There's a Hell of a Universe Next Door (Chapter Three)
Title: There's a Hell of a Universe Next Door
Fandom: Supernatural
Pairing: Sam/Dean, Sam/Dean (this will totally make sense if you read it)
Warnings: AU (sort of), dub-con (sort of), suicide (sort of), mental illness, violence
Rated: R-NC17
Word count: 28,000// this part: 8,016
Summary: There's a big difference between dying and never being born.
There’s a Hell of a Universe Next Door
III.
There is a theory which states that if ever anybody discovers
exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here,
it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something
even more bizarre and inexplicable. There is another
theory which states that this has already happened.
Douglas Adams
Dean spent the next day miserable and alone, locked in his room with the radio turned up just loud enough that he couldn’t hear the voices of his parents or any visitors on the main floor and he barely heard his mother when she knocked at his door. He heard it because he was still awake, but he ignored her and she went away.
On Saturday, Dean started taking the new pills Dr. Fraus had prescribed for him and he felt a little bit better. Working also took his mind off of things and it relaxed him. Rotate tires, fix a fender, putty a dent, replace a windshield, change the oil… There was no distinct pattern to it, at least not in any way that an outsider looking in would have recognized it as such, but there was a rhythm to it that was easy to fall into and distracting. He knew these things, he could do these things and so what if he talked to himself? Buster Freemont, the kid his dad had hired the summer before, listened to his iPod while he worked and sang along to every song, his voice carrying over the sound of engines and machinery so that Dean got to hear all about some girl and her Apple Bottom jeans on what felt like repeat for three months. No one really cared that Dean talked to himself.
Dean had another dream on Monday night, but it was brief and like watching out of focus TV through a layer of foggy tulle. He woke up nearly crying in frustration, then tried right away to get it back, but trying to dream never worked. He tried to sleep and by Tuesday he couldn’t even do that, even from the roof of the engineering building over at the community college, he just couldn’t go to sleep and so spent the night laying there watching the stars, an incredible and pervasive sense of déjà vu nagging at his tired brain. On Wednesday, bone deep exhausted and so frustrated and lost that he was sick with it, Dean went to work and he had determined to stop thinking about Sam or wanting Sam and, most impossible of all, to stop loving Sam.
The more he thought it, the less it was true, something so very akin to the whole deliberately trying to dream thing that he could have laughed or screamed or vomited in self disgust at the irony of it. Stuck in the middle to dwell on something that he couldn’t have until it felt like he was starving. For the first time since the feeling had began growing in him back in school, Dean felt his complete lack of ability to fill the void or control the way it dominated him. That whistling, hollow place in his mind reached its ice cold fingers into his soul and was constantly waiting, watching, on the verge of swallowing him, like a vampire, no longer satisfied to only sip and drain him of his blood, that has turned instead to devour him.
Buster was singing Kanye West while he worked on the engine of a Buick and John was in the office talking to a guy whose wife was filling out some paper work and Dean was supposed to be switching the tires on a big 4x4 pickup but instead he was thinking and feeling and trying to make the shit stop. That was when it happened.
He wasn’t paying attention to what he was doing and he knew special care had to be taken with the tires on these types of trucks because there was a spring in those split rims and if he wasn’t paying attention, bad things could happen. He knew this, but he wasn’t thinking about it then because shit like that was not important when measured beside everything that was ripping him apart inside. So, because he knew this, when the spring snapped out, Dean reacted in time to save himself from a broken, maimed arm, but the thin open edges of the rim sliced him open in one quick flick from wrist to elbow and tore through the webbing of skin between his thumb and forefinger.
Dean looked at his hand curiously and spread his fingers to watch the lips of the deep wound in his hand open and gurgle blood through his fingers. Blood was flowing from his arm, turning cold as it was touched by the air, and dripping in a steady stream off his elbow onto the concrete floor. It looked too bright there on the dirty, oil spotted floor to be real and on some distant level, Dean was wondering why he didn’t feel anything but a numb, almost buzzing sensation running the length of his arm. It was cold and it tickled where the blood slid along his skin, but he felt no pain. He felt no pain and it was a strange, almost euphoric feeling, the way the icy, cruel fingers that had been ripping at his mind suddenly became soothing and soft.
He knew, like he knew a lot of things he wasn’t sure how he knew because it all just rattled around up in there, that there were chemicals somewhere in his brain that were responsible for this. He thought of shock and wondered if perhaps he should lay down on the floor and elevate his legs because that was what you did for shock, wasn’t it? He thought of the sarcastic things he heard about people who cut themselves and he suddenly felt like he was on the verge of discovering the answer to their secret. This was why, and though as he looked down at the spreading pool of blood at his feet he knew he would never develop a taste for such a thing, he thought he understood that now. He understood the why behind it and could clearly see how that could become a place to hide.
It was better, even if it was only for a few seconds, to feel nothing. It was like having the switch on a very loud, horrible soundtrack abruptly kicked off.
Dean sighed and felt his breath shake on the exhale, then a little bit of sound filtered in and Buster was screaming for John, who was throwing the glass door between the office and the shop open so hard that it crashed against the wall and Dean thought vaguely, It’s going to break, but it didn’t. John slipped a little in the puddle of blood around Dean, then he was grabbing at Dean, his hands on his shoulders, shaking him. His fingers were on Dean’s arm, touching to find the wound under all the blood.
“Dean,” he said and Dean thought he was probably shouting because he opened his mouth much wider than he had to to say the single syllable. He shook Dean once roughly, forcing Dean to look at him and focus, and Dean did, though reluctantly. “DEAN!”
Dean winced and leaned back from his father, his ears ringing. “I…” He swallowed and felt nausea rise up in his throat, tasting like acid. “I have to sit down,” Dean said, and immediately started to sit down right there on the floor in his own blood.
John stopped him and hauled him upright with another shake. “You’re in shock, son,” he said. “I’m taking you to the hospital. Can you walk?”
“I don’t know,” Dean said. He blinked and John looked fuzzy around the edges when he opened his eyes. “Dad?”
“What?” John asked, all concern and panic rolled up in one until he was fairly shaking with it. “What is it?”
“I think you need to… find a tourniquet…” Dean mumbled, and he couldn’t stand up anymore.
He went limp and John caught him, cursing as he hefted Dean’s weight in his arms. “BUSTER!”
“Right here, boss,” Buster said from by John’s left shoulder. “You need my car?”
“No,” John said. “Give me your belt.”
~~*~~
Dean opened his eyes and he was in another place, another strange room with textured taupe colored walls and yellow curtains that had once been white a hundred years ago. He was in a strange bed on his stomach and the first thing he noticed while he was floating in the ether between dreaming and awake was that the coverlet, which he was staring down at, was thin with obnoxiously bright colors making up an unlikely pattern of crosshatching. He could feel sweat sliding down his spine, then a tongue licking up his back to his shoulder and there were hands on his waist holding him still.
He suddenly knew where he was and what was happening and for a second he panicked. He was in a motel room on a motel bed and Sam was touching him. He immediately started to freak out but he really couldn’t. He couldn’t make himself feel it or act upon it as he normally would have done because once again he wasn‘t in control, all he could feel was the adrenalin screaming through his blood, his heart pounding like it was going to crash through his ribcage, the smooth slide of Sam’s belly along the curve of his ass and the small of his back. He could hear himself panting and moaning, feel the worn texture of the fabric beneath him, but it was like watching the world through the painted glass of a kaleidoscope. He couldn’t even focus his attention on any one thing long enough to breach the distance of dreamlike separation until it felt real. Really real like it had felt only a couple of times before.
“You could have died,” Sam whispered.
He spoke against the back of Dean’s ear and Dean moaned, shivering at his breath along the side of his neck. Sam stroked his hands up Dean’s sides, back down to his hips, and Dean gripped the edge of the mattress. His head was swimming like his brain had been submersed in a vat of water. Water that was full of the most beautiful goldfish, which kept stealing his attention from Sam and what he was doing.
“I’m sorry, Sammy,” Dean whispered back to him. He wasn’t paying attention, though. Not until Sam dug his fingers in and pain shot up his back. Pain that surprised him by being… not very painful.
“What would I do if I lost you like that?” Sam asked him. His hands dragged back down and Sam lifted his hips, moving against him. “If a werewolf or a vampire turned you and I had to put you down? Don’t you think about that?”
“All the time,” Dean said, though he didn’t know what he was even talking about.
Sam ran one hand up the back of Dean’s neck and fisted it in his hair, pulling his head back with a growl. It focused his attention instantly and Dean wanted to scream, suddenly afraid, but his mouth fell open and all he did was pant and whimper. The adrenaline rushing through his body had him shaking and shivering, but he thought he would probably be shaking anyway because he was suddenly scared. On some level he understood that it wasn’t all fear, either, but that this lack of fear, this pleasure that he felt in what Sam was doing to him came from somewhere else. From elsewhere. Perhaps from the Dean that lived with Sam and had tattoos and scars all over his body. That Dean who wasn’t him at all liked it and Dean just wanted to get away.
There was a deep burn inside his body as Sam slowly pushed inside him and Dean’s breath hitched, his thoughts a scrambled, frantic mess as he fully realized what was happening to him. In a dream, of all places, and even in a dream he couldn’t just let it happen. On some level he had known about this and even wanted it, but not like this. He didn’t want to be waking up in the middle of it and lose his virginity to something that was way too akin to rape for comfort.
Except Sam would never rape him. He knew that though he couldn’t be sure he knew how he knew it. Sam was good. It was a simple and naïve thing to believe, but he did believe it. Sam was a good man and Sam would never do something like that. Dean didn’t remember it because this wasn’t Dean’s world, it was the other Dean’s world, but he had consented. He had wanted at some point not so long ago.
Knowing this, Dean had to give up his idealistic desires and fantasies about what he had hoped and thought would eventually happen and make himself calm down. There was nothing he could do about it and maybe this wasn’t how he had imagined sex with Sam when he eventually had sex with Sam in his dreams, but it was happening and it was still Sam. He still loved Sam.
“I love you,” Dean gasped out, and it was all him that time. All of it.
Sam went very still and Dean could feel Sam looking at him. His eyes boring into him, searching for some trick or lie in it. Not because Dean didn’t love him in this other life where he didn’t live, but because that Dean, the Dean that he wasn’t, would never tell him so. Not like that. He wouldn’t just say it. For a moment Dean experienced an entirely different kind of panic, thinking Sam would figure it out because Sam was wicked smart. He didn’t know how he knew that, but he knew it, and if anyone would ever figure it out, it was Sam because no one knew Dean the way Sam knew Dean.
Sam surprised him by laughing. Dean tensed up at first, thinking Sam was mocking him, but Sam must have anticipated his reaction or something similar to it and he petted him, trying to make him relax again. He cupped Dean’s chin in one hand and urged him to turn his head around so he could kiss him over his shoulder, happy, surprised laughter still rolling on his tongue as he licked into Dean’s mouth and Dean felt his insides turn liquid.
He whimpered and pulled at Sam, trying to get more of him, trying to see him, and finally Sam shoved him and Dean grasped the side of the mattress again. He looked down at his own hands and saw blood drying under his fingernails. Then Sam pulled out of him and rolled Dean onto his back on the bed, his hands closing around Dean’s wrists as he held him down, and their eyes locked. Sam paused and looked at him curiously, his head tipped inquisitively to one side, his eyes reaching right into Dean’s head to pin him there.
He didn’t know but he was starting to wonder. Dean could see the questions he wouldn’t ask every time Sam’s eyes settled on him and it scared him what he might do if he figured it out. He didn’t think Sam would ever hurt him, and he really didn’t think Sam would hurt him if he understood what was actually happening, but Dean thought maybe the way they lived over here in this world where he didn’t fit made them suspicious, violent, paranoid people. He thought maybe Sam was a little too quick to violence and might hurt him before he really knew all the answers and that scared Dean. Then he reminded himself that it was all just dreams and smoke anyway, so it didn’t matter. He would wake up.
Except he didn’t want to wake up. He wanted to stay in the sleazy motel world with Sam.
Dean put his hands up to Sam’s face, studying his fine features. Sam looked back at him and smiled. He lowered his head to nuzzle Dean affectionately as he slid his hands under him up the mattress to cup the back of his shoulders. Dean’s fingers slipped into Sam’s hair as Sam kissed and nipped and licked his way down Dean’s throat. He shivered as he held him and his heart galloped with every single lingering kiss.
“I love you, too,” Sam murmured to him. He lightly bit the point of Dean’s collarbone. “Jerk. You scared the holy fuck out of me. Guess you scared yourself a little, too, huh?”
“Yeah,” Dean said. He could barely force the word out, he was breathing so hard and his heart was pounding like a drum in his throat.
“Yeah,” Sam said, mimicking him with a roll of his eyes. “Dean?”
“What?” Dean said. He pulled gently at Sam’s hair to get him to lift his head.
“I love you,” Sam said, looking back at him with a very serious, nearly sad expression. “No matter… you know, what happens. With Michael and--”
“Sam, shut up,” Dean said. The other Dean because no way would Dean ever tell Sam to shut up when he was being sweet and romantic. Apparently this was one area where he and the dream world Dean seriously parted ways.
To Dean’s complete surprise, Sam laughed and kissed him on the mouth hungrily. Dean gasped and Sam’s quick, clever tongue flicked inside to stroke over his own. Sam shifted against him, pushing his hips down on Dean’s so that strange, pleasurable sensations rocketed up into his belly. Dean moaned and opened his legs wider, squeezing Sam’s hips between his thighs as he arched under him, trying to get closer. Sam smiled against his mouth, Dean felt it in the way his teeth pressed lightly against his lips, and shifted again, rocking.
I love you, Sam had said to him. Twice. Dean answered it instantly, without a word, every particle of his mind and body screamed, I love you right back and God, oh God, he wished he could believe that Sam loved him. Him. He held that desire deep inside, protected and secret, and wished he could stay. He wished to be Dean for Sam, covered in scars, tattooed and burned, blunt and arrogant and dangerous to be reckoned with. He wasn’t, though. He was just Dean, untouched, shy, innocent and ignorant by turns, crazy and medicated to the gills and sad, sad, sad.
How he was even allowed to glimpse the other world, to see the world where Sam lived with his Dean, he didn’t know. It came to him that it was Sam. Sam was the door, but conversely he was also the key to that door. Dean didn’t know how that could be, how he, how Sam whom he had never known except in his dreams, could be both of those things to him, but he thought it was his wretched loneliness and not his madness that had first allowed the dream world to make itself known to him.
The world around him was starting to fade as Sam thrust into him and sexual pleasure thrummed up his spine like the knock from a tuning fork. Dean cried out and grabbed Sam, his fingers scrabbling for purchase on his sweaty skin. Sam loomed over him, his shoulders hunched slightly as he worked his hips and began to move. As he began to move, the bed rocked and the world rocked with it. The light splintered around the edges and there were fish-like shadows darting in the periphery of his vision again, little elusive fingers of reality bleeding unwanted into the dream.
Somewhere in the darkness that clouded his eyes, Dean could hear water dripping. It echoed like the spring thaw in a deep cavern. It sounded like laughter in a faraway world.
~~*~~
“I thought you would not wake up,” a rough, vaguely familiar voice said.
In his newly awakened, newly returned to earth state, Dean wasn’t very glad to hear his state of wakefulness confirmed for him. Dean picked his head up and looked over at the chair by his bed. He was laying in a hospital bed and his arm was bandaged. He realized that a short moment before he recognized the man in the tie and trench coat watching him from the chair beside the bed.
Dean groaned, his heart sinking somewhere close to his stomach, and he rolled over, away from the chair where Castiel sat staring at him. “Go away,” he said.
“Dearly as I would like to, I cannot do that,” Castiel said. “You must listen to me. We haven’t much time.”
Dean wasn’t listening to him, though. He had just realized that his arousal had followed him over from his dream and not only was it deeply humiliating, it hurt. He moaned and drew his legs up defensively, heat and tension rippling through his abdomen. He was a normally functioning young man, he had had wet dreams, he sometimes woke up with morning wood, he had been known to masturbate, but this was something altogether different from anything he had ever experienced, and close on the back of the physical pain was a sorrowful ache of loss. Like every dream he woke from lately, it hurt his heart like tape pulled slowly from a persistently unhealing wound.
Miserable, hot tears seeped from Dean’s eyes and pooled in the hollows beneath his lashes. They quickly cooled like something vile on his skin and Dean swiped at them with his arm. “Leave me alone,” he muttered.
Castiel was so quiet for so long that he thought the man had obeyed and left him. When his hand touched Dean’s shoulder, Dean tensed so violently that he clutched at the side of the bed and almost screamed. He bit the sound back, not sure why he didn’t want to alert people to Castiel’s presence. After all, he didn’t know the guy and he seemed to be following Dean. He needed him to remain a secret, though, this he did know.
“How the hell did you get in here, anyway?” Dean demanded, suddenly rolling over to face him.
Castiel tipped his head to one side, the gesture oddly familiar and unsettling, and sat back down in the chair beside the bed. “It is something that you have termed ‘apparating.’ I do not understand the term, but from what I have been told, it comes from a children’s book.”
“Harry Potter,” Dean said, eyeing him with absolute disbelief.
“Yes,” Castiel said. “But that is unimportant.”
“Where’s my dad?” Dean said. He sat up. He was starting to remember what had happened and he knew his dad would be completely ape-shit. “He must be freaking out right now.”
“He is otherwise occupied at the moment,” Castiel said. A little smile, quickly there and gone, implied that he might have had something to do with John’s current state of preoccupation.
“What did you do?” Dean demanded.
“I merely suggested to the nurse in charge that he might have a good deal of paperwork to look at while you are resting,” Castiel said.
“Suggested?” Dean said.
“Strongly suggested,” Castiel agreed.
“What does that even mean?” Dean said.
“It is not important and I honestly do not feel comfortable confiding such things to you in your current… state,” Castiel said.
Maddened by his evasiveness, Dean scowled at him. “I think you need to leave.”
“It is not terribly important to me what you think,” Castiel said.
“I… What?” Dean said.
“It is only important that you listen and that you do what I expect you to do,” Castiel said. “A grievous mistake has been made--your mistake--and we must right the situation at once.”
“What are you talking about?” Dean said, a touch of hysteria creeping into his voice. “I’m… Look, this is really bad timing, okay? Really. I just had an accident, I just woke up from this really fucked up dream I keep having and probably one of the worst pains in my life, and you’re talking about fucking Harry Potter at me and making no sense.”
Dean put his hands over his face, wishing with childish stupidity that Castiel would just vanish while his eyes were closed, and groaned. “Go away, go away, GO AWAY.”
He waited a minute, then dropped his hands and found Castiel still sitting there, now with an expression of mild annoyance on his face.
“You have been somewhat overindulged here, haven’t you?” Castiel said. It sounded like a rhetorical question, but Dean opened his mouth to respond anyway. Castiel held up a hand to signal him to silence, his expression going from annoyed to stern in a way that made Dean immediately shut his mouth. “You have good parents and they love you, but your madness has made them spoil you in their desire to be kind and fair.”
Castiel regarded him quietly for a minute, his bright blue eyes like flames that could quickly flare and burn if Dean were to anger him. He suddenly felt a little afraid, sensing the potential for real violence beneath the man’s casual attire and unassuming appearance. He also sensed that it would not be directed at him without great provocation because Castiel was patient. He couldn’t really understand how patient, but he felt it, and he also felt that while they didn’t know each other, Castiel regarded him with a strange sort of affection.
“It is only to be expected, I suppose,” Castiel said.
“What?” Dean said.
“You. The way that you are because of the way that things are here,” Castiel said. “You are different. Not at all the warrior I know you to be.”
“What?” Dean said again. He was starting to feel like a real moron the longer he was in Castiel’s company but honestly, what?
“We do not have time for this,” Castiel said. He sat forward with his elbows on his knees, bringing himself closer to Dean. “Things are happening and you are a part of them. You have tried to remove yourself from the fray and I understand your reason--it is the only reason that counts--but it cannot be allowed to pass this way. Do you understand me?”
Dean blinked at him in utter confusion. “Not even a little bit,” he said.
“Sam has to be born,” Castiel said. “He must. For more reasons than just the one, he must live. The world will still end without him, you know. Nothing has been saved and much more has been lost. He cannot be not born. It is not that simple.”
“Sam?” Dean said, startled to hear the name in someone else’s mouth. “What do you know about Sam?”
Castiel smirked at him and shook his head imperceptibly. “Much, much more than you do at this point, I’m afraid.”
“What the hell does that mean?” Dean snapped, suddenly angry. How dare this stranger keep secrets from him. How dare he know anything about Sam, his Sammy. “Stop with the fucking riddles and just tell me what you’re talking about.”
“I am talking about the end of the world, but all you hear is Sam’s name,” Castiel said. He sighed and sat back. “I should not find this surprising. That is where you are. That is always where you’re going to be. You were a fool to once think otherwise and now here we are. And your poor mother blames herself.”
Dean’s mouth fell open. Just when he thought things couldn’t possibly get any more weird or confusing, impossibly, they did. “My mother? What the fuck do you know about my mother?”
“I know that she shouldn’t,” Castiel said simply. “She shouldn’t blame herself. She could not have known.”
“Blame herself for what?” Dean said, his voice rising toward a shout. “Could not have known what?”
“She could not have known that choosing to not give birth to Sam would not work the way the three of you hoped it would,” Castiel said, his infinite patience keeping his voice calm and mild in the face of Dean’s agitation. “Perhaps if you had not already been growing in her womb, then it might have changed things. But you were and it was already too late.”
Dean had to take a deep breath and think for a minute or he was going to explode in a screaming mess of gooey, frustrated confusion right there on the hospital bed. He breathed in, breathed out, and when that wasn’t quite good enough, he did it again. “Okay, hold on. Hold the goddamn phone for just a minute. What?”
Castiel sighed and started to explain it again.
“Wait,” Dean said, flapping his hands at him. “Rewind and start over. Pretend I’m not me and explain it to me like I’m five or something.”
Castiel laughed suddenly like Dean had made a joke. Dean glared at him, suspecting he was being made fun of. “You are still you in spite of it all,” Castiel said.
“Whatever that means,” Dean muttered.
“Like you’re five and you’re not you,” Castiel said in the tone of someone who is reminding himself to behave. “Yes, okay. You know that there are other dimensions? Timelines and perceived realities? Wheres and whens?”
“No,” Dean said. “My therapist would kill you right now for saying something like that to me, by the way.”
“Therapist,” Castiel said, mulling the word over. He made a dismissive sound and waved it off like the concept were some annoying, biting insect. “I have said that you are spoiled and I was not exaggerating.”
“Great. Well, that’s a mean thing to say,” Dean said. “Can you just tell me what the hell is going on and what you’re doing here and, for that matter, who are you? Oh, and how do you know about Sam and how the fuck do you know my mother?”
“I was getting to that if you would please exercise some patience,” Castiel snapped.
Dean frowned at him, then dropped his eyes to his lap. He suddenly realized that he wasn’t hard anymore and the pain he had woken up with was gone. For some reason, this made him laugh.
“Now what?” Castiel said.
“Nothing,” Dean said, still grinning. “Sorry.”
Castiel raised a brow at him, then decided not to question him about it. “Your mother and father are Mary Campbell and John Winchester, descendents of Cain and Abel,” he began.
Dean regarded him calmly from beneath lifted brows. “No way,” he said.
“Way,” Castiel said dryly. “Apparently there is a long line of incestuous behavior in your family tree.”
“Hey, that’s not fair. I’m not… incestuous,” Dean said.
“Oh yes? So what you were dreaming about when I entered the room was a kind of platonic love affair?” Castiel said.
“Hey! You know what… stay out of my head,” Dean said. He flushed and couldn’t meet Castiel’s eyes. He was all the more embarrassed because Castiel was smiling at him.
“Your birth was part of the great pattern, controlled and created by God so that you might one day fulfill a preordained destiny,” Castiel said, ignoring his embarrassment. “You fought it, as is your way, and you were time and again shown that you can not change the past. What is past is past, or as you like to say; what is dead should stay dead. You are not very good at taking your own advice, though.”
Dean heard the affection in Castiel’s voice as he spoke and it confused him more, but he didn’t say anything. He was beginning to suspect from pieces of what Castiel had said, that Castiel was from his dream world. Impossible as that was, it almost had to be true. How else could he know about Sam? Dean had only told Dr. Fraus about Sam and he hadn’t known his name the last time he spoke with her. But Castiel knew. He knew about Sam and the other world where Dean dreamed and he knew them. The way he talked about Dean said that they were friends and the way his eyes went a little faraway when he spoke of Sam said that he knew the man well.
All of this made Dean much more interested in what he had to say. He stared at him with rapt interest and felt his heart racing with joy inside him because Castiel knowing, Castiel being from there, meant that it was all more than a dream. Somewhere out there it was real and if it was real, maybe Dean could have it if he listened. If he did what this weird stranger wanted him to do, maybe he could go there.
“It happened that you came face to face with your mother in a time shortly before your birth and shortly after your conception,” Castiel said. “You and Sam, you tried to convince her to leave your father so that neither of you could be born and the things that would bring on the end of the world would not come to pass. She refused.”
Dean waited for him to go on but when Castiel sat there quietly for too long, he cleared his throat. “Why?” he asked. “I mean… it’s the world. That’s more important than… well, than anything. Isn’t it?”
Castiel smiled without looking at him, his eyes downcast on his clasped hands. “No. Not more than anything,” he said. “It is extremely important, but it is not more important than anything. You taught me that, you know.”
“I did?” Dean said, awed by the concept.
“Well… not you exactly, but yes,” Castiel said. “I once believed such things were black and white as they are often painted. I made mistakes believing that. I no longer believe that, however, and that will have to be my redemption.”
“Okay,” Dean said slowly, not sure if he really understood what he was being told. “So, what happened?”
“Your mother was already pregnant with you and so she would not leave John. She also loved your father deeply, as you love your brother. What a man long ago with the rather odd name of Plato called soul mates. That is what they are to one another. That is also what you are to Sam and what Sam is to you. It is why you are so… disjointed,” Castiel said.
“You mean it’s why I’m crazy,” Dean said.
“Not precisely, but for the sake of this conversation and your understanding, yes,” Castiel said.
“Okay,” Dean said. He tried not to think too hard on that or his eyes crossed.
“Mary soon forgot you and Sam and everything that had happened when you were there,” Castiel said.
“Why?” Dean said. “That’s… I mean, it’s important, why would she forget it?”
“She was made to forget,” Castiel said. “But, though she forgot, she carried with her a feeling of unease and fear. She made things very difficult for your father the first five years of their marriage, though she didn’t know why and neither did he. It was her fear and it kept them from being as close as they both wanted to be. It kept her from conceiving Sam because a little part of her, deep and sacred where memory is not touched by logic or reason but by instinct and emotion, remained. She was scared to have that other child because she knew that Sam could bring the world crashing down even if she didn’t remember how she knew it.”
“What about Adam?” Dean asked. “He’s still theirs, so why isn’t he the same? I mean… wouldn’t he just be Sam, only later?”
“No,” Castiel said. “If the same two cells do not touch and grow in the same time, they do not become the same person. Two other cells touch and grow and they are a completely different being. The time for Sam’s conception passed long ago in this place. Adam is a child that Mary would never have had if Sam had been born. A child that John would have conceived with another woman--a fact which also makes him different. But here your mother still lives, so there never was another woman.”
“Mom’s dead in your world, isn’t she?” Dean asked quietly. He had already suspected as much, but it still hurt.
“Yes,” Castiel said. “I’m sorry, yes she is.”
Dean sat there for a minute, thinking. He thought about his mother, how his mother had always treated him with a kind of delicate care. His father had taken his cues from her about that because Dean knew that sometimes John got frustrated with him and he was much quicker to anger than Mary. Mary was the most kind, beautiful woman in the world. It was an opinion early forged in his childhood that had never changed. He loved her more than anyone in the world, more than his father, more than anything. In this other world where Sam lived, Mary would be dead. To have that world to himself, Dean knew that he would have to choose between his lovely, kind mother and Sam. Castiel didn’t have to say it, he knew. That was the option being placed before him as Castiel spoke.
“Who are you in all of this?” Dean asked Castiel. “How do I know you? How do you know me? How do you know all of this about me?”
“I’m a friend,” Castiel said.
“My friend?” Dean said, not sure he believed that.
“Yours and your brother’s,” Castiel said.
“Sam, not Adam,” Dean said.
“Of course,” Castiel said.
“What do you want me to do?” Dean asked.
Castiel raised a brow at him. “I should think it would be quite clear,” he said.
When Dean just stared at him, Castiel shook his head and sighed. “You are not stupid, but you are so stubborn sometimes that it hardly matters,” he said. “You have to choose. I cannot make you do anything, it is up to you. It has always been up to you.”
“Choose what?” Dean said, but he suspected. “Choose between this world and yours? Choose between my mother and this guy, Sam? Is that what you’re talking about?”
“Essentially,” Castiel said. Dean glared at him like Castiel had just suggested he plunge a knife through his mother’s heart. Castiel chuffed out a soft laugh. “Understand something, Dean Winchester, you would not be killing her. She is already dead. You would not be giving life to Sam. He is already alive, as I think you know. There are no other worlds. There is world. One, within which exist many possibilities. You yourself are but one possible road, one that I hope to stop from becoming reality. If I could do this without your consent, believe me, I would.”
“So what you’re saying is that my world… this world isn’t even real,” Dean said. He was frightened by the idea, but also angry at Castiel for saying something like that. It was like the first time someone told him he was crazy. He hadn’t wanted to believe it and he had been completely offended by the idea. “How do you know that your world isn’t the fake one?”
“I am saying no such thing,” Castiel said, exasperated with him. “I am saying that your world, your where and when runs like a stream beside the river of my world. There are literally millions of such possibilities with new ones forming every second, but they rarely ever touch that river. People take a wrong turn and die, so it goes. People catch a taxi because their car gets a flat and they meet the love of their life, so it goes. Most of the time people do what they are supposed to do, one way or another. Your little stream of possibility has the singular distinction of being one of very few that I have ever seen that threatens to branch off into the river of what is my world and redirect its course. Does that make sense?”
“That’s a hell of a metaphor,” Dean said dumbly.
“I am aware of that,” Castiel said, annoyed with him at last. “I have to rely on something as patiently unreliable as the human heart--your heart--to decide whether or not this catastrophe will occur.”
“But who the hell are you?” Dean said. “You’re not just some guy. If you were just some guy you couldn’t know some of this stuff. Unless you’re making it up, and if you are, then man, you are crazier than I am.”
“It’s been said,” Castiel said. He huffed out a tired breath and leaned forward on his elbows again. “I’m an angel.”
“Right, and I’m a circus clown,” Dean said automatically.
Castiel pinched the bridge of his nose in frustration. “Believe it or don’t. You are wearing on my patience and we do not have time for me to convince you of the truth.”
This went farther toward convincing Dean than if Castiel had deliberately tried to persuade him that he was telling the truth. He didn’t care if Dean believed him because he knew that he was speaking the truth and regardless of what Dean did, he would be returning soon to his own world. Even if his world became a distant shallow stream of a possibility diminished from the once raging river of its dominion over the rest, all Dean had to do was look at him to know that he would be going back. Castiel called that raging river home. Even the frightening things that he talked about that were happening there would not keep him from going back.
“If you’re an angel, then… this is your world, too, isn’t it?” Dean said. “All worlds as one world.”
“There are not worlds,” Castiel said. “I am not making myself clear or it is not a concept you can grasp, but there is one. One only. This is a single possibility of my world, the one world, that has not yet been fully realized. Under other circumstances, it would merely drift along beside mine, be of very little significance and never interfere with it, much like another world as you insist on saying. Somewhere in your… possible world, there is another Castiel. He is the product of many decisions that were made or not made differently here than there. I would imagine he is far less friendly than I am.”
“Okay, okay, okay,” Dean said, holding up his hands in surrender. “Just stop before my head pops. I can’t even begin to wrap my mind around there being other worlds and still not being other worlds. It’s giving me a headache, so just stop.”
“Fine,” Castiel said.
“Good,” Dean said.
Castiel stood up. “I must go now. I have remained here far too long already and this… place makes me ill.”
“But… But I still don’t know anything,” Dean said, instant panic shooting up inside him. “I don’t know how to get there or how to stay if I can find the way. Jesus, I haven’t even been able to dream about it for… for a long time. Too long. Not until just now. What am I supposed to do?”
Castiel frowned down at him in the hospital bed and Dean got the uncomfortable impression that he was being compared and weighed against that other Dean who was Castiel’s friend. Weighed and found severely wanting. “I am supposed to have all of the answers and give them to you for nothing,” Castiel said, a touch of bitterness and scorn in his voice. “I think not.”
“But then how am I supposed to--”
“You will be silent,” Castiel snarled. For the first time Dean looked up at him and saw the fierce creature that he really was lurking beneath the surface of the placid disguise he wore. “Listen to me. Listen. You know the way, it’s that same way as before. You know the law of physics which states that two objects cannot occupy the exact same space at the exact same time?”
“Yes,” Dean said. “I mean, I’ve heard that before. It makes sense.”
“Yes,” Castiel said. “It’s very true. The same is true of a single object occupying two separate spaces at the exact same time. It is not impossible, but it cannot go on indefinitely. At some point, a change will happen and either the object will no longer be the same, the spaces will merge, or the time will change. Do you understand the concept of entropy?”
“Uh… sort of,” Dean said. He was once again feeling like a moron and it was all Castiel’s fault. He desperately wished the man would just get to the damn point.
“It is a similar concept,” Castiel said. He noticed Dean’s perplexity and rolled his eyes with a heavy sigh. “Simply put, you cannot be in two places at once. You cannot exist there and here at the same time without things devolving into chaos. Do you understand?”
“I think so,” Dean said. He thought of Jolene’s twisted, mutated face in the diner and shivered. If that wasn’t a sign of things falling toward chaos, he didn’t know what was. “I think… I get it. I can’t live here and there. I have to… I have to choose.”
Castiel grunted out a soft, irritable affirmative. “And if you want to keep dreaming, I would suggest you stop taking these,” he said. He dropped an orange prescription pill bottle into Dean’s lap.
Dean picked up the bottle and read the label. It was the last prescription Dr. Fraus had written for him. All the while telling him that she was trying to help him and her little pills had been stealing his dreams. Stealing Sam and that other world from him.
Dean closed his hand around the bottle and clenched his fingers tightly. “You’re sure?”
Castiel did not deign to reply to that one way or the other. He put his hand out and touched his first two fingertips to Dean’s forehead. It surprised Dean and his instinctive revulsion for physical contact would have made him recoil from it if he had had time, but he didn’t. The touch was there and gone in only a few seconds, during which bright soothing heat rushed like sunlight through his body and burned like heated iron to the tips of his fingers in his injured hand.
Castiel dropped his hand and stepped back. “Your arm will be better now. I suggest you continue bandaging it anyway to avoid awkward questions,” Castiel said. “I must go. Your father will be coming to take you home.”
Dean looked down at his wrapped hand and flexed his fingers. He expected pain, but there was none. In fact, there was an abiding, comfortable warmth that went the length of his arm. Amazed, Dean looked up to find that Castiel was gone and he was alone. He looked around, half expecting Castiel to be hiding somewhere, but there was nowhere to hide even if he had wanted to. There was no way he could have left the room without Dean seeing him go, either.
John stuck his head in the room then and smiled at Dean, relieved to see him awake and aware. “Hey, Dean,” he said. “Feeling alright?”
“Yeah, Dad, I’m… I’m great,” Dean said, still looking around for either Castiel or a way he could have left the room without Dean noticing.
“You ready to go home, then?” John said. “Your mother’s out of her head with worry. I promised to bring you home so she could fuss at you.”
Dean smiled at him with honest pleasure. His joy was tinged with a pang of regret and sorrow. It was a sorrow, he thought, that would never leave him. No matter where he went, no matter when, it would go with him. No matter what choice he made, he would suffer for it and regardless of what Castiel said, it felt like murder.
Chapter Four>>
Fandom: Supernatural
Pairing: Sam/Dean, Sam/Dean (this will totally make sense if you read it)
Warnings: AU (sort of), dub-con (sort of), suicide (sort of), mental illness, violence
Rated: R-NC17
Word count: 28,000// this part: 8,016
Summary: There's a big difference between dying and never being born.
There’s a Hell of a Universe Next Door
III.
There is a theory which states that if ever anybody discovers
exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here,
it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something
even more bizarre and inexplicable. There is another
theory which states that this has already happened.
Douglas Adams
Dean spent the next day miserable and alone, locked in his room with the radio turned up just loud enough that he couldn’t hear the voices of his parents or any visitors on the main floor and he barely heard his mother when she knocked at his door. He heard it because he was still awake, but he ignored her and she went away.
On Saturday, Dean started taking the new pills Dr. Fraus had prescribed for him and he felt a little bit better. Working also took his mind off of things and it relaxed him. Rotate tires, fix a fender, putty a dent, replace a windshield, change the oil… There was no distinct pattern to it, at least not in any way that an outsider looking in would have recognized it as such, but there was a rhythm to it that was easy to fall into and distracting. He knew these things, he could do these things and so what if he talked to himself? Buster Freemont, the kid his dad had hired the summer before, listened to his iPod while he worked and sang along to every song, his voice carrying over the sound of engines and machinery so that Dean got to hear all about some girl and her Apple Bottom jeans on what felt like repeat for three months. No one really cared that Dean talked to himself.
Dean had another dream on Monday night, but it was brief and like watching out of focus TV through a layer of foggy tulle. He woke up nearly crying in frustration, then tried right away to get it back, but trying to dream never worked. He tried to sleep and by Tuesday he couldn’t even do that, even from the roof of the engineering building over at the community college, he just couldn’t go to sleep and so spent the night laying there watching the stars, an incredible and pervasive sense of déjà vu nagging at his tired brain. On Wednesday, bone deep exhausted and so frustrated and lost that he was sick with it, Dean went to work and he had determined to stop thinking about Sam or wanting Sam and, most impossible of all, to stop loving Sam.
The more he thought it, the less it was true, something so very akin to the whole deliberately trying to dream thing that he could have laughed or screamed or vomited in self disgust at the irony of it. Stuck in the middle to dwell on something that he couldn’t have until it felt like he was starving. For the first time since the feeling had began growing in him back in school, Dean felt his complete lack of ability to fill the void or control the way it dominated him. That whistling, hollow place in his mind reached its ice cold fingers into his soul and was constantly waiting, watching, on the verge of swallowing him, like a vampire, no longer satisfied to only sip and drain him of his blood, that has turned instead to devour him.
Buster was singing Kanye West while he worked on the engine of a Buick and John was in the office talking to a guy whose wife was filling out some paper work and Dean was supposed to be switching the tires on a big 4x4 pickup but instead he was thinking and feeling and trying to make the shit stop. That was when it happened.
He wasn’t paying attention to what he was doing and he knew special care had to be taken with the tires on these types of trucks because there was a spring in those split rims and if he wasn’t paying attention, bad things could happen. He knew this, but he wasn’t thinking about it then because shit like that was not important when measured beside everything that was ripping him apart inside. So, because he knew this, when the spring snapped out, Dean reacted in time to save himself from a broken, maimed arm, but the thin open edges of the rim sliced him open in one quick flick from wrist to elbow and tore through the webbing of skin between his thumb and forefinger.
Dean looked at his hand curiously and spread his fingers to watch the lips of the deep wound in his hand open and gurgle blood through his fingers. Blood was flowing from his arm, turning cold as it was touched by the air, and dripping in a steady stream off his elbow onto the concrete floor. It looked too bright there on the dirty, oil spotted floor to be real and on some distant level, Dean was wondering why he didn’t feel anything but a numb, almost buzzing sensation running the length of his arm. It was cold and it tickled where the blood slid along his skin, but he felt no pain. He felt no pain and it was a strange, almost euphoric feeling, the way the icy, cruel fingers that had been ripping at his mind suddenly became soothing and soft.
He knew, like he knew a lot of things he wasn’t sure how he knew because it all just rattled around up in there, that there were chemicals somewhere in his brain that were responsible for this. He thought of shock and wondered if perhaps he should lay down on the floor and elevate his legs because that was what you did for shock, wasn’t it? He thought of the sarcastic things he heard about people who cut themselves and he suddenly felt like he was on the verge of discovering the answer to their secret. This was why, and though as he looked down at the spreading pool of blood at his feet he knew he would never develop a taste for such a thing, he thought he understood that now. He understood the why behind it and could clearly see how that could become a place to hide.
It was better, even if it was only for a few seconds, to feel nothing. It was like having the switch on a very loud, horrible soundtrack abruptly kicked off.
Dean sighed and felt his breath shake on the exhale, then a little bit of sound filtered in and Buster was screaming for John, who was throwing the glass door between the office and the shop open so hard that it crashed against the wall and Dean thought vaguely, It’s going to break, but it didn’t. John slipped a little in the puddle of blood around Dean, then he was grabbing at Dean, his hands on his shoulders, shaking him. His fingers were on Dean’s arm, touching to find the wound under all the blood.
“Dean,” he said and Dean thought he was probably shouting because he opened his mouth much wider than he had to to say the single syllable. He shook Dean once roughly, forcing Dean to look at him and focus, and Dean did, though reluctantly. “DEAN!”
Dean winced and leaned back from his father, his ears ringing. “I…” He swallowed and felt nausea rise up in his throat, tasting like acid. “I have to sit down,” Dean said, and immediately started to sit down right there on the floor in his own blood.
John stopped him and hauled him upright with another shake. “You’re in shock, son,” he said. “I’m taking you to the hospital. Can you walk?”
“I don’t know,” Dean said. He blinked and John looked fuzzy around the edges when he opened his eyes. “Dad?”
“What?” John asked, all concern and panic rolled up in one until he was fairly shaking with it. “What is it?”
“I think you need to… find a tourniquet…” Dean mumbled, and he couldn’t stand up anymore.
He went limp and John caught him, cursing as he hefted Dean’s weight in his arms. “BUSTER!”
“Right here, boss,” Buster said from by John’s left shoulder. “You need my car?”
“No,” John said. “Give me your belt.”
~~*~~
Dean opened his eyes and he was in another place, another strange room with textured taupe colored walls and yellow curtains that had once been white a hundred years ago. He was in a strange bed on his stomach and the first thing he noticed while he was floating in the ether between dreaming and awake was that the coverlet, which he was staring down at, was thin with obnoxiously bright colors making up an unlikely pattern of crosshatching. He could feel sweat sliding down his spine, then a tongue licking up his back to his shoulder and there were hands on his waist holding him still.
He suddenly knew where he was and what was happening and for a second he panicked. He was in a motel room on a motel bed and Sam was touching him. He immediately started to freak out but he really couldn’t. He couldn’t make himself feel it or act upon it as he normally would have done because once again he wasn‘t in control, all he could feel was the adrenalin screaming through his blood, his heart pounding like it was going to crash through his ribcage, the smooth slide of Sam’s belly along the curve of his ass and the small of his back. He could hear himself panting and moaning, feel the worn texture of the fabric beneath him, but it was like watching the world through the painted glass of a kaleidoscope. He couldn’t even focus his attention on any one thing long enough to breach the distance of dreamlike separation until it felt real. Really real like it had felt only a couple of times before.
“You could have died,” Sam whispered.
He spoke against the back of Dean’s ear and Dean moaned, shivering at his breath along the side of his neck. Sam stroked his hands up Dean’s sides, back down to his hips, and Dean gripped the edge of the mattress. His head was swimming like his brain had been submersed in a vat of water. Water that was full of the most beautiful goldfish, which kept stealing his attention from Sam and what he was doing.
“I’m sorry, Sammy,” Dean whispered back to him. He wasn’t paying attention, though. Not until Sam dug his fingers in and pain shot up his back. Pain that surprised him by being… not very painful.
“What would I do if I lost you like that?” Sam asked him. His hands dragged back down and Sam lifted his hips, moving against him. “If a werewolf or a vampire turned you and I had to put you down? Don’t you think about that?”
“All the time,” Dean said, though he didn’t know what he was even talking about.
Sam ran one hand up the back of Dean’s neck and fisted it in his hair, pulling his head back with a growl. It focused his attention instantly and Dean wanted to scream, suddenly afraid, but his mouth fell open and all he did was pant and whimper. The adrenaline rushing through his body had him shaking and shivering, but he thought he would probably be shaking anyway because he was suddenly scared. On some level he understood that it wasn’t all fear, either, but that this lack of fear, this pleasure that he felt in what Sam was doing to him came from somewhere else. From elsewhere. Perhaps from the Dean that lived with Sam and had tattoos and scars all over his body. That Dean who wasn’t him at all liked it and Dean just wanted to get away.
There was a deep burn inside his body as Sam slowly pushed inside him and Dean’s breath hitched, his thoughts a scrambled, frantic mess as he fully realized what was happening to him. In a dream, of all places, and even in a dream he couldn’t just let it happen. On some level he had known about this and even wanted it, but not like this. He didn’t want to be waking up in the middle of it and lose his virginity to something that was way too akin to rape for comfort.
Except Sam would never rape him. He knew that though he couldn’t be sure he knew how he knew it. Sam was good. It was a simple and naïve thing to believe, but he did believe it. Sam was a good man and Sam would never do something like that. Dean didn’t remember it because this wasn’t Dean’s world, it was the other Dean’s world, but he had consented. He had wanted at some point not so long ago.
Knowing this, Dean had to give up his idealistic desires and fantasies about what he had hoped and thought would eventually happen and make himself calm down. There was nothing he could do about it and maybe this wasn’t how he had imagined sex with Sam when he eventually had sex with Sam in his dreams, but it was happening and it was still Sam. He still loved Sam.
“I love you,” Dean gasped out, and it was all him that time. All of it.
Sam went very still and Dean could feel Sam looking at him. His eyes boring into him, searching for some trick or lie in it. Not because Dean didn’t love him in this other life where he didn’t live, but because that Dean, the Dean that he wasn’t, would never tell him so. Not like that. He wouldn’t just say it. For a moment Dean experienced an entirely different kind of panic, thinking Sam would figure it out because Sam was wicked smart. He didn’t know how he knew that, but he knew it, and if anyone would ever figure it out, it was Sam because no one knew Dean the way Sam knew Dean.
Sam surprised him by laughing. Dean tensed up at first, thinking Sam was mocking him, but Sam must have anticipated his reaction or something similar to it and he petted him, trying to make him relax again. He cupped Dean’s chin in one hand and urged him to turn his head around so he could kiss him over his shoulder, happy, surprised laughter still rolling on his tongue as he licked into Dean’s mouth and Dean felt his insides turn liquid.
He whimpered and pulled at Sam, trying to get more of him, trying to see him, and finally Sam shoved him and Dean grasped the side of the mattress again. He looked down at his own hands and saw blood drying under his fingernails. Then Sam pulled out of him and rolled Dean onto his back on the bed, his hands closing around Dean’s wrists as he held him down, and their eyes locked. Sam paused and looked at him curiously, his head tipped inquisitively to one side, his eyes reaching right into Dean’s head to pin him there.
He didn’t know but he was starting to wonder. Dean could see the questions he wouldn’t ask every time Sam’s eyes settled on him and it scared him what he might do if he figured it out. He didn’t think Sam would ever hurt him, and he really didn’t think Sam would hurt him if he understood what was actually happening, but Dean thought maybe the way they lived over here in this world where he didn’t fit made them suspicious, violent, paranoid people. He thought maybe Sam was a little too quick to violence and might hurt him before he really knew all the answers and that scared Dean. Then he reminded himself that it was all just dreams and smoke anyway, so it didn’t matter. He would wake up.
Except he didn’t want to wake up. He wanted to stay in the sleazy motel world with Sam.
Dean put his hands up to Sam’s face, studying his fine features. Sam looked back at him and smiled. He lowered his head to nuzzle Dean affectionately as he slid his hands under him up the mattress to cup the back of his shoulders. Dean’s fingers slipped into Sam’s hair as Sam kissed and nipped and licked his way down Dean’s throat. He shivered as he held him and his heart galloped with every single lingering kiss.
“I love you, too,” Sam murmured to him. He lightly bit the point of Dean’s collarbone. “Jerk. You scared the holy fuck out of me. Guess you scared yourself a little, too, huh?”
“Yeah,” Dean said. He could barely force the word out, he was breathing so hard and his heart was pounding like a drum in his throat.
“Yeah,” Sam said, mimicking him with a roll of his eyes. “Dean?”
“What?” Dean said. He pulled gently at Sam’s hair to get him to lift his head.
“I love you,” Sam said, looking back at him with a very serious, nearly sad expression. “No matter… you know, what happens. With Michael and--”
“Sam, shut up,” Dean said. The other Dean because no way would Dean ever tell Sam to shut up when he was being sweet and romantic. Apparently this was one area where he and the dream world Dean seriously parted ways.
To Dean’s complete surprise, Sam laughed and kissed him on the mouth hungrily. Dean gasped and Sam’s quick, clever tongue flicked inside to stroke over his own. Sam shifted against him, pushing his hips down on Dean’s so that strange, pleasurable sensations rocketed up into his belly. Dean moaned and opened his legs wider, squeezing Sam’s hips between his thighs as he arched under him, trying to get closer. Sam smiled against his mouth, Dean felt it in the way his teeth pressed lightly against his lips, and shifted again, rocking.
I love you, Sam had said to him. Twice. Dean answered it instantly, without a word, every particle of his mind and body screamed, I love you right back and God, oh God, he wished he could believe that Sam loved him. Him. He held that desire deep inside, protected and secret, and wished he could stay. He wished to be Dean for Sam, covered in scars, tattooed and burned, blunt and arrogant and dangerous to be reckoned with. He wasn’t, though. He was just Dean, untouched, shy, innocent and ignorant by turns, crazy and medicated to the gills and sad, sad, sad.
How he was even allowed to glimpse the other world, to see the world where Sam lived with his Dean, he didn’t know. It came to him that it was Sam. Sam was the door, but conversely he was also the key to that door. Dean didn’t know how that could be, how he, how Sam whom he had never known except in his dreams, could be both of those things to him, but he thought it was his wretched loneliness and not his madness that had first allowed the dream world to make itself known to him.
The world around him was starting to fade as Sam thrust into him and sexual pleasure thrummed up his spine like the knock from a tuning fork. Dean cried out and grabbed Sam, his fingers scrabbling for purchase on his sweaty skin. Sam loomed over him, his shoulders hunched slightly as he worked his hips and began to move. As he began to move, the bed rocked and the world rocked with it. The light splintered around the edges and there were fish-like shadows darting in the periphery of his vision again, little elusive fingers of reality bleeding unwanted into the dream.
Somewhere in the darkness that clouded his eyes, Dean could hear water dripping. It echoed like the spring thaw in a deep cavern. It sounded like laughter in a faraway world.
~~*~~
“I thought you would not wake up,” a rough, vaguely familiar voice said.
In his newly awakened, newly returned to earth state, Dean wasn’t very glad to hear his state of wakefulness confirmed for him. Dean picked his head up and looked over at the chair by his bed. He was laying in a hospital bed and his arm was bandaged. He realized that a short moment before he recognized the man in the tie and trench coat watching him from the chair beside the bed.
Dean groaned, his heart sinking somewhere close to his stomach, and he rolled over, away from the chair where Castiel sat staring at him. “Go away,” he said.
“Dearly as I would like to, I cannot do that,” Castiel said. “You must listen to me. We haven’t much time.”
Dean wasn’t listening to him, though. He had just realized that his arousal had followed him over from his dream and not only was it deeply humiliating, it hurt. He moaned and drew his legs up defensively, heat and tension rippling through his abdomen. He was a normally functioning young man, he had had wet dreams, he sometimes woke up with morning wood, he had been known to masturbate, but this was something altogether different from anything he had ever experienced, and close on the back of the physical pain was a sorrowful ache of loss. Like every dream he woke from lately, it hurt his heart like tape pulled slowly from a persistently unhealing wound.
Miserable, hot tears seeped from Dean’s eyes and pooled in the hollows beneath his lashes. They quickly cooled like something vile on his skin and Dean swiped at them with his arm. “Leave me alone,” he muttered.
Castiel was so quiet for so long that he thought the man had obeyed and left him. When his hand touched Dean’s shoulder, Dean tensed so violently that he clutched at the side of the bed and almost screamed. He bit the sound back, not sure why he didn’t want to alert people to Castiel’s presence. After all, he didn’t know the guy and he seemed to be following Dean. He needed him to remain a secret, though, this he did know.
“How the hell did you get in here, anyway?” Dean demanded, suddenly rolling over to face him.
Castiel tipped his head to one side, the gesture oddly familiar and unsettling, and sat back down in the chair beside the bed. “It is something that you have termed ‘apparating.’ I do not understand the term, but from what I have been told, it comes from a children’s book.”
“Harry Potter,” Dean said, eyeing him with absolute disbelief.
“Yes,” Castiel said. “But that is unimportant.”
“Where’s my dad?” Dean said. He sat up. He was starting to remember what had happened and he knew his dad would be completely ape-shit. “He must be freaking out right now.”
“He is otherwise occupied at the moment,” Castiel said. A little smile, quickly there and gone, implied that he might have had something to do with John’s current state of preoccupation.
“What did you do?” Dean demanded.
“I merely suggested to the nurse in charge that he might have a good deal of paperwork to look at while you are resting,” Castiel said.
“Suggested?” Dean said.
“Strongly suggested,” Castiel agreed.
“What does that even mean?” Dean said.
“It is not important and I honestly do not feel comfortable confiding such things to you in your current… state,” Castiel said.
Maddened by his evasiveness, Dean scowled at him. “I think you need to leave.”
“It is not terribly important to me what you think,” Castiel said.
“I… What?” Dean said.
“It is only important that you listen and that you do what I expect you to do,” Castiel said. “A grievous mistake has been made--your mistake--and we must right the situation at once.”
“What are you talking about?” Dean said, a touch of hysteria creeping into his voice. “I’m… Look, this is really bad timing, okay? Really. I just had an accident, I just woke up from this really fucked up dream I keep having and probably one of the worst pains in my life, and you’re talking about fucking Harry Potter at me and making no sense.”
Dean put his hands over his face, wishing with childish stupidity that Castiel would just vanish while his eyes were closed, and groaned. “Go away, go away, GO AWAY.”
He waited a minute, then dropped his hands and found Castiel still sitting there, now with an expression of mild annoyance on his face.
“You have been somewhat overindulged here, haven’t you?” Castiel said. It sounded like a rhetorical question, but Dean opened his mouth to respond anyway. Castiel held up a hand to signal him to silence, his expression going from annoyed to stern in a way that made Dean immediately shut his mouth. “You have good parents and they love you, but your madness has made them spoil you in their desire to be kind and fair.”
Castiel regarded him quietly for a minute, his bright blue eyes like flames that could quickly flare and burn if Dean were to anger him. He suddenly felt a little afraid, sensing the potential for real violence beneath the man’s casual attire and unassuming appearance. He also sensed that it would not be directed at him without great provocation because Castiel was patient. He couldn’t really understand how patient, but he felt it, and he also felt that while they didn’t know each other, Castiel regarded him with a strange sort of affection.
“It is only to be expected, I suppose,” Castiel said.
“What?” Dean said.
“You. The way that you are because of the way that things are here,” Castiel said. “You are different. Not at all the warrior I know you to be.”
“What?” Dean said again. He was starting to feel like a real moron the longer he was in Castiel’s company but honestly, what?
“We do not have time for this,” Castiel said. He sat forward with his elbows on his knees, bringing himself closer to Dean. “Things are happening and you are a part of them. You have tried to remove yourself from the fray and I understand your reason--it is the only reason that counts--but it cannot be allowed to pass this way. Do you understand me?”
Dean blinked at him in utter confusion. “Not even a little bit,” he said.
“Sam has to be born,” Castiel said. “He must. For more reasons than just the one, he must live. The world will still end without him, you know. Nothing has been saved and much more has been lost. He cannot be not born. It is not that simple.”
“Sam?” Dean said, startled to hear the name in someone else’s mouth. “What do you know about Sam?”
Castiel smirked at him and shook his head imperceptibly. “Much, much more than you do at this point, I’m afraid.”
“What the hell does that mean?” Dean snapped, suddenly angry. How dare this stranger keep secrets from him. How dare he know anything about Sam, his Sammy. “Stop with the fucking riddles and just tell me what you’re talking about.”
“I am talking about the end of the world, but all you hear is Sam’s name,” Castiel said. He sighed and sat back. “I should not find this surprising. That is where you are. That is always where you’re going to be. You were a fool to once think otherwise and now here we are. And your poor mother blames herself.”
Dean’s mouth fell open. Just when he thought things couldn’t possibly get any more weird or confusing, impossibly, they did. “My mother? What the fuck do you know about my mother?”
“I know that she shouldn’t,” Castiel said simply. “She shouldn’t blame herself. She could not have known.”
“Blame herself for what?” Dean said, his voice rising toward a shout. “Could not have known what?”
“She could not have known that choosing to not give birth to Sam would not work the way the three of you hoped it would,” Castiel said, his infinite patience keeping his voice calm and mild in the face of Dean’s agitation. “Perhaps if you had not already been growing in her womb, then it might have changed things. But you were and it was already too late.”
Dean had to take a deep breath and think for a minute or he was going to explode in a screaming mess of gooey, frustrated confusion right there on the hospital bed. He breathed in, breathed out, and when that wasn’t quite good enough, he did it again. “Okay, hold on. Hold the goddamn phone for just a minute. What?”
Castiel sighed and started to explain it again.
“Wait,” Dean said, flapping his hands at him. “Rewind and start over. Pretend I’m not me and explain it to me like I’m five or something.”
Castiel laughed suddenly like Dean had made a joke. Dean glared at him, suspecting he was being made fun of. “You are still you in spite of it all,” Castiel said.
“Whatever that means,” Dean muttered.
“Like you’re five and you’re not you,” Castiel said in the tone of someone who is reminding himself to behave. “Yes, okay. You know that there are other dimensions? Timelines and perceived realities? Wheres and whens?”
“No,” Dean said. “My therapist would kill you right now for saying something like that to me, by the way.”
“Therapist,” Castiel said, mulling the word over. He made a dismissive sound and waved it off like the concept were some annoying, biting insect. “I have said that you are spoiled and I was not exaggerating.”
“Great. Well, that’s a mean thing to say,” Dean said. “Can you just tell me what the hell is going on and what you’re doing here and, for that matter, who are you? Oh, and how do you know about Sam and how the fuck do you know my mother?”
“I was getting to that if you would please exercise some patience,” Castiel snapped.
Dean frowned at him, then dropped his eyes to his lap. He suddenly realized that he wasn’t hard anymore and the pain he had woken up with was gone. For some reason, this made him laugh.
“Now what?” Castiel said.
“Nothing,” Dean said, still grinning. “Sorry.”
Castiel raised a brow at him, then decided not to question him about it. “Your mother and father are Mary Campbell and John Winchester, descendents of Cain and Abel,” he began.
Dean regarded him calmly from beneath lifted brows. “No way,” he said.
“Way,” Castiel said dryly. “Apparently there is a long line of incestuous behavior in your family tree.”
“Hey, that’s not fair. I’m not… incestuous,” Dean said.
“Oh yes? So what you were dreaming about when I entered the room was a kind of platonic love affair?” Castiel said.
“Hey! You know what… stay out of my head,” Dean said. He flushed and couldn’t meet Castiel’s eyes. He was all the more embarrassed because Castiel was smiling at him.
“Your birth was part of the great pattern, controlled and created by God so that you might one day fulfill a preordained destiny,” Castiel said, ignoring his embarrassment. “You fought it, as is your way, and you were time and again shown that you can not change the past. What is past is past, or as you like to say; what is dead should stay dead. You are not very good at taking your own advice, though.”
Dean heard the affection in Castiel’s voice as he spoke and it confused him more, but he didn’t say anything. He was beginning to suspect from pieces of what Castiel had said, that Castiel was from his dream world. Impossible as that was, it almost had to be true. How else could he know about Sam? Dean had only told Dr. Fraus about Sam and he hadn’t known his name the last time he spoke with her. But Castiel knew. He knew about Sam and the other world where Dean dreamed and he knew them. The way he talked about Dean said that they were friends and the way his eyes went a little faraway when he spoke of Sam said that he knew the man well.
All of this made Dean much more interested in what he had to say. He stared at him with rapt interest and felt his heart racing with joy inside him because Castiel knowing, Castiel being from there, meant that it was all more than a dream. Somewhere out there it was real and if it was real, maybe Dean could have it if he listened. If he did what this weird stranger wanted him to do, maybe he could go there.
“It happened that you came face to face with your mother in a time shortly before your birth and shortly after your conception,” Castiel said. “You and Sam, you tried to convince her to leave your father so that neither of you could be born and the things that would bring on the end of the world would not come to pass. She refused.”
Dean waited for him to go on but when Castiel sat there quietly for too long, he cleared his throat. “Why?” he asked. “I mean… it’s the world. That’s more important than… well, than anything. Isn’t it?”
Castiel smiled without looking at him, his eyes downcast on his clasped hands. “No. Not more than anything,” he said. “It is extremely important, but it is not more important than anything. You taught me that, you know.”
“I did?” Dean said, awed by the concept.
“Well… not you exactly, but yes,” Castiel said. “I once believed such things were black and white as they are often painted. I made mistakes believing that. I no longer believe that, however, and that will have to be my redemption.”
“Okay,” Dean said slowly, not sure if he really understood what he was being told. “So, what happened?”
“Your mother was already pregnant with you and so she would not leave John. She also loved your father deeply, as you love your brother. What a man long ago with the rather odd name of Plato called soul mates. That is what they are to one another. That is also what you are to Sam and what Sam is to you. It is why you are so… disjointed,” Castiel said.
“You mean it’s why I’m crazy,” Dean said.
“Not precisely, but for the sake of this conversation and your understanding, yes,” Castiel said.
“Okay,” Dean said. He tried not to think too hard on that or his eyes crossed.
“Mary soon forgot you and Sam and everything that had happened when you were there,” Castiel said.
“Why?” Dean said. “That’s… I mean, it’s important, why would she forget it?”
“She was made to forget,” Castiel said. “But, though she forgot, she carried with her a feeling of unease and fear. She made things very difficult for your father the first five years of their marriage, though she didn’t know why and neither did he. It was her fear and it kept them from being as close as they both wanted to be. It kept her from conceiving Sam because a little part of her, deep and sacred where memory is not touched by logic or reason but by instinct and emotion, remained. She was scared to have that other child because she knew that Sam could bring the world crashing down even if she didn’t remember how she knew it.”
“What about Adam?” Dean asked. “He’s still theirs, so why isn’t he the same? I mean… wouldn’t he just be Sam, only later?”
“No,” Castiel said. “If the same two cells do not touch and grow in the same time, they do not become the same person. Two other cells touch and grow and they are a completely different being. The time for Sam’s conception passed long ago in this place. Adam is a child that Mary would never have had if Sam had been born. A child that John would have conceived with another woman--a fact which also makes him different. But here your mother still lives, so there never was another woman.”
“Mom’s dead in your world, isn’t she?” Dean asked quietly. He had already suspected as much, but it still hurt.
“Yes,” Castiel said. “I’m sorry, yes she is.”
Dean sat there for a minute, thinking. He thought about his mother, how his mother had always treated him with a kind of delicate care. His father had taken his cues from her about that because Dean knew that sometimes John got frustrated with him and he was much quicker to anger than Mary. Mary was the most kind, beautiful woman in the world. It was an opinion early forged in his childhood that had never changed. He loved her more than anyone in the world, more than his father, more than anything. In this other world where Sam lived, Mary would be dead. To have that world to himself, Dean knew that he would have to choose between his lovely, kind mother and Sam. Castiel didn’t have to say it, he knew. That was the option being placed before him as Castiel spoke.
“Who are you in all of this?” Dean asked Castiel. “How do I know you? How do you know me? How do you know all of this about me?”
“I’m a friend,” Castiel said.
“My friend?” Dean said, not sure he believed that.
“Yours and your brother’s,” Castiel said.
“Sam, not Adam,” Dean said.
“Of course,” Castiel said.
“What do you want me to do?” Dean asked.
Castiel raised a brow at him. “I should think it would be quite clear,” he said.
When Dean just stared at him, Castiel shook his head and sighed. “You are not stupid, but you are so stubborn sometimes that it hardly matters,” he said. “You have to choose. I cannot make you do anything, it is up to you. It has always been up to you.”
“Choose what?” Dean said, but he suspected. “Choose between this world and yours? Choose between my mother and this guy, Sam? Is that what you’re talking about?”
“Essentially,” Castiel said. Dean glared at him like Castiel had just suggested he plunge a knife through his mother’s heart. Castiel chuffed out a soft laugh. “Understand something, Dean Winchester, you would not be killing her. She is already dead. You would not be giving life to Sam. He is already alive, as I think you know. There are no other worlds. There is world. One, within which exist many possibilities. You yourself are but one possible road, one that I hope to stop from becoming reality. If I could do this without your consent, believe me, I would.”
“So what you’re saying is that my world… this world isn’t even real,” Dean said. He was frightened by the idea, but also angry at Castiel for saying something like that. It was like the first time someone told him he was crazy. He hadn’t wanted to believe it and he had been completely offended by the idea. “How do you know that your world isn’t the fake one?”
“I am saying no such thing,” Castiel said, exasperated with him. “I am saying that your world, your where and when runs like a stream beside the river of my world. There are literally millions of such possibilities with new ones forming every second, but they rarely ever touch that river. People take a wrong turn and die, so it goes. People catch a taxi because their car gets a flat and they meet the love of their life, so it goes. Most of the time people do what they are supposed to do, one way or another. Your little stream of possibility has the singular distinction of being one of very few that I have ever seen that threatens to branch off into the river of what is my world and redirect its course. Does that make sense?”
“That’s a hell of a metaphor,” Dean said dumbly.
“I am aware of that,” Castiel said, annoyed with him at last. “I have to rely on something as patiently unreliable as the human heart--your heart--to decide whether or not this catastrophe will occur.”
“But who the hell are you?” Dean said. “You’re not just some guy. If you were just some guy you couldn’t know some of this stuff. Unless you’re making it up, and if you are, then man, you are crazier than I am.”
“It’s been said,” Castiel said. He huffed out a tired breath and leaned forward on his elbows again. “I’m an angel.”
“Right, and I’m a circus clown,” Dean said automatically.
Castiel pinched the bridge of his nose in frustration. “Believe it or don’t. You are wearing on my patience and we do not have time for me to convince you of the truth.”
This went farther toward convincing Dean than if Castiel had deliberately tried to persuade him that he was telling the truth. He didn’t care if Dean believed him because he knew that he was speaking the truth and regardless of what Dean did, he would be returning soon to his own world. Even if his world became a distant shallow stream of a possibility diminished from the once raging river of its dominion over the rest, all Dean had to do was look at him to know that he would be going back. Castiel called that raging river home. Even the frightening things that he talked about that were happening there would not keep him from going back.
“If you’re an angel, then… this is your world, too, isn’t it?” Dean said. “All worlds as one world.”
“There are not worlds,” Castiel said. “I am not making myself clear or it is not a concept you can grasp, but there is one. One only. This is a single possibility of my world, the one world, that has not yet been fully realized. Under other circumstances, it would merely drift along beside mine, be of very little significance and never interfere with it, much like another world as you insist on saying. Somewhere in your… possible world, there is another Castiel. He is the product of many decisions that were made or not made differently here than there. I would imagine he is far less friendly than I am.”
“Okay, okay, okay,” Dean said, holding up his hands in surrender. “Just stop before my head pops. I can’t even begin to wrap my mind around there being other worlds and still not being other worlds. It’s giving me a headache, so just stop.”
“Fine,” Castiel said.
“Good,” Dean said.
Castiel stood up. “I must go now. I have remained here far too long already and this… place makes me ill.”
“But… But I still don’t know anything,” Dean said, instant panic shooting up inside him. “I don’t know how to get there or how to stay if I can find the way. Jesus, I haven’t even been able to dream about it for… for a long time. Too long. Not until just now. What am I supposed to do?”
Castiel frowned down at him in the hospital bed and Dean got the uncomfortable impression that he was being compared and weighed against that other Dean who was Castiel’s friend. Weighed and found severely wanting. “I am supposed to have all of the answers and give them to you for nothing,” Castiel said, a touch of bitterness and scorn in his voice. “I think not.”
“But then how am I supposed to--”
“You will be silent,” Castiel snarled. For the first time Dean looked up at him and saw the fierce creature that he really was lurking beneath the surface of the placid disguise he wore. “Listen to me. Listen. You know the way, it’s that same way as before. You know the law of physics which states that two objects cannot occupy the exact same space at the exact same time?”
“Yes,” Dean said. “I mean, I’ve heard that before. It makes sense.”
“Yes,” Castiel said. “It’s very true. The same is true of a single object occupying two separate spaces at the exact same time. It is not impossible, but it cannot go on indefinitely. At some point, a change will happen and either the object will no longer be the same, the spaces will merge, or the time will change. Do you understand the concept of entropy?”
“Uh… sort of,” Dean said. He was once again feeling like a moron and it was all Castiel’s fault. He desperately wished the man would just get to the damn point.
“It is a similar concept,” Castiel said. He noticed Dean’s perplexity and rolled his eyes with a heavy sigh. “Simply put, you cannot be in two places at once. You cannot exist there and here at the same time without things devolving into chaos. Do you understand?”
“I think so,” Dean said. He thought of Jolene’s twisted, mutated face in the diner and shivered. If that wasn’t a sign of things falling toward chaos, he didn’t know what was. “I think… I get it. I can’t live here and there. I have to… I have to choose.”
Castiel grunted out a soft, irritable affirmative. “And if you want to keep dreaming, I would suggest you stop taking these,” he said. He dropped an orange prescription pill bottle into Dean’s lap.
Dean picked up the bottle and read the label. It was the last prescription Dr. Fraus had written for him. All the while telling him that she was trying to help him and her little pills had been stealing his dreams. Stealing Sam and that other world from him.
Dean closed his hand around the bottle and clenched his fingers tightly. “You’re sure?”
Castiel did not deign to reply to that one way or the other. He put his hand out and touched his first two fingertips to Dean’s forehead. It surprised Dean and his instinctive revulsion for physical contact would have made him recoil from it if he had had time, but he didn’t. The touch was there and gone in only a few seconds, during which bright soothing heat rushed like sunlight through his body and burned like heated iron to the tips of his fingers in his injured hand.
Castiel dropped his hand and stepped back. “Your arm will be better now. I suggest you continue bandaging it anyway to avoid awkward questions,” Castiel said. “I must go. Your father will be coming to take you home.”
Dean looked down at his wrapped hand and flexed his fingers. He expected pain, but there was none. In fact, there was an abiding, comfortable warmth that went the length of his arm. Amazed, Dean looked up to find that Castiel was gone and he was alone. He looked around, half expecting Castiel to be hiding somewhere, but there was nowhere to hide even if he had wanted to. There was no way he could have left the room without Dean seeing him go, either.
John stuck his head in the room then and smiled at Dean, relieved to see him awake and aware. “Hey, Dean,” he said. “Feeling alright?”
“Yeah, Dad, I’m… I’m great,” Dean said, still looking around for either Castiel or a way he could have left the room without Dean noticing.
“You ready to go home, then?” John said. “Your mother’s out of her head with worry. I promised to bring you home so she could fuss at you.”
Dean smiled at him with honest pleasure. His joy was tinged with a pang of regret and sorrow. It was a sorrow, he thought, that would never leave him. No matter where he went, no matter when, it would go with him. No matter what choice he made, he would suffer for it and regardless of what Castiel said, it felt like murder.
Chapter Four>>