Not Just Any Port in a Storm
Title: Not Just Any Port in a Storm
Summary: Fusion 'verse. Sam isn't the only one with nightmares.
Characters: Dean, Sam
Rating: PG-13
Wordcount: 2,380
Disclaimer: Still not mine.
Warnings: Swearing, and there's some fairly graphic descriptions of torture toward the beginning. Also, gore.
Neurotic Author's Note #1: This is set right around the same time as Defying Gravity.
Neurotic Author's Note #2: Show is frustrating me a little with its hand-waving of the whole Hell-flashbacks-PTSD stuff, for Sam but especially for Dean. I never got the really juicy Dean & Alastair stuff I wanted from Season 4, so I guess this is me writing my own little wish fulfillment fantasy. Sometimes I think Show forgets that Dean went to Hell too.
"It's all in the wrist."
A whisper of hot air caresses his cheek, but it's the voice that makes him shudder. It's rough under the warmth, echoes hoarsely in his mind. The voice never leaves him, it's always there, always talking in that low, scratchy murmur. It lives in his blood, courses through his veins.
"You're my best and brightest, you know," Alastair tells him, dragging a finger over Dean's bare shoulder. There's no need for clothing in Hell. There's nowhere to hide, anyway -they always find you. The tip of Alastair's clawed finger breaks the skin just enough to draw blood, and Dean shudders, half with pain, half with pleasure. "But your wrists are still too stiff. Imagine your body like a river -all blood and roiling magma and sulphur- and let yourself flow along with it."
Great forked talons move along his arms, peeling away the skin before Alastair lets them transform into hands again. Dean still hasn't mastered that -he thinks he might always look human down here, no matter what, even though he'd love nothing more than to be able to grow a carapace like some of the other demons, or learn how to become a puff of smoke, always intangible- but Alastair doesn't seem to mind his staying in his own vulnerable little meat sack.
"Nothing so terrifying as watching your own kind do this sort of thing to you," he reassures Dean, tongue flickering out to taste the blood he's just drawn. "Now, take the razor and find your sweet spot. It might be soft, or it might be hard, but you'll know it when you find it."
The woman in front of him is a shivering, weeping mess. She's a new arrival, still trying to cover up her hanging breasts even though her arms are stuck fast with iron nails thicker than Dean's thumb, still trying to keep her knees together to protect herself. ("It's funny, she never had qualms about keeping them together when she was alive," Alastair rumbles a laugh into Dean's ear, and Dean echoes it, and tells himself it doesn't sound hollow.) It doesn't matter if what his master is saying is true, it doesn't matter if being a slut topside is or isn't a reason for Dean to carve her open. Down here, the truth is what they make it, and the truth is that she's on the rack and he's not, and that's all that matters.
Her eyes are swollen shut with tears, there's snot dripping from her upper lip, but at least she's given up begging for now. Her skin yields beautifully to the touch, parting like the Red Sea before Moses, and Chuck Heston has nothing on Dean now, nothing at all. She screams and sobs and doesn't bother begging, not even when he puts out her eyes one by one and licks the tips of his fingers, tastes the salt of her tears. He's just thankful he doesn't have to watch her cry anymore.
"Good boy," Alastair soothes him with a hand on his head, fingers in his hair, nails digging into his scalp to leave v-shaped, bloody indentations. "Now drink her blood and make her watch. It doesn't matter if she doesn't have eyes: down here we can all see what you're doing, always."
The taste of blood is still on Dean's tongue when his eyes snap open to darkness. He swallows convulsively, mouth filled with fluid that all still tastes of blood, even though it's not. Probably not. Maybe not. He's shivering, sweating under sheets that have soaked through and wrapped themselves around his legs like vines. He tries to kick at them, get them off before they pull him down, pull him back in, but it's useless, his leg won't work, won't bend the way he tells it, nothing's working the way he remembers and he can't get free, can't get away, and for a moment he thinks maybe he never did agree to step off the rack and they're going to come back for him and it's all going to start again and he'd scream if his mouth wasn't filling with blood again.
"Dean. Dean!" The voice isn't Alastair's. It's a voice he hasn't heard in well over thirty years, it can't be it can't be -it's the whole reason he's here, it can't be right, but it is. "Dean, come on, you're having a nightmare, wake up!"
The walls are pulsing red and black and yellow, and it's Sam sitting next to him on the bed, pulling the sheets away, and there's blood all over Dean's hands, all over the sheets and trickling down his throat even though he hasn't swallowed any more (he swore he wouldn't, never again, no, Jesus God, he swore) and none of it makes sense. He shoves weakly against Sam, but the next thing he knows Sam is pulling him upright, smoothing back his hair (and it's gentle and there's no pain at all and it's just wrong), and all he can think is that he's going to be sick.
Sam seems to read his mind. "Hey, I got you. Come on, up!"
It shouldn't be this easy for Sam to just lift him to his feet. He pulls Dean's arm over his shoulders, solid and steady when Dean stumbles on his way to the bathroom, lips pressed tightly together so he won't throw up all over the floor. They barely make it in time, and Dean's draped uncomfortably over the cold porcelain, bad leg out at the worst possible angle for his hip, but he doesn't care because the pain at least is familiar and comforting (and not the same) and Sam keeps a hand planted firmly between his shoulder blades as he pukes. He keeps his eyes closed as he throws up, still half-convinced that if he opens them all he'll see at the bottom of the white bowl is red-stained water.
I can still see you. I can always see you.
The voice creeps back into his mind, and the coppery taste in his mouth turns sulphuric and he gags and retches again, bile burning his throat and tears burning his eyes. He can feel Sam shift a little behind him, hears the sound of water running (oh God, the things he did to people with water -it's all fluid, down here, all so malleable), and when Sam holds a glass to his lips the tiny sip he manages turns to blood until he's back, head-down over the toilet bowl while Sam rubs his back and apologizes in a tiny, quiet whisper that sounds nothing at all like the constant whispering at the back of his mind. It's not the same, not the same at all, and Sam shouldn't even be here, he did this so Sam wouldn't have to -and then the tears are coming hot and fast without his being able to do a damned thing about them.
Alastair used to lick the tears from his face as they coursed down his cheeks. That was before he taught Dean how they tasted, before Dean understood...
Sam pulls him away from the toilet, hauls him bodily into his lap, frames Dean's legs with his own, and wraps his arms tightly around him. He's stronger than Dean remembers, arms keeping Dean against his chest where he can hear the warm thump of Sam's heartbeat even as he chokes on sobs he can't seem to muffle. Sam's hand comes up to rest on the back of his head, heat radiating from the palm, and it's not the same, not the same at all, and all he wants is to just stop goddamn crying already, but he's soaking through Sam's stupid grey t-shirt that he wears to bed all the time and he can't even stop shaking let alone hold back the tears that keep spilling down his face. Fuck, he thinks, just fuck, and Sam shouldn't have to deal with this shit, he should just -just, he doesn't even know, but when he tries to pull away Sam just clamps his free hand on his back and presses harder on the back of his head until Dean gives up and sags against him again.
"It's okay," Sam tells him quietly. "It takes the time it takes. Stop apologizing," he says, and it's only then that Dean realizes that all that's been coming out of his mouth is a litany of 'I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry.' He clamps his teeth together, stops talking.
It feels like years, but eventually the shuddering stops, long after the tears have dried up. Sam doesn't move, just rubs behind Dean's ear with his thumb. It feels better than it has any right to, like Sam is an impenetrable wall between him and the rest of the world. A fortress of warmth and familiar smells. When Dean's breathing has gone almost back to normal, Sam shifts again, just a little, just enough to let Dean turn around a little, to ease the pressure off his good leg. Sam ducks his head forward, talks quietly in Dean's ear.
"Tell me what you see."
And that makes him laugh. It's a half-choked, sad attempt at a laugh, but it's genuine. God only knows he's played this game countless times with Sam, only their roles were reversed. He feels Sam reaching out with one arm, and when Sam pulls his arm back he's got a washcloth in his hand, though Dean doesn't know when in all this mess he had time to wet it. Maybe when he was filling the water glass.
"Can I?" Sam asks, and he nods.
Sam tilts Dean's head a little, just two fingers against his jaw, uses his free hand to wipe his face with the cloth. He stills when Dean squirms, starts again as soon as Dean is quiet, until he's wiped his whole face clean, slowly and gently.
"C'mon, what do you see?"
There's no choice now. He forces his eyes open, half-expecting to see pulsing black and swirling blood, and is rewarded with the blue and white tile of the bathroom floor, the gleaming white porcelain of the bathtub. It's hard at first -all the words feel heavy and unfamiliar on his tongue, but Sam squeezes his shoulder and he makes himself talk: toilet, tiles, blue, white, water, washcloth, Sam. Sam, Sam, Sam.
"You said me already," Sam says. "Keep going."
"I am. There's a lot of you." His voice is reed-thin, even to his own ears, but Sam laughs, and it's the best thing Dean has felt in forever, the vibrations thrumming all the way through his chest and down into his toes. "Fucking giant."
"What do you need?"
He pulls in a shuddering breath, another, until he's breathing evenly again. "I, uh..."
"Okay, too complicated," Sam concedes. "Stay here, or back to bed?"
Unconsciously he fists his hand near the hem of Sam's t-shirt. He doesn't want to move, but they've been on the floor God only knows how long, and it's cold and his leg is aching dully and Sam should go back to sleep, because it's not like Sam gets enough sleep these days.
"Hey," Sam breaks into his thoughts. "We're not talking about me right now, okay? I'm fine. Here or bed? Those are your choices."
"Uh, bed." There's no way he's getting there on his own, but Sam's here, so it's okay.
"You got it."
His good leg is asleep, the pins and needles almost make his knee buckle until Sam pivots them both to a more stable position, Dean's arm over his shoulders, his arm around Dean's back, hand at Dean's waist. He lets Dean walk to the bedroom on his own, just bracing him so that he won't fall, and Dean is pathetically grateful to him for giving him that tiny illusion of control. He drops back onto his bed, has to stop himself from reaching out to grab at Sam when his brother moves away. It's short-lived, though: Sam pulls a fresh set of sheets from his cupboard -he didn't even know Sam kept spares in there- and makes up the bed around him again, pulling the covers loosely over Dean, smoothing them in place with a practiced hand. He disappears again, and Dean wraps his arms around himself to keep from shivering, until Sam comes back, glass of water in hand.
"Drink it all, I don't want to find a prune in your bed tomorrow instead of you," he says, right before crawling onto the bed next to him and shoving himself bodily into Dean's personal space.
Dean doesn't argue, just grasps the glass with both hands and swallows the contents as fast as possible. It's ice cold, comes close to giving him brain freeze, but it's water and only water, and he doesn't remember being this grateful for water in a very long time. Sam liberates the empty glass from him a few minutes later, then pulls him close and settles them both on the bed.
"Fucking giant," Dean says again, but he can't make his tone anything but fond. He can't curl up into Sam the way he wants, but he lets Sam wrap his arms around him again, feels his own heartbeat slow to match his brother's. "What time is it?" For all he knows, the night could be over already.
"Doesn't matter. You don't have to work today," Sam reminds him. "You should sleep, if you can. If you can't, we'll just stay here until one of us has to take a leak. And then we'll argue about it, if it makes you feel better."
He huffs a laugh. "Yeah, okay. I'm sorry," he blurts. "I didn't mean to-"
"Hey," Sam cuts him off. "If I'm not allowed to apologize, you're not allowed to apologize. You're the only reason I'm dealing as well as I am. I'm not the only one who can have bad days, got it?"
"Got it." He's too tired to argue.
"Can you sleep?"
He nods against Sam's chest. "Think so."
"Good. We're safe here, you know that, right?"
"Yeah, I know."
And the weird thing about it all is that he knows it's true.
This entry was originally posted at http://ratherastory.dreamwidth.org/209375.html. Please comment there using OpenID.
Summary: Fusion 'verse. Sam isn't the only one with nightmares.
Characters: Dean, Sam
Rating: PG-13
Wordcount: 2,380
Disclaimer: Still not mine.
Warnings: Swearing, and there's some fairly graphic descriptions of torture toward the beginning. Also, gore.
Neurotic Author's Note #1: This is set right around the same time as Defying Gravity.
Neurotic Author's Note #2: Show is frustrating me a little with its hand-waving of the whole Hell-flashbacks-PTSD stuff, for Sam but especially for Dean. I never got the really juicy Dean & Alastair stuff I wanted from Season 4, so I guess this is me writing my own little wish fulfillment fantasy. Sometimes I think Show forgets that Dean went to Hell too.
"It's all in the wrist."
A whisper of hot air caresses his cheek, but it's the voice that makes him shudder. It's rough under the warmth, echoes hoarsely in his mind. The voice never leaves him, it's always there, always talking in that low, scratchy murmur. It lives in his blood, courses through his veins.
"You're my best and brightest, you know," Alastair tells him, dragging a finger over Dean's bare shoulder. There's no need for clothing in Hell. There's nowhere to hide, anyway -they always find you. The tip of Alastair's clawed finger breaks the skin just enough to draw blood, and Dean shudders, half with pain, half with pleasure. "But your wrists are still too stiff. Imagine your body like a river -all blood and roiling magma and sulphur- and let yourself flow along with it."
Great forked talons move along his arms, peeling away the skin before Alastair lets them transform into hands again. Dean still hasn't mastered that -he thinks he might always look human down here, no matter what, even though he'd love nothing more than to be able to grow a carapace like some of the other demons, or learn how to become a puff of smoke, always intangible- but Alastair doesn't seem to mind his staying in his own vulnerable little meat sack.
"Nothing so terrifying as watching your own kind do this sort of thing to you," he reassures Dean, tongue flickering out to taste the blood he's just drawn. "Now, take the razor and find your sweet spot. It might be soft, or it might be hard, but you'll know it when you find it."
The woman in front of him is a shivering, weeping mess. She's a new arrival, still trying to cover up her hanging breasts even though her arms are stuck fast with iron nails thicker than Dean's thumb, still trying to keep her knees together to protect herself. ("It's funny, she never had qualms about keeping them together when she was alive," Alastair rumbles a laugh into Dean's ear, and Dean echoes it, and tells himself it doesn't sound hollow.) It doesn't matter if what his master is saying is true, it doesn't matter if being a slut topside is or isn't a reason for Dean to carve her open. Down here, the truth is what they make it, and the truth is that she's on the rack and he's not, and that's all that matters.
Her eyes are swollen shut with tears, there's snot dripping from her upper lip, but at least she's given up begging for now. Her skin yields beautifully to the touch, parting like the Red Sea before Moses, and Chuck Heston has nothing on Dean now, nothing at all. She screams and sobs and doesn't bother begging, not even when he puts out her eyes one by one and licks the tips of his fingers, tastes the salt of her tears. He's just thankful he doesn't have to watch her cry anymore.
"Good boy," Alastair soothes him with a hand on his head, fingers in his hair, nails digging into his scalp to leave v-shaped, bloody indentations. "Now drink her blood and make her watch. It doesn't matter if she doesn't have eyes: down here we can all see what you're doing, always."
The taste of blood is still on Dean's tongue when his eyes snap open to darkness. He swallows convulsively, mouth filled with fluid that all still tastes of blood, even though it's not. Probably not. Maybe not. He's shivering, sweating under sheets that have soaked through and wrapped themselves around his legs like vines. He tries to kick at them, get them off before they pull him down, pull him back in, but it's useless, his leg won't work, won't bend the way he tells it, nothing's working the way he remembers and he can't get free, can't get away, and for a moment he thinks maybe he never did agree to step off the rack and they're going to come back for him and it's all going to start again and he'd scream if his mouth wasn't filling with blood again.
"Dean. Dean!" The voice isn't Alastair's. It's a voice he hasn't heard in well over thirty years, it can't be it can't be -it's the whole reason he's here, it can't be right, but it is. "Dean, come on, you're having a nightmare, wake up!"
The walls are pulsing red and black and yellow, and it's Sam sitting next to him on the bed, pulling the sheets away, and there's blood all over Dean's hands, all over the sheets and trickling down his throat even though he hasn't swallowed any more (he swore he wouldn't, never again, no, Jesus God, he swore) and none of it makes sense. He shoves weakly against Sam, but the next thing he knows Sam is pulling him upright, smoothing back his hair (and it's gentle and there's no pain at all and it's just wrong), and all he can think is that he's going to be sick.
Sam seems to read his mind. "Hey, I got you. Come on, up!"
It shouldn't be this easy for Sam to just lift him to his feet. He pulls Dean's arm over his shoulders, solid and steady when Dean stumbles on his way to the bathroom, lips pressed tightly together so he won't throw up all over the floor. They barely make it in time, and Dean's draped uncomfortably over the cold porcelain, bad leg out at the worst possible angle for his hip, but he doesn't care because the pain at least is familiar and comforting (and not the same) and Sam keeps a hand planted firmly between his shoulder blades as he pukes. He keeps his eyes closed as he throws up, still half-convinced that if he opens them all he'll see at the bottom of the white bowl is red-stained water.
I can still see you. I can always see you.
The voice creeps back into his mind, and the coppery taste in his mouth turns sulphuric and he gags and retches again, bile burning his throat and tears burning his eyes. He can feel Sam shift a little behind him, hears the sound of water running (oh God, the things he did to people with water -it's all fluid, down here, all so malleable), and when Sam holds a glass to his lips the tiny sip he manages turns to blood until he's back, head-down over the toilet bowl while Sam rubs his back and apologizes in a tiny, quiet whisper that sounds nothing at all like the constant whispering at the back of his mind. It's not the same, not the same at all, and Sam shouldn't even be here, he did this so Sam wouldn't have to -and then the tears are coming hot and fast without his being able to do a damned thing about them.
Alastair used to lick the tears from his face as they coursed down his cheeks. That was before he taught Dean how they tasted, before Dean understood...
Sam pulls him away from the toilet, hauls him bodily into his lap, frames Dean's legs with his own, and wraps his arms tightly around him. He's stronger than Dean remembers, arms keeping Dean against his chest where he can hear the warm thump of Sam's heartbeat even as he chokes on sobs he can't seem to muffle. Sam's hand comes up to rest on the back of his head, heat radiating from the palm, and it's not the same, not the same at all, and all he wants is to just stop goddamn crying already, but he's soaking through Sam's stupid grey t-shirt that he wears to bed all the time and he can't even stop shaking let alone hold back the tears that keep spilling down his face. Fuck, he thinks, just fuck, and Sam shouldn't have to deal with this shit, he should just -just, he doesn't even know, but when he tries to pull away Sam just clamps his free hand on his back and presses harder on the back of his head until Dean gives up and sags against him again.
"It's okay," Sam tells him quietly. "It takes the time it takes. Stop apologizing," he says, and it's only then that Dean realizes that all that's been coming out of his mouth is a litany of 'I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry.' He clamps his teeth together, stops talking.
It feels like years, but eventually the shuddering stops, long after the tears have dried up. Sam doesn't move, just rubs behind Dean's ear with his thumb. It feels better than it has any right to, like Sam is an impenetrable wall between him and the rest of the world. A fortress of warmth and familiar smells. When Dean's breathing has gone almost back to normal, Sam shifts again, just a little, just enough to let Dean turn around a little, to ease the pressure off his good leg. Sam ducks his head forward, talks quietly in Dean's ear.
"Tell me what you see."
And that makes him laugh. It's a half-choked, sad attempt at a laugh, but it's genuine. God only knows he's played this game countless times with Sam, only their roles were reversed. He feels Sam reaching out with one arm, and when Sam pulls his arm back he's got a washcloth in his hand, though Dean doesn't know when in all this mess he had time to wet it. Maybe when he was filling the water glass.
"Can I?" Sam asks, and he nods.
Sam tilts Dean's head a little, just two fingers against his jaw, uses his free hand to wipe his face with the cloth. He stills when Dean squirms, starts again as soon as Dean is quiet, until he's wiped his whole face clean, slowly and gently.
"C'mon, what do you see?"
There's no choice now. He forces his eyes open, half-expecting to see pulsing black and swirling blood, and is rewarded with the blue and white tile of the bathroom floor, the gleaming white porcelain of the bathtub. It's hard at first -all the words feel heavy and unfamiliar on his tongue, but Sam squeezes his shoulder and he makes himself talk: toilet, tiles, blue, white, water, washcloth, Sam. Sam, Sam, Sam.
"You said me already," Sam says. "Keep going."
"I am. There's a lot of you." His voice is reed-thin, even to his own ears, but Sam laughs, and it's the best thing Dean has felt in forever, the vibrations thrumming all the way through his chest and down into his toes. "Fucking giant."
"What do you need?"
He pulls in a shuddering breath, another, until he's breathing evenly again. "I, uh..."
"Okay, too complicated," Sam concedes. "Stay here, or back to bed?"
Unconsciously he fists his hand near the hem of Sam's t-shirt. He doesn't want to move, but they've been on the floor God only knows how long, and it's cold and his leg is aching dully and Sam should go back to sleep, because it's not like Sam gets enough sleep these days.
"Hey," Sam breaks into his thoughts. "We're not talking about me right now, okay? I'm fine. Here or bed? Those are your choices."
"Uh, bed." There's no way he's getting there on his own, but Sam's here, so it's okay.
"You got it."
His good leg is asleep, the pins and needles almost make his knee buckle until Sam pivots them both to a more stable position, Dean's arm over his shoulders, his arm around Dean's back, hand at Dean's waist. He lets Dean walk to the bedroom on his own, just bracing him so that he won't fall, and Dean is pathetically grateful to him for giving him that tiny illusion of control. He drops back onto his bed, has to stop himself from reaching out to grab at Sam when his brother moves away. It's short-lived, though: Sam pulls a fresh set of sheets from his cupboard -he didn't even know Sam kept spares in there- and makes up the bed around him again, pulling the covers loosely over Dean, smoothing them in place with a practiced hand. He disappears again, and Dean wraps his arms around himself to keep from shivering, until Sam comes back, glass of water in hand.
"Drink it all, I don't want to find a prune in your bed tomorrow instead of you," he says, right before crawling onto the bed next to him and shoving himself bodily into Dean's personal space.
Dean doesn't argue, just grasps the glass with both hands and swallows the contents as fast as possible. It's ice cold, comes close to giving him brain freeze, but it's water and only water, and he doesn't remember being this grateful for water in a very long time. Sam liberates the empty glass from him a few minutes later, then pulls him close and settles them both on the bed.
"Fucking giant," Dean says again, but he can't make his tone anything but fond. He can't curl up into Sam the way he wants, but he lets Sam wrap his arms around him again, feels his own heartbeat slow to match his brother's. "What time is it?" For all he knows, the night could be over already.
"Doesn't matter. You don't have to work today," Sam reminds him. "You should sleep, if you can. If you can't, we'll just stay here until one of us has to take a leak. And then we'll argue about it, if it makes you feel better."
He huffs a laugh. "Yeah, okay. I'm sorry," he blurts. "I didn't mean to-"
"Hey," Sam cuts him off. "If I'm not allowed to apologize, you're not allowed to apologize. You're the only reason I'm dealing as well as I am. I'm not the only one who can have bad days, got it?"
"Got it." He's too tired to argue.
"Can you sleep?"
He nods against Sam's chest. "Think so."
"Good. We're safe here, you know that, right?"
"Yeah, I know."
And the weird thing about it all is that he knows it's true.
This entry was originally posted at http://ratherastory.dreamwidth.org/209375.html. Please comment there using OpenID.