Exhibition Skate (the points don't matter) - Supernatural - PG-13
Author: anamuan
Title: Exhibition Skate (the points don't matter)
Fandom: Supernatural
Rating: PG-13 for language.
Warnings: Genfic.
Word Count: 6,587 words.
Summary: Figure skating is a mental sport as much as anything else.
A/N: This is a product of reading entirely too much Winter Olympics fanfiction right after the Olympics ended. I always said I'd never write supernatural fic, but I guess I've made myself a liar again. Self-beta, and nearly all of my knowledge of ice skating comes from wikipedia, so feel free to point out mistakes.
Sam doesn't know where he is. It looks like a locker room, but the last thing he remembers is falling asleep in the front seat of the Impala on the way out of Nevada...and then he opened his eyes, and the only thing that was the same was that he was sitting.
He's not in a car, and there's a hard bench under him, and--Sam cranes his neck to look around, yup, definitely--lockers behind him. Sam tells himself sharply not to panic, because it's unfortunate but true that this kind of thing happens to him a lot. He's probably not dead, because he's been to heaven before, and it wasn't like this last time, and if this was hell, he's pretty sure someone, any one of the people he knew who'd been there, would have mentioned. Or at the very least, made classy jokes about making sure not to drop the soap.
Sam eases into a standing position and realizes three things:
1. He's not as tall as he is pretty sure he is usually. Unless these ceilings are really ridiculously high, he isn't as close to them as he should have been.
2. He's not packing any kind of weapon, even though he knows he had the demon killing knife tucked into his shirt, and another knife down in his boot, and- Well, the gun was in the glove compartment, but his fingers still itched because it is well out of reach now.
3. He is not wearing his usual clothing, but some kind of stretchy, sparkly one piece thing. Were those feathers going down his side? Those were definitely feathers. Sparkly feathers. And skates. Ice skates. Sam was wearing sparkly feathers, and ice skates with the guards on.
Sam catalogues this new knowledge, but he doesn't really have any other options than to ease around the corner and maybe see where the fuck he is. An exit, not some back corner, would be awesome right about now. The only hitch is that, unarmed as he is, he probably won't be able to take anyone out unless they get close enough to do him an awful lot of damage back.
There are a couple of other guys in sparkly outfits and various states of dress and undress around the bend in the locker room. One is lacing his skates up, another's putting on a shirt that is almost strangely devoid of ruffles, and then Sam realizes that's because it's street clothes, and his costume top is hanging up behind him. A very pretty kid walks in the doors opposite Sam--though, Sam realizes belated, he’s not actually younger than Sam is. He just looks it--giant sunglasses covering most of his face. And that? That was Johnny fucking Weir. Sam knows this because ok, maybe the world is ending, but that doesn't mean Sam isn't going to watch the Olympics. They're the fucking Olympics.
Where the fuck is he?
A woman bursts into the locker room, and storms straight at Sam. She's tiny, but throws off enough presence that it takes Sam a minute to notice that fact. None of the other skaters seem to care that a woman just walked into what is, presumably, the men's locker room, but a few are watching the proceedings with interest.
"What are you doing? You don't have time for a freak-out. Freak out after you skate beautifully. You have to get out there or they're going to disqualify you!" the tiny woman hisses at him angrily, and jerks him along by the arm like he's not a huge, hulking giant of a man, and like she knows he's going to do whatever she says. It's creating just enough cognitive dissonance that he actually does just follow behind her. He does mutter "Christo" at her back, but there's no reaction. Maybe she's just human.
The thing is? Sam doesn't know how to ice skate. They moved around too much when he was growing up, and then California. It's not like Stanford is exactly known for its wintry weather. Sam doesn't think he's ever actually been inside an ice rink. And they expect him to what, to go out on the ice, in skates, and perform some thing he's definitely doesn't know and doesn't know how to do in the first place?
Except he kind of does. In a weird, freaky, semi-out-of-body kind of way. Because Sam pulls off his skate guards, and steps out onto the ice, and skates out to the middle of the rink and poses. And the music starts, and he just...sort of starts skating. The music picks up, and Sam skates faster, and oh shit, he's going to do a jump, that's what this shit means, and he doesn't know how to do a jump in figure skates--
And then his entire body works, back and thighs and arms and torso, and he's up in the air, spinning fast-
And then he's down, one leg coming out around the back, and he's upright and not dead, and skating perfectly away from what probably should have been a broken leg because Sam doesn't know how to skate. The next jump isn't as clean as it could be, but he makes the landing and finishes the piece without any major mistakes. People throw flowers and shit.
Great. He's trapped in someone else's body again. Some pretty men's figure skater who couldn't take the pressure and decided to check out for a while by stealing Sam's body and, what, ride around the country fighting demons. That was so much less pressure. Sam really, really hopes that Dean catches on faster this time, and that whoever's in his body doesn't say yes to the devil, because yeah. Bad.
Sam steps off the ice gingerly. Part of Sam has just enough absurdist space left to wonder where a figure skater in the same league as Johnny Weir found the time to practice witchcraft. He is pretty sure figure skaters are not supposed to have free time not devoted to more figure skating.
Sam follows the woman, who must be his coach, over to a waiting area to sit, breathless with exertion and a camera in his face. A kid in skates shows up to give him an armful of flowers and a stuffed lamb. Sam recognizes this, so he takes the presents and tries to smile for the camera. When Sam gets his scores, he has to fight this inexplicable urge to cry, which is just weird. He's used to being angry, so angry, all the time; he's not, you're not supposed to want to cry when you're elated and those were, Sam knows somehow, the best scores of his life and dear God it's all a little overwhelming.
Through the desire to cry and the desire to really not cry, and through Sam's psyche steadfastly choosing to ignore the fact that he may kind of be flapping his hands in front of his grinning face, like that will do something, Sam notices one other thing. The scores he got? Have got an American flag and his name next to them: Sam Winchester. Shit. Not someone else's body.
Sam runs through his options furiously as he's let out of the kiss-and-cry and left to his own devices. Where did that leave him, then? Gabriel? Gabriel's dead. Lucifer? Which ok, would be the weirdest mindfuck ever, but not really likely to make Sam say 'yes' to the Devil. Heaven's latest ploy? Zachariah's also dead, which would explain this not really feeling like one of his tricks, but as far as Sam can tell, Dean's not anywhere in this and it makes no sense to kidnap Sam and make him into a pretty amazing men's figure skater in order to convince Dean to agree to let Michael wear him. Unless it was some kind of weird, brotherly blackmail, because Dean is just butch enough that he might fall for that one. 'Let me in, or I'll make your brother a word famous men's figure skater and no one but you two will realize how wrong that is.'
After his performance, all Sam can do is wait so he finds a payphone, jimmies it into thinking he'd paid, and calls every single cell phone Dean owns. Dean never picks up. Sam tries Bobby next, who does answer.
"What are you calling me for, idjit," Bobby says, which sounds like Bobby, except he continues, "I saw your short program on TV. It was great. Your best, maybe. Landing for the triple axel was a little shaky, but I know you know that, so that's all I'm gonna say on it." Bobby doesn't say 'I'm proud of you, boy' or anything like that, which is at least relieving, because the rest of it is kind of freaking Sam out. Bobby thinks he's supposed to be a world-famous figure skater. Bobby critiqued his performance, kind of like he knows something about figure skating and maybe like he watches all of Sam's performances. Sam was just on TV. Sam really hopes that, whatever is going on, he's not still wanted by the FBI.
There's a beat of silence, because Sam doesn't know what to say to a Bobby who's watching his short program on TV. "So why're you callin'?" Bobby asks when he's decided Sam needs prompting.
"Oh, err, have you seen Dean?" Sam asks, because he's not answering his phones and because Sam'd like to know and because, just because this is getting too weird and he'd like to know he's not alone in it.
"Inni up there with you?" Bobby says, vaguely hostile, the way he gets when anything takes him by surprise. And ok, it still really sounds like Bobby, but it sounded like Bobby when he was possessed too.
"Oh yeah. I know he's here," Sam lies, because suddenly lying seems a whole lot better than trying to explain that he's really not a figure skater, remember? Because this has got to be some kind of hugely elaborate mindfuck and whoever's responsible might be listening in. Sam is not going to give them that satisfaction. "I just don't know where here, and he wasn't answering his phone." Sam ignores the fact that he doesn't know where 'here' is, exactly, either. "I dunno, I thought maybe he'dve checked in with you and it would be faster. Nevermind, Bobby, I'll find him." Sam hangs up and leans his forehead up against the edge of the payphone. He needs to regroup.
"Sam! There you are! I've been looking all over for you!" It's his coach again, that tiny, not literally a devil-woman which, Sam supposes, should really make him grateful. She looks a little worried. "Don't you want to watch the rest and see how you place? You did great today, sweetie. Just what we've been working towards! You don't have to worry about how anyone else is going to do." She is, Sam realizes, trying to calm Sam down. She thinks he's worried about how he's going to place, like scores are the important thing in his life. "Why don't you come on back to the rink? Dean's still holding seats for us by the ice."
"Yeah, ok," Sam says, because what's he going to do anyway? At least he knows where Dean is now.
'Sammy!' Dean exclaims when he sees Sam following the coach. Sam realizes he doesn't even know her name and hopes that doesn't become a problem. There's something suspicious in Dean's eyes, though, something Dean's trying to cover with fake enthusiasm. Sam settles in on a seat between Dean and his coach, and Sam and Dean both mutter 'Christo' at each other at the same time. It's his Dean, not some freaky alternate universe Dean like it was a freaky alternate universe Bobby. Sam doesn't think he's felt this relieved since the time he woke up on a Wednesday and Dean was still alive.
Sam comes in fifth in the end. He's not sure whether he's supposed to be pleased or disappointed by this based on past performance, but luckily his coach makes it easy on him. "Not bad, Sammy-boy. Not awesome," she adds, so he won't get any ideas about coasting and not having to work his ass off, "But not bad. I'm feeling gracious. You can have the rest of the day off. Remember I booked us ice-time at the rink tomorrow morning. Be ready to go by 6:30." Then she hands him a hotel keycard and lets him off.
~~~
The hotel room is kind of depressingly untacky. Sam remembers when he used to hate all the cheap hotel rooms they stayed in, growing up, how much he wanted to get away from that life, but some things are just wrong. There are two gigantic beds, which are soft and fluffy and Sam can't feel a single spring in the mattress. The covers seem clean in a way that might actually be genuine--or at the very least, be made to look genuine, and the sheets aren't threadbare in the slightest. Sam doesn't think he could catch anything just by lying down. There isn't any ridiculous wallpaper. The beds don't vibrate. If there's porn available, they're being very discrete about it, like it's not the hotel's major and possibly only draw.
It's creepy and nothing like what a stay in a hotel with his brother ought to be like.
"So, angels, demons, or something else?" Dean asks once they're alone.
Sam shrugs helplessly. "If Gabriel weren't definitely dead, I'd say this fits right in with his sense of humour. This situation is way too subtle for upstairs, and doesn't make enough sense for the basement."
"You tried calling Bobby yet?"
"That's a no-go. He complimented me on my short program and told me to watch the triple axel. What about Cas?"
"Couldn't get through. He's out of pre-paid minutes."
"Figures."
~~~
They get dinner in the hotel, Dean with his disgustingly fatty burger and fries, and Sam, a salad, some delicately braised tuna on top. At least their eating habits are still normal. Sam doesn't know what he'd do if Dean ordered a salad.
It's pretty late by the time they finish, and Sam is exhausted from performing and performance-nerves and weirded-out-what-the-fuck-nerves, so they go back upstairs to the creepily classy hotel room to do internet-based research instead of hitting the library right away. Sam finds out that the beds in classy hotels? Are pretty freaking awesome. Like sleeping on a cloud, or something, and decides that maybe being a world-famous figure skater in some strange universe where Bobby knows what a triple lutz is might not be so bad, if it means he also gets beds like this.
Dean, of course, doesn't really sleep, because he never really sleeps since Hell. He pulls out Sam's laptop though, and Sam pretends that Dean won't look at any porn in addition to research, and later, Dean will drink the entire contents of the minibar and grab a couple of hours passed out on the other bed.
~~~
His coach shows up at his door at 5:45 am, and bitches him out for not being out of bed yet, much less getting ready. He pointed out that she said to meet her in the lobby at 6:30, but the reasoning doesn't seem to fly. She seems to expect him to call her when he gets up, and also, strangely, seems to expect him to do more than brush his teeth, put something in his stomach, and go. His coach, thankfully, leaves the bathroom for him to take a piss, but she hovers in the doorway for the rest of his morning routine and makes tching noises just often enough to make Sam paranoid because he doesn't know what she's even watching for.
When he crawls into a pair of warm-up pants and a sweater that had been folded up in the hotel's dresser, and grabs the duffel bag full of skating equipment he'd had with him when he woke up in the locker room last night, and just kind of looks at her expectantly, she's surprised. He's done though, and she's clearly an opportunist, because she gives him a couple of power bars for breakfast and says that they can probably talk the rink into opening early for them. Sam's pretty sure Dean hasn't been to bed yet, but he doesn't care because Dean can laze around in bed all day if he wants, and he's being dragged bodily to the bathroom and then will be carted off to an ice rink God only knows where to practice his skating, which his brain and all of his memories still assert he doesn't know how to do, even if his legs seem to think it's fine.
Sam naps on the way over. He does without sleep kind of depressingly routinely, but he's not on a hunt right now (not really), and he just doesn't have enough adrenaline pumping through his system to keep himself up.
At practice, Sam falls. And falls. And falls. And then his tiny bitch of a coach comes out onto the ice and yells at him, and makes him get up and fall some more. By the time she throws her hands up in the air and tells him to get off the ice, he's got more bruises than the last time a demon through him threw a wall, which, really. There's something not right about that.
Off the ice, she tells him this is the worst she's seen him, possibly ever and gives him a lecture about not worrying about how anyone else skates and keeping his head in the game.
"You've still got a shot at a medal, Sam," she tells him. "But you've got to nail the free skate Thursday if you want to do it. You have to skate your best, and this is definitely not it." Sam nods along gamely, because really? What else is he going to do? He doesn't plan on being around for a free skate on Thursday--this is way too weird, and the world is probably still ending, even if it's not a world Sam recognizes--but right now he's in practice and his coach may be tiny, but she's kind of terrifying. Like, Sam knows he could take her, but part of him believes with a deep, unshakable conviction that she'd probably maim him in the process using sheer force of will. Anyone who survives the training, pressure, general insanity and diva fits which almost seem like an off-ice technical requirement for the sport is not someone Sam really wants to tangle with if he can help it.
"I think you're over-thinking all of the jumps. We'll break for lunch and then go over your program on video back at the hotel. We don't get to keep the rink in the afternoon, but you're probably not worth any more today anyway." She grins a little bit as she says it, so Sam thinks that probably passes for a joke and isn't intended as an actual assessment of Sam's value. Then, like a vaguely nagging motherly afterthought, she adds, "Make sure you ice that hip. And stick to your diet! Dean promised me you would!" And that's just patently ridiculous. Sam doesn't know what his diet is, but having Dean keep him on it doesn't even make sense in a world where Sam figure skates.
Sam stiffens up on the ride back and by the time they get to the hotel, Sam can barely walk without limping. He ignores Dean entirely and crawls straight into the shower and stays there until he only feels like a giant mass of bruises instead of a target practice crash test dummy. When he gets out of the shower, Dean's holding up a can of muscle-ache stuff and several ice packs.
"I don't think your coach trusts me to take care of you," Dean says. Sam can't tell how offended Dean is at the implication, but they're really good at not talking about things, and Dean has an ice pack, which clearly takes precedence over conversations about Dean's feelings. "She had a lunch sent up for you too."
Sam grunts and takes the cream, and Dean hisses gratifyingly when he sees the results of the morning's practice.
"Are you sure she's human?" Dean asks him. "I can totally take her out."
Sam rolls his eyes, but sucks in a breath when the first ice pack hits tender skin. "She's human."
~~~
They have a couple of hours before Sam's afternoon practice starts, so despite his desperate need of a nap, Sam's guilty work ethic gets to him and he heads with Dean to the local library to find what they can find.
The Impala's in the hotel parking garage. The valets try to bring it up for them, but Dean isn't having any of it. He's got like, a homing beacon built into his brain for the car anyway, so it's not like they need it to find where they're parked even though neither has memories of actually parking it. Fourth level, section G.
Once they hit street level, Sam notices something he'd missed in the dark that morning. The street signs are all in English and French.
Canada? Sam doesn't think he has a valid passport. He knows Dean doesn't.
"Dean? Where are we?" Sam doesn't like how small his voice sounds, but figures he gets a bit of a pass considering he's still finding glitter on his skin and it's been at least 24 hours and two showers since he knowingly wore anything that could have put it there.
Dean squints at the green sign with the white maple leaf pointing towards the highway. "Looks like Canada," he says.
"Dean, why are we in Canada?" Sam asks. He sounds much better this time.
"Well, Sammy, I imagine it's for your fancy figure skating competition." And ok, Sam kind of hates Dean right now.
The library ends up being less productive than they could have wished, because they'd only gotten started in on a couple of hunches when a little kid recognizes Sam and asks for an autograph. That gets the attention of a little girl, maybe twelve years old, and she makes these excited choking noises, like she'd like to be squealing but too many years of training keeping her voice down in a library is forcing her to try to stifle it, and the combination is going to kill her. She pulls a Sam Winchester, Figure Skater folder out of her backpack and opens it to reveal several magazine clippings of Sam in a variety of bedazzled, befeathered, occasionally flowy costumes, both on and off ice. Sam signs one of the bigger clippings and the folder quickly, before she asks him to like, sign her face and the excitement really does kill her.
That catches one of the librarian's attention, and a couple of other teeny boppers, and it really all goes downhill from there. A mostly waist-high mob forms, some wanting autographs, some wanting to congratulate Sam on his performance the previous day, some just wanting to bask in his presence in their local library. It's ludicrous that he'd have local fans in Canada, but apparently he does. Dean does nothing to help, of course. He's enjoying Sam's mortified discomfort too much to even complain about having to do all the research himself.
~~~
Practice that afternoon is much less traumatic than it had been in the morning. She makes him do some stretching exercises to keep his muscles from tightening up again, but mostly they just spend a lot of time watching tapes of his past run-throughs with the program he'd be skating in two days. It is really...kind of pretty. Sam doesn't understand any of the technical points his coach walks him through or warns him to be careful about, but he nods along like he does. That phantom my-body-isn't-quite-mine feeling is back a little, and Sam thinks he can probably pull the thing off if he has to, as long as he doesn't try to think about the mechanics of the thing. Even this morning, he'd managed the occasional landing when he wasn't trying to figure out how he was going to keep from dying or breaking any bones.
She lets him go after several watch-throughs and tells him to make sure he keeps stretching out to stay loose. He has another practice session at that rink tomorrow morning, but not quite as early, and she expects him to suck a lot less then. Then she pulls him down to pet his head like he is really just an over-grown twelve year old himself and tells him to enjoy some time with his brother, since he was able to get the time off to come up with them for this competition.
She seems so fond of him for a moment that Sam almost wants to ask her where they are exactly, like a city name, and maybe kind of when they are too. Something's been nagging Sam ever since he realized they weren't in the U.S. Sam had an American flag by his name the day before. So Canada and skating competitions probably puts them at the Grand Prix, but Johnny Weir was there, only Johnny Weir is maybe retiring and had definitely not participated at Worlds this year and besides, Skate Canada isn't until October. When he'd fallen asleep in the Impala yesterday afternoon, it was just barely May. It all sounds way too crazy though, so Sam keeps his mouth shut and says he'll call her when he wakes up tomorrow so she knows he won't be late to practice.
~~~
"Any leads?" Sam asks as soon as he gets back to their room. Dean grimaces and shakes his head.
"Dude, Rufus? He squealed like that little girl at the library and asked us to mail him an autograph."
Sam stops short, and he knows his expression must be really strange, but this whole situation is just so- "Why didn't he have one already?" Sam asks, because it seems like the most logical question. "You'd think I'd have hooked up all the hunters first. You know, a 'thanks for saving dad's ass and our asses so many times and being an informational network' thing." The hunter connection has got to be the only reason these guys are following men's figure skating, right? Rufus and Bobby? They're not figure skating people. They wouldn't even be figure skating people if it weren't for the monster hunting thing. There's really no excuse for them to be figure skating people now.
"I don't know, Sam. I didn't ask."
"Ok," says Sam, because, yeah. Ok. What kind of answer had he wanted anyway? Hardened hunters wanting his autograph was weird enough already.
"Any rate, no one else was really helpful either. No one but us seems to think anything is wrong with this situation. Seems like whatever's going on, it's got everyone believing that you're a figure skater full time; I'm a hunter, working mostly solo. On the plus side, the world doesn't seem to be ending."
"That's something," Sam says. "Do you think it's really not ending, or do you think no one thinks its ending because they also think I'm a world-class figure skater?" Dean just shrugs. Sam hesitates, then winces and plows on ahead, because it's something that needs to be addressed. "Also, um. Something's probably wrong with our- our time line? Our time? Something's off." Sam finishes, but Dean just looks confused. Sam points down at the corner of the open laptop screen still sitting in front of Dean on the way too classy hotel desk. "Look. October. Two days ago, we were driving out of Nevada, and it was May."
The look Dean gives him isn't a good look at all.
~~~
"Want the time thing or the distance thing?" Sam asks. They'd been forced to break into the library after-hours. It had been a risky move--it isn't even dark out yet, barely six o'clock--but Sam has to go to bed early so he'll be ready for the free skate tomorrow, and Sam is apparently too recognizable for them to come to the library when it's open and other people might also be there. One thing Sam had never wanted to be was famous.
"You know you're shorter than you're supposed to be," Dean replies. Sam glares at him, because yes he knows, but it doesn't feel as satisfying when he has to look up to do it. "Definitely taller before you were a figure skater."
"That's not one of your choices."
Dean rolls his eyes. "Distance. I'll take distance." Sam throws a book at him because he can. Whatever, he can't be mature all the time. Dean settles down at a table and Sam goes back to try and find a lead on the time jump.
"Hey Dean," Sam calls from the stacks.
"Yeah?"
"Last time we were here, you notice this library has an unusually extensive section on Vedic texts for a small suburb in Canada?" Sam asks.
~~~
"You realize that if you're wrong about this, I am fucked for the free skate tomorrow, right?" Sam tries to inject enough dryness into his voice for it to come off as sarcastic, but he kind of means it. Some kind of weird alternate reality caused by an unknown creature that's probably trying to kill them in secret or not, Sam really wants to do well on the ice the next day. He's not getting gold unless several people trip and fall on their asses, and maybe if Dean pulls a Tonya Harding on Johnny Weir, which would be horrible and tragic and might actually be the worst thing to ever hap- Yeah, ok, no. Sam's not going there. Not even his own head.
He needs to get back to his own body and his own time line and his own reality and his own bloody end of the world because, dude, at least that's his, and this is weird. Sam steadfastly ignores the voice in his head that points out that he would still be devastated if someone tried to take out Johnny Weir. Johnny Weir is awesome, ok. Anyone who denies that is blind.
Sam just doesn't want to blow his chances at placing because he was up too late, sneaking out with his brother to the ice rink he'd been practicing at earlier. At least no one will really question why he's at a skating rink in the middle of the night--well, no one except for his coach, who would have his balls. She'd probably make them into earrings and wear them during practice as a reminder. He just has a feeling about her.
Sam thinks he's not the only one, because Dean hasn't even tried to hit on her once and pretty, living and human is exactly Dean's type.
"Why the skate rink?" Dean asks again, like he isn't the one who'd broken them into the building this time.
"Could be anywhere, really," Sam replies, "As long as there aren't too many people around."
"But they're just dream people."
"Well, yes and no. They're dream people when they're not here interacting with us. When they are, they're pretty much real as us. We're all dream people, of a sort," Sam says.
Dean doesn't say anything else, and Sam's grateful, because he can't really explain it better than that. All the Maya and the cycles and the real and unreal and all of that get confusing really fast. He's not sure it would be better in the original text, of which the small suburban library in Canada had a suspiciously large number. Sam for his part, had stuck to the translation this time around. His Sanskrit's a little rusty.
They split up to check the locker rooms. This is just a dinky rink, not too fancy and not very large, but there are a surprising number of odd little spaces to get lost in. He flashes the circle of light from his flashlight around the locker room one last time. It's clean too. That's when he hears Dean shout, muffled through concrete walls.
~~~~
Sam breaks down the girls' locker room door and barrels headfirst into a wall of cobweb. He's got enough momentum that he breaks through it without trouble, but there was a lot of it--a ridiculous amount, really, several inches thick--and it clumps on his shoulders and hangs down like some ghostly version of a skater's costume. Dean's about halfway down the room, near the only set of lockers not covered in thick webbing like that Sam had broken through. He's spun up tight in spider silk like a giant fly, just his head free. There's a freaking huge spider nominally hanging from the ceiling a little way past him, even though there's not really much point in hanging from the ceiling, because the spider is so big it only has about a foot of air above or below it.
The spider may be looking at Sam; he can't tell with all the eyes, but it doesn't react to his presence. Dean doesn't turn his head and Sam's not sure if that's because he's trying not to divert the spider's attention to Sam if it hasn't noticed already, or if he just can't move it in all the webbing. "I am going to kill you," Dean says. "I am going to watch you burn."
"You can't kill me. We don't die," it says. Its voice sounds strange, like a buzzing, vibrating sound is overlaying it, or like its voice has been laid on top of the vibration. Maybe it's just that giant spiders aren't made for human speech.
"We can sure as hell try," Dean spits, but he's wrapped up tight and isn't in a position to back it up. "We've heard that before. They all died just fine."
If spiders could shrug, Sam thinks this one would. "Those were not me, and they were not what I am," it buzzes at them. "We are dreams. We are the untruths you don't want to sacrifice. Truth is beyond the senses, beyond the mind, beyond intelligence, beyond imagination. As long as you try to understand with your individual little minds, as long as you are, all ignorance, we shall be."
Which ok, annoying. Sam does not need lectures from giant Vedic spiders. Lectures from his coach are enough--and then Sam realizes with a pang that she isn't real, never was. Sam shakes the thought away. Focus. He edges closer, trying to slide the knife out surreptitiously. Spiders have too many eyes; he can't ever tell what they're really seeing.
"Why are you doing this?" Dean asks, playing diversion, trying to keep the spider's attention. There's a pause, heavy silence filling the room like the spider's silk hanging from the room's corners.
"...You drove into our web. It makes reality from your dreams if you sleep." Sam blinks, because no. The spider did not just say that this whole thing was because Sam dreamt it into being. Sam slides forward another half-step. His foot inches into a strand of spider web, then, one Sam didn't see and couldn't avoid, and the spider lashes out faster than Sam can follow, long legs flicking Sam away as easy as blowing paper.
Sam is thrown backwards. He hits a wall hard. The drywall buckles a little, but his hip hits a strut, causing instant bruising all up one side, like during practice. Then he slides straight down the wall to land in a heap on the ground.
Some things aren't so different between hunting and figure skating. The way you constantly punish your body. The way you have to just push through things, like exhaustion and injury, and keep going. The way you have to win, a desire that edges beyond survival instinct and dives straight for obsessive.
Sam hauls himself up off the ground. He needs the wall for help at first, but once he gets his feet, he feels better, knows he can do it. He charges the spider, swinging the knife and wishing the blade were longer. The spider doesn't move this time, even though it has to know he's coming.
The instant he makes contact, the giant spider explodes into hundreds of thousands, maybe millions, of tiny, tiny black spiders, going into hundreds of thousands, maybe millions, of directions. They evaporate into the air like mist, never real in the first place.
It's kind of anticlimactic. And creepy. No body to show if they'd really won, or if they were still losing. Sam carefully cuts the webbing off Dean because either way he'd feel better knowing Dean is able to have his back. The sticky threads resist the knife, and Sam has to concentrate to put enough strength behind it without also cutting Dean. When Dean starts to brush the thick layers of spider's silk off, though, they melt like butter in sheets, evaporating before they hit the ground. Another illusion.
They go outside to get away. The Impala's waiting there, pulled into park by the side of the road. There's a little bit of webbing across the grill, but it's like real spider silk, and sticks to things and doesn't dissolve when they brush it away.
"Think it was telling the truth? Think we're out?" Sam asks. Dean shrugs. Sam checks his phone, and it's May again at least.
They get in the car and call Bobby.
"'lo?" Bobby says. He sounds cranky, like they just woke him up. Or like Bobby.
"Bobby? It's Sam. Got a quick question for you: am I a world-famous figure skater?" There's a long silence on the other end.
"D'you hit your head?" Bobby demands, finally. "What in God's green earth are you talking about?"
Sam laughs. He can't help it; he's too relieved. "Thanks, Bobby. Nevermind, we'll explain later," he says and hangs up.
Dean starts the car, familiar purr of the engine rolling out into the night, and pulls onto the road. Sam's side is one big ache, but he feels good.
Then: "You dream about being a figure skater, Sammy?" Dean is smirking at him. Of course. Sam doesn't know why he expected Dean to let something like that drop.
Sam pulls a bitch face he learned from the skinny Canadian skater, something Chan. Eric, maybe. Patrick. Patrick Chan, that was it. He'd been really good at bitch faces. "Just. Get us to a motel," he says.
The rest of the drive is uneventful, quiet enough that Sam thinks maybe they can put this one behind them. The motel is as tacky as he could wish for, silhouettes of naked women on the walls, and the bedspread is camo. Sam starts letting himself settle into his life--his real life, free of figure skating and medals and competitions. The world's probably ending again, but at least it's real.
Sam steals the shower first, so Dean flushes the toilet just out of spite. It keeps him from feeling deja vu for a shower that didn't happen after a practice session that wasn't real.
Sam climbs out and towels off with a towel that is satisfyingly too small, because it means that he's his normal size again. Then he finds sparkles stuck to his skin. His life is so unfair.
Title: Exhibition Skate (the points don't matter)
Fandom: Supernatural
Rating: PG-13 for language.
Warnings: Genfic.
Word Count: 6,587 words.
Summary: Figure skating is a mental sport as much as anything else.
A/N: This is a product of reading entirely too much Winter Olympics fanfiction right after the Olympics ended. I always said I'd never write supernatural fic, but I guess I've made myself a liar again. Self-beta, and nearly all of my knowledge of ice skating comes from wikipedia, so feel free to point out mistakes.
Sam doesn't know where he is. It looks like a locker room, but the last thing he remembers is falling asleep in the front seat of the Impala on the way out of Nevada...and then he opened his eyes, and the only thing that was the same was that he was sitting.
He's not in a car, and there's a hard bench under him, and--Sam cranes his neck to look around, yup, definitely--lockers behind him. Sam tells himself sharply not to panic, because it's unfortunate but true that this kind of thing happens to him a lot. He's probably not dead, because he's been to heaven before, and it wasn't like this last time, and if this was hell, he's pretty sure someone, any one of the people he knew who'd been there, would have mentioned. Or at the very least, made classy jokes about making sure not to drop the soap.
Sam eases into a standing position and realizes three things:
1. He's not as tall as he is pretty sure he is usually. Unless these ceilings are really ridiculously high, he isn't as close to them as he should have been.
2. He's not packing any kind of weapon, even though he knows he had the demon killing knife tucked into his shirt, and another knife down in his boot, and- Well, the gun was in the glove compartment, but his fingers still itched because it is well out of reach now.
3. He is not wearing his usual clothing, but some kind of stretchy, sparkly one piece thing. Were those feathers going down his side? Those were definitely feathers. Sparkly feathers. And skates. Ice skates. Sam was wearing sparkly feathers, and ice skates with the guards on.
Sam catalogues this new knowledge, but he doesn't really have any other options than to ease around the corner and maybe see where the fuck he is. An exit, not some back corner, would be awesome right about now. The only hitch is that, unarmed as he is, he probably won't be able to take anyone out unless they get close enough to do him an awful lot of damage back.
There are a couple of other guys in sparkly outfits and various states of dress and undress around the bend in the locker room. One is lacing his skates up, another's putting on a shirt that is almost strangely devoid of ruffles, and then Sam realizes that's because it's street clothes, and his costume top is hanging up behind him. A very pretty kid walks in the doors opposite Sam--though, Sam realizes belated, he’s not actually younger than Sam is. He just looks it--giant sunglasses covering most of his face. And that? That was Johnny fucking Weir. Sam knows this because ok, maybe the world is ending, but that doesn't mean Sam isn't going to watch the Olympics. They're the fucking Olympics.
Where the fuck is he?
A woman bursts into the locker room, and storms straight at Sam. She's tiny, but throws off enough presence that it takes Sam a minute to notice that fact. None of the other skaters seem to care that a woman just walked into what is, presumably, the men's locker room, but a few are watching the proceedings with interest.
"What are you doing? You don't have time for a freak-out. Freak out after you skate beautifully. You have to get out there or they're going to disqualify you!" the tiny woman hisses at him angrily, and jerks him along by the arm like he's not a huge, hulking giant of a man, and like she knows he's going to do whatever she says. It's creating just enough cognitive dissonance that he actually does just follow behind her. He does mutter "Christo" at her back, but there's no reaction. Maybe she's just human.
The thing is? Sam doesn't know how to ice skate. They moved around too much when he was growing up, and then California. It's not like Stanford is exactly known for its wintry weather. Sam doesn't think he's ever actually been inside an ice rink. And they expect him to what, to go out on the ice, in skates, and perform some thing he's definitely doesn't know and doesn't know how to do in the first place?
Except he kind of does. In a weird, freaky, semi-out-of-body kind of way. Because Sam pulls off his skate guards, and steps out onto the ice, and skates out to the middle of the rink and poses. And the music starts, and he just...sort of starts skating. The music picks up, and Sam skates faster, and oh shit, he's going to do a jump, that's what this shit means, and he doesn't know how to do a jump in figure skates--
And then his entire body works, back and thighs and arms and torso, and he's up in the air, spinning fast-
And then he's down, one leg coming out around the back, and he's upright and not dead, and skating perfectly away from what probably should have been a broken leg because Sam doesn't know how to skate. The next jump isn't as clean as it could be, but he makes the landing and finishes the piece without any major mistakes. People throw flowers and shit.
Great. He's trapped in someone else's body again. Some pretty men's figure skater who couldn't take the pressure and decided to check out for a while by stealing Sam's body and, what, ride around the country fighting demons. That was so much less pressure. Sam really, really hopes that Dean catches on faster this time, and that whoever's in his body doesn't say yes to the devil, because yeah. Bad.
Sam steps off the ice gingerly. Part of Sam has just enough absurdist space left to wonder where a figure skater in the same league as Johnny Weir found the time to practice witchcraft. He is pretty sure figure skaters are not supposed to have free time not devoted to more figure skating.
Sam follows the woman, who must be his coach, over to a waiting area to sit, breathless with exertion and a camera in his face. A kid in skates shows up to give him an armful of flowers and a stuffed lamb. Sam recognizes this, so he takes the presents and tries to smile for the camera. When Sam gets his scores, he has to fight this inexplicable urge to cry, which is just weird. He's used to being angry, so angry, all the time; he's not, you're not supposed to want to cry when you're elated and those were, Sam knows somehow, the best scores of his life and dear God it's all a little overwhelming.
Through the desire to cry and the desire to really not cry, and through Sam's psyche steadfastly choosing to ignore the fact that he may kind of be flapping his hands in front of his grinning face, like that will do something, Sam notices one other thing. The scores he got? Have got an American flag and his name next to them: Sam Winchester. Shit. Not someone else's body.
Sam runs through his options furiously as he's let out of the kiss-and-cry and left to his own devices. Where did that leave him, then? Gabriel? Gabriel's dead. Lucifer? Which ok, would be the weirdest mindfuck ever, but not really likely to make Sam say 'yes' to the Devil. Heaven's latest ploy? Zachariah's also dead, which would explain this not really feeling like one of his tricks, but as far as Sam can tell, Dean's not anywhere in this and it makes no sense to kidnap Sam and make him into a pretty amazing men's figure skater in order to convince Dean to agree to let Michael wear him. Unless it was some kind of weird, brotherly blackmail, because Dean is just butch enough that he might fall for that one. 'Let me in, or I'll make your brother a word famous men's figure skater and no one but you two will realize how wrong that is.'
After his performance, all Sam can do is wait so he finds a payphone, jimmies it into thinking he'd paid, and calls every single cell phone Dean owns. Dean never picks up. Sam tries Bobby next, who does answer.
"What are you calling me for, idjit," Bobby says, which sounds like Bobby, except he continues, "I saw your short program on TV. It was great. Your best, maybe. Landing for the triple axel was a little shaky, but I know you know that, so that's all I'm gonna say on it." Bobby doesn't say 'I'm proud of you, boy' or anything like that, which is at least relieving, because the rest of it is kind of freaking Sam out. Bobby thinks he's supposed to be a world-famous figure skater. Bobby critiqued his performance, kind of like he knows something about figure skating and maybe like he watches all of Sam's performances. Sam was just on TV. Sam really hopes that, whatever is going on, he's not still wanted by the FBI.
There's a beat of silence, because Sam doesn't know what to say to a Bobby who's watching his short program on TV. "So why're you callin'?" Bobby asks when he's decided Sam needs prompting.
"Oh, err, have you seen Dean?" Sam asks, because he's not answering his phones and because Sam'd like to know and because, just because this is getting too weird and he'd like to know he's not alone in it.
"Inni up there with you?" Bobby says, vaguely hostile, the way he gets when anything takes him by surprise. And ok, it still really sounds like Bobby, but it sounded like Bobby when he was possessed too.
"Oh yeah. I know he's here," Sam lies, because suddenly lying seems a whole lot better than trying to explain that he's really not a figure skater, remember? Because this has got to be some kind of hugely elaborate mindfuck and whoever's responsible might be listening in. Sam is not going to give them that satisfaction. "I just don't know where here, and he wasn't answering his phone." Sam ignores the fact that he doesn't know where 'here' is, exactly, either. "I dunno, I thought maybe he'dve checked in with you and it would be faster. Nevermind, Bobby, I'll find him." Sam hangs up and leans his forehead up against the edge of the payphone. He needs to regroup.
"Sam! There you are! I've been looking all over for you!" It's his coach again, that tiny, not literally a devil-woman which, Sam supposes, should really make him grateful. She looks a little worried. "Don't you want to watch the rest and see how you place? You did great today, sweetie. Just what we've been working towards! You don't have to worry about how anyone else is going to do." She is, Sam realizes, trying to calm Sam down. She thinks he's worried about how he's going to place, like scores are the important thing in his life. "Why don't you come on back to the rink? Dean's still holding seats for us by the ice."
"Yeah, ok," Sam says, because what's he going to do anyway? At least he knows where Dean is now.
'Sammy!' Dean exclaims when he sees Sam following the coach. Sam realizes he doesn't even know her name and hopes that doesn't become a problem. There's something suspicious in Dean's eyes, though, something Dean's trying to cover with fake enthusiasm. Sam settles in on a seat between Dean and his coach, and Sam and Dean both mutter 'Christo' at each other at the same time. It's his Dean, not some freaky alternate universe Dean like it was a freaky alternate universe Bobby. Sam doesn't think he's felt this relieved since the time he woke up on a Wednesday and Dean was still alive.
Sam comes in fifth in the end. He's not sure whether he's supposed to be pleased or disappointed by this based on past performance, but luckily his coach makes it easy on him. "Not bad, Sammy-boy. Not awesome," she adds, so he won't get any ideas about coasting and not having to work his ass off, "But not bad. I'm feeling gracious. You can have the rest of the day off. Remember I booked us ice-time at the rink tomorrow morning. Be ready to go by 6:30." Then she hands him a hotel keycard and lets him off.
~~~
The hotel room is kind of depressingly untacky. Sam remembers when he used to hate all the cheap hotel rooms they stayed in, growing up, how much he wanted to get away from that life, but some things are just wrong. There are two gigantic beds, which are soft and fluffy and Sam can't feel a single spring in the mattress. The covers seem clean in a way that might actually be genuine--or at the very least, be made to look genuine, and the sheets aren't threadbare in the slightest. Sam doesn't think he could catch anything just by lying down. There isn't any ridiculous wallpaper. The beds don't vibrate. If there's porn available, they're being very discrete about it, like it's not the hotel's major and possibly only draw.
It's creepy and nothing like what a stay in a hotel with his brother ought to be like.
"So, angels, demons, or something else?" Dean asks once they're alone.
Sam shrugs helplessly. "If Gabriel weren't definitely dead, I'd say this fits right in with his sense of humour. This situation is way too subtle for upstairs, and doesn't make enough sense for the basement."
"You tried calling Bobby yet?"
"That's a no-go. He complimented me on my short program and told me to watch the triple axel. What about Cas?"
"Couldn't get through. He's out of pre-paid minutes."
"Figures."
~~~
They get dinner in the hotel, Dean with his disgustingly fatty burger and fries, and Sam, a salad, some delicately braised tuna on top. At least their eating habits are still normal. Sam doesn't know what he'd do if Dean ordered a salad.
It's pretty late by the time they finish, and Sam is exhausted from performing and performance-nerves and weirded-out-what-the-fuck-nerves, so they go back upstairs to the creepily classy hotel room to do internet-based research instead of hitting the library right away. Sam finds out that the beds in classy hotels? Are pretty freaking awesome. Like sleeping on a cloud, or something, and decides that maybe being a world-famous figure skater in some strange universe where Bobby knows what a triple lutz is might not be so bad, if it means he also gets beds like this.
Dean, of course, doesn't really sleep, because he never really sleeps since Hell. He pulls out Sam's laptop though, and Sam pretends that Dean won't look at any porn in addition to research, and later, Dean will drink the entire contents of the minibar and grab a couple of hours passed out on the other bed.
~~~
His coach shows up at his door at 5:45 am, and bitches him out for not being out of bed yet, much less getting ready. He pointed out that she said to meet her in the lobby at 6:30, but the reasoning doesn't seem to fly. She seems to expect him to call her when he gets up, and also, strangely, seems to expect him to do more than brush his teeth, put something in his stomach, and go. His coach, thankfully, leaves the bathroom for him to take a piss, but she hovers in the doorway for the rest of his morning routine and makes tching noises just often enough to make Sam paranoid because he doesn't know what she's even watching for.
When he crawls into a pair of warm-up pants and a sweater that had been folded up in the hotel's dresser, and grabs the duffel bag full of skating equipment he'd had with him when he woke up in the locker room last night, and just kind of looks at her expectantly, she's surprised. He's done though, and she's clearly an opportunist, because she gives him a couple of power bars for breakfast and says that they can probably talk the rink into opening early for them. Sam's pretty sure Dean hasn't been to bed yet, but he doesn't care because Dean can laze around in bed all day if he wants, and he's being dragged bodily to the bathroom and then will be carted off to an ice rink God only knows where to practice his skating, which his brain and all of his memories still assert he doesn't know how to do, even if his legs seem to think it's fine.
Sam naps on the way over. He does without sleep kind of depressingly routinely, but he's not on a hunt right now (not really), and he just doesn't have enough adrenaline pumping through his system to keep himself up.
At practice, Sam falls. And falls. And falls. And then his tiny bitch of a coach comes out onto the ice and yells at him, and makes him get up and fall some more. By the time she throws her hands up in the air and tells him to get off the ice, he's got more bruises than the last time a demon through him threw a wall, which, really. There's something not right about that.
Off the ice, she tells him this is the worst she's seen him, possibly ever and gives him a lecture about not worrying about how anyone else skates and keeping his head in the game.
"You've still got a shot at a medal, Sam," she tells him. "But you've got to nail the free skate Thursday if you want to do it. You have to skate your best, and this is definitely not it." Sam nods along gamely, because really? What else is he going to do? He doesn't plan on being around for a free skate on Thursday--this is way too weird, and the world is probably still ending, even if it's not a world Sam recognizes--but right now he's in practice and his coach may be tiny, but she's kind of terrifying. Like, Sam knows he could take her, but part of him believes with a deep, unshakable conviction that she'd probably maim him in the process using sheer force of will. Anyone who survives the training, pressure, general insanity and diva fits which almost seem like an off-ice technical requirement for the sport is not someone Sam really wants to tangle with if he can help it.
"I think you're over-thinking all of the jumps. We'll break for lunch and then go over your program on video back at the hotel. We don't get to keep the rink in the afternoon, but you're probably not worth any more today anyway." She grins a little bit as she says it, so Sam thinks that probably passes for a joke and isn't intended as an actual assessment of Sam's value. Then, like a vaguely nagging motherly afterthought, she adds, "Make sure you ice that hip. And stick to your diet! Dean promised me you would!" And that's just patently ridiculous. Sam doesn't know what his diet is, but having Dean keep him on it doesn't even make sense in a world where Sam figure skates.
Sam stiffens up on the ride back and by the time they get to the hotel, Sam can barely walk without limping. He ignores Dean entirely and crawls straight into the shower and stays there until he only feels like a giant mass of bruises instead of a target practice crash test dummy. When he gets out of the shower, Dean's holding up a can of muscle-ache stuff and several ice packs.
"I don't think your coach trusts me to take care of you," Dean says. Sam can't tell how offended Dean is at the implication, but they're really good at not talking about things, and Dean has an ice pack, which clearly takes precedence over conversations about Dean's feelings. "She had a lunch sent up for you too."
Sam grunts and takes the cream, and Dean hisses gratifyingly when he sees the results of the morning's practice.
"Are you sure she's human?" Dean asks him. "I can totally take her out."
Sam rolls his eyes, but sucks in a breath when the first ice pack hits tender skin. "She's human."
~~~
They have a couple of hours before Sam's afternoon practice starts, so despite his desperate need of a nap, Sam's guilty work ethic gets to him and he heads with Dean to the local library to find what they can find.
The Impala's in the hotel parking garage. The valets try to bring it up for them, but Dean isn't having any of it. He's got like, a homing beacon built into his brain for the car anyway, so it's not like they need it to find where they're parked even though neither has memories of actually parking it. Fourth level, section G.
Once they hit street level, Sam notices something he'd missed in the dark that morning. The street signs are all in English and French.
Canada? Sam doesn't think he has a valid passport. He knows Dean doesn't.
"Dean? Where are we?" Sam doesn't like how small his voice sounds, but figures he gets a bit of a pass considering he's still finding glitter on his skin and it's been at least 24 hours and two showers since he knowingly wore anything that could have put it there.
Dean squints at the green sign with the white maple leaf pointing towards the highway. "Looks like Canada," he says.
"Dean, why are we in Canada?" Sam asks. He sounds much better this time.
"Well, Sammy, I imagine it's for your fancy figure skating competition." And ok, Sam kind of hates Dean right now.
The library ends up being less productive than they could have wished, because they'd only gotten started in on a couple of hunches when a little kid recognizes Sam and asks for an autograph. That gets the attention of a little girl, maybe twelve years old, and she makes these excited choking noises, like she'd like to be squealing but too many years of training keeping her voice down in a library is forcing her to try to stifle it, and the combination is going to kill her. She pulls a Sam Winchester, Figure Skater folder out of her backpack and opens it to reveal several magazine clippings of Sam in a variety of bedazzled, befeathered, occasionally flowy costumes, both on and off ice. Sam signs one of the bigger clippings and the folder quickly, before she asks him to like, sign her face and the excitement really does kill her.
That catches one of the librarian's attention, and a couple of other teeny boppers, and it really all goes downhill from there. A mostly waist-high mob forms, some wanting autographs, some wanting to congratulate Sam on his performance the previous day, some just wanting to bask in his presence in their local library. It's ludicrous that he'd have local fans in Canada, but apparently he does. Dean does nothing to help, of course. He's enjoying Sam's mortified discomfort too much to even complain about having to do all the research himself.
~~~
Practice that afternoon is much less traumatic than it had been in the morning. She makes him do some stretching exercises to keep his muscles from tightening up again, but mostly they just spend a lot of time watching tapes of his past run-throughs with the program he'd be skating in two days. It is really...kind of pretty. Sam doesn't understand any of the technical points his coach walks him through or warns him to be careful about, but he nods along like he does. That phantom my-body-isn't-quite-mine feeling is back a little, and Sam thinks he can probably pull the thing off if he has to, as long as he doesn't try to think about the mechanics of the thing. Even this morning, he'd managed the occasional landing when he wasn't trying to figure out how he was going to keep from dying or breaking any bones.
She lets him go after several watch-throughs and tells him to make sure he keeps stretching out to stay loose. He has another practice session at that rink tomorrow morning, but not quite as early, and she expects him to suck a lot less then. Then she pulls him down to pet his head like he is really just an over-grown twelve year old himself and tells him to enjoy some time with his brother, since he was able to get the time off to come up with them for this competition.
She seems so fond of him for a moment that Sam almost wants to ask her where they are exactly, like a city name, and maybe kind of when they are too. Something's been nagging Sam ever since he realized they weren't in the U.S. Sam had an American flag by his name the day before. So Canada and skating competitions probably puts them at the Grand Prix, but Johnny Weir was there, only Johnny Weir is maybe retiring and had definitely not participated at Worlds this year and besides, Skate Canada isn't until October. When he'd fallen asleep in the Impala yesterday afternoon, it was just barely May. It all sounds way too crazy though, so Sam keeps his mouth shut and says he'll call her when he wakes up tomorrow so she knows he won't be late to practice.
~~~
"Any leads?" Sam asks as soon as he gets back to their room. Dean grimaces and shakes his head.
"Dude, Rufus? He squealed like that little girl at the library and asked us to mail him an autograph."
Sam stops short, and he knows his expression must be really strange, but this whole situation is just so- "Why didn't he have one already?" Sam asks, because it seems like the most logical question. "You'd think I'd have hooked up all the hunters first. You know, a 'thanks for saving dad's ass and our asses so many times and being an informational network' thing." The hunter connection has got to be the only reason these guys are following men's figure skating, right? Rufus and Bobby? They're not figure skating people. They wouldn't even be figure skating people if it weren't for the monster hunting thing. There's really no excuse for them to be figure skating people now.
"I don't know, Sam. I didn't ask."
"Ok," says Sam, because, yeah. Ok. What kind of answer had he wanted anyway? Hardened hunters wanting his autograph was weird enough already.
"Any rate, no one else was really helpful either. No one but us seems to think anything is wrong with this situation. Seems like whatever's going on, it's got everyone believing that you're a figure skater full time; I'm a hunter, working mostly solo. On the plus side, the world doesn't seem to be ending."
"That's something," Sam says. "Do you think it's really not ending, or do you think no one thinks its ending because they also think I'm a world-class figure skater?" Dean just shrugs. Sam hesitates, then winces and plows on ahead, because it's something that needs to be addressed. "Also, um. Something's probably wrong with our- our time line? Our time? Something's off." Sam finishes, but Dean just looks confused. Sam points down at the corner of the open laptop screen still sitting in front of Dean on the way too classy hotel desk. "Look. October. Two days ago, we were driving out of Nevada, and it was May."
The look Dean gives him isn't a good look at all.
~~~
"Want the time thing or the distance thing?" Sam asks. They'd been forced to break into the library after-hours. It had been a risky move--it isn't even dark out yet, barely six o'clock--but Sam has to go to bed early so he'll be ready for the free skate tomorrow, and Sam is apparently too recognizable for them to come to the library when it's open and other people might also be there. One thing Sam had never wanted to be was famous.
"You know you're shorter than you're supposed to be," Dean replies. Sam glares at him, because yes he knows, but it doesn't feel as satisfying when he has to look up to do it. "Definitely taller before you were a figure skater."
"That's not one of your choices."
Dean rolls his eyes. "Distance. I'll take distance." Sam throws a book at him because he can. Whatever, he can't be mature all the time. Dean settles down at a table and Sam goes back to try and find a lead on the time jump.
"Hey Dean," Sam calls from the stacks.
"Yeah?"
"Last time we were here, you notice this library has an unusually extensive section on Vedic texts for a small suburb in Canada?" Sam asks.
~~~
"You realize that if you're wrong about this, I am fucked for the free skate tomorrow, right?" Sam tries to inject enough dryness into his voice for it to come off as sarcastic, but he kind of means it. Some kind of weird alternate reality caused by an unknown creature that's probably trying to kill them in secret or not, Sam really wants to do well on the ice the next day. He's not getting gold unless several people trip and fall on their asses, and maybe if Dean pulls a Tonya Harding on Johnny Weir, which would be horrible and tragic and might actually be the worst thing to ever hap- Yeah, ok, no. Sam's not going there. Not even his own head.
He needs to get back to his own body and his own time line and his own reality and his own bloody end of the world because, dude, at least that's his, and this is weird. Sam steadfastly ignores the voice in his head that points out that he would still be devastated if someone tried to take out Johnny Weir. Johnny Weir is awesome, ok. Anyone who denies that is blind.
Sam just doesn't want to blow his chances at placing because he was up too late, sneaking out with his brother to the ice rink he'd been practicing at earlier. At least no one will really question why he's at a skating rink in the middle of the night--well, no one except for his coach, who would have his balls. She'd probably make them into earrings and wear them during practice as a reminder. He just has a feeling about her.
Sam thinks he's not the only one, because Dean hasn't even tried to hit on her once and pretty, living and human is exactly Dean's type.
"Why the skate rink?" Dean asks again, like he isn't the one who'd broken them into the building this time.
"Could be anywhere, really," Sam replies, "As long as there aren't too many people around."
"But they're just dream people."
"Well, yes and no. They're dream people when they're not here interacting with us. When they are, they're pretty much real as us. We're all dream people, of a sort," Sam says.
Dean doesn't say anything else, and Sam's grateful, because he can't really explain it better than that. All the Maya and the cycles and the real and unreal and all of that get confusing really fast. He's not sure it would be better in the original text, of which the small suburban library in Canada had a suspiciously large number. Sam for his part, had stuck to the translation this time around. His Sanskrit's a little rusty.
They split up to check the locker rooms. This is just a dinky rink, not too fancy and not very large, but there are a surprising number of odd little spaces to get lost in. He flashes the circle of light from his flashlight around the locker room one last time. It's clean too. That's when he hears Dean shout, muffled through concrete walls.
~~~~
Sam breaks down the girls' locker room door and barrels headfirst into a wall of cobweb. He's got enough momentum that he breaks through it without trouble, but there was a lot of it--a ridiculous amount, really, several inches thick--and it clumps on his shoulders and hangs down like some ghostly version of a skater's costume. Dean's about halfway down the room, near the only set of lockers not covered in thick webbing like that Sam had broken through. He's spun up tight in spider silk like a giant fly, just his head free. There's a freaking huge spider nominally hanging from the ceiling a little way past him, even though there's not really much point in hanging from the ceiling, because the spider is so big it only has about a foot of air above or below it.
The spider may be looking at Sam; he can't tell with all the eyes, but it doesn't react to his presence. Dean doesn't turn his head and Sam's not sure if that's because he's trying not to divert the spider's attention to Sam if it hasn't noticed already, or if he just can't move it in all the webbing. "I am going to kill you," Dean says. "I am going to watch you burn."
"You can't kill me. We don't die," it says. Its voice sounds strange, like a buzzing, vibrating sound is overlaying it, or like its voice has been laid on top of the vibration. Maybe it's just that giant spiders aren't made for human speech.
"We can sure as hell try," Dean spits, but he's wrapped up tight and isn't in a position to back it up. "We've heard that before. They all died just fine."
If spiders could shrug, Sam thinks this one would. "Those were not me, and they were not what I am," it buzzes at them. "We are dreams. We are the untruths you don't want to sacrifice. Truth is beyond the senses, beyond the mind, beyond intelligence, beyond imagination. As long as you try to understand with your individual little minds, as long as you are, all ignorance, we shall be."
Which ok, annoying. Sam does not need lectures from giant Vedic spiders. Lectures from his coach are enough--and then Sam realizes with a pang that she isn't real, never was. Sam shakes the thought away. Focus. He edges closer, trying to slide the knife out surreptitiously. Spiders have too many eyes; he can't ever tell what they're really seeing.
"Why are you doing this?" Dean asks, playing diversion, trying to keep the spider's attention. There's a pause, heavy silence filling the room like the spider's silk hanging from the room's corners.
"...You drove into our web. It makes reality from your dreams if you sleep." Sam blinks, because no. The spider did not just say that this whole thing was because Sam dreamt it into being. Sam slides forward another half-step. His foot inches into a strand of spider web, then, one Sam didn't see and couldn't avoid, and the spider lashes out faster than Sam can follow, long legs flicking Sam away as easy as blowing paper.
Sam is thrown backwards. He hits a wall hard. The drywall buckles a little, but his hip hits a strut, causing instant bruising all up one side, like during practice. Then he slides straight down the wall to land in a heap on the ground.
Some things aren't so different between hunting and figure skating. The way you constantly punish your body. The way you have to just push through things, like exhaustion and injury, and keep going. The way you have to win, a desire that edges beyond survival instinct and dives straight for obsessive.
Sam hauls himself up off the ground. He needs the wall for help at first, but once he gets his feet, he feels better, knows he can do it. He charges the spider, swinging the knife and wishing the blade were longer. The spider doesn't move this time, even though it has to know he's coming.
The instant he makes contact, the giant spider explodes into hundreds of thousands, maybe millions, of tiny, tiny black spiders, going into hundreds of thousands, maybe millions, of directions. They evaporate into the air like mist, never real in the first place.
It's kind of anticlimactic. And creepy. No body to show if they'd really won, or if they were still losing. Sam carefully cuts the webbing off Dean because either way he'd feel better knowing Dean is able to have his back. The sticky threads resist the knife, and Sam has to concentrate to put enough strength behind it without also cutting Dean. When Dean starts to brush the thick layers of spider's silk off, though, they melt like butter in sheets, evaporating before they hit the ground. Another illusion.
They go outside to get away. The Impala's waiting there, pulled into park by the side of the road. There's a little bit of webbing across the grill, but it's like real spider silk, and sticks to things and doesn't dissolve when they brush it away.
"Think it was telling the truth? Think we're out?" Sam asks. Dean shrugs. Sam checks his phone, and it's May again at least.
They get in the car and call Bobby.
"'lo?" Bobby says. He sounds cranky, like they just woke him up. Or like Bobby.
"Bobby? It's Sam. Got a quick question for you: am I a world-famous figure skater?" There's a long silence on the other end.
"D'you hit your head?" Bobby demands, finally. "What in God's green earth are you talking about?"
Sam laughs. He can't help it; he's too relieved. "Thanks, Bobby. Nevermind, we'll explain later," he says and hangs up.
Dean starts the car, familiar purr of the engine rolling out into the night, and pulls onto the road. Sam's side is one big ache, but he feels good.
Then: "You dream about being a figure skater, Sammy?" Dean is smirking at him. Of course. Sam doesn't know why he expected Dean to let something like that drop.
Sam pulls a bitch face he learned from the skinny Canadian skater, something Chan. Eric, maybe. Patrick. Patrick Chan, that was it. He'd been really good at bitch faces. "Just. Get us to a motel," he says.
The rest of the drive is uneventful, quiet enough that Sam thinks maybe they can put this one behind them. The motel is as tacky as he could wish for, silhouettes of naked women on the walls, and the bedspread is camo. Sam starts letting himself settle into his life--his real life, free of figure skating and medals and competitions. The world's probably ending again, but at least it's real.
Sam steals the shower first, so Dean flushes the toilet just out of spite. It keeps him from feeling deja vu for a shower that didn't happen after a practice session that wasn't real.
Sam climbs out and towels off with a towel that is satisfyingly too small, because it means that he's his normal size again. Then he finds sparkles stuck to his skin. His life is so unfair.