every other night, and Dean is nervous and Sam is cold, but neither of them seems to know what else to do, and so this is how it goes. Sam brings Dean apple pie to eat under library tables, tries not to complain, and Dean smiles at him sidelong, leaves his unoccupied hand loose on the table near to Sam's, so Sam can't take his eyes off it, keeps wondering how it would feel against his own cold palms, whether its heat would smoke out the chill.
He never makes any attempt to find out, of course, but the thought is there. After a certain point, it starts to feel like the thought always is.
Sometimes, Sam dreams of Him. It's always the same, always his own face with that unaccustomed smirk tugging nastily at the lips, and always worse because it is so clearly Sam and not some shade of Satan. He dreams of hands at his throat, long-fingered, long familiar, and his stomach dips in response to their pressure at his windpipe, a spike of fear shot through with a crawling want that leaves him nauseous when he wakes.
"Sam," says the other man, the interloper, the villain with his face, "I'm in you, you know that, don't you? You let me in. You let me get all up inside you and you're never getting me out."
These dreams are not like the dreams of Lucifer's cage of ice, not exact repetitions of each other. Sometimes, the man is naked when Sam finds him, sprawled on the ground as if dead, and Sam approaches, every time, despite his better judgement, as if he could surprise him, although the screaming voice at the back of his mind is certain that he cannot. Sam's eyes rove over the spreadeagled length of him, oddly objective, distanced from the reality of things, and when he wakes, he assumes the detachment is a mechanism his brain has constructed as a defence against the fact that they're one and the same. In the dream, though, it doesn't feel like a mechanism. In the dream, it feels like lust, low and dirty in his stomach, and Sam's approach feels like an attack, his pulse thundering under his jaw, sick and shivery with guilt. And then, at the last second, the other man will move -- will leap up, snatch at Sam's arms, pull him down -- and their positions will be reversed, the guilt in Sam's throat shocked instantly into trepidation.
"Let me in, Sam," the man says, rough and hot against the soft skin of Sam's throat, the space beneath his ear. "Sam." He bites, little nipping snatches of his teeth along the line of Sam's jaw; sucks hard bruises into Sam's neck, vicious enough that Sam's always surprised not to find them there in the morning, runs fingers reflexively over the places where they should be.
"Sam," the man hisses, kicking Sam's legs open with his own, "I'm gonna have you, you know that, right? You can run, but -- " and he hitches their hips together, slots himself flush between Sam's thighs -- "You can't hide. You're gonna take me."
This used to be where Sam jolted awake, sweat sticking his t-shirt to his skin, breath coming quickly for reasons he didn't want to analyse. Recently, though, his body has been too slow to save him from the worst of it, to thrust him into full consciousness before the man is done. Now, more often than not, this is only the beginning.
"Sam," the man says, and Sam is never naked when the dream begins, but it is as if he's stripped by the man's eyes, his body gone bare and vulnerable beneath his hands. "Makin' such a show of it, aren't you? But we both know you're gonna give it up for me, don't we, baby? Spreadin' it for freaking Lucifer --" He's quick, hands palming Sam's thighs wide, and then his fingers crook up inside Sam like a burn, the breaching ache of them spreading him open. "Christ, you'd spread for your goddamn brother, wouldn't you? Spread for him so fucking easy, I figure you can do it for me, too, huh? We're meant to be together, Sammy-boy, you can't fight it. You can't --"
And then he's sliding home, fat thrust of his cock jolting Sam, shaking, into wakefulness, and sometimes there's come on his stomach and sometimes there isn't, but the dirty twist in his chest is always the same, the uncomfortable ache of a remembered shame.
"You and me, Sam," the man says, "we're one and the same, dude. I know you." He touches all the places in Sam that never fail to make him squirm; gets his hands inside him just right, makes it good even while Sam's chest grows tight from the wrongness of it all. "Sam. I know you. I know who you are. I know what you want."
Sam only wishes it wasn't true.
Dean's eyes are green and gold, warm in every light. When Sam was a kid, there was nothing better than feeling them turned on him in approval; nothing that could match the sensation of being the only important person in the world, the one lucky enough to have commanded Dean's full attention. For a brief time -- maybe a year or two -- Sam wanted to fuck him so fervently that he couldn't even deny it to himself, the desire crawling up out of his subconscious in the night like an sea monster. It was only a teenage confusion of feelings, a conflation of his love for Dean with his own embryonic sexuality, Sam knew that. The books he checked surreptitiously out of city libraries were eager to assure him of the fact, at least, and Sam put a lot of faith in books then. Dean had been there through every stage of Sam's development, had been brother and parent and friend, and it made sense that some part of Sam felt that he should continue to be everything now, when the list of his needs included lover as well. They'd seen more of each other than siblings should, God knows. Sam knew the line of Dean's back, naked and damp from the shower; knew the sounds his breath made, hitching, when he jerked himself off under the covers in the early mornings. He knew the familiar, grounding smell of his sweat, the warmth of his body curled around Sam's while they slept. He and Dean had always been more intimate than lovers in every way but the obvious, and it made sense. The books said Sam would grow out of it when his world expanded, and so Sam pushed it aside, tried not to worry too much over it. Dean would never find out, after all, and sooner or later, Sam was going to go to college, and that would blow his world too wide to leave Dean as his body's first choice for this. It would be all right.
For a while, it was. Heaven was high and earth wide, and Sam's body learned to want other people's, to crave the smooth curves he didn't have himself instead of the reassuring sameness of Dean's narrow hips and broad shoulders, his Winchester blood. Eventually, for an idyllic span of months, his heart succeeded, too, in opening for someone else, for Jess's warm eyes and soft mouth, her cleverness and laughter. And then hell rose up, and heaven descended, and Sam was trapped in the middle again with Dean, in a space that was shrinking all the time. The monster had crawled back slowly, spreading its tendrils under Sam's skin, feeding on Dean's every concerned look, every sidelong smile, their every shoulder-to-shoulder stride into the fray together. But there had been a last stretch of space between them, all the same; they had rarely touched, never slept together the way they had as teenagers unless there was no other option, and there had always been someone, a final barrier. The memory of Jess; Dad; Bobby; Ruby. Castiel. Sam had kept the monster down without too great an effort, smothered it beneath the weight of everything else they had to worry about. But Castiel had been the last bastion, and he's gone, now, and the world is telescoping down to nothing. After everything, there is only Dean left, and Sam is so cold, wants so badly to touch him.
If it hadn't been for the sea monster, he might have let himself. As it is -- because Sam can't help but remember -- it's impossible. It's a risk too great to chance, and he doesn't need some soulless bastard with his own face to tell him that. Sam's approached this life from all sides, now, and if there's one thing he's sure of, it's that he'd rather stand in the cold with Dean than touch him and be burned. He can't be alone again, and Dean doesn't need that either, not now. Sam's a big boy; he'll cope, and it will get better. Dean never has to know.
part two