Sam, As He Sleeps
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Original Request: "Ficlet of Ruby watching Sam sleep (Supernatural)" Kinda obvious, but no spoilers for current season. :D
Title: 'Sam, As He Sleeps'
Characters: Sam and Ruby
Wordcount: ~600
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: none, really
Summary: Eh, just what it says on the tin: Ruby, watching Sam sleep.
“No man chooses evil because it is evil; he only mistakes it for happiness, the good he seeks.” ― Mary Shelley
Lightning strobes the room in flicker-quick shots of white over Sam's body. He's dropped himself across a sagging mattress, snarled in the dingy thread-bare sheets of some nameless 70’s travel lodge, bare feet hanging off the end of the bed and his gray t-shirt, damp with sweat, rucking up under his arms from restless, unquiet sleep.
He never sleeps well unless he's full of whiskey, Ruby thinks absently, though she's a bit ambivalent about the sacredness of sleep anyway, strolling around in a dead girl's carcass. Pillow-topped mattresses, 600-count Egyptian cotton, breakfast in bed. It's a fucking archaic ritual, sleep is. But Sam, in his precious living skin, succumbs to it.
The stuccoed walls are rough on Ruby's skin as she leans there, watching.
It's high summer and humid, air as loaded and dark as primordial ooze. The casement windows have been cranked open to allow the heat out and rain in, and Sam's hair tousles in the breeze. His eyes flutter beneath thin, blueish lids and he drags in breath, erratic and responding to something dreamed. His nose and cheeks are flushed warm. So pretty, the way his lips part and move like he's whispering secrets. Her secrets, their secrets, slipping through the cracks of sleep.
"Chasing rabbits," Ruby murmurs on a crooked smile, just before muted thunder complains across the night.
There's a tangle of old scars cradled in the sway of Sam's back, a threesome of claw marks just to the left of the scar bundle, and what looks suspiciously like a poorly healed stab wound or bullet hole in an exposed thigh. He's all muscle and veins and scars, coarse as a street thug. But he's convinced himself he's doing all this-the blood drinking and failed exorcisms that have left the hosts dead and smoldering-for heroic reasons. But Ruby knows why.
Grief. Vengeance.
Because it feels good.
Because beneath the cheap plaid shirts, the razor blade cheekbones and long, clever fingers, beneath the name Winchester ... Sam is unspooling.
Ruby pushes off the wall. She crosses the room like she's being inexorably drawn through honeyed air, a thick slow drag. Her fingertips draw over his thigh and smear through the sheen of sweat. He twitches in his sleep.
She knows she can make him do anything, really, as she rebuilds him.
She's that good.
She'll collect all the jagged pieces of him that were blown apart by Dean's little one-on-one with the hellhound, and slot them together again in brilliant new ways. She won't be soft with him because he doesn't know 'soft'. She'll sharpen all his corners and make him think it's been his idea all along, star student that he is. Then she'll back away, misdirect, give him just enough space to feel the vacuum of her absence. He'll beg her back in, moan for her.
Because if there's one thing Ruby knows, it's how to build the perfect beast.
Lightning floods the room again, on the heels of thunder, closer yet. And in this moment, Ruby feels like a mad scientist, bringing her creation to life. Sam claws the sheets and shifts, half-awake. Maybe with his hunter's instincts, he senses her watching. Or the heat is finally getting to him. His eyes slit open, barely a glint through a fringe of dark hair.
"It lives," Ruby says blithely. He doesn't smile, but he doesn't flinch away either. He lets her brush her knuckles across his cheek.
Her darling monster. Her Sam.
Original Request: "Ficlet of Ruby watching Sam sleep (Supernatural)" Kinda obvious, but no spoilers for current season. :D
Title: 'Sam, As He Sleeps'
Characters: Sam and Ruby
Wordcount: ~600
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: none, really
Summary: Eh, just what it says on the tin: Ruby, watching Sam sleep.
“No man chooses evil because it is evil; he only mistakes it for happiness, the good he seeks.” ― Mary Shelley
Lightning strobes the room in flicker-quick shots of white over Sam's body. He's dropped himself across a sagging mattress, snarled in the dingy thread-bare sheets of some nameless 70’s travel lodge, bare feet hanging off the end of the bed and his gray t-shirt, damp with sweat, rucking up under his arms from restless, unquiet sleep.
He never sleeps well unless he's full of whiskey, Ruby thinks absently, though she's a bit ambivalent about the sacredness of sleep anyway, strolling around in a dead girl's carcass. Pillow-topped mattresses, 600-count Egyptian cotton, breakfast in bed. It's a fucking archaic ritual, sleep is. But Sam, in his precious living skin, succumbs to it.
The stuccoed walls are rough on Ruby's skin as she leans there, watching.
It's high summer and humid, air as loaded and dark as primordial ooze. The casement windows have been cranked open to allow the heat out and rain in, and Sam's hair tousles in the breeze. His eyes flutter beneath thin, blueish lids and he drags in breath, erratic and responding to something dreamed. His nose and cheeks are flushed warm. So pretty, the way his lips part and move like he's whispering secrets. Her secrets, their secrets, slipping through the cracks of sleep.
"Chasing rabbits," Ruby murmurs on a crooked smile, just before muted thunder complains across the night.
There's a tangle of old scars cradled in the sway of Sam's back, a threesome of claw marks just to the left of the scar bundle, and what looks suspiciously like a poorly healed stab wound or bullet hole in an exposed thigh. He's all muscle and veins and scars, coarse as a street thug. But he's convinced himself he's doing all this-the blood drinking and failed exorcisms that have left the hosts dead and smoldering-for heroic reasons. But Ruby knows why.
Grief. Vengeance.
Because it feels good.
Because beneath the cheap plaid shirts, the razor blade cheekbones and long, clever fingers, beneath the name Winchester ... Sam is unspooling.
Ruby pushes off the wall. She crosses the room like she's being inexorably drawn through honeyed air, a thick slow drag. Her fingertips draw over his thigh and smear through the sheen of sweat. He twitches in his sleep.
She knows she can make him do anything, really, as she rebuilds him.
She's that good.
She'll collect all the jagged pieces of him that were blown apart by Dean's little one-on-one with the hellhound, and slot them together again in brilliant new ways. She won't be soft with him because he doesn't know 'soft'. She'll sharpen all his corners and make him think it's been his idea all along, star student that he is. Then she'll back away, misdirect, give him just enough space to feel the vacuum of her absence. He'll beg her back in, moan for her.
Because if there's one thing Ruby knows, it's how to build the perfect beast.
Lightning floods the room again, on the heels of thunder, closer yet. And in this moment, Ruby feels like a mad scientist, bringing her creation to life. Sam claws the sheets and shifts, half-awake. Maybe with his hunter's instincts, he senses her watching. Or the heat is finally getting to him. His eyes slit open, barely a glint through a fringe of dark hair.
"It lives," Ruby says blithely. He doesn't smile, but he doesn't flinch away either. He lets her brush her knuckles across his cheek.
Her darling monster. Her Sam.