[Nym] Hush (Don't Tell a Soul) [4/6]
Title: Hush (Don't Tell a Soul) [4/6]
Author: nymeria
Pairing: Sam/Dean, Sam/Jess, Dean/Other
Rating: Adult
Word Count: 30,275 in total, 5,111 this chapter
Genre: AU.
Betas: estaster30, poisonrella. ♥
Notes: Thar be smidgeons of plot ahead.
Chapters: [Part one] [Part two] [Part three] [Part four] [Part five] [Part six] [Epilogue]
You're waiting for someone to put you together
You're waiting for someone to push you away
There's always another wound to discover
There's always something more you wish he'd say
Everything You Want
← previous chapter
Sam finds it hard to concentrate in his class the next day, tapping his pen against his pad and gazing thoughtfully at the window. It's not raining, and he can't help but think it should be, to match his mood. The paper in front of him is full of scrawling notes in his own untidy handwriting, tic-tac-toe in the margins of his pages (he's lost three games or, depending on which way you look at it, won three) right next to underlined words. Bast. Ra. Isis. Set. Anubis. Osiris.
He knows he ought to be paying attention; Classical Religions is a total fucking full-ride class provided you take notes, and he has end-of-semester exams and papers to look forward to. Claire Bonham in the seat next to him has her head down, the tip of her tongue poking out between pink lips as she highlights key phrases, and with reluctance Sam tries to force himself into the tune of the conversation, to his professor squabbling with Holly Newark at the front of his classroom. Holly's a walking cliché, all bubble-gum pink spiked hair and black lipstick, pentagram necklaces and too much eyeliner. She thinks she's unique.
"I'm just saying, Isis can be interpreted in a variety of different ways," she's saying, and Sam bends his head, carefully writes Two weeks+? depression at the bottom of his paper. "She's been renewed. Like Hecate."
"Miss Newark, this is an academic lecture, not a discussion on new age ideas," the professor says dryly and Sam rolls his eyes, not overly fond of the guy. He's known on campus as a dirty old man and a misogynist; Jess switched classes when she tried to take this one last year and found he was teaching.
He didn't really have time to prepare for this class last night, not after the whammy of Dean and sick. He stayed up until far too late googling depression and weeding through a plethora of Linkin Park message boards and angsty poetry to research anything possible to serve as a cure - Dean won't take meds, so things like Prozac and so on are out, and what if it's bipolar? Aren't there different meds for bipolar? - until Jess'd woken him up at four in the morning, shaking his shoulders gently and shepherding him back to bed, not even asking what could be so important Sam'd fallen asleep drooling on his keyboard.
He'd left in a bit of a hurry, and misses his laptop now. He doesn't like Holly, and would love the opportunity to be able to show her up.
"I'm just saying," Holly repeats, and the professor sighs, takes off his glasses and begins polishing them on his sleeve.
"Alright, leaving aside Isis as the patron goddess for witchcraft now, can anyone tell me what her sacred animals were in Egyptian mythology?"
Claire raises her hand, spitting the cap of her highlighter into her palm, and when their lecturer nods in her direction, says, "Um, she's usually represented with, like, cattle horns? So... cows? And also, there's some stuff about her being tied into Sirius, the dog star..."
She continues, listing a several more animals and birds, and Sam can't help but lean back against the window, etch out another tic-tac-toe grid and take the initiative with a cross in the upper-right corner. He plays slowly, filling the grid in, and finally etches a line diagonally through three zeros, only to look up and find the class staring at him expectantly.
"Something on your mind, Samuel?" the professor asks, not unkindly. Sam licks his lips, colors a little, and carefully lays the pen down. "Thank you. Now, I asked if you knew in what aspects people worshipped Isis in? What did she do for the Egyptians?"
"Um," Sam says awkwardly, and on the other side of the room, Holly smirks. He racks his memory, pulling out awkward half-facts, and quietly curses the fact that Dean and Dad never hunted any supernatural Egyptian creatures; he has pages upon pages of mental notes about the Norse pantheon, about Thor and Loki and Freyja, but next-to-nothing on the Egyptian save from what he picked up when he went to see The Mummy and The Mummy Returns with Dean.
Oh well. When in doubt, with early religions, fall back on precedent. "Fertility?" he tries, hopefully. "She was a fertility goddess?"
His professor fixes him with a light smile. "Correct, among other things," he says. "Isis is named in the Book of the Dead as - be ready to take this down, it'll be important: 'She who gives birth to heaven and earth, knows the orphan, knows the widow, seeks justice for the poor and shelter for the weak'. Her others titles include..."
Sam tunes him out then, even though he knows he shouldn't. He folds his arms over the top of the desk, staring down at his notebook, and thinks about Dean alone in his apartment. Maybe Jess was right, maybe he's lonely? It would fit. Dean's never really been at home with people - he can charm the pants off anyone if he wants to, and he's good with Sam, but he's awkward around Jess, not sure how to relate to a woman he doesn't want to fuck, and almost bumbling around most other folk. He knows Dean has friends at work, but he's nowhere near as close to his co-workers as Sam is to some of his friends at school.
By the time he slips out of his doze class is nearly over, the other students attempting to discretely slip stationary and books into bags, shutting down laptops and turning off recording devices. Claire's screwing the cap back on her highlighter, and she turns and gives him a quick smile when she notices him watching; he and Holly are the only ones not getting ready to flee, and Sam remedies that by flipping his notebook shut. Holly's loudly making some point about Isis in witchcraft and how she can use that in her paper; the professor is nodding along and making observations, so clearly staring down Holly's top Sam's surprised she doesn't punch him like she did Sam two years ago. Fucking bitch.
"Alright, you lot, you're free to leave," the professor says, and the class stands up, begins to file out of the room. Sam nearly leaves too before he realizes he needs to ask the professor about an extension on his paper so that the class has time to cover the Norse legends, and waves briefly to his friends Don and Chrissie when they pause at the door to wait for him, signalling they should go ahead. He slides into a seat two over from Holly while he waits for her to finish up.
"Isis is like, a symbol of female sexual empowerment nowadays, right?" she's saying. "I thought maybe I could work that into the question about attitudes towards female goddesses - Ishtar was like, a total bimbo, then Isis, and also Hera, this really bitter old hag? I thought maybe I could do something about how Isis has changed with, you know, modern female worshippers and stuff, because before she was like, the deified wife of the Pharaoh and a glorified version of Ishtar, but now -"
"I'm not seeing how she's all that different from a fertility goddess now," the professor notes, mildly, and Holly snorts.
"Because nowadays she represents female sexual gratification - sex without pregnancy as the ultimate goal," she offers, and Sam clears his throat, taps his fingers on the desk in a cadence of boredom. Holly shoots him a filthy look, and he offers her a small smile. "Isis doesn't just represent femininity, of course, you'll hear people claiming she can do anything from, like, astral projection and dream spells to elemental magic and shapeshifting, but-"
"Holly," their professor interrupts wearily. "This class is focused on the ancients. That's why it's called Classical Religions. If you want to discuss Isis in her supposed current form, you should've taken Comparative Religions, okay?"
Holly pouts and Sam clears his throat again, noisily, and leans forward meaningfully. "Sorry to interrupt," he says in a tone which conveys he's anything but, "But I need to ask for an extension on my paper. I want to do it on the Norse faith instead."
"I don't think it's fair for you to shoot down my analysis on the ways religion changes and give him an extension," Holly complains, and Sam shoots her a quick, smug smile.
"I'm sorry about that, but, you know, with my paper being on-topic and all..."
"Stop it, both of you. Sam, sure. You know what you'll be doing?"
"Yeah, I thought I'd do Loki as a manipulator and a catalyst for Ragnorak," Sam says cheerfully and the professor nods, waves him off with his hand. "See you next week," Sam adds, shouldering his schoolbag, and Holly shoots him a death glare and grabs her own black Hot Topic purse. It's black PVC and the zipper has a skull on it. Sam thinks if Dean saw it he'd roll his eyes so hard he'd look into last week.
"Sexist pig," she mutters as they walk out, hot on his heels, and Sam snorts.
"I really honestly fell over you that time, you know," he says, shoving his hands in his pockets. "I have a girlfriend to grope when the mood strikes me, why would I wanna feel you up?" She makes a derisive noise and he shrugs, not really worried whether or not she believes him. "You really should drop that grudge."
"Whatever," Holly snaps and shoulders past him, knocking into him roughly with her shoulder as she does so. Sam pauses in the hallway, watching her determined march down the corridor, and stares thoughtfully at the tattoo on the small of her back - a tiny little ankh - and he hasn't really seen one of those since he was twelve, when his dad took the pair of them to stay with a real witch in Ohio.
He wonders, unsettled, if maybe what's wrong with Dean isn't just depression.
By the time he gets back home, he's nursing a slight headache. Traffic was awful and where it normally only takes twenty minutes to ride his bike home from school, this time it took closer to forty-five, what with roadwork and various detours made to avoid said roadwork.
Jess is cooking when he gets in, and that lightens his mood a little although not, unfortunately, his headache. She smiles up at him as he closes the door. "Hey, baby," she says, and croons soothingly as he stalks across the kitchen to the cupboard where they keep their first aid kit and aspirin. "Migraine again?"
"Building up to one," he answers shortly and pops the cap on the bottle of pills, taking two in one go, dry.
"I'm making stew," she offers, sounding somewhat helpless, and he flashes her a brief smile. "Are you gonna be okay?"
"Probably, yeah... Jess? You know I had that box of stuff when I moved in, from my dad? Where did we put it?"
"Back of the closet, underneath my suitcase," Jess says vaguely, doubling the speed with which she stirs the contents of her saucepan. "Is there something you need?"
"Yeah, Dean asked me to get something for him," Sam says, already on the way to the bedroom. He misses her reply, the bedroom door swinging behind him to muffle it, and opens up the closet; Jess' olive-green suitcase is tucked into the rear corner, hidden behind one of the two formal dresses she owns. He shoves the dresses out of the way and tugs the suitcase out, and there, exactly where she said, is the battered little cardboard box, Dad written simply on the lid in thick black Sharpie. He pulls that out and stuffs the suitcase back in its place, nudges the closet doors closed with his hip, and carries the box to their bed.
It's sealed up with scotch tape and it takes him just a few seconds to tear it off, open it up. It stinks, musty and gross, and he leafs through their father's few remaining personal effects: letters, photographs of him and their mom, a clear plastic envelope containing his wedding ring, and right at the bottom, the leather flaking and cracked, their father's journal.
Dean'd brought it back from the coroner's office, along with the ring. When they'd begun the tedious, painful process of calling up their father's acquaintances the next day, both Caleb and Pastor Jim had volunteered to take the journal, although only Pastor Jim offered to take them in. Dean had said no, politely as possible. The journal's thick and dark and there's some old dried blood on the pages, where Dean hadn't been able to remove it - and he'd tried, expression numb, eyes glazed, gently washing the cover clean in their apartment's tiny bathroom sink.
The journal creaks when he unfastens it, and he can't help but run his fingers reverently along the sides of the pages. This book contains the sum of his father's knowledge, all those years spent hunting, and contact numbers for a wide variety of his comrades. If there is a paranormal entity forcing his brother to sleep more, it'll be in here, he's sure.
By the time Jess comes to fetch him for dinner, he's halfway through, combing for something - anything - capable of casting sleep spells. He looks up when he hears the door open, and she pokes her head in, blinks a bit when she sees what he's doing. "Hey," she says. "Food's ready. You okay?"
"Fine," Sam replies shortly, and sticks a photograph of his dad - dressed in his Marines uniform, with one arm around his mom - into the journal to serve as a bookmark. It's a nice picture, he thinks, and wonders if maybe he ought to get it framed.
"No, you're not," Jess points out, drawing him out of the thought, and he glances up at her. She looks concerned, clutching onto the door. "Sam, honey, you've been really weird all afternoon. Is it just the migraine, or is it something else?" Her voice is gentle, and Sam wishes he could tell her I think there's something after my brother.
"It's Dean," he says instead, because a half-truth is always better than a lie, and he can't bring himself to deflect her question. "Something's wrong with Dean and I don't know what."
She steps away from the door, padding bare foot across the carpet to come settle down on the bed next to him, carefully nudging his father's journal out to way so she can rest her head in that spot instead. He leans over and kisses her abruptly, fiercely, and she tilts her head into it, closes her eyes.
She tastes of the Chinese herbal teas she buys at the health store, all bitter and sweet with a hint of cinnamon, and it's easy to close his eyes and lose himself in this, in her kiss. He loves her so much it makes him giddy, sometimes, in a way he doesn't remember feeling since he was much smaller and younger, since he looked at his brother with different eyes and thought Oh.
"What's the matter with him?" she murmurs when they part, lips almost-touching but not quite, her breath hot on his mouth, and he sighs. "Sam?"
"He's... sick," he replies carefully, and her eyes widen. "He's sick and I don't know how bad it is, not yet."
"Are we talking... hospital sick?" she asks softly, and he shrugs. He doesn't know what's going on, what it is; his father's journal is written in very vague code, aside from those parts which served as an actual journal. He's tried calling Caleb; got the guy's wife on the phone, said Caleb died a year ago. Poltergeist. Sam thinks he ought to feel guilty, or at least sad, about that.
"I don't know," he says, and sighs, lowering himself to starfish on his belly on the bed. Jess reaches out and settles her hand at the nape of his neck, thumb rubbing soothingly over the sharp spur of bone. His head hurts and he doesn't have any answers and for all he knows Dean could be in mortal danger, but he still feels a little better when she leans in close, kisses his temple.
"He'll be okay," she says in her most reassuring voice. "Your brother's a tough guy. Make him go see a doctor tomorrow. Break out the puppy-dog eyes if you have to; he'll be fine. It's okay, Sam."
He smiles at that and she kisses him again before rolling away, climbing off the bed and brushing down her jeans. Her hair's mussed and she combs her fingers through it as he turns onto his back and watches her. "What if he won't?" he asks, helplessly, and she turns around, shoots him a quick smile.
"He will, baby. C'mon, Dean wouldn't dare die without your express permission," she teases, and for some reason that hits wrong in his belly, sour and painful. His mouth thins and she blinks, startled, at his expression.
"I think I'm going to skip dinner," he says, because he doesn't know where this feeling, this worry and anger came from, and he doesn't want to take it out on her. Not on his Jess. She bites her lower lip, looking worried, and he sighs, lowering his head to rest on the blankets. "The migraine's not going away," he says, because it's true, it's getting worse. She looks slightly mollified, although still concerned, and turns around. "I'm sorry, Jess. Just... turn the lights out?" he calls after her, and she snaps the switch, although doesn't quite leave.
"I love you, Sam," she says, and only then does the door quietly click closed. Sam buries his face in the covers and screws his eyes shut, feeling the insistent pain-pulse ebb and spike deep inside his head, gritting his teeth at the pain. He doesn't get migraines often, although when they come they usually put him out of commission for hours at a time.
The one's exceptionally bad, and it's getting worse fast. Sam hisses softly in pain, pressing two fingers against each of his temples, and rolls onto his back, screwing his eyes shut and wishing he had stronger painkillers than aspirin in the house. Morphine, maybe. The pain twists and nausea coils in his belly, and Sam thinks, with a sense of passive irritation, that he could do without the vomiting thing. He begins to climb onto his knees, but he doesn't think he reaches so much as the edge of the bed before his vision whites out.
Great, he thinks, annoyed, when he comes to. He hates passing out with his migraines. At least this time he hadn't hallucinated; one time he thought he was watching Tetris, of all things, on the TV, when Dean later informed him he'd spent ten minutes lying facedown on the carpet, his older brother watching him torn between taking pictures for posterity and calling an ambulance.
He rolls over on his back, relieved that the pain, at least, has faded. Running his hands over his face to check for nosebleeds reveals there's nothing wrong there, too; it's only when he tries opening his eyes and is met with the sight of not hundreds of bright, multi-coloured dancing flecks but rather himself, cross-legged at the foot of a huge white bed, dressed in white sweats and a matching t-shirt, that he realises he's still not in the land of the real.
"You're not supposed to be able to do that," says the other version of himself, sounding pissy and really kind of bratty.
"Do what? Have splitting headaches?" he asks, voice muggy and thick, and thinks about sitting up. "Are you, like, my conscience? Am I having an epiphany?"
The other version of him screws his face up, like he finds that funny and is trying not to laugh. "No," he says eventually, and then, "You know, when I copied you, I missed the part where you're a psychic."
Sam blinks at it, dazed, and decides he's too sore to deal with this stuff. He hopes this isn't a near-death experience. That would kind of suck. "I'm not going to ask 'where am I,'" he says after a beat, and the other version of himself cocks his head. "Because that's totally cliché."
There's a pause, during which he and his doppelganger have some sort of staring match, and then Sam caves and asks, "So, where am I?"
"Where you're not supposed to be," the other Sam grumbles. "Your kind aren't supposed to be able to do that. It's not your dream to hijack."
Sam blinks at him and attempts to put the puzzle pieces together. It's hard. His whole body feels very different; hard to move, like it's not responding right to his mental commands. The other Sam's fierce glowering isn't helping any.
"Am I dying?" he asks softly, and the other Sam rolls his eyes. "Don't pull that face at me. God, you're like, the suckiest spirit guide or mentor or whatever... ever."
"Wow, you really are the family genius," the other Sam sneers, unfolding his legs to stick out straight in front of him, leaning backwards to rest his weight on his palms. "You shouldn't be here. This is private."
"It's a fucking room with a bed, for god's sake," Sam snaps. "If I'm not supposed to be here, who is?"
The spirit guide - or whatever - doesn't answer with words; its eyes flit sideways and its expression softens, and Sam turns his head slowly, so slowly, to follow its gaze. He's not expecting Dean to literally fall through him like he's incorporeal, belly-flopping on the bed - which doesn't move with his body like it ought to. "Dean?" Sam asks, incredulous, and his brother doesn't stir. The other Sam does, though, crawling across the bed on its knees to kneel by his brother's head, fingertips carding through Dean's hair.
"Hey," it says, such tenderness in its voice it makes Sam's spine crawl. "Welcome back."
Dean grumbles and rolls over, shifting and squirming until his head is pillowed quite comfortably in his lap. Sam leans forward, reaching out to touch his brother, and shivers when his hand passes straight through Dean's wrist. The false Sam smirks at him, and he feels something cold in his belly. "This isn't just a hallucination, is it," he says slowly.
"No," it replies, smile almost predatory, and Dean's eyes flutter open, iris wide and murky. He looks tired; there're circles under his eyes.
"Who're you talking to?" he asks, curious, and the false Sam grins and bends its head, kissing him upside-down, and right then Sam knows. He lunges across the bed, hands grabbing for this imposter dragging his brother into this stupid dream world every night; they pass right through, and the false Sam raises its head, tosses him a superior smirk. Dean makes a small noise of protest and rolls back onto his belly, reaching up and hauling the fraud down for another kiss, and Sam thinks he sees red.
"It's you," he growls as Dean hums muffled pleasure into its mouth, as he reaches up and cups the stranger's jaw, pushing it onto its back and crawling clumsily on top of it. He's naked, and Sam realizes with a jolt the fake Sam is, too, its clothes having vanished presumably just after he jumped it. "I thought maybe he was being whammed with some supernatural mojo and I was right. What are you?"
The Sam slides two huge hands around the back of Dean's head, cradling his skull. They kiss passionately, wetly, and Sam's not sure what pisses him off more: the way the fake Sam meets his gaze as it kisses his brother senseless, the way the hands around Dean's head are his, right down to the IV scar on the back of the right one from that hospital visit when he was seven, or the way that Dean and the false Sam are fucking affectionate. This kiss isn't heated. It's like the ones he sometimes shares with Jess, tangled up in bed together on a lazy morning, not wanting anything beyond each other; Dean's palm skates up and down the false Sam's side, contact soothing, petting, loving in a way that has Sam's hackles up, and though he tries not to, his eyes inevitably tangle downwards, where he's both horrified and angry to see that Dean's not even hard.
He's watching his brother make out with some evil shadow of himself, he thinks, appalled, and his first reaction is to be pissed off that it's duped Dean into being tender - romantic, even - with it.
"Get off him," he says, but he's not holding out much hope, and the false Sam hooks its chin over Dean's shoulder to beam at him, breaks one hand away from the back of his brother's head to give him a thumbs up. Sam looks down at his hands, wondering if whether by concentrating really really hard he can force a silver knife into his fingers, some weapon that will allow him to fight off this attacker.
Dean breaks the kiss with a sigh and the false Sam diverts his attention back to his brother, cupping his face in his hands, thumbs stroking over Dean's cheekbones. Sam can't see his brother's expression, not from this angle, and he watches speechless as Dean leans forward, gives the imposter a swift, sweet kiss on the mouth and then pushes himself upright, turning as he goes to sit up on the bed beside it. His hands are clasped loosely in his lap and Sam blushes at his brother's nakedness, even though Dean still hasn't clocked onto his presence.
"Are you okay?" the false Sam asks, voice dripping with concern, and Sam flips it off, wishes really hard for that knife.
"Sort of," Dean replies, and Sam freezes. "I'm just... I'm good."
"Sam again?" the false Sam asks, eyes flitting deliberately to where Sam kneels on the bedspread, face locked in an expression of pure hate. It reaches out, rubbing gently at Dean's back in a way Dean would shrug off in a heartbeat if the real Sam tried it; here he closes his eyes and sighs softly in pleasure, leaning back against the fake.
"Yeah," Dean says. "And then again, no."
"Tell me?" The false Sam rubs a little harder, sitting up slowly to fit itself more against Dean's back. It kisses the nape of his neck, other hand rising to join the first on Dean's skin, and his brother closes his eyes, tips his chin up and his head back, and just - relaxes. Really relaxes, in a way Sam hasn't seen him do since long before their father died. "I promise to make sympathetic cooing noises and offer consolation sex, no matter what the problem is," the imposter adds, and God Sam wants to kill it, wants to wrap his hands around its throat and choke the life out of this - this parasite, squirming into his brother's dreams, enticing him to waste away in sleep with a weak lie.
Dean pauses a while before answering, guilt thick and heavy in his voice. Sam licks his lips, waiting for the confession and feeling guilty for eavesdropping. "It's... It's getting harder to deal with him," his brother says finally, and the false Sam makes a soft, soothing noise. "I - I'm, I thought I could hide it as long as it took, you know? But it's just - he called me this morning before he left for class, to make sure I was up, and I just... I got so close to telling him that I loved him. It's getting harder to hide it. I feel so - stretched these days, you know?"
The false Sam leans forward, kisses him behind the ear gently. "Yeah," it says, and Sam can't read its expression (Guilt? Glee?). "I know."
Dean squirms, and Sam swallows. His older brother looks sad and uncomfortable, but peaceful here, despite being groped by this stranger. "I practically raised him and I want him," he says helplessly. "How fucked up is that? Is there, like, a name for that level of fucked-up? Preferably in Latin?"
"Beats me," the false Sam says with a shrug, still petting his brother, and Sam's stomach flip-flops. He's not sure how to take this revelation. He's not sure he wanted to hear this revelation. "If you were lusting after your mom, it'd be an Oedipus complex - "
"Don't. Just, don't even go there," Dean interrupts, shivering. "I'm fucked-up but not that fucked up." He sighs, leaning forward and twisting, places his palm flat on the false Sam's belly. Sam averts his eyes as the false Sam's cock begins to thicken and lengthen; bites his lip and screws his eyes shut, guilty. He shouldn't be here, not in this secret place where Dean whispers things he's not supposed to hear. His stomach contracts again, and this time it brings forth the stabbing pain of a fading migraine, and he opens his eyes to find himself sprawled on the edge of his bed in his dark room, back in the real world, the soft clink of cutlery against crockery in the next room signalling Jess halfway through her dinner.
He groans and rolls onto his back, his migraine moving considerately with him. After a couple of seconds his eyes adjust to the dim soft light and he watches their lampshade swing in tiny ovals in the breeze let in through their window, open a fraction because even though it's winter John taught him fresh air is something to be appreciated.
Of course, John also taught them to stay on their guard, to keep aware for creatures like... whatever it is that has infiltrated his brother's mind, whatever it is that adopts his image and plays on Dean's desires like this. Whatever it is that takes his face and gives Dean what he desperately craves. Sam closes his eyes, silently cursing himself for his own stupidity; all this time and he'd been so caught up in his own inappropriate desires he never noticed Dean angsting himself into isolation over his own.
It never occurs to him to doubt the truth of what he'd seen. He just watches the lampshade swing and wonders how you exorcise something like that from a person, and what losing it will do to Dean.
-tbc
Next chapter →
This is the right turn wrong
Universe taking me in full bloom
Fireball careful with that there
See what you made me do
Must Be Dreaming
Author: nymeria
Pairing: Sam/Dean, Sam/Jess, Dean/Other
Rating: Adult
Word Count: 30,275 in total, 5,111 this chapter
Genre: AU.
Betas: estaster30, poisonrella. ♥
Notes: Thar be smidgeons of plot ahead.
Chapters: [Part one] [Part two] [Part three] [Part four] [Part five] [Part six] [Epilogue]
You're waiting for someone to put you together
You're waiting for someone to push you away
There's always another wound to discover
There's always something more you wish he'd say
Everything You Want
← previous chapter
Sam finds it hard to concentrate in his class the next day, tapping his pen against his pad and gazing thoughtfully at the window. It's not raining, and he can't help but think it should be, to match his mood. The paper in front of him is full of scrawling notes in his own untidy handwriting, tic-tac-toe in the margins of his pages (he's lost three games or, depending on which way you look at it, won three) right next to underlined words. Bast. Ra. Isis. Set. Anubis. Osiris.
He knows he ought to be paying attention; Classical Religions is a total fucking full-ride class provided you take notes, and he has end-of-semester exams and papers to look forward to. Claire Bonham in the seat next to him has her head down, the tip of her tongue poking out between pink lips as she highlights key phrases, and with reluctance Sam tries to force himself into the tune of the conversation, to his professor squabbling with Holly Newark at the front of his classroom. Holly's a walking cliché, all bubble-gum pink spiked hair and black lipstick, pentagram necklaces and too much eyeliner. She thinks she's unique.
"I'm just saying, Isis can be interpreted in a variety of different ways," she's saying, and Sam bends his head, carefully writes Two weeks+? depression at the bottom of his paper. "She's been renewed. Like Hecate."
"Miss Newark, this is an academic lecture, not a discussion on new age ideas," the professor says dryly and Sam rolls his eyes, not overly fond of the guy. He's known on campus as a dirty old man and a misogynist; Jess switched classes when she tried to take this one last year and found he was teaching.
He didn't really have time to prepare for this class last night, not after the whammy of Dean and sick. He stayed up until far too late googling depression and weeding through a plethora of Linkin Park message boards and angsty poetry to research anything possible to serve as a cure - Dean won't take meds, so things like Prozac and so on are out, and what if it's bipolar? Aren't there different meds for bipolar? - until Jess'd woken him up at four in the morning, shaking his shoulders gently and shepherding him back to bed, not even asking what could be so important Sam'd fallen asleep drooling on his keyboard.
He'd left in a bit of a hurry, and misses his laptop now. He doesn't like Holly, and would love the opportunity to be able to show her up.
"I'm just saying," Holly repeats, and the professor sighs, takes off his glasses and begins polishing them on his sleeve.
"Alright, leaving aside Isis as the patron goddess for witchcraft now, can anyone tell me what her sacred animals were in Egyptian mythology?"
Claire raises her hand, spitting the cap of her highlighter into her palm, and when their lecturer nods in her direction, says, "Um, she's usually represented with, like, cattle horns? So... cows? And also, there's some stuff about her being tied into Sirius, the dog star..."
She continues, listing a several more animals and birds, and Sam can't help but lean back against the window, etch out another tic-tac-toe grid and take the initiative with a cross in the upper-right corner. He plays slowly, filling the grid in, and finally etches a line diagonally through three zeros, only to look up and find the class staring at him expectantly.
"Something on your mind, Samuel?" the professor asks, not unkindly. Sam licks his lips, colors a little, and carefully lays the pen down. "Thank you. Now, I asked if you knew in what aspects people worshipped Isis in? What did she do for the Egyptians?"
"Um," Sam says awkwardly, and on the other side of the room, Holly smirks. He racks his memory, pulling out awkward half-facts, and quietly curses the fact that Dean and Dad never hunted any supernatural Egyptian creatures; he has pages upon pages of mental notes about the Norse pantheon, about Thor and Loki and Freyja, but next-to-nothing on the Egyptian save from what he picked up when he went to see The Mummy and The Mummy Returns with Dean.
Oh well. When in doubt, with early religions, fall back on precedent. "Fertility?" he tries, hopefully. "She was a fertility goddess?"
His professor fixes him with a light smile. "Correct, among other things," he says. "Isis is named in the Book of the Dead as - be ready to take this down, it'll be important: 'She who gives birth to heaven and earth, knows the orphan, knows the widow, seeks justice for the poor and shelter for the weak'. Her others titles include..."
Sam tunes him out then, even though he knows he shouldn't. He folds his arms over the top of the desk, staring down at his notebook, and thinks about Dean alone in his apartment. Maybe Jess was right, maybe he's lonely? It would fit. Dean's never really been at home with people - he can charm the pants off anyone if he wants to, and he's good with Sam, but he's awkward around Jess, not sure how to relate to a woman he doesn't want to fuck, and almost bumbling around most other folk. He knows Dean has friends at work, but he's nowhere near as close to his co-workers as Sam is to some of his friends at school.
By the time he slips out of his doze class is nearly over, the other students attempting to discretely slip stationary and books into bags, shutting down laptops and turning off recording devices. Claire's screwing the cap back on her highlighter, and she turns and gives him a quick smile when she notices him watching; he and Holly are the only ones not getting ready to flee, and Sam remedies that by flipping his notebook shut. Holly's loudly making some point about Isis in witchcraft and how she can use that in her paper; the professor is nodding along and making observations, so clearly staring down Holly's top Sam's surprised she doesn't punch him like she did Sam two years ago. Fucking bitch.
"Alright, you lot, you're free to leave," the professor says, and the class stands up, begins to file out of the room. Sam nearly leaves too before he realizes he needs to ask the professor about an extension on his paper so that the class has time to cover the Norse legends, and waves briefly to his friends Don and Chrissie when they pause at the door to wait for him, signalling they should go ahead. He slides into a seat two over from Holly while he waits for her to finish up.
"Isis is like, a symbol of female sexual empowerment nowadays, right?" she's saying. "I thought maybe I could work that into the question about attitudes towards female goddesses - Ishtar was like, a total bimbo, then Isis, and also Hera, this really bitter old hag? I thought maybe I could do something about how Isis has changed with, you know, modern female worshippers and stuff, because before she was like, the deified wife of the Pharaoh and a glorified version of Ishtar, but now -"
"I'm not seeing how she's all that different from a fertility goddess now," the professor notes, mildly, and Holly snorts.
"Because nowadays she represents female sexual gratification - sex without pregnancy as the ultimate goal," she offers, and Sam clears his throat, taps his fingers on the desk in a cadence of boredom. Holly shoots him a filthy look, and he offers her a small smile. "Isis doesn't just represent femininity, of course, you'll hear people claiming she can do anything from, like, astral projection and dream spells to elemental magic and shapeshifting, but-"
"Holly," their professor interrupts wearily. "This class is focused on the ancients. That's why it's called Classical Religions. If you want to discuss Isis in her supposed current form, you should've taken Comparative Religions, okay?"
Holly pouts and Sam clears his throat again, noisily, and leans forward meaningfully. "Sorry to interrupt," he says in a tone which conveys he's anything but, "But I need to ask for an extension on my paper. I want to do it on the Norse faith instead."
"I don't think it's fair for you to shoot down my analysis on the ways religion changes and give him an extension," Holly complains, and Sam shoots her a quick, smug smile.
"I'm sorry about that, but, you know, with my paper being on-topic and all..."
"Stop it, both of you. Sam, sure. You know what you'll be doing?"
"Yeah, I thought I'd do Loki as a manipulator and a catalyst for Ragnorak," Sam says cheerfully and the professor nods, waves him off with his hand. "See you next week," Sam adds, shouldering his schoolbag, and Holly shoots him a death glare and grabs her own black Hot Topic purse. It's black PVC and the zipper has a skull on it. Sam thinks if Dean saw it he'd roll his eyes so hard he'd look into last week.
"Sexist pig," she mutters as they walk out, hot on his heels, and Sam snorts.
"I really honestly fell over you that time, you know," he says, shoving his hands in his pockets. "I have a girlfriend to grope when the mood strikes me, why would I wanna feel you up?" She makes a derisive noise and he shrugs, not really worried whether or not she believes him. "You really should drop that grudge."
"Whatever," Holly snaps and shoulders past him, knocking into him roughly with her shoulder as she does so. Sam pauses in the hallway, watching her determined march down the corridor, and stares thoughtfully at the tattoo on the small of her back - a tiny little ankh - and he hasn't really seen one of those since he was twelve, when his dad took the pair of them to stay with a real witch in Ohio.
He wonders, unsettled, if maybe what's wrong with Dean isn't just depression.
By the time he gets back home, he's nursing a slight headache. Traffic was awful and where it normally only takes twenty minutes to ride his bike home from school, this time it took closer to forty-five, what with roadwork and various detours made to avoid said roadwork.
Jess is cooking when he gets in, and that lightens his mood a little although not, unfortunately, his headache. She smiles up at him as he closes the door. "Hey, baby," she says, and croons soothingly as he stalks across the kitchen to the cupboard where they keep their first aid kit and aspirin. "Migraine again?"
"Building up to one," he answers shortly and pops the cap on the bottle of pills, taking two in one go, dry.
"I'm making stew," she offers, sounding somewhat helpless, and he flashes her a brief smile. "Are you gonna be okay?"
"Probably, yeah... Jess? You know I had that box of stuff when I moved in, from my dad? Where did we put it?"
"Back of the closet, underneath my suitcase," Jess says vaguely, doubling the speed with which she stirs the contents of her saucepan. "Is there something you need?"
"Yeah, Dean asked me to get something for him," Sam says, already on the way to the bedroom. He misses her reply, the bedroom door swinging behind him to muffle it, and opens up the closet; Jess' olive-green suitcase is tucked into the rear corner, hidden behind one of the two formal dresses she owns. He shoves the dresses out of the way and tugs the suitcase out, and there, exactly where she said, is the battered little cardboard box, Dad written simply on the lid in thick black Sharpie. He pulls that out and stuffs the suitcase back in its place, nudges the closet doors closed with his hip, and carries the box to their bed.
It's sealed up with scotch tape and it takes him just a few seconds to tear it off, open it up. It stinks, musty and gross, and he leafs through their father's few remaining personal effects: letters, photographs of him and their mom, a clear plastic envelope containing his wedding ring, and right at the bottom, the leather flaking and cracked, their father's journal.
Dean'd brought it back from the coroner's office, along with the ring. When they'd begun the tedious, painful process of calling up their father's acquaintances the next day, both Caleb and Pastor Jim had volunteered to take the journal, although only Pastor Jim offered to take them in. Dean had said no, politely as possible. The journal's thick and dark and there's some old dried blood on the pages, where Dean hadn't been able to remove it - and he'd tried, expression numb, eyes glazed, gently washing the cover clean in their apartment's tiny bathroom sink.
The journal creaks when he unfastens it, and he can't help but run his fingers reverently along the sides of the pages. This book contains the sum of his father's knowledge, all those years spent hunting, and contact numbers for a wide variety of his comrades. If there is a paranormal entity forcing his brother to sleep more, it'll be in here, he's sure.
By the time Jess comes to fetch him for dinner, he's halfway through, combing for something - anything - capable of casting sleep spells. He looks up when he hears the door open, and she pokes her head in, blinks a bit when she sees what he's doing. "Hey," she says. "Food's ready. You okay?"
"Fine," Sam replies shortly, and sticks a photograph of his dad - dressed in his Marines uniform, with one arm around his mom - into the journal to serve as a bookmark. It's a nice picture, he thinks, and wonders if maybe he ought to get it framed.
"No, you're not," Jess points out, drawing him out of the thought, and he glances up at her. She looks concerned, clutching onto the door. "Sam, honey, you've been really weird all afternoon. Is it just the migraine, or is it something else?" Her voice is gentle, and Sam wishes he could tell her I think there's something after my brother.
"It's Dean," he says instead, because a half-truth is always better than a lie, and he can't bring himself to deflect her question. "Something's wrong with Dean and I don't know what."
She steps away from the door, padding bare foot across the carpet to come settle down on the bed next to him, carefully nudging his father's journal out to way so she can rest her head in that spot instead. He leans over and kisses her abruptly, fiercely, and she tilts her head into it, closes her eyes.
She tastes of the Chinese herbal teas she buys at the health store, all bitter and sweet with a hint of cinnamon, and it's easy to close his eyes and lose himself in this, in her kiss. He loves her so much it makes him giddy, sometimes, in a way he doesn't remember feeling since he was much smaller and younger, since he looked at his brother with different eyes and thought Oh.
"What's the matter with him?" she murmurs when they part, lips almost-touching but not quite, her breath hot on his mouth, and he sighs. "Sam?"
"He's... sick," he replies carefully, and her eyes widen. "He's sick and I don't know how bad it is, not yet."
"Are we talking... hospital sick?" she asks softly, and he shrugs. He doesn't know what's going on, what it is; his father's journal is written in very vague code, aside from those parts which served as an actual journal. He's tried calling Caleb; got the guy's wife on the phone, said Caleb died a year ago. Poltergeist. Sam thinks he ought to feel guilty, or at least sad, about that.
"I don't know," he says, and sighs, lowering himself to starfish on his belly on the bed. Jess reaches out and settles her hand at the nape of his neck, thumb rubbing soothingly over the sharp spur of bone. His head hurts and he doesn't have any answers and for all he knows Dean could be in mortal danger, but he still feels a little better when she leans in close, kisses his temple.
"He'll be okay," she says in her most reassuring voice. "Your brother's a tough guy. Make him go see a doctor tomorrow. Break out the puppy-dog eyes if you have to; he'll be fine. It's okay, Sam."
He smiles at that and she kisses him again before rolling away, climbing off the bed and brushing down her jeans. Her hair's mussed and she combs her fingers through it as he turns onto his back and watches her. "What if he won't?" he asks, helplessly, and she turns around, shoots him a quick smile.
"He will, baby. C'mon, Dean wouldn't dare die without your express permission," she teases, and for some reason that hits wrong in his belly, sour and painful. His mouth thins and she blinks, startled, at his expression.
"I think I'm going to skip dinner," he says, because he doesn't know where this feeling, this worry and anger came from, and he doesn't want to take it out on her. Not on his Jess. She bites her lower lip, looking worried, and he sighs, lowering his head to rest on the blankets. "The migraine's not going away," he says, because it's true, it's getting worse. She looks slightly mollified, although still concerned, and turns around. "I'm sorry, Jess. Just... turn the lights out?" he calls after her, and she snaps the switch, although doesn't quite leave.
"I love you, Sam," she says, and only then does the door quietly click closed. Sam buries his face in the covers and screws his eyes shut, feeling the insistent pain-pulse ebb and spike deep inside his head, gritting his teeth at the pain. He doesn't get migraines often, although when they come they usually put him out of commission for hours at a time.
The one's exceptionally bad, and it's getting worse fast. Sam hisses softly in pain, pressing two fingers against each of his temples, and rolls onto his back, screwing his eyes shut and wishing he had stronger painkillers than aspirin in the house. Morphine, maybe. The pain twists and nausea coils in his belly, and Sam thinks, with a sense of passive irritation, that he could do without the vomiting thing. He begins to climb onto his knees, but he doesn't think he reaches so much as the edge of the bed before his vision whites out.
Great, he thinks, annoyed, when he comes to. He hates passing out with his migraines. At least this time he hadn't hallucinated; one time he thought he was watching Tetris, of all things, on the TV, when Dean later informed him he'd spent ten minutes lying facedown on the carpet, his older brother watching him torn between taking pictures for posterity and calling an ambulance.
He rolls over on his back, relieved that the pain, at least, has faded. Running his hands over his face to check for nosebleeds reveals there's nothing wrong there, too; it's only when he tries opening his eyes and is met with the sight of not hundreds of bright, multi-coloured dancing flecks but rather himself, cross-legged at the foot of a huge white bed, dressed in white sweats and a matching t-shirt, that he realises he's still not in the land of the real.
"You're not supposed to be able to do that," says the other version of himself, sounding pissy and really kind of bratty.
"Do what? Have splitting headaches?" he asks, voice muggy and thick, and thinks about sitting up. "Are you, like, my conscience? Am I having an epiphany?"
The other version of him screws his face up, like he finds that funny and is trying not to laugh. "No," he says eventually, and then, "You know, when I copied you, I missed the part where you're a psychic."
Sam blinks at it, dazed, and decides he's too sore to deal with this stuff. He hopes this isn't a near-death experience. That would kind of suck. "I'm not going to ask 'where am I,'" he says after a beat, and the other version of himself cocks his head. "Because that's totally cliché."
There's a pause, during which he and his doppelganger have some sort of staring match, and then Sam caves and asks, "So, where am I?"
"Where you're not supposed to be," the other Sam grumbles. "Your kind aren't supposed to be able to do that. It's not your dream to hijack."
Sam blinks at him and attempts to put the puzzle pieces together. It's hard. His whole body feels very different; hard to move, like it's not responding right to his mental commands. The other Sam's fierce glowering isn't helping any.
"Am I dying?" he asks softly, and the other Sam rolls his eyes. "Don't pull that face at me. God, you're like, the suckiest spirit guide or mentor or whatever... ever."
"Wow, you really are the family genius," the other Sam sneers, unfolding his legs to stick out straight in front of him, leaning backwards to rest his weight on his palms. "You shouldn't be here. This is private."
"It's a fucking room with a bed, for god's sake," Sam snaps. "If I'm not supposed to be here, who is?"
The spirit guide - or whatever - doesn't answer with words; its eyes flit sideways and its expression softens, and Sam turns his head slowly, so slowly, to follow its gaze. He's not expecting Dean to literally fall through him like he's incorporeal, belly-flopping on the bed - which doesn't move with his body like it ought to. "Dean?" Sam asks, incredulous, and his brother doesn't stir. The other Sam does, though, crawling across the bed on its knees to kneel by his brother's head, fingertips carding through Dean's hair.
"Hey," it says, such tenderness in its voice it makes Sam's spine crawl. "Welcome back."
Dean grumbles and rolls over, shifting and squirming until his head is pillowed quite comfortably in his lap. Sam leans forward, reaching out to touch his brother, and shivers when his hand passes straight through Dean's wrist. The false Sam smirks at him, and he feels something cold in his belly. "This isn't just a hallucination, is it," he says slowly.
"No," it replies, smile almost predatory, and Dean's eyes flutter open, iris wide and murky. He looks tired; there're circles under his eyes.
"Who're you talking to?" he asks, curious, and the false Sam grins and bends its head, kissing him upside-down, and right then Sam knows. He lunges across the bed, hands grabbing for this imposter dragging his brother into this stupid dream world every night; they pass right through, and the false Sam raises its head, tosses him a superior smirk. Dean makes a small noise of protest and rolls back onto his belly, reaching up and hauling the fraud down for another kiss, and Sam thinks he sees red.
"It's you," he growls as Dean hums muffled pleasure into its mouth, as he reaches up and cups the stranger's jaw, pushing it onto its back and crawling clumsily on top of it. He's naked, and Sam realizes with a jolt the fake Sam is, too, its clothes having vanished presumably just after he jumped it. "I thought maybe he was being whammed with some supernatural mojo and I was right. What are you?"
The Sam slides two huge hands around the back of Dean's head, cradling his skull. They kiss passionately, wetly, and Sam's not sure what pisses him off more: the way the fake Sam meets his gaze as it kisses his brother senseless, the way the hands around Dean's head are his, right down to the IV scar on the back of the right one from that hospital visit when he was seven, or the way that Dean and the false Sam are fucking affectionate. This kiss isn't heated. It's like the ones he sometimes shares with Jess, tangled up in bed together on a lazy morning, not wanting anything beyond each other; Dean's palm skates up and down the false Sam's side, contact soothing, petting, loving in a way that has Sam's hackles up, and though he tries not to, his eyes inevitably tangle downwards, where he's both horrified and angry to see that Dean's not even hard.
He's watching his brother make out with some evil shadow of himself, he thinks, appalled, and his first reaction is to be pissed off that it's duped Dean into being tender - romantic, even - with it.
"Get off him," he says, but he's not holding out much hope, and the false Sam hooks its chin over Dean's shoulder to beam at him, breaks one hand away from the back of his brother's head to give him a thumbs up. Sam looks down at his hands, wondering if whether by concentrating really really hard he can force a silver knife into his fingers, some weapon that will allow him to fight off this attacker.
Dean breaks the kiss with a sigh and the false Sam diverts his attention back to his brother, cupping his face in his hands, thumbs stroking over Dean's cheekbones. Sam can't see his brother's expression, not from this angle, and he watches speechless as Dean leans forward, gives the imposter a swift, sweet kiss on the mouth and then pushes himself upright, turning as he goes to sit up on the bed beside it. His hands are clasped loosely in his lap and Sam blushes at his brother's nakedness, even though Dean still hasn't clocked onto his presence.
"Are you okay?" the false Sam asks, voice dripping with concern, and Sam flips it off, wishes really hard for that knife.
"Sort of," Dean replies, and Sam freezes. "I'm just... I'm good."
"Sam again?" the false Sam asks, eyes flitting deliberately to where Sam kneels on the bedspread, face locked in an expression of pure hate. It reaches out, rubbing gently at Dean's back in a way Dean would shrug off in a heartbeat if the real Sam tried it; here he closes his eyes and sighs softly in pleasure, leaning back against the fake.
"Yeah," Dean says. "And then again, no."
"Tell me?" The false Sam rubs a little harder, sitting up slowly to fit itself more against Dean's back. It kisses the nape of his neck, other hand rising to join the first on Dean's skin, and his brother closes his eyes, tips his chin up and his head back, and just - relaxes. Really relaxes, in a way Sam hasn't seen him do since long before their father died. "I promise to make sympathetic cooing noises and offer consolation sex, no matter what the problem is," the imposter adds, and God Sam wants to kill it, wants to wrap his hands around its throat and choke the life out of this - this parasite, squirming into his brother's dreams, enticing him to waste away in sleep with a weak lie.
Dean pauses a while before answering, guilt thick and heavy in his voice. Sam licks his lips, waiting for the confession and feeling guilty for eavesdropping. "It's... It's getting harder to deal with him," his brother says finally, and the false Sam makes a soft, soothing noise. "I - I'm, I thought I could hide it as long as it took, you know? But it's just - he called me this morning before he left for class, to make sure I was up, and I just... I got so close to telling him that I loved him. It's getting harder to hide it. I feel so - stretched these days, you know?"
The false Sam leans forward, kisses him behind the ear gently. "Yeah," it says, and Sam can't read its expression (Guilt? Glee?). "I know."
Dean squirms, and Sam swallows. His older brother looks sad and uncomfortable, but peaceful here, despite being groped by this stranger. "I practically raised him and I want him," he says helplessly. "How fucked up is that? Is there, like, a name for that level of fucked-up? Preferably in Latin?"
"Beats me," the false Sam says with a shrug, still petting his brother, and Sam's stomach flip-flops. He's not sure how to take this revelation. He's not sure he wanted to hear this revelation. "If you were lusting after your mom, it'd be an Oedipus complex - "
"Don't. Just, don't even go there," Dean interrupts, shivering. "I'm fucked-up but not that fucked up." He sighs, leaning forward and twisting, places his palm flat on the false Sam's belly. Sam averts his eyes as the false Sam's cock begins to thicken and lengthen; bites his lip and screws his eyes shut, guilty. He shouldn't be here, not in this secret place where Dean whispers things he's not supposed to hear. His stomach contracts again, and this time it brings forth the stabbing pain of a fading migraine, and he opens his eyes to find himself sprawled on the edge of his bed in his dark room, back in the real world, the soft clink of cutlery against crockery in the next room signalling Jess halfway through her dinner.
He groans and rolls onto his back, his migraine moving considerately with him. After a couple of seconds his eyes adjust to the dim soft light and he watches their lampshade swing in tiny ovals in the breeze let in through their window, open a fraction because even though it's winter John taught him fresh air is something to be appreciated.
Of course, John also taught them to stay on their guard, to keep aware for creatures like... whatever it is that has infiltrated his brother's mind, whatever it is that adopts his image and plays on Dean's desires like this. Whatever it is that takes his face and gives Dean what he desperately craves. Sam closes his eyes, silently cursing himself for his own stupidity; all this time and he'd been so caught up in his own inappropriate desires he never noticed Dean angsting himself into isolation over his own.
It never occurs to him to doubt the truth of what he'd seen. He just watches the lampshade swing and wonders how you exorcise something like that from a person, and what losing it will do to Dean.
-tbc
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