Fandom: Supernatural/Firefly
Pairing: Sam Winchester/River Tam
Theme set: Set Alpha
Title: Much Like Falling
Rating: PG - R
Warning[s]: Nothing everyone doesn’t already know.
Notes: for
1sentence. they ahm, do get longer towards the end. Abuse of commas and semicolons, forewarned. A few of these will be fleshed out. 47 is a crossover with BSG. 36 crosses with Merlin. 06 has a quote from V for Vendetta. Title from the Flyleaf song much like falling. Please tell me which ones you liked the best.
#01 - Comfort
She’s not well and it shows in the red of her eyes; the way she doesn’t move as fluidly as she used to; the way she jumps at small noises and seems to forget where she is and Sam doesn’t know how to help her, especially at night, when she’s screaming in her sleep and all he can do is hold onto her and listen to her pain.
#02 - Kiss
He’s pretending to sleep when she crawls into bed with him, her cold body pressed against his, smelling like another man, like his brother, and presses her mouth against his to say hello; to say goodbye.
#03 - Soft
River pulls her dress over her head and drops into his lap, his hands coming up automatically to grip her hips, the calluses on his fingers in contrast to her soft skin.
#04 - Pain
Stars explode behind his eyes before he has a chance to turn around; he doesn’t know how he does it, but he’s got the dark haired girl pinned to the pool table, his body pressed into her in the most interesting of ways and all he can think of is how the hell she managed to kick him in the head.
#05 - Potatoes
Sam missed a lot of things about his old life (Jess, Dean, solid ground) but sitting at the kitchen table cleaning his guns, with River sitting next to him, almost in his lap, he finds he misses potato chips the most; he knows River would have found them fascinating.
#06 - Rain
“God is in the rain,” she breathes, standing in the middle of the dirt road, her dress sticking to her legs and chest; Sam’s sitting uncomfortably on a broken tree stump, blood and rain soaked into the front of his shirt, dripping off his hair and onto the clasped hands against his face; praying that God really was in the rain, to wash away his sins.
#07 - Chocolate
Sam hated camping, he really did; it was dirty and there were skunks and bugs and sometimes, the impala would get infested with sprites no matter how many charms you put on the damn thing, but it was all worth it, just to see River’s face, covered in chocolate, marshmallow and graham cracker bits.
#08 - Happiness
Happiness is watching her smile, and the way it lights up her face and makes her bad days bearable; happiness is wiping the blood off his mouth and telling him he’s not a monster, and knowing he finally believes it himself.
#09 - Telephone
Hey, you’ve reached Sam, I’m not here right now so leave a message and I’ll give you a call back when I can-
You-you…you’re in my dreams, you’re broken but you tried to fix yourself, only it broke you more; I know who you are…what you’re becoming and you can’t- you…you’re in terrible danger, you have to…stop!
#10 - Ears
“You make me hear with my ears and see with my eyes; kiss with my mouth- never done that before, but you show me how to do it; and even when I hear with my eyes you make me feel normal, safe, girl like.”
#11 - Name
It was on the tip of her tongue (she knew what it was, but she couldn’t place it); She would walk around Serenity (wondering if she could tell her what it was); all she learned was that it was a name and weeks later (weeks after the sensation of not quite knowing fell upon her tongue) she knew the name: “Sam.”
#12 - Sensual
She knew what it felt like, the way her insides were boiling and her head was kind of light; he was making her feel this way, with his hands heavy on her hips, his breath on her jaw, his nose brushing against hers and it was all making her toes curl into the metal under her feet, making her clutch at his shoulders as his teeth scraped against her neck and his leg pressed between hers; made her breathe his name and make him groan into her shoulder because of it.
#13 - Death
Sam had been dead too long for anyone to do anything important, his skin stained red and pale and covered in cold; River hadn’t moved from where she was lying against him in as many minutes as he’d stopped breathing; her head on his chest, her mouth moving wordlessly as her eyes stared into nothing, blank and dead; Simon and Dean stood over her and Sam on the ground, Dean with tears in his eyes and Simon with blood splattered across his clothes…nothing left to do but keep on fighting.
#14 - Sex
She seemed so small sometimes that he thought he might break her; when he pushed into her he could feel her breaking, her resolve, her grip on reality; and it was times like that, like this, when he was moving over her, he could see the collapse of her self.
#15 - Touch
River traced the pattern of scars along his chest, traveling lower, whispering things to herself and to him and to his wounds; she was straddling his lower half, the fabric of her dress and the softness of her legs and the weight of her body making him respond in ways that probably weren’t appropriate for the situation she had in mind.
#16 - Weakness
Sam growled, biting his lip to keep from giving into temptation, to keep from giving into her…but it was like trying to stop breathing and in a moment all resolve and control snapped like a thread and he was plunging into her soul, grinning wickedly as she breathed beneath him, his mouth filling with blood as she weakened his moral and made him beg for her; she made him come to her name until it was the only word he knew.
#17 - Tears
Sam held her face close to his, their foreheads pressed together as he whispered things in all the languages he knew, while tears streamed down her face because the voices she followed had stopped and it was scary and Sam, her Sammy, didn’t know how to make it better.
#18 - Speed
The wind and the fire and blood and screaming and darkness, brightness, tearing and smashing together stopped suddenly; they breathed together, standing so close they could feel each others body heat, so close that all of the world seemed insignificant, all of the world didn’t mean anything as long as they were looking into each others eyes, whether it was the first time (Sam thought it was the first time) or the last time (River knew it would be the last time); the wind picked up speed, blowing soundlessly around them while the world was encased in fire and in darkness.
#19 - Wind
He was most vulnerable when he was drinking blood, and she found she could crawl inside his head and watch him, listen to him and he never knew; never knew someone else could feel the addiction on their tongue, or that he really did wish unicorns were real; she was invisible in her world and in his, she was a leaf on the wind and a spark in his head.
#20 - Freedom
She was sitting in the back of the Impala, naked except for Sam’s jacket draped over her shoulders; Dean was running his mouth about how they should have left her there because hell they were already being chased by the feds, but Sam…Sam was looking back at her, his face was flushed and he kept averting his eyes but he was staring at her, and she was safe.
#21 - Life
They couldn’t keep it a secret forever, especially since her dresses wouldn’t be able to cover up the fact that she was carrying his child for much longer; but now, when they were alone, (when they could pretend that his brother wasn’t overprotective and he wasn’t cursed, that her brother wasn’t completely blind to the woman his little sister had grown into and that she wasn’t so broken) they could lay together in bed, Sam’s hand pressed against the swell of skin that was their baby and pretend that their respective brothers would be happy that at least they found someone to keep the demons at bay.
#22 - Jealousy
Simon hated the way he looked at his mei mei, the way they looked at each other and made conversations with their eyes, the way he touched her; Simon was a sick man, watching his sister fall in love with that hwun dan she took to bed with; he might not be a mind reader, but he wasn’t stupid, and Sam wasn’t very good at pretending he wasn’t screwing his sister.
#23 - Hands
He had big hands; they were calloused and scarred and scraped into her skin, his grip was firm and mean but his hands kept her safe, from doing something crazy.
#24 - Taste
The taste of her sweat on his tongue, intoxicating, the way she moves, and he can smell the way she thinks, taste the ways she moves, he sinks his teeth into the curve of her neck and she taste like home, even in this hellish place.
#25 - Devotion
Dean never really cared for River, he thought she was weird and smallish and way too fucking dangerous to be incased in a small metal car for hours at a time; Dean watched her because he was wary of her, because he wanted to be the first to say ‘I told you so’ when she went ape shit and killed them all; Dean watched her because Sam couldn’t take his eyes off her, and he wanted to know what was so fucking special about her…what she had that kept his brother hypnotized…why Sam couldn’t keep his hands off her.
#26 - Forever
Sam cut into their palms, drawling lines of red with a silver knife, whispering the Latin spell that would keep the bound forever; River watched blood bead across her hand and pool in her palm, watched it glitter and felt the dizziness of magic when Sam pressed his own bleeding palms against hers and told her, very seriously, that he would love her forever, if she would let him.
#27 - Blood
The taste of ruby red against her tongue is sweeter than she thought and even sweeter when she’s swallowing it off of his; the taste of blood and salty skin and smugness makes her weak in the knees, but Sam’s still draining blood from the demon’s wrist and she’s still drinking it from his mouth.
#28 - Sickness
River brushed her fingertips along the pool of blood on the concrete under her bed, slipping through the brick wall next to her bed, she whispered to whoever was bleeding on the other side (Are you there? Can you hear me? Are you sick too?) ; a masculine voice answered her, voice hoarse from the screaming he must have been doing, she knew that well, “I’m broken too, if that’s what you mean.”
#29 - Melody
River hummed the song stuck in her head, knowing the tune, but not the words, not knowing if there were any words because it sounded like a hum, she picked it up in her dreams, it went rather nicely to Serenity; Sam tapped his fingers against the dashboard as he waited for Dean to get his pie fix out of the way, tapping something unusually soothing, something that he quickly got lost in, shutting his eyes and tapping out a melody he hadn’t heard before, but just sort of knew, something he might have heard in a dream once, it was pretty nice, until Dean slammed the car door shut and whacked him over the head with a bag of Funions.
#30 - Star
She was a ballet dancer, she loved coffee and books and lying on the hood of her car at night, staring up at the stars; He was a lawyer, he loved coffee and books and watching his wife sleep, her blonde hair curling around her face; They saw each other every morning when they got coffee from the shop at the corner, (between the firm he was interning at and the theatre she was performing in) he saved her a seat next to the window in the café and they swapped stories of their childhood; He knew their relationship had developed into an affair when he stopped watching his wife sleep at night in favor of watching the stars on the hood of his car, with her.
#31 - Home
Sam watched her throw her arms around her brother, hanging back against the Impala, his hands stuffed in his pockets with Dean shaking the hands of Mr. and Mrs. Tam, graciously accepting the reward money for their daughter (“Oh, no, we couldn’t! Well, if you insist, it was out pleasure really, she’s really quite…special”); River pulled away from her brother and turned, catching his eyes, his breath catching in his chest, remembering the night they’d found her half out of her mind on the side of the road; watching her clean and reassemble every gun they owned; walking out of the shower and in on her changing in an empty motel room, the heat he felt when she kissed him then, how easy it was to pull her back into the bathroom and show how badly he wanted her…how badly he never wanted to let her go.
#32 - Confusion
Sam was just a little more than confused, staring up into two calculating brown eyes framed by a veil of dark hair that brushed against his face when she leaned closer to him, her mouth so close to his that he could feel the energy pushing against him; Sam swallowed, more than a little aroused as she pressed her chest against him, practically lying on top of him, one of her hands sweeping down his body to brush against his crotch, making him hiss and press up into her; she smiled at him pleasantly and turned her head to the doorway where Dean and Doctor Tam were standing, gapping at the two of them and spoke, “He’s awake now.”
#33 - Fear
Blood and teeth; the pull of the stars tugged on River, and she climbed out of bed, bare feet padding along tile and dirt and rocks; metal and lights; River turned her body sharply, staring behind her at darkness, the balls of her feet scraping against pavement, blacker than the sky with it’s lights and souls, she turned again, slowly, watching a pair of light barrel toward her, the sound of smoke and the smell of rubber filling her head until it was screaming and echoing insider her brainpan, boiling like oil; the sound of doors and metal filled her ears and then there were warm hands on her arms, and River was staring up into warm brown eyes and floppy hair, she didn’t need to think about it, she wasn’t scared.
#34 - Lightning/Thunder
“I‘m counting the seconds between lightning and thunder to see if the storms coming or going,” whispered River from the back seat of the Impala, her cheek pressed against the window and her hand curled into the seat cushion by Dean’s head, the blood on her hands still not dried; Sam looked over at her, his face and shirt splattered with blood; he looked away from her and out the window at the bright blue sky; Dean clenched his teeth and the car speed up just a little more as they tried to out run the black that was following them, electricity crackling as the darkness billowed and folded inside itself, catching up to them.
#35 - Bonds
River twirled her hair around her fingers, standing as far away from her parents and older brother as possible amidst the glittering girls and companions and the overconfident, rich men of the Core world; she was sipping champagne and trying to ignore the looks a few younger men were giving her, those ‘come hither’ looks that they thought made them look so appealing, they wouldn’t work on her (she was smarter than they would ever be, and who wanted that in a sixteen year old girl, one who would shoot them down without so much as looking at them); “You look as bored as I feel,” came a mumbled voice at her shoulder, causing her to turn into a boy about her age, with floppy hair and warm brown eyes; she wouldn’t realize he was worse than all those other boys (worse then all of them combined) until three day after that moment, when he left her and her bed without saying goodbye, without leaving anything of himself except the imprint of his teeth in her neck and a charm on her bedside table that he must have left by accident; but for the moment, when it was just the two of them hiding from the gilded people of her world, that the tug of her heart was caused by him, and the way his smile was a little lopsided and shy was because of her.
#36 - Market
The Lady didn’t wear shoes when she walked the grounds, when she walked in the market, a knight as her guard following her every move, bemused by the way she would stop and play with children or listen to an old gypsy woman tell her fortune; Samuel rolled his eyes (but accepted, because who was he to deny the girl he was so fond of anything) when she fastened a daisy chain around his neck, wondering to himself what his brother would think of him, lying about his lineage as he pranced around as a knight in Camelot, waiting hand and foot on the most peculiar girl, who talked to the trees and played with his hair, and whispered secrets in his ear.
#37 - Technology
“What the hell…” muttered Dean, throwing the parking break on and climbing out of the car with Sam on his heels (after the tires had stopped smoking and they realized, no, it wasn’t their imagination, there was a giant metal box sitting in the middle of the frickin’ road); the two stared down at it, at the blinking lights on the control panel, the latch, before Dean unlocked it, took half a step back and kicked it off; warning lights swirled in the cold steam coming out of the box; Dean frowned at it and whack Sam across the shoulder, telling him to check it out with a look; Sam rolled his eyes and stepped forward, peering over the edge of the box and inside…inside was a just girl.
#38 - Gift
River wasn’t a gift, she was curse, grumbled Sam silently, stomping down the corridors of Serenity, trying to get wide, dark eyes and knowing stares out of his head, trying to shake off the sting of Simon’s fist against his face; it wasn’t his fault he wanted her, with her stupid curiosity, her intelligence, it wasn’t his fault she was hilarious and pretty…it was his fault for thinking about the things he wanted to do to her, his fault for thinking them in the same room as her, because she’d given him a look, turned bright red and said something way too erotic for him or Simon to ignore; and now here he was, walking around Serenity trying not to think about her, and all he could do was think about her.
#39 - Smile
His smile brightened his face, made her glad to know him, made her glad she’d found him, even if he didn’t talk out loud, he talked to her, the way he wasn’t really talking; he didn’t tell her that he had an overprotective brother like she did, and smiled when Simon did something brother-like; didn’t tell her he could shoot, better than Mal and Jayne, but not Zoë and smiled, ‘cause she could shoot better than them too; she talked to him in whispers because he knew things they didn’t, that the things in the dark were things and he smiled because he knew she could hear him, even though he wasn’t talking.
#40 - Innocence
She was six when she first heard the name Sam Winchester (heard that he saved the world or destroyed the world or was wanted for murder or something), she found a picture of him on Simon’s source box, what he looked like on Earth-That-Was and he became a hobby; When she was eleven she learned that there were demons and angels and things that she knew logically were not possible, but she couldn’t deny the evidence when she found books and pages of Latin; She was 16 and on a ship bound for nowhere and everywhere and she was broken and missing links in her head when she first fell asleep and heard them, saw them (they come out of the black, they come when you call) and Sam was there, his mouth moving in a language long dead that she understood so perfectly; She touched his cheek with cool fingertips and woke up on Serenity with electricity crackling under her skin.
#41 - Completion
Sam Winchester stood behind his girlfriend awkwardly as she introduced him to her parents ‘Mr. and Mrs. Tam’, feeling small under their scrutiny, but when Simon Tam shook his hand warmly and River slipped her hand into his, he felt like maybe he could have a normal life after all, without monsters.
#42 - Clouds
Pieces of cloud fell out of her mouth and she watched them fall (little lies, fluffy and cold) to the ground at her feet and snuggle up to Sam, who watched them turn black and stormy; who saw through the clouds and riddles in her head and made them real and scary.
#43 - Sky
“Sammy,” dark hair and haunting eyes breathed into his ear, cold fingertips trailing fire down his neck; Sam arched into a touch he must have been imagining as fire trailed down his chest, resting at the top of his jeans; his head fell back as the sky opened up, raining cold down to earth, “Scream at the sky.”
#44 - Heaven
“What do you think it’s like,” asked Sam under his breath, loading boxes of goods out of the mule, Jayne scoffed at him and shook his head, taking a box from Sam and moving it to one of the compartments in the side of the boat; “I think it’s like wind,” whispered River, her arms crossed over the bars of the mule, her hair falling around her arms and face, her eyes unfocused on Sam’s body as he stopped to stare at her, “Like wind and rain and sunshine, with stars that you can touch (her eyes focused, flickering up to his face, pressing her chest into the bar as she leaned over the edge of the mule, her voice a whisper as she continued); I see it sometimes…you’ve been there too.”
#45 - Hell
Black eyes roamed over her naked body, large, calloused hands swept down her front, making her breath hitch, arching into his hands; her fingers twisted into her sheets, blood filling her mouth as she bit the inside of her cheek to keep from screaming as her demon fell into her, sliding long fingers along her skin; Simon closed his eyes in his room, on the other side of thin paper walls, listening to his sister in her own private hell.
#46 - Sun
Sam’s fingers drifted along the skin of River’s back, propped up on one arm, watching her sleep as the sun began to filter through the shades; in a few minutes Dean would roll out of bed and get coffee, pretending to ignore his brother and the weird girl who’d started showing up in their motel rooms, or the back of their car, he didn’t really care anymore, especially since Sam was so much less whiny now that she was.
#47 - Moon
Sam had know idea why Apollo shoved him into a Raptor with someone he didn’t know, not her name, not her callsign, and he certainly didn’t know why she stared at him, how she did things before he asked them (he would always say thank you, had started saying it without looking behind him, which also meant he didn’t stare at her for half as long); they were together in the same Raptor for a week, barely talking, (on the second day, Sam did manage to ask her name; she was River, and her callsign was Little Mouse) staring at each other when they thought the other wasn’t looking; they jumped on the seventh day, nearly inside a moon, hitting a piece of debris and sending River flying across the length of the ship and crashing into Sam, sending them both to the floor, her on top of him; the interior lights flickered off, the light of the moon casting on their faces in an entirely too romantic way.
#48 - Waves
Drinking games had become something he could teach her, something that took away the aching at her heart, a remedy he’d used time again (or maybe it was Dean‘s remedy, maybe it was Dean who always told him to take another shot); he’d take advantage of her, when his vision was just as disconnected as her, his hands sweeping over her exposed flesh (she always had so much exposed, maybe she did it on purpose, maybe she was taking advantage of him) and under the skirts she insisted on wearing, even though it made it hard to take her seriously; she’d beg him, when his mouth was moving wetly over her neck, under her jaw and her hands would fist in his hair, begging him in whispers to take the pain away (he’d take it away, he always did; with nail marks down his back and bruises on her hips in the shape of fingers, her cries always waking the neighbors and always sending him over the edge, falling into her), to make reality fall away.
#49 - Hair
River was lying half on top of Sam, her feet kicking up in the air, making her girl-like and cute as she fiddled with Sam’s hair; He was reading, ignoring her as she played, occasionally glancing over at her from his words to brush her own hair out of her face, his fingers tangling in it, getting lost in it before swallowing (remembering who’s little sister she was and what he would do to him if he found out about his crush) and turning back to his book; she could touch, he could look and there wasn’t anything he could do about it.
#50 - Supernova
River was at the controls of Serenity, Mal was asleep at his own; she knew what she was doing, and she’d been planning it for months, flying out a little further into the black, finding jobs because she was looking further out; It took months, but there it was, glowing dangerously and waiting to die: the Sun and the Earth-That-Was; With narrowed eyes River set the autopilot and climbed out of her chair, standing at the top of metal stairs, staring through narrowed eyes as sunlight illuminated her face and just a few more hours, just a few more seconds to pass away and the Sun, the one that had been in stories from long ago, would wither and die; She breathed slowly, muttering words until they danced together brightly, just like Sam had taught her; they would be together.