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FIC: One Cloud Scattered Night (Sam/Dean, R)
Title: One Cloud Scattered Night
Author: Audra Rose
Summary: written for![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
spn_halloween, Prompt 152: Sam gets trapped in a nightmare and Dean has to go in and lead him back to consciousness.
Length: 5000 words or so
Warnings: Wincest, first time, h/c on a near-epic scale. Heh.
Notes: Thanks to![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
quarterturn for the awesome prompt and to ignipes for the challenge. Also, huge thanks to mikou for reminding me that a story needs to make sense without the author notes and summary, and to the brilliant sori1773 for making sure this one actually does. *hugs*
One Cloud Scattered Night by Audra Rose
oh my fair north star
i have held to you dearly
i had asked you to steer me
until one cloud scattered night
i got lost
--Mercy of the Fallen, Dar Williams
“Talk, Sam.”
“Talk?”
“Yeah. Say something. Anything. Tell me a story.”
Dean waits for the annoyed, sideways look from his brother, barely visible in the darkness and briefer than usual, because Sam needs to keep his eyes on the uneven pavement in front of them or he’ll trip again. He’s already gone down once, startled into falling when Dean suddenly appeared beside him, and his palms are still bleeding. Dean doesn’t know if that’s symbolic or not, but he’s sure it still hurts like a bitch.
“Are you out of your mind?” Waspy and irritated and typical. Dean finds that oddly comforting.
“No, I’m bored and I’m cold and I’m sick of walking.”
“So it’s my job to entertain you.”
“Hey, you’re the one who’s making us hike through the woods, so, yeah. Pretty much. Where are we going, anyway?”
He gets silence in response, with just the sound of their footfalls muffled by the thick trees hanging over the road. Just the sound of their breathing, harsh and uneven and hanging misty-white in the cold, night air.
Try to keep him talking, Ellen had said, right before Dean had closed his eyes, and that had sounded simple, but apparently Sam likes to brood silently in his dreams just as much as he does when he’s awake. Terrific.
“What kind of story?” Sam asks, finally.
Dean’s going to say, whatever you want, just fucking talk to me, but decides better of it when they leave the road to stand outside the circle of a campfire, staring at five boys huddling around the flickering light like it’s going to keep the bad things away.
“Well, maybe not a ghost story,” Dean says.
Dean doesn’t think he’s ever told a ghost story, not once, not even when they stayed in one place long enough for Sam to make friends who stayed over.
It’s been more than ten years, but he still remembers this night -- Sam’s twelfth birthday and a camping trip with some kids from the junior high school. Maybe a big brother was supposed to put a flashlight under his chin and whisper about ghosts and ghouls to scare the little bastards into wetting their sleeping bags, but Dean remembers letting some other kid tell the stories while he used his flashlight to look into the shadows. Kept watch, because if you ever stopped looking around you might miss what was coming at you out of the dark.
“You’re not supposed to be here,” Sam blurts out, accusing and angry, suddenly twelve years old and close to tears of frustration he’ll never let fall.
“How –.” Dean starts, turning to the little kid standing next to him who was twenty-two a second ago and he has to steady himself. He tries again. “How do you know that? Ellen said you’d probably think I was part of your dream.”
“Dad promised,” almost-teen Sam continues, like Dean never spoke. “This is my party. My friends. You can leave.”
“Oh,” Dean says, and the disappointment is wounding, but he tries to remember what he said when this really happened. “I’m not leaving you alone out here. End of story, so suck it up.”
“I’m not a baby, Dean. I don’t need you to protect me!” Trembling, tense, holding himself on the balls of his feet and Dean wonders if Sam will try to hit him. He doesn’t remember Sam being this upset when this happened the first time, wonders what he should do next when Sam hisses, “You ruin everything! I hate you!”
He whirls around to run, plunging off into the darkness before Dean has a chance to react.
“Hey! Hey, Sam, wait up!”
But Sam is furious and disappearing into the woods, so Dean has no choice but to run after him, almost falling into the
**
long grass under the tree, so long it hides the roots and he almost trips, almost drops the baby and mom will be so upset so he hangs on tighter, tiny bundle in his arms that should be bigger, heavier, almost too much for him to hold, but for some reason, isn’t this time, and he falls to his knees. It’s okay, Sam, staring into huge eyes in a tiny face, too-knowing eyes that reflect back the flames rolling out of the house behind them, and maybe this time Dean will shout the way he wanted to the first time, but
**
he’s standing up in the motel parking lot with empty arms and the sun setting red and bloody behind him, looking frantically around the pavement for a baby on the ground. Instead, thank God, there’s Sam walking out of the motel and slamming the door behind him, hair a mess and seventeen years old, at least.
Dean rubs his eyes. “Okay, that was freaky shit, Sam. Do not do that again. I’m serious.”
“Maybe you can fucking talk to him, because God knows I can’t.” Sam waves a hand back the way he came, ignoring Dean’s words. “Maybe you can make him understand.” Urgent and determined, with a hard grasp on Dean’s forearm.
Sam’s wearing a blue shirt and holding a duffle bag and Dean has no problem at all remembering what he said when this happened the first time.
“I don’t know what you expect me to do.”
“It’s a full ride, Dean.” Sincere Sam voice, the one that Sam thinks will make anyone agree with him if he just explains enough times. “To Stanford. I’ll never get another chance like this, you know that.”
Dean did know that. It was unbelievable, really -- his little brother with a full ride to Stanford, when he’d never spent more than six months at one school, most of it waiting for transcripts that never quite followed him in time. Somehow he’d grown up brilliant all the same, and how had Dean missed what a miracle that had been?
“I know.”
That makes Sam stop, makes him look at Dean like he isn’t sure he heard right.
“He said – he told me never to come back. If I left. And I’m leaving.” Sam’s jaw is set, light stubble and fine bone, not a glimpse of the pudgy little kid Dean remembers, but still so fucking young, and Dean’s heart aches in one rolling thump.
And hell, he knows he should ask Sam to stay, make him talk, that’s the whole reason he’s here, after all, but there are some mistakes it would be a sin to make twice.
“Then go.” Shouted last time, spit out with hurt and grief, but this time Dean makes the words quiet and Sam doesn’t know what to do.
“I’m not coming back.” A threat with tears behind it, something choking him and Dean finds that he can smile a little bit.
“That’s okay,” he says softly. “I’ll come to you.”
Sam almost backs away, his face twisting with emotion, but then suddenly he turns and crosses the parking lot at a jog so he can hitch to the bus station two miles away. Except it’s dark, now, and Dean should offer to drive him there, because Sam’s running toward lights close on the horizon that aren’t the bus station at all.
“Sam! Sam, wait up,” he calls, but he never hears if Sam answers him
**
because the noise is going to deafen him if the whirling lights don’t blind him first; it’s all screams and wild laughter, distorted music that pounds against his ears. Night. A carnival.
Dean knows this place.
Knows the why of this place.
And, no, Sam. Not this.
“Sam!” Flooding panic makes him choke on the name, look around wildly, but Sam isn’t anywhere, so he starts running and hopes he’s choosing the right direction.
“Sam, we don’t have to stay here.” He calls it out into the whirling dark, shoulders his way past a crowd where every third face is the same and none of them are Sam and in a minute he won’t be able to breathe.
“We can go anywhere you want to go, any place you like – so let’s get out of here, okay?”
No answer and Dean is going to be sick because he should never have let Sam out of his sight. His brother’s only eight and that’s way too young to wander this kind of place alone.
“Anywhere else but here, Sam…” he’s begging, but the words die before he finishes them, trail off weak and unfinished when he sees the tall figure and the small one ahead of him, going behind the trailer, and he feels sick like this is for real.
He’d followed them back then, too, furious with Sam for talking to strangers and with himself for losing track of Sam. He should probably be grateful that yelling made the guy run before anything really awful happened, but in so many ways it was still too late, because nothing ever seemed safe again, and he learned a thing doesn’t need to be dead to be evil.
And it’s happening again. Only this time he’s not twelve.
It’s like a flying dream only faster; and the sick fuck who preyed on kids all those years ago goes down beneath his fists. He uses everything he’s got to hold the guy down and obliterate his face, and someone Sam, this time is shouting leave us alone, over and over.
By the time he stops, there’s blood all over his hands, and he gets it on his face when he rubs his eyes. He can’t look at what he’s done. Can’t look at his brother, silent and accusing.
“Shit, Sam,” he says, with grief that tastes like blood. “Didn’t anything good ever happen to you?”
He takes a deep breath and drops his hand
**
and looks around a hallway he’s never seen before; institutional tile and fluorescent lighting with walls painted a hideous green that reminds Dean that he still feels sick, but Sam’s helping him stand up.
“Dean, what are you doing down there, man?”
Big smile, and Sam’s got to be about twenty, half-way in between the kid Dean watched walk away in the parking lot and the man whose house he broke into a year ago. Tan and strong, hair falling in his face like Dad would never have allowed and Dean brushes off his jeans with hands that are clean, now.
“Better watch where I’m going, I guess.”
“Lame-ass,” Sam says, but he’s laughing, and even though this never happened, at least there’s nothing hurting them, yet. Dean follows his brother down the hall.
“Did you have a hard time finding it?” Sam asks, moving through crowds of kids with backpacks and ragged clothes so purposely shabby that it can only be deliberate.
“Wasn’t exactly easy,” Dean says, deciding that this must be Stanford and Sam’s dorm and it could’ve really used a new paint job sometime in the last few decades.
“Well, you’re here, anyway. Come on, step it up, there’s someone I want you to meet.” Sam’s voice is high with anticipation, bright and excited and Dean starts to feel dread building again.
She’s just like he remembers, only dressed in jeans and a shrunken baseball jersey that shows way too much tanned, perfect stomach for someone who’s supposed to be only fucking his brother. And Jesus, where the hell did that come from?
“Jess. Jess this is my brother, Dean – the one I told you about,” and she smiles, a grin wider than Sam’s, happy to meet him like he’s the goddamned pope, and Dean is about to say something snarky about it being awesome to meet her, too, when Sam says, “Dean, this is Jess. My fiancée.”
Just for a second, everything goes blank.
“You really wanted to marry her,” Dean says abruptly, the only words he can get past his throat, but they don’t think it’s weird. They just smile at each other like they really have a future, and Dean coughs a little, before he says, “Congratulations, Sam. That’s… great. Really great.” Deep breath. “Come with me. I’ll buy you a drink. Celebrate. We can talk.”
“Yeah, yeah, okay,” Sam agrees, tearing his eyes away from Jessica and finally looking at Dean, who tries not to grab onto Sam and drag him away.
“Wait, Sam, you didn’t ask him,” Jess says to Sam, slender hand around Sam’s bicep and Dean wants to strangle her for stopping him.
“Right, right. Dean, uh, Jess and I… well, we’d be, honored, I guess?” He laughs a little nervously, self-conscious like Dean hasn’t seen him since he was ten. “Oh, fuck, I’m screwing this up. Look, will you be my best man?”
He was waiting for it, but it’s still like a blow to the stomach and he has to wait before he can talk. Like a movie playing on the wall he sees candles and flowers and blonde hair under a white veil; he sees his brother working a job where nothing tries to kill him and rushing home for soccer games played by sandy-haired kids, tall like Sam but with Jess’s eyes; he sees a whole lifetime of lovehurtangerjoy that never got a chance to take a breath.
“I’d have moved hell to be there, Sammy,” he whispers.
Sam is staring at him, suddenly serious and watchful, while Jess simply fades away beside him.
“Come on. I’ll buy you that drink,” Dean says, choking, and turns away, hoping Sam will follow him
**
down an endless hallway, featureless and white, stretching like taffy out along perspective lines toward the horizon. There’s a door at the end just closing on a Sam-shape, outlined in brilliant light, like the sun is behind him.
“Wait, Sam!” he shouts, but of course, it’s too late; the door is closed and the hallway is still stretching, so the only thing Dean can do is run. Step after step and the door just gets farther away while the air gets thick as motor oil, constricting his chest and slowing his feet, until finally Dean just stops, hands on his knees and breathing hard. He’s too tired for this, inside and out.
“Okay, that’s it. Enough. Listen up, Sam,” he says, holding out his arms. “I hate this dream. Everybody hates this dream. So just give me the damned doorway, and we’ll go somewhere and talk.”
Silence, and if anything the door is farther away.
“Yeah, Sam, thanks,” he calls out. “That’s just fucking great.” Dean turns in a circle, wondering what he’s supposed to do now.
Then he freezes.
She’s probably been standing there all along, skinny girl with lank, dark hair hanging over her face, fifty feet away down the hall, feet bare on the cold, white floor and Dean feels his heart stutter.
“Doorway, Sam,” he says, a little more insistent, now. “Don’t screw around here.” Starts backing away and she doesn’t move, but he knows that the second he turns his back she’s going be on him, scuttling like a spider along the walls and if he lifts his hand to touch the wetness on his cheeks his fingers will come away red.
“Open the door!” He shouts because he can’t stand it anymore, can’t be here when she lifts her head, can’t look in her eyes, not ever, not ever. He runs with legs like lead for a door that keeps moving away from him, listening frantically for the skittering flap of bare feet on tile getting closer and closer.
He can’t really hear anything over the noise he’s making, but she must be close behind him because he can feel stripes of pain across his back and through his chest. Familiar agony, because the demon did this, too, soaked the front of his shirt with too much blood, so much that it’s spraying over the walls, now, dripping from his fingers and rolling down his face.
And this is it, she’s right behind him, frigid breath on the back of his neck will be the last thing he feels -- except it isn’t, because there’s cold metal against his palm as he turns the doorknob and falls through the doorway
**
onto soft grass again, but not overgrown this time and it isn’t night; it’s afternoon with long slanting sunlight, gold the way it only is in October once the leaves start turning. No blood on his hands in this place, but the pain is still there in burning gashes that seem to go right through him, like he could catch on fire.
“This is weird,” Sam is saying, voice grown-up and deep.
“No argument here,” Dean breathes, letting himself collapse, and when he rests his head the marble is cool and smooth against his cheek and makes the pain recede a little.
“She doesn’t answer,” Sam tells him, and Dean opens his eyes without moving, looks up the long length of his brother’s body into Sam concerned, twenty-two year-old face, shadows playing over his cheek as the wind moves the tree branches above them. He’s holding his phone to his ear, listening worriedly.
“It just rings and rings,” he says, and even if the voice is older the tone is young and lost. He holds the phone out to Dean like something broken and Dean can hear the tinny, repeating buzz. “You don’t think anything’s wrong, do you?”
The question just hangs in the air and Dean closes his eyes again. He doesn’t need to see to know that the name on the stone he’s resting against is Jessica’s, and if Sam can’t see it then damned if Dean is going to be the one to make him look.
“Hell, Sam. Don’t make me say it.”
No answer, just the cold breeze pushing dry leaves over his hair, and god dammit, Sam’s gone again -- but then he hears it, a child’s hopeless weeping carried on the wind. He doesn’t think he can walk but somehow he’s up and moving, practically crawling through the stones and when he finds Sam he can’t be older than five, sitting alone with his arms around his knees, tiny shoulders shaking.
“God, Sam… please, don’t cry,” he says, feeling hopeless himself.
The little boy looks up, swipes at his eyes with his hands. “Don’t tell Dad.”
Dean sinks down slowly, shaking his head. “I won’t. I promise.”
“I’m tired,” Sam says, forlorn, and Dean feels his throat constrict.
“Yeah… yeah, me, too.” And God, that’s true, he’s tired to death, with his chest burning like there are knives inside him. “We can go, you know,” he tells Sam quietly, trying to keep the pain from showing in his voice. “Get out of here?”
“Not yet,” Sam whispers, and Dean nods.
“Okay,” he says, softly. “Okay, but Sam, we need to go somewhere safe, someplace we can rest. Can you take us somewhere like that?”
And for one long minute he thinks Sam isn’t going to answer, that Sam’s going to run and he’s going to lose his brother again, this time for good, maybe, because there’s no way he can chase Sam with his insides torn apart. Instead, he could almost weep with relief when he feels small arms twine around his neck, and when he opens his eyes
**
they’re in a motel room that could be any of a hundred motel rooms where they grew up, and he has just enough energy to laugh hopelessly that Sam’s safe place is a dilapidated rental with faded carpets and peeling paint. Maybe Sam’s got the right idea, though, because night after night it was him and Sam and Dad with rock salt at the windows and the rifle behind the door and they woke up whole every single time.
“Good job, Sammy,” he says and collapses on the bed with a warm, tiny weight cuddled up beside him. Before he lets it all go dark he half-wishes that he could keep Sam like this forever, tucked up against his side and so much easier to protect.
“Dean?” Sam asks.
“I’m here,” Dean whispers. “Just rest, now.”
**
He’s conscious again hoursminutesdays later with a heavy, warm weight on top of him, long limbs sprawled out over his body and he knows if he lifts his hands he’ll tangle his fingers in soft hair, long waves too fine to do anything but flop over Sam’s forehead and into his eyes. He wonders blankly if Sam still hates his hair.
Sam’s bigger than he is, stronger and heavier, and in older brother currency, that just isn’t fair at all, but in bed Sam feels incredible, muscle and heat and weight all around him.
“Sam,” he whispers, throat dry, and he gets just a glimpse of sleepy eyes and messy hair, his brother exactly the way he looked when he fell asleep just a day or so ago.
Then Sam is leaning toward him. No surprise, no surprise at all when Sam kisses him, soft lips and warm tongue so that his mouth is filled with Sam’s taste and Dean is breathing him in. Sweetly familiar because Dean’s had this dream, too, so many times, but he’s always forced himself awake at the first touch of his brother’s lips, feeling shaken and aching and ashamed.
But this is Sam’s dream, so he opens his mouth and lets Sam suck on his tongue, lets Sam put kisses over his jaw and down his throat, lets Sam tangle their bodies together so they can touch each other with searching, gentle hands. Lean muscle and smooth skin, soft hair Dean pushes off Sam’s face -- just a dream, Dean tells himself, just a dream, but Sam feels real, like liquid heat melting over him, drowning him, pulling him down.
“You feel…” Sam murmurs, “God, you feel… so good …Why -- why are you letting me do this?”
And he wishes Sam would just shut up and kiss him because Dean just wants to stay here, do this forever, but now he has to remember that any second Sam could disappear, go somewhere Dean can’t find him. He pulls his brother close, hooks a leg over Sam’s.
“You’re dreaming,” he says quietly, lets his lips brush Sam’s ear and then he lets Sam pull back just enough to look at him.
“Dean? What --?” Sam says, his face troubled, and Dean tries to hold him tighter, anchor him down.
“It’s a dream. And you need to wake up.” Sam shakes his head, tries to pull back, but Dean doesn’t let him answer, doesn’t let him go. “If you come with me -- Sam, listen – if you come with me now and you want this when you wake up…” Dean stumbles over the words, grasping for the right way to say it. Finally he whispers, “If you want this, for real, you can have it.”
For a second he thinks it’s going to work, but then Sam is gone like a light going out and Dean’s alone
**
in the back seat of the Impala, darkness and speed and he hasn’t ridden in the back seat since he was twelve, except one time… just one time, one awful time, with blinding pain and blood on his shirt, headlights bearing down and Sam’s hopeless, haunted eyes meeting his in the mirror, and oh, Sam, please, please not this, not this
**
and then Dean can’t move at all.
Can’t see.
Can’t hear.
Can’t breathe.
help me, Sam
**
Sudden rush of noise and light and he still can’t move but at least Sam’s here with him, leaning over him, hand in his hair and lips against his forehead.
“Don’t leave me, Dean, don’t go,” a whispered litany washing over him, and then, “We were just starting to be brothers again.”
If this really happened Dean doesn’t remember it, but he wishes he did. You’ve always been my brother, Sam he wants to say, but he can’t talk around the tube in his throat and Sam is moving away so there are bright lights in his eyes and now Sam’s talking to someone standing next to the bed.
“I don’t want to fight anymore, either.” Sam says it like he’s finishing a conversation he just started, and maybe Dean really will die this time because it’s Dad standing there, clear and real, not like Dean’s own memories that are starting to get fuzzy around the edges.
Dad’s hand is resting near Dean’s, an inch and forever away, and he wants to reach out, touch his father one last time, but Dad’s fading and that’s just. Fucking. It.
“Enough of this bullshit, Sam,” he says, and suddenly they’re facing each other over an empty hospital bed.
“What… how…” Sam’s looking from the bed to Dean and moving backwards.
“You don’t get to drive this car wreck anymore. You’re too fucking lost.”
Sam is shaking his head, almost at the door, but Dean doesn’t let him get away, moves in so they’re standing toe to toe.
“You’re dreaming! For days, Sam, and it’s time to wake up. Just come with me,’ Dean’s pleading, ready to get on his knees. “Come with me and we’ll get the hell out of here.”
“I don’t know…” Sam whispers, wavering, and Dean is going to reach for him, but Sam is looking out into the hall, listening to something Dean can’t hear, and then he’s gone.
Dean follows, like he’ll always follow, and the hallway is long. Just a hallway in a hospital that Dean will never, ever forget.
“Sam.”
He’s where Dean thought he’d be, but younger than he expected, seventeen and wearing a blue shirt, sitting on the floor with his duffle bag beside him and holding their father against his chest, rocking.
Dean goes down to the floor next to him, reaches out to touch their father’s arm and wonders why they didn’t do this when they really lost him.
“Sam.”
The broad forearm beneath his fingers shrinks, skin becoming smooth and wrist becoming delicate. When Dean looks up they are sitting on the floor of a bedroom in a long-gone apartment. Sam is twenty-two and holding Jessica, pressing his face into her hair.
“Sam.”
Dean drops his hand and they’re on the side of the road, just Sam and him and he lets his brother hold him while the winter wind blows through the trees. Silence between them, with just the sound of their breathing, soft and even and hanging misty-white in the cold, night air.
“Sam. Let’s get out of here. Please.”
“Yeah. Okay.”
**
He wakes up in Ellen’s back room, feeling like he went a few rounds with a poltergeist, with Ellen looking down at him in concern.
“Auntie Em?”
Her face clears and she reaches down to take a leather wrapped stone from his chest. “So I take it the amulets work. What do you know. Thanks for taking the test drive.”
“Hey, I do what I can.” He looks over at the other side of the bed, and shoves himself up on one elbow, makes his voice casual. “Sam?”
Ellen’s moved over to Sam’s side, taking a similar stone from his chest. “You okay, there, honey?”
“Thirsty,” Sam whispers, eyes still closed and voice harsh.
“You’ve been sleeping for almost two days,” Ellen says, falsely hearty voice doing nothing to disguise her worry. “I imagine you would be. I’ll go get you some water.”
She looks at Dean again before she leaves like there’s something he should do, but when she walks out the door, Sam still hasn’t opened his eyes.
Dean waits.
“You used some unknown, untested, supernatural amulet to mess around in my head?” Sam sounds completely appalled.
“Hey, desperate times, dude, what was I supposed to do?” He rubs his forehead and studies the frayed quilt beneath his other hand. “That was some fucking dream, Sam. You’ve got some scary-ass places up there.” Dean wonders how much of it Sam remembers. Hopes he’s able to forget.
Sam rests his arm over his eyes. “Yeah, and your head’s full of flowers and rainbows and shit.”
“Fine, point taken.” Dean pulls at a loose thread on the quilt and tries not to stare at Sam’s mouth. “What happened? You were -- catatonic, or something. You wouldn’t wake up. Freaked me out.” Which doesn’t quite express Dean’s sweeping panic, but is close enough.
“I don’t know,” Sam says, shifting on the pillow. “I was just… dreaming. I didn’t even know anything was weird about it until you showed up.” Sam sounds uncertain, and if this were still a dream Dean would have touched him, but real life has different rules. Dean bunches the quilt in his hand, instead.
“Nothing weird about re-living every awful moment in your life? Sam. You’ve got issues.”
“Ha.”
“And I don’t even want to start on that kid in the hallway --.”
“Hey.” Sam lifts his arm enough to look at Dean through gritty, swollen eyes. “Thanks for coming to get me.”
Dean snorts. “Like I’d leave you there.”
“No, you never would.” Sam’s voice is scratchy and Dean looks at him carefully, almost afraid to hope, but then there are hard fingers in his hair, cupping the back of his head. Sam is pulling him forward so he has to reach out and catch himself, and if this is a falling dream, it’s the best one he’s ever had. Sam rests their foreheads together.
“You said I could have this,” Sam says, choking a little.
Dean swallows. “If you want it.”
Sam nods, one quick jerk of his chin before Dean has Sam’s mouth, pushed up hard against his – painful and real.
Better than any dream.
End
Author: Audra Rose
Summary: written for
spn_halloween, Prompt 152: Sam gets trapped in a nightmare and Dean has to go in and lead him back to consciousness.Length: 5000 words or so
Warnings: Wincest, first time, h/c on a near-epic scale. Heh.
Notes: Thanks to
quarterturn for the awesome prompt and to ignipes for the challenge. Also, huge thanks to mikou for reminding me that a story needs to make sense without the author notes and summary, and to the brilliant sori1773 for making sure this one actually does. *hugs*One Cloud Scattered Night by Audra Rose
oh my fair north star
i have held to you dearly
i had asked you to steer me
until one cloud scattered night
i got lost
--Mercy of the Fallen, Dar Williams
“Talk, Sam.”
“Talk?”
“Yeah. Say something. Anything. Tell me a story.”
Dean waits for the annoyed, sideways look from his brother, barely visible in the darkness and briefer than usual, because Sam needs to keep his eyes on the uneven pavement in front of them or he’ll trip again. He’s already gone down once, startled into falling when Dean suddenly appeared beside him, and his palms are still bleeding. Dean doesn’t know if that’s symbolic or not, but he’s sure it still hurts like a bitch.
“Are you out of your mind?” Waspy and irritated and typical. Dean finds that oddly comforting.
“No, I’m bored and I’m cold and I’m sick of walking.”
“So it’s my job to entertain you.”
“Hey, you’re the one who’s making us hike through the woods, so, yeah. Pretty much. Where are we going, anyway?”
He gets silence in response, with just the sound of their footfalls muffled by the thick trees hanging over the road. Just the sound of their breathing, harsh and uneven and hanging misty-white in the cold, night air.
Try to keep him talking, Ellen had said, right before Dean had closed his eyes, and that had sounded simple, but apparently Sam likes to brood silently in his dreams just as much as he does when he’s awake. Terrific.
“What kind of story?” Sam asks, finally.
Dean’s going to say, whatever you want, just fucking talk to me, but decides better of it when they leave the road to stand outside the circle of a campfire, staring at five boys huddling around the flickering light like it’s going to keep the bad things away.
“Well, maybe not a ghost story,” Dean says.
Dean doesn’t think he’s ever told a ghost story, not once, not even when they stayed in one place long enough for Sam to make friends who stayed over.
It’s been more than ten years, but he still remembers this night -- Sam’s twelfth birthday and a camping trip with some kids from the junior high school. Maybe a big brother was supposed to put a flashlight under his chin and whisper about ghosts and ghouls to scare the little bastards into wetting their sleeping bags, but Dean remembers letting some other kid tell the stories while he used his flashlight to look into the shadows. Kept watch, because if you ever stopped looking around you might miss what was coming at you out of the dark.
“You’re not supposed to be here,” Sam blurts out, accusing and angry, suddenly twelve years old and close to tears of frustration he’ll never let fall.
“How –.” Dean starts, turning to the little kid standing next to him who was twenty-two a second ago and he has to steady himself. He tries again. “How do you know that? Ellen said you’d probably think I was part of your dream.”
“Dad promised,” almost-teen Sam continues, like Dean never spoke. “This is my party. My friends. You can leave.”
“Oh,” Dean says, and the disappointment is wounding, but he tries to remember what he said when this really happened. “I’m not leaving you alone out here. End of story, so suck it up.”
“I’m not a baby, Dean. I don’t need you to protect me!” Trembling, tense, holding himself on the balls of his feet and Dean wonders if Sam will try to hit him. He doesn’t remember Sam being this upset when this happened the first time, wonders what he should do next when Sam hisses, “You ruin everything! I hate you!”
He whirls around to run, plunging off into the darkness before Dean has a chance to react.
“Hey! Hey, Sam, wait up!”
But Sam is furious and disappearing into the woods, so Dean has no choice but to run after him, almost falling into the
**
long grass under the tree, so long it hides the roots and he almost trips, almost drops the baby and mom will be so upset so he hangs on tighter, tiny bundle in his arms that should be bigger, heavier, almost too much for him to hold, but for some reason, isn’t this time, and he falls to his knees. It’s okay, Sam, staring into huge eyes in a tiny face, too-knowing eyes that reflect back the flames rolling out of the house behind them, and maybe this time Dean will shout the way he wanted to the first time, but
**
he’s standing up in the motel parking lot with empty arms and the sun setting red and bloody behind him, looking frantically around the pavement for a baby on the ground. Instead, thank God, there’s Sam walking out of the motel and slamming the door behind him, hair a mess and seventeen years old, at least.
Dean rubs his eyes. “Okay, that was freaky shit, Sam. Do not do that again. I’m serious.”
“Maybe you can fucking talk to him, because God knows I can’t.” Sam waves a hand back the way he came, ignoring Dean’s words. “Maybe you can make him understand.” Urgent and determined, with a hard grasp on Dean’s forearm.
Sam’s wearing a blue shirt and holding a duffle bag and Dean has no problem at all remembering what he said when this happened the first time.
“I don’t know what you expect me to do.”
“It’s a full ride, Dean.” Sincere Sam voice, the one that Sam thinks will make anyone agree with him if he just explains enough times. “To Stanford. I’ll never get another chance like this, you know that.”
Dean did know that. It was unbelievable, really -- his little brother with a full ride to Stanford, when he’d never spent more than six months at one school, most of it waiting for transcripts that never quite followed him in time. Somehow he’d grown up brilliant all the same, and how had Dean missed what a miracle that had been?
“I know.”
That makes Sam stop, makes him look at Dean like he isn’t sure he heard right.
“He said – he told me never to come back. If I left. And I’m leaving.” Sam’s jaw is set, light stubble and fine bone, not a glimpse of the pudgy little kid Dean remembers, but still so fucking young, and Dean’s heart aches in one rolling thump.
And hell, he knows he should ask Sam to stay, make him talk, that’s the whole reason he’s here, after all, but there are some mistakes it would be a sin to make twice.
“Then go.” Shouted last time, spit out with hurt and grief, but this time Dean makes the words quiet and Sam doesn’t know what to do.
“I’m not coming back.” A threat with tears behind it, something choking him and Dean finds that he can smile a little bit.
“That’s okay,” he says softly. “I’ll come to you.”
Sam almost backs away, his face twisting with emotion, but then suddenly he turns and crosses the parking lot at a jog so he can hitch to the bus station two miles away. Except it’s dark, now, and Dean should offer to drive him there, because Sam’s running toward lights close on the horizon that aren’t the bus station at all.
“Sam! Sam, wait up,” he calls, but he never hears if Sam answers him
**
because the noise is going to deafen him if the whirling lights don’t blind him first; it’s all screams and wild laughter, distorted music that pounds against his ears. Night. A carnival.
Dean knows this place.
Knows the why of this place.
And, no, Sam. Not this.
“Sam!” Flooding panic makes him choke on the name, look around wildly, but Sam isn’t anywhere, so he starts running and hopes he’s choosing the right direction.
“Sam, we don’t have to stay here.” He calls it out into the whirling dark, shoulders his way past a crowd where every third face is the same and none of them are Sam and in a minute he won’t be able to breathe.
“We can go anywhere you want to go, any place you like – so let’s get out of here, okay?”
No answer and Dean is going to be sick because he should never have let Sam out of his sight. His brother’s only eight and that’s way too young to wander this kind of place alone.
“Anywhere else but here, Sam…” he’s begging, but the words die before he finishes them, trail off weak and unfinished when he sees the tall figure and the small one ahead of him, going behind the trailer, and he feels sick like this is for real.
He’d followed them back then, too, furious with Sam for talking to strangers and with himself for losing track of Sam. He should probably be grateful that yelling made the guy run before anything really awful happened, but in so many ways it was still too late, because nothing ever seemed safe again, and he learned a thing doesn’t need to be dead to be evil.
And it’s happening again. Only this time he’s not twelve.
It’s like a flying dream only faster; and the sick fuck who preyed on kids all those years ago goes down beneath his fists. He uses everything he’s got to hold the guy down and obliterate his face, and someone Sam, this time is shouting leave us alone, over and over.
By the time he stops, there’s blood all over his hands, and he gets it on his face when he rubs his eyes. He can’t look at what he’s done. Can’t look at his brother, silent and accusing.
“Shit, Sam,” he says, with grief that tastes like blood. “Didn’t anything good ever happen to you?”
He takes a deep breath and drops his hand
**
and looks around a hallway he’s never seen before; institutional tile and fluorescent lighting with walls painted a hideous green that reminds Dean that he still feels sick, but Sam’s helping him stand up.
“Dean, what are you doing down there, man?”
Big smile, and Sam’s got to be about twenty, half-way in between the kid Dean watched walk away in the parking lot and the man whose house he broke into a year ago. Tan and strong, hair falling in his face like Dad would never have allowed and Dean brushes off his jeans with hands that are clean, now.
“Better watch where I’m going, I guess.”
“Lame-ass,” Sam says, but he’s laughing, and even though this never happened, at least there’s nothing hurting them, yet. Dean follows his brother down the hall.
“Did you have a hard time finding it?” Sam asks, moving through crowds of kids with backpacks and ragged clothes so purposely shabby that it can only be deliberate.
“Wasn’t exactly easy,” Dean says, deciding that this must be Stanford and Sam’s dorm and it could’ve really used a new paint job sometime in the last few decades.
“Well, you’re here, anyway. Come on, step it up, there’s someone I want you to meet.” Sam’s voice is high with anticipation, bright and excited and Dean starts to feel dread building again.
She’s just like he remembers, only dressed in jeans and a shrunken baseball jersey that shows way too much tanned, perfect stomach for someone who’s supposed to be only fucking his brother. And Jesus, where the hell did that come from?
“Jess. Jess this is my brother, Dean – the one I told you about,” and she smiles, a grin wider than Sam’s, happy to meet him like he’s the goddamned pope, and Dean is about to say something snarky about it being awesome to meet her, too, when Sam says, “Dean, this is Jess. My fiancée.”
Just for a second, everything goes blank.
“You really wanted to marry her,” Dean says abruptly, the only words he can get past his throat, but they don’t think it’s weird. They just smile at each other like they really have a future, and Dean coughs a little, before he says, “Congratulations, Sam. That’s… great. Really great.” Deep breath. “Come with me. I’ll buy you a drink. Celebrate. We can talk.”
“Yeah, yeah, okay,” Sam agrees, tearing his eyes away from Jessica and finally looking at Dean, who tries not to grab onto Sam and drag him away.
“Wait, Sam, you didn’t ask him,” Jess says to Sam, slender hand around Sam’s bicep and Dean wants to strangle her for stopping him.
“Right, right. Dean, uh, Jess and I… well, we’d be, honored, I guess?” He laughs a little nervously, self-conscious like Dean hasn’t seen him since he was ten. “Oh, fuck, I’m screwing this up. Look, will you be my best man?”
He was waiting for it, but it’s still like a blow to the stomach and he has to wait before he can talk. Like a movie playing on the wall he sees candles and flowers and blonde hair under a white veil; he sees his brother working a job where nothing tries to kill him and rushing home for soccer games played by sandy-haired kids, tall like Sam but with Jess’s eyes; he sees a whole lifetime of lovehurtangerjoy that never got a chance to take a breath.
“I’d have moved hell to be there, Sammy,” he whispers.
Sam is staring at him, suddenly serious and watchful, while Jess simply fades away beside him.
“Come on. I’ll buy you that drink,” Dean says, choking, and turns away, hoping Sam will follow him
**
down an endless hallway, featureless and white, stretching like taffy out along perspective lines toward the horizon. There’s a door at the end just closing on a Sam-shape, outlined in brilliant light, like the sun is behind him.
“Wait, Sam!” he shouts, but of course, it’s too late; the door is closed and the hallway is still stretching, so the only thing Dean can do is run. Step after step and the door just gets farther away while the air gets thick as motor oil, constricting his chest and slowing his feet, until finally Dean just stops, hands on his knees and breathing hard. He’s too tired for this, inside and out.
“Okay, that’s it. Enough. Listen up, Sam,” he says, holding out his arms. “I hate this dream. Everybody hates this dream. So just give me the damned doorway, and we’ll go somewhere and talk.”
Silence, and if anything the door is farther away.
“Yeah, Sam, thanks,” he calls out. “That’s just fucking great.” Dean turns in a circle, wondering what he’s supposed to do now.
Then he freezes.
She’s probably been standing there all along, skinny girl with lank, dark hair hanging over her face, fifty feet away down the hall, feet bare on the cold, white floor and Dean feels his heart stutter.
“Doorway, Sam,” he says, a little more insistent, now. “Don’t screw around here.” Starts backing away and she doesn’t move, but he knows that the second he turns his back she’s going be on him, scuttling like a spider along the walls and if he lifts his hand to touch the wetness on his cheeks his fingers will come away red.
“Open the door!” He shouts because he can’t stand it anymore, can’t be here when she lifts her head, can’t look in her eyes, not ever, not ever. He runs with legs like lead for a door that keeps moving away from him, listening frantically for the skittering flap of bare feet on tile getting closer and closer.
He can’t really hear anything over the noise he’s making, but she must be close behind him because he can feel stripes of pain across his back and through his chest. Familiar agony, because the demon did this, too, soaked the front of his shirt with too much blood, so much that it’s spraying over the walls, now, dripping from his fingers and rolling down his face.
And this is it, she’s right behind him, frigid breath on the back of his neck will be the last thing he feels -- except it isn’t, because there’s cold metal against his palm as he turns the doorknob and falls through the doorway
**
onto soft grass again, but not overgrown this time and it isn’t night; it’s afternoon with long slanting sunlight, gold the way it only is in October once the leaves start turning. No blood on his hands in this place, but the pain is still there in burning gashes that seem to go right through him, like he could catch on fire.
“This is weird,” Sam is saying, voice grown-up and deep.
“No argument here,” Dean breathes, letting himself collapse, and when he rests his head the marble is cool and smooth against his cheek and makes the pain recede a little.
“She doesn’t answer,” Sam tells him, and Dean opens his eyes without moving, looks up the long length of his brother’s body into Sam concerned, twenty-two year-old face, shadows playing over his cheek as the wind moves the tree branches above them. He’s holding his phone to his ear, listening worriedly.
“It just rings and rings,” he says, and even if the voice is older the tone is young and lost. He holds the phone out to Dean like something broken and Dean can hear the tinny, repeating buzz. “You don’t think anything’s wrong, do you?”
The question just hangs in the air and Dean closes his eyes again. He doesn’t need to see to know that the name on the stone he’s resting against is Jessica’s, and if Sam can’t see it then damned if Dean is going to be the one to make him look.
“Hell, Sam. Don’t make me say it.”
No answer, just the cold breeze pushing dry leaves over his hair, and god dammit, Sam’s gone again -- but then he hears it, a child’s hopeless weeping carried on the wind. He doesn’t think he can walk but somehow he’s up and moving, practically crawling through the stones and when he finds Sam he can’t be older than five, sitting alone with his arms around his knees, tiny shoulders shaking.
“God, Sam… please, don’t cry,” he says, feeling hopeless himself.
The little boy looks up, swipes at his eyes with his hands. “Don’t tell Dad.”
Dean sinks down slowly, shaking his head. “I won’t. I promise.”
“I’m tired,” Sam says, forlorn, and Dean feels his throat constrict.
“Yeah… yeah, me, too.” And God, that’s true, he’s tired to death, with his chest burning like there are knives inside him. “We can go, you know,” he tells Sam quietly, trying to keep the pain from showing in his voice. “Get out of here?”
“Not yet,” Sam whispers, and Dean nods.
“Okay,” he says, softly. “Okay, but Sam, we need to go somewhere safe, someplace we can rest. Can you take us somewhere like that?”
And for one long minute he thinks Sam isn’t going to answer, that Sam’s going to run and he’s going to lose his brother again, this time for good, maybe, because there’s no way he can chase Sam with his insides torn apart. Instead, he could almost weep with relief when he feels small arms twine around his neck, and when he opens his eyes
**
they’re in a motel room that could be any of a hundred motel rooms where they grew up, and he has just enough energy to laugh hopelessly that Sam’s safe place is a dilapidated rental with faded carpets and peeling paint. Maybe Sam’s got the right idea, though, because night after night it was him and Sam and Dad with rock salt at the windows and the rifle behind the door and they woke up whole every single time.
“Good job, Sammy,” he says and collapses on the bed with a warm, tiny weight cuddled up beside him. Before he lets it all go dark he half-wishes that he could keep Sam like this forever, tucked up against his side and so much easier to protect.
“Dean?” Sam asks.
“I’m here,” Dean whispers. “Just rest, now.”
**
He’s conscious again hoursminutesdays later with a heavy, warm weight on top of him, long limbs sprawled out over his body and he knows if he lifts his hands he’ll tangle his fingers in soft hair, long waves too fine to do anything but flop over Sam’s forehead and into his eyes. He wonders blankly if Sam still hates his hair.
Sam’s bigger than he is, stronger and heavier, and in older brother currency, that just isn’t fair at all, but in bed Sam feels incredible, muscle and heat and weight all around him.
“Sam,” he whispers, throat dry, and he gets just a glimpse of sleepy eyes and messy hair, his brother exactly the way he looked when he fell asleep just a day or so ago.
Then Sam is leaning toward him. No surprise, no surprise at all when Sam kisses him, soft lips and warm tongue so that his mouth is filled with Sam’s taste and Dean is breathing him in. Sweetly familiar because Dean’s had this dream, too, so many times, but he’s always forced himself awake at the first touch of his brother’s lips, feeling shaken and aching and ashamed.
But this is Sam’s dream, so he opens his mouth and lets Sam suck on his tongue, lets Sam put kisses over his jaw and down his throat, lets Sam tangle their bodies together so they can touch each other with searching, gentle hands. Lean muscle and smooth skin, soft hair Dean pushes off Sam’s face -- just a dream, Dean tells himself, just a dream, but Sam feels real, like liquid heat melting over him, drowning him, pulling him down.
“You feel…” Sam murmurs, “God, you feel… so good …Why -- why are you letting me do this?”
And he wishes Sam would just shut up and kiss him because Dean just wants to stay here, do this forever, but now he has to remember that any second Sam could disappear, go somewhere Dean can’t find him. He pulls his brother close, hooks a leg over Sam’s.
“You’re dreaming,” he says quietly, lets his lips brush Sam’s ear and then he lets Sam pull back just enough to look at him.
“Dean? What --?” Sam says, his face troubled, and Dean tries to hold him tighter, anchor him down.
“It’s a dream. And you need to wake up.” Sam shakes his head, tries to pull back, but Dean doesn’t let him answer, doesn’t let him go. “If you come with me -- Sam, listen – if you come with me now and you want this when you wake up…” Dean stumbles over the words, grasping for the right way to say it. Finally he whispers, “If you want this, for real, you can have it.”
For a second he thinks it’s going to work, but then Sam is gone like a light going out and Dean’s alone
**
in the back seat of the Impala, darkness and speed and he hasn’t ridden in the back seat since he was twelve, except one time… just one time, one awful time, with blinding pain and blood on his shirt, headlights bearing down and Sam’s hopeless, haunted eyes meeting his in the mirror, and oh, Sam, please, please not this, not this
**
and then Dean can’t move at all.
Can’t see.
Can’t hear.
Can’t breathe.
help me, Sam
**
Sudden rush of noise and light and he still can’t move but at least Sam’s here with him, leaning over him, hand in his hair and lips against his forehead.
“Don’t leave me, Dean, don’t go,” a whispered litany washing over him, and then, “We were just starting to be brothers again.”
If this really happened Dean doesn’t remember it, but he wishes he did. You’ve always been my brother, Sam he wants to say, but he can’t talk around the tube in his throat and Sam is moving away so there are bright lights in his eyes and now Sam’s talking to someone standing next to the bed.
“I don’t want to fight anymore, either.” Sam says it like he’s finishing a conversation he just started, and maybe Dean really will die this time because it’s Dad standing there, clear and real, not like Dean’s own memories that are starting to get fuzzy around the edges.
Dad’s hand is resting near Dean’s, an inch and forever away, and he wants to reach out, touch his father one last time, but Dad’s fading and that’s just. Fucking. It.
“Enough of this bullshit, Sam,” he says, and suddenly they’re facing each other over an empty hospital bed.
“What… how…” Sam’s looking from the bed to Dean and moving backwards.
“You don’t get to drive this car wreck anymore. You’re too fucking lost.”
Sam is shaking his head, almost at the door, but Dean doesn’t let him get away, moves in so they’re standing toe to toe.
“You’re dreaming! For days, Sam, and it’s time to wake up. Just come with me,’ Dean’s pleading, ready to get on his knees. “Come with me and we’ll get the hell out of here.”
“I don’t know…” Sam whispers, wavering, and Dean is going to reach for him, but Sam is looking out into the hall, listening to something Dean can’t hear, and then he’s gone.
Dean follows, like he’ll always follow, and the hallway is long. Just a hallway in a hospital that Dean will never, ever forget.
“Sam.”
He’s where Dean thought he’d be, but younger than he expected, seventeen and wearing a blue shirt, sitting on the floor with his duffle bag beside him and holding their father against his chest, rocking.
Dean goes down to the floor next to him, reaches out to touch their father’s arm and wonders why they didn’t do this when they really lost him.
“Sam.”
The broad forearm beneath his fingers shrinks, skin becoming smooth and wrist becoming delicate. When Dean looks up they are sitting on the floor of a bedroom in a long-gone apartment. Sam is twenty-two and holding Jessica, pressing his face into her hair.
“Sam.”
Dean drops his hand and they’re on the side of the road, just Sam and him and he lets his brother hold him while the winter wind blows through the trees. Silence between them, with just the sound of their breathing, soft and even and hanging misty-white in the cold, night air.
“Sam. Let’s get out of here. Please.”
“Yeah. Okay.”
**
He wakes up in Ellen’s back room, feeling like he went a few rounds with a poltergeist, with Ellen looking down at him in concern.
“Auntie Em?”
Her face clears and she reaches down to take a leather wrapped stone from his chest. “So I take it the amulets work. What do you know. Thanks for taking the test drive.”
“Hey, I do what I can.” He looks over at the other side of the bed, and shoves himself up on one elbow, makes his voice casual. “Sam?”
Ellen’s moved over to Sam’s side, taking a similar stone from his chest. “You okay, there, honey?”
“Thirsty,” Sam whispers, eyes still closed and voice harsh.
“You’ve been sleeping for almost two days,” Ellen says, falsely hearty voice doing nothing to disguise her worry. “I imagine you would be. I’ll go get you some water.”
She looks at Dean again before she leaves like there’s something he should do, but when she walks out the door, Sam still hasn’t opened his eyes.
Dean waits.
“You used some unknown, untested, supernatural amulet to mess around in my head?” Sam sounds completely appalled.
“Hey, desperate times, dude, what was I supposed to do?” He rubs his forehead and studies the frayed quilt beneath his other hand. “That was some fucking dream, Sam. You’ve got some scary-ass places up there.” Dean wonders how much of it Sam remembers. Hopes he’s able to forget.
Sam rests his arm over his eyes. “Yeah, and your head’s full of flowers and rainbows and shit.”
“Fine, point taken.” Dean pulls at a loose thread on the quilt and tries not to stare at Sam’s mouth. “What happened? You were -- catatonic, or something. You wouldn’t wake up. Freaked me out.” Which doesn’t quite express Dean’s sweeping panic, but is close enough.
“I don’t know,” Sam says, shifting on the pillow. “I was just… dreaming. I didn’t even know anything was weird about it until you showed up.” Sam sounds uncertain, and if this were still a dream Dean would have touched him, but real life has different rules. Dean bunches the quilt in his hand, instead.
“Nothing weird about re-living every awful moment in your life? Sam. You’ve got issues.”
“Ha.”
“And I don’t even want to start on that kid in the hallway --.”
“Hey.” Sam lifts his arm enough to look at Dean through gritty, swollen eyes. “Thanks for coming to get me.”
Dean snorts. “Like I’d leave you there.”
“No, you never would.” Sam’s voice is scratchy and Dean looks at him carefully, almost afraid to hope, but then there are hard fingers in his hair, cupping the back of his head. Sam is pulling him forward so he has to reach out and catch himself, and if this is a falling dream, it’s the best one he’s ever had. Sam rests their foreheads together.
“You said I could have this,” Sam says, choking a little.
Dean swallows. “If you want it.”
Sam nods, one quick jerk of his chin before Dean has Sam’s mouth, pushed up hard against his – painful and real.
Better than any dream.
End