[fic] hiyacynth: Mockingbird
[ Het ]
Title: Mockingbird
Writer: hiyacynth
Status of work: Complete
Characters and/or pairings: Sam/OFC, Dean
Rating: NC-17
Warnings, kinks & contents: [Click to read]Some violence, on and off screen
Length: ~130k
Summary: Dean frowned and shook his head. Even if he wanted to, how could he start to explain what Sam was these days? He wasn't sure himself. He knew what Sam had been before the war. He had a pretty good idea of what Sam'd been during. And he knew Sam wasn't either of those things anymore.
Reccer's notes: I'm terrible for forgetting to read author notes and not looking at dates etc, and when I first started to read this, I thought it might be a RoboSam story. It's not; it's an AU from near the end of season 2, with Sam having been gone for a while, taken over by Azazel, and though Dean's got him back, now, Sam's different. Often emotionally flat. Sometimes frightening. There's an OFC in this story, Jem, who runs the motel they stay at while they take some time in a small town. Jem herself is a really well fleshed out character, and she and Sam end up with a little something going that works for both of them. I know the word count on this one might be a bit daunting, but it's really more that it's deeply satisfying, a good, long, meaty story you can immerse yourself in. Sam's still having visions, and there's a thread running through it of them trying to figure out how to apply the info from his latest one. It must have been awesome to read it when it was first posted, but it's also awesome to read it now, like a cool trip back to the early season possibilities, what could have happened if some things had gone a little differently. POVs are Dean's and Jem's; Sam is necessarily something of an mystery here, but a very present one.
Also there is some very hot sex between Jem and Sam. That's never a bad thing ;).
[Short excerpt]
Dean woke with a jerk to the unmistakable clatter of a cheap motel room's front door shutting. He hated that noise. Always had. A solid oak door, or a steel-reinforced one, smashing open under a well-placed boot or slamming shut behind him-now those were satisfying noises, those were doors. This hollow-core crap, it sounded just like what it was: a flimsy barrier between you and everything that was trying to get you, and Dean had no illusions about how much it would keep out.
Squinting through the film uneasy sleep left on his eyes, Dean saw Sam outlined against the door, and a hot, panicky burst of energy shot from somewhere deep in his ribcage, waking him up fast and fully. He sat up, wrestling back the alarm.
"I had a dream last night," Sam said, pulling the lid off the steaming paper cup he carried, oblivious to Dean's distress.
No shit, Dean thought as he rubbed his eyes clear and willed his heart rate to slow.
Sam had dreams every night. He was like clockwork these days. Three hours after he fell asleep he'd start thrashing and moaning, calling out names-some Dean knew, some he didn't-and muttering incomprehensible phrases, sometimes crying like Dean had only ever heard him cry once when he was awake. The dreams would last half an hour or so, and then Sam would wrench with the force of the terrified gasp that seized his whole body, sigh, and relax right back into the baby-deep sleep he'd slipped easily into just minutes after the lights went out. Dean had tried everything he could think of to snap him out of his nightmares, but nothing worked.
Yeah, Sam had dreams.
Dean kicked himself free of the ugly-ass comforter and stood up, stretching in what he hoped was a casual-looking way, watching his brother carefully but trying not to get caught at it. The first few weeks after Dean'd gotten Sam back, he tried to ask about the dreams, but Sam wouldn't talk about them. First he just plain wouldn't talk, which was a whole other thing. And when he did start talking again-a couple weeks in-Sam said in as few words as possible that he didn't remember the dreams, or even know that he was having them. Dean wasn't sure whether he believed it, but he didn't press the issue. Instead, he bore the waking memory of the dreams for Sam and listened for clues in the ravings, hoping to find something that might help him work out a road map of some kind, an idea of where to take Sam from here.