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Wot, wot? Make it yourself. With love to my old skool Jossverse peoples. It's been a while. Angel was my first, I remember him with the sort of affection made sort of moth-eaten and a parody-ish over time. With a huge nod to kita0610 who is, oddly, back in a fandom with me for the first time in, oh, YEARS.
beta by dopplegl. Why there aren't about ten of these already is beyond me.
Not Fade Away
Sam never realized that part of running away from home was the stopping. That when home was a traveling circus of motel rooms, temporary apartments, the backseat of a car, and constant forward movement, that running away would be a neck-cracking slam into stasis, stillness, sameness.
Palo Alto is full of people looking for good schools for their kids, economic migrants from Silicon Valley and San Francisco, wood-framed houses and new cars. Sam drinks there on the weekends, tries to fit into normal. Normal fits like jeans that keep falling off, that keep exposing him when he’s not looking.
Sam whips around so fast when he feels someone step on his shadow that he knocks over a Badly Drawn Boy display in the uber-hip record shop he’s browsing in. Connor Reilly smiles at him in a twisted way that looks so familiar that Sam’s mouth drops open. Connor raises his hands, palms out, and backs up a half step.
“Your reflexes are…” Connor’s sharp smile dips, his full mouth a distraction, an intentional distraction. “Good.” He shows teeth. The smile could have been interpreted as warm if Sam were someone else, if Connor didn’t always seem like he was three steps ahead of anyone else in the room with him, if he didn’t always just appear places.
Sam had seen him walk silently in flip-flops.
Connor seems to be running to a stand-still the same way Sam is. Sam tries every waking moment to be nothing like Connor, to be average, medium, faded at the edges. Connor is too bright, a color with no name--even though he’s quick with a joke, funny, and always putting everyone else at ease.
He makes no effort to put Sam at ease. Up-lifted palms and placating half-step retreats are just part of a complex symbology indicating silently to Sam that Sam’s not very good at blending in. Why Connor exposes himself to Sam, lifts the veil and winks at their unspoken kinship, Sam doesn’t want to know. He wants to pretend, to be just like everyone else, all those other people pretending to be more, pretending to be different. Sam pretends to be less, to be the same.
“You’re favoring your right side lately. Old injury bothering you?” Connor slides his hands in his front pockets, cocks his head. The smile blips off. He’s studying Sam.
Sam’s right rotator cuff has been aching the last couple weeks. Swatted into an oak tree by a werewolf when he was fourteen. Cracked the socket in his shoulder in several places. He eats Advil like candy when it acts up, but he still feels the phantom pain under the drugs.
“Basketball thing.” Sam mumbles, looks away towards a group of kids laughing too loudly at some in-joke.
“Uh huh.” Connor’s smile is in his voice, in his sarcastic tone. Sam wants to punch him. He somehow knows Connor could probably kill him ten different ways before Sam even lifted his arm.
How he knows that, he couldn’t say. Probably the same way that Connor tastes weird in the air around Sam. Like to like.
“Whatever, dude.” Sam sighs, reaching down to pick up the display he’d knocked over when Connor appeared behind him.
“It’s cool, man. If, you know, you ever need help.” Connor bobs down next to Sam, crouching, his hair falling in his eyes. He touches one finger on the ground between his legs, as if for balance, but Sam can see that Connor is perfectly balanced, exact, predatory. He thinks this is probably the closest he’s gotten to the person Connor is at night and alone.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Sam says on reflex. Connor’s smile tells him they both know what kind of lie it is-a lame one.
*
Full moons are too much of a lure for creatures like Sam. He leaves a paper half finished and sticks a couple stakes into the inner pocket of his jacket, jams a metal flask of holy water into his back pocket, snaps open the barrel of the old Colt he keeps in his desk inside a ripped up bible and spins it to make sure there are six silver bullets in the chambers.
It’s almost too warm for a jacket. His hair sticks to his temples from nervous sweat as he clears the campus and wanders towards the closest cemetery. He’s still not used to doing this alone. It feels uncomfortable instead of liberating.
The back of Sam’s neck starts to itch. He twists around, watches Connor materialize out of a crowd of frat guys carrying a keg.
“Full moon,” Connor says, voice lower than it ought to be considering how slight he is.
“So?” Sam was going to go with flip, but there’s a touch of anger under the syllable.
“Easy to hunt by. Easier to be hunted by.” Connor’s face is obscured by shadows from the trees overhanging the sidewalk. His clothes are black on black, and his body’s hidden, swallowed up by the darkness.
“Sure. Ok.” Sam’s a little scared. A little more scared than he was to be out looking for werethings and vampires and bump-in-the-nights alone. Without Dad or Dean. But this isn’t his first full moon, his first restless night.
He walks away from Connor feeling him at his back like something vibrating behind him.
*
Connor doesn’t stalk him for a week or so, and Sam isn’t sure if that’s better or worse. But he loses track of whether he should care either way in the chaos of midterms, in fractals and stats and maritime history.
He spots Connor in a liquid blood dusk-sky sitting right on Sam’s shoulders-talking to a beautiful woman with dark hair and red lipstick. The woman laughs too loudly, touches Connor’s face and chest, like she’s not really sure if he’s real. Connor’s face alternates between enamored and murderous.
Sam watches them, light bleeding from the world, until the woman spots him, waves to him. He pretends not to notice, crosses the lawn towards his dorm on hurrying feet.
*
“You’re not from California,” Connor says to Sam in way of greeting. He slides into the vacant seat next to him. Sam’s using an empty lecture hall to review his notes before his next class, too lazy to walk all the way back to his room.
“You spotted that, did you?” Sam’s tired of Connor ruining his chance to blend in. Not that Connor doesn’t blend. No one thinks he’s weird but Sam. He’s cool, just a regular guy when anyone else is around, but when it’s just Sam, Connor is edges and oddly assessing eyes.
“Where are you from?” Connor runs a hand through his floppy hair, twists around in his seat so that he’s facing Sam.
“Why?” They aren’t friends. This conversation would be strange even if Connor wasn’t plainly a freak.
“Have you ever heard of a place called Sunnydale?” Connor doesn’t blink. But even if he had, Sam’s expression would have still been just as shocked, just as raw and blatant when Connor had opened his eyes.
“Why?” Sam’s notebook feels heavy in his hand. Connor’s eyes still don’t blink. They both know Sam’s question is really about three different ones all wrapped up in one word.
“Do you ever feel like all the death is more real when you trap it inside, like there’s something screaming in your chest just waiting for you to rip yourself apart and let it out?” Connor’s voice is the slick slide of a blade between ribs, the stillness between a last heartbeat and the loss of your soul.
“I just want to fit in.” Sam answers with a sigh.
“You picked the wrong sort of people to do that with.” There’s a tart edge of disdain in his tone. Sam isn’t sure if it’s intended for him or for the other students at Stanford.
*
Thanksgiving feels like a burden. Half the people he knows invite him home with them. Sam declines. He wants to punish himself with self-hatred and the kind of doubt that whispers to him with Dean’s voice.
He’s been dreaming of screaming children, of entrails and razor claws, for at least a week. He can’t remember how long exactly. Long enough to see blood clots and hear wet popping when he’s awake.
Connor appears in the bathroom looking at his reflected face in the mirror above the sink the Friday after Thanksgiving. Sam wipes his forehead with the back of his hand.
“I thought you were gone, like everyone but me and the foreign kids.” Sam watches Connor watch him; he lifts an eyebrow.
“I was worried about you. There’s something wrong with you.” The sudden appearance of genuineness it weird. Sam looks away, but the mirror’s there so there’s nowhere to hide his annoyed expression.
“I’m not sleeping well.”
“Bad dreams?” Connor’s voice is low, concerned, digging.
“Yes.” Sam has no idea why he admits that.
*
The dreams keep coming. More and more vivid. Sam does nothing. For a while.
Connor comes and goes with whatever inexplicable motivations compel him. Sam wonders if his mother’s a slayer. When he was in junior high, they’d met a kid whose mom had been. He’d been weird sort of in the same way as Connor. Not exactly, but close. Uncanny was the best word for both of them.
Sam’s dreams shift to a murderous poltergeist. It knocks people down stairs, breaking their necks with something else if that doesn’t do the job. He lets those go on for two weeks or so. Until he gets a good look at one of the victims-sandy blond hair and freckles, an up-turned nose and dark eyes. Sam barely makes it through all of his classes the next day. He spends every second in between searching for the house in local real estate flyers. He had seen a for sale sign in the yard in his dream.
The house turns out to be in Palo Alto. He’s not surprised by that for some reason. He borrows James Kincaid’s car--bribing him with photocopies of his stats notes-and packs a duffle full of salt and an urn full of ashes from a cremated suicide, holy water, a bible, a copy of the pre-Vatican II exorcism ritual in Latin, and for good measure his pistol.
In a completely unsurprising turn of events, Connor’s waiting for him next to the car when Sam hits the parking lot. Sam doesn’t have time for normal that night. He’s going to save a little boy who looks so much like his brother that his palms are sweating with fear.
“Poltergeist.” Sam unlocks the doors with the remote. Connor climbs in the passenger seat.
“Throws people down the stairs.” Connor snaps his seatbelt on.
“Yup.” Sam turns the engine over. Sublime blares out of the stereo. He doesn’t bother to turn it down.
“You dreamed it.” It’s not a question. Sam’s not normal tonight, so he doesn’t bother to lie.
Connor is surprisingly good with breaking and entering. He has the backdoor open, slipping inside on silent feet and economy of motion, before Sam has even framed a general concept of getting inside.
Salt and ashes in a star on the floor. Connor as look-out for the family, for headlights or nosy neighbors. He watches from behind a lifted drape with one eye, watches Sam kneeling on the floor, reciting the exorcism more from memory than from the Xeroxed sheets in his hand.
“Amen.” Sam whispers. The word feels natural on his lips.
“Do you believe in God?” Connor asks in a pause in the ritual, face obscured. Sam knows that’s on purpose now. Connor’s more private than Sam is, really. Sam’s obvious and bad at acting; Connor’s subtle and very good at lying.
“Yes,” Sam answers. His real answer is way more complex than that, but he doesn’t feel like tempting whoever makes the exorcism work by denying faith. “I’ve seen holy water burn a vampire, crosses and rosaries burn them.”
Connor says nothing. When Sam looks up his expression is unfathomable.
“I don’t really think that’s God. That’s their own superstition.” Connor’s voice pricks the hair all over Sam’s body. Sam’s almost glad when the poltergeist begins tossing the pictures and knickknacks off the mantel at his head.
Sam chants. Connor moves to circle Sam, to keep himself between the displaced reality, the blurry, underwater effect of the poltergeist’s energy and Sam. When the spirit becomes corporeal, shifting from wavering nothingness to horned demon, Connor rips his heart from his chest in a move reminiscent of tai chi.
One second there’s a slimy, slathering beast with four horns protruding from its head and venom dripping from its fangs. The next second Connor’s fluidly twisting and shooting his fist out, just punching a hole in its chest and withdrawing with a still beating heart in his hand.
“Ok then.” Sam says, laughing a little, from nerves or from actual amusement, he’s not sure. It doesn’t matter. Connor’s answering smile is vast and dangerous and devouring. He doesn’t eat the heart, which is sort of a let down.
After cleaning up, after driving back to campus in silence, Connor sits on the curb in the parking lot next to James Kincaid’s car and pulls a bottle out of one of the pockets of his pants.
“Was your mother a slayer?” Connor takes a pull from the bottle and offers it to Sam, who sits as well, takes the bottle.
“I was going to ask you that.” Sam doesn’t wince as he drinks the whiskey straight from the bottle. He started stealing booze from his dad and Dean when he was fourteen.
“No. But the chick you saw me with a while back, she’s one. Faith. She’s friends with my father.” Connor pushes his hair back from his face as he takes another drink. Sam wonders how hard it is for him to give away details that he obviously works very hard not to ever mention.
“You don’t have to tell me.” The words tumble out, and Sam’s not sure if he meant that to be kind or because he’d just rather not know.
“Yeah, I really do. The thing trying to eat itself out of me?” He might be smiling; Sam doesn’t look, just drinks, hunches in on himself. He has no idea what it would be like to admit the darkness, to talk about it. Everything Sam’s ever known has been lying, whispering in the dark and never saying the important things. The most important things are the ones with no words to explain them. “Faith checks up on me sometimes. She’s not supposed to, but I guess that’s why she does it.”
“You can take care of yourself.” Sam’s annoyed on Connor’s behalf. He passes him back the bottle, skin starting to hum and burn on his face from the alcohol.
“Yeah, well, the end of the world makes people worry.” Connor sort of sighs and chuckles to himself.
“I’m going to pretend like you didn’t say that.” Sam relaxes back on his elbows, stretching his legs out in front of him. He can’t really see the sky because of the streetlights in the parking lot. He can’t see ahead of him very far because the cars block his view.
“I could make several different jokes revolving around you pretending, but that’s more my dad’s arena. Bad puns and dating the enemy, that’s him not me.” Connor’s laughing for real now, deeply amused by the joke he is making, the joke that Sam doesn’t get.
Sam’s hair falls in his eyes as he rolls his head back and forth. “You think I pretend stuff?”
“Yeah,” Connor answers, the laughter still in his voice. Sam sees him leaning down out of one eye, the eye not covered by his bangs, and he makes no move to turn away from Connor.
In the breath it takes for Connor to telegraph the kiss, the easy camaraderie falls away, and the situation becomes more obviously what it is-the post-battle affirmation of not dying yet. Connor’s soft mouth meets Sam’s wide open and wet, his tongue sliding into Sam’s mouth as his fingers grab at his hair and twist Sam’s head to accommodate him. Sam’s thought about this, needed this for what seems like his whole life, but he’s never had it. Never let his thoughts spiral into nothing but his fingers popping the buttons on Connor’s fly open, and the toe-curling talent of Connor’s tongue and lips sucking his soul out through his mouth.
Sam doesn’t think about demons or ghosts or Dean as Connor shoves him all the way down onto the ground with his whole body, hips working as he straddles Sam, somehow getting Sam’s jeans open. Connor’s cock thrusts against Sam’s tightened belly, and Sam shoves Connor’s pants down far enough to slide his own cock up the cleft of his ass, so that with every forward-back-forward rock Connor makes Sam gets almost enough contact. Connor breaks the kiss, trailing his wet mouth over Sam’s chin, his tongue down his neck, and just keeps snaking away. Sam snatches at slick, straight hair, grits his teeth and almost says no.
He’s sort of dating a girl, a pretty, smart, funny girl who looks at Sam like he’s totally normal. Who does jell-o shots at frat parties and likes to shop. The sort of holy grail of a girl he’d never even bothered to dream about being his.
But Connor’s mouth sucks him inside, his tongue wide and mobile touching places that make Sam see black spots. Sam isn’t sure if he’s moaning, if he’s bleeding out from an arterial wound and this is the blissful edge of death-euphoria. He has no sense of time or space or anything besides baby-fine hair around and under his fingers and wet suction on his cock. He comes with a shock, not even aware that’s where all this was heading.
Connor is licking his lips and buttoning his own pants when Sam blinks his impossibly heavy eyes open.
“Um,” Sam vaguely gestures to Connor’s crotch area.
Connor laughs, deep and adult, knowing in a way that Sam doubts he’ll ever achieve. “Took care of that myself. I’ve got a lot of practice.”
Sam’s entire body aches when he rolls up into a sitting position. He has dead grass and grit in his hair. His legs are both asleep. His lower back has about fifteen distinct bruises from rocks.
Connor swigs at the whiskey as Sam buttons his pants.
“If you’re mom isn’t a slayer, what’s the deal with the heart-ripping out thing?” Sam tilts his head back slightly when Connor presses the bottle to his mouth.
“That is more of a three dates and reciprocal oral sex sort of question.”
Sam laughs along with Connor this time. He gets secrets. He also thinks maybe not being completely alone might not suck.
*
Connor disappears right before the whole brouhaha in L.A. Sam might not be with his dad and Dean anymore, but he knows the right usenet groups, and he stays apprised. He’s been dreaming of a dragon for almost a month.
Connor disappears. Sam and Jess break up because Sam’s having trouble keeping a lid on his anxiety.
Connor sends him an email telling him he’s transferring to Notre Dame several weeks after he goes missing. He doesn’t offer an explanation, but Sam doesn’t expect one.
Sam moves in with Jess in June. She’s his slice of normal, and he almost feels like it isn’t pretending anymore. Some nights he dreams of Connor and a tall man in black leather. Some nights he dreams about Connor and a blue woman who moves like a bird. Some nights he dreams that Connor sees him watching, and he smiles his huge, devouring smile.