Fic: Falling Through
Title: Falling Through
Fandom: Supernatural
Rating: NC-17
Pairing: Sam/Dean
Warnings: Incest
Disclaimer: In no way mine or anything to do with me. I own nothing.
Summary: Like his world is wrong in some way, for not having a Sam.
AN: Written for paxlux for Christmas. For the prompt 'crash' and the request for 'plot' I really hope 'this thing rambled itself out' counts as plot, but I managed to finish it for you, before Christmas.
The place is a maze, one smoke-filled corridor leads to another, and Dean's shifting through them at a pace, shoulder slamming into the wall on every turn.
He's not sure how far behind the creature is, but he's not stopping to find out, not when the thing has to smash through every wide doorway, not when it has all the momentum of a truck.
So he keeps going, keeps twisting, sliding down every stairway he finds, with only the barest idea of where he's going.
He knows it's down, all the way down, down to the basement to meet someone who's promised that he can help, and though Dean isn't exactly a hundred percent certain of that he's taking the chance.
He skids past a window, half-buried under medical equipment, and a fall of unhappy blue curtains.
The sky outside is an angry smudged grey, flames curl up high on either side, outlining the rest of the world in a sickly unwelcome light, the fire leaves trails of thicker, harder grey.
Dean slides a hand across the windowsill, and moves on, boots loud on the floor.
The lower he goes the darker it gets, and he's not exactly happy at the prospect of working his way back up again.
But when he drops down to the ground floor he finds the reception area, finds the office.
There's a shape, propped up against the other door, at the end of a long smear of red.
The man he's come to find.
Dean drops to his knees, but the old man isn't getting up again, the mess under his shirt can't be fixed, not by him, and not in a half-collapsed building with the shriek of teeth and fury echoing through the walls.
The floor shakes.
There's nothing Dean can say, but he doesn't have to. The man knows he's finished.
"You must- you must take this." He tugs at something folded inside his coat, a necklace that comes free in a tumble of small shapes, curling over his thin fingers. His hands are shaking, and the damp shock pale skin of his face, tells Dean he doesn't have long.
"What is it?" Dean demands.
The old man coughs, and presses the necklace into Dean's hands. A jumbled mixture of bone and beads, skin-warm and grating together in tiny clicks. Dean wraps his hand around it without thought.
"Escape." The man's expression is a fierce mixture of earnestness and pain, and then both of them melt away, until it's completely utterly flat.
His hands slide from Dean's, fall against the bunched fabric of his coat, and rest there.
Then the whole world explodes, and everything goes black.
~~~
The blackness is shot through with light, a thousand tiny sparkling pinpricks.
It takes Dean a long second to realise he's looking up at the sky. And like that's some sort of trigger, it's suddenly cold, the long deep cold of dirt under his back, and night air in his lungs.
He shifts an arm, finds dirt, grass and the encouragement that his fingers work just fine.
He tries for a hat trick by easing himself to a sit.
It's not fun, every bone in his body protests and his neck twinges painfully. He'd bet money he fell, or was thrown, a long way, but still, he's alive.
Alive is all that matters.
Dragging himself to his feet is an unpleasant collection of sensations, but he doesn't feel sick, though the back of his mouth tastes like blood.
The world is cold, flat and...wrong.
It's quiet and dark as far as the eye can see, nothing is burning. Dean has gotten so used to the world burning, the darkness leaves him uneasy.
He lifts a hand, finds the necklace round his own throat, and for a moment he holds it.
It's a strange weight where no weight has ever been.
But the old man didn't lie. Wherever this is, it isn't where he was.
He lets it drop, and starts back towards the road.
The Impala is canted at an ugly angle just on the grass, starburst hole in the windshield that Dean suspects he went through, and a force impact indent in the front, where he hit something, hit something hard.
Though the road is clear from end to end, no blood or body.
Dean's lucky to be alive.
But that's not the strangest thing about her, aside from the crash damage she's a rich flat black, shiny, there's no sign of the scratches, dents and holes, that he has memorised. She's slippery flat from end to end.
She's also not empty.
Dean's hand goes to the back of his jeans, finds nothing there but the wet edge of his shirt, and the scraped up skin of his back.
Instead of the usual mess Dean has dumped in the passenger seat, there's the long frame of a man. Untidy mess of limbs that Dean can tell, even folded up, skips over six feet and keeps on going. There's a mess of hair over his face, but even through the dim interior Dean can see the trail of blood down his temple.
He's out cold, or faking better than Dean has ever seen.
Dean doesn't know him.
The Impala hasn't looked this good for years.
Maybe that's the answer, maybe-
That's a pretty fucked up maybe.
Dean slides into the car, shoves the stranger against the passenger window and goes through his pockets.
He's carrying more than one ID, so not a job, not a ride...the date...the date's recent. So Dean hasn't, in some messed up mockery of his whole damn life, slipped back in time, to when the Impala was a shiny new toy.
One mystery at a time.
He lets the other man fall back against the seat.
A hunter? It's possible, but he looks too young, too clean, his face is made entirely of smooth edges and soft curves under his hair. Could be a psychic, they've used them before, and they never fail to look fragile under the wrong light. Like they've been filled up wrong, human batteries threaded through with death and secrets. Best to use them up and throw them away, before the demons get inside them, turn them against you.
Dean doesn't trust psychics.
He sits in the drivers seat, hands twisting and clenching on the wheel.
The car clicks and ticks quietly, as it settles, out in the open like this, Dean should feel something, you don't just sit out in the open without something trying to dig in and rip you to pieces.
The world isn't...safe.
But sitting there with the door half-open, and sweat cooling on his back, he can't feel anything but the breeze. Can't smell anything but dirt, and wet grass, and leather.
The stranger in the passenger seat shifts, murmurs his name.
Dean stares at him for a long time, the steady thrum in his head barely loud enough to be a thought.
He pulls the door shut, tries twice to start the car, it bites the third time.
Safe place or not Dean can't stay on the road like this. Being forced to sit still in the middle of nowhere, will shred his nerves to pieces.
There's a steady ache in the back of his neck and shoulder, and one of his arms doesn't feel quite right, fractured maybe?
He'll have to remember not to lean on it, not to let anything grab a hold of it.
Not to let it compromise him.
He pulls on to the road, glass showering over the dash and into the car, as it reluctantly but obediently picks up speed.
Twenty miles down the road. There's a shiver of...something, and the windscreen impossibly, disturbingly, rebuilds itself on a wave.
~~~
Dean stamps on the brake, hard.
The car screech-shudders to a stop, and the man in the passenger seat jerks awake, one hand sliding out to brace himself.
"What is it?"
There's no blood on his face, no indication he was ever in a crash.
Dean's forearm is fine, the solid ache in the back of his neck and shoulder is completely gone.
"Dean?" The man he doesn't know has one hand on the dash, alert, ready.
Dean stares at the windscreen for a heartbeat, shifts under his jacket, testing the bruises that aren't there any more.
"It's nothing," Dean says flatly. "Go back to sleep."
~~~
Dean chooses where to stop, motel half-dark under the hang of a taller building, doesn't say a word when the stranger wakes, shifts against the leather and follows him inside like he has nowhere else to go.
He doesn't resist being slammed into the wall, doesn't resist at all and Dean isn't prepared for that, uses too much force, leaves him wheezing against the cheap plaster, breathing against the edge of Dean's forearm, wide eyes angry, and wary, and confused.
"Who are you?" Dean says tightly, shifts his grip, makes sure.
"Dean," the voice is soft, softer than he expects, considering how much height he has on him. One hand skids along Dean's wrist, testing his hold, but not digging in, not trying to claw himself free. Dean can't tell if that's an honest lack of self-preservation, or a pause before the violence.
"Who are you?" Dean says fiercely, half-tempted to tighten his grip, to push his knuckles up until they're pressed into that long throat, that's giving him nothing.
"What the hell Dean, what-"
Dean slams him into the wall.
"What's your name?!"
The expression twists into something startled.
"Dean?" shove of knuckles through the shirt and into the middle of his chest.
"Name!"
"Sam," the stranger says slowly. "My name is Sam."
"Sam what?"
Flicker of honest confusion on the face, and he quickly, uncertainly licks his lips.
"Sam Winchester."
Dean's hand spasms in his shirt, tight on damp fabric, nails digging into his own palm.
"Who are you?"
Taut pause before the answer, slid out in surprised reluctance.
"I'm your brother."
"I don't have a brother."
"Yes...you do," Sam says stupidly, twitches his head to the side, which seems to be a pointed gesture to let him go. Or at least a protest at being crushed into the wall.
Dean ignores it.
Sam does it again and then frowns, shoulders shifting.
"Are you going to let go of me?" Sam spreads his hands slowly, he has large hands, makes a show of harmlessness. Dean doesn't buy it. If he really is a Winchester, in any shape or form, harmless is the last fucking thing he is.
"Dean?"
Dean lets him down off of the wall. Steps back, but he's fully prepared to put him down if he gives any indication at all-
Sam reads his body language, and folds in on himself, just a fraction.
"I'm not your enemy Dean."
"I don't know what you are," Dean tells him honestly.
He wants to think it's some demonic trick.
~~~
But it's the same in the next change.
~~~
And the next.
~~~
The man is always Sam Winchester.
~~~
Sam Winchester-
A truck slides past in a roar of sound and water droplets, cab shifting from black to white in a shiver, that leaves Dean staring into the distance after it. Wondering if anyone else in the world is falling too.
The necklace is warm against his skin and he knows its a weakness leaving it on. He knows better than this. Knows better than to trust any magical object without questioning, without wondering
But there are children playing in the street.
It's been a long time since Dean's seen that.
He watches them for as long as he can get away with, then crosses and slides back into the semi-darkness of the motel.
Sam is folded over his laptop, a modern computer for a modern world, that's never had to worry about going out after dark.
Dean sits down opposite him.
"I'm not who you think I am," he says calmly.
Sam gives him a look. All calm indulgence, but his shoulder's twitch together, fingers shifting on his knee. If he doesn't like whatever Dean says next he'll try and put him down.
This Dean understands.
"Who are you?"
"I'm Dean Winchester."
This Sam is quicker than the one before, harder. He knows how to hurt things, and though there's a faint hesitation in his eyes Dean knows he'll do it. If he has to.
But Dean has been hurting things for a long time.
He has Sam's hand against the wood, twisted to one side. Dean presses against the bone and Sam tests the hold, tests his strength.
"Don't make me break your wrist, I've done it before."
Sam's arm settles, though the rest of him is still wound up tight.
His skin is warm.
"My name is Dean Winchester, but I'm not this Dean Winchester. I've been slipping through different variations of the world for four days now."
Sam's hand shifts under his own, and Dean judges his expression ruthlessly before letting it go.
"Slipping?"
"Find me a better word and I'll use it, the world just...changes." Dean shrugs.
Sam tips his head back.
"Tell me something-"
"That only he would know? It won't work," Dean says flatly. "We've tried this before, I didn't grow up with you, or in the same places, our histories are different. I'm not your brother."
Sam makes a noise, like he doesn't quite believe him.
"Where are you from?" Sam asks quietly.
"Somewhere worse," Dean says. "Now, since you've been Sam Winchester in five different versions of the world I'm going to work on the assumption that you are. If I come to regret that assumption so will you."
Sam's looking at him, looking at him hard, like he's trying to find differences.
Dean's already done that. Stripped down in front of the mirror, staring at every scar and line of flesh. Dean thinks he can't be both himself and the Dean that this Sam knows. He can't be both.
He's lived a hard fucking life and he has too many scars.
One of them has to be wrong.
But Sam clearly doesn't find anything.
"You have this-" Dean pushes the laptop across the table. "And this." The stack of books follows it. "Which gives me some idea of what you are, so tell me what the hell is going on.
Sam stares at him for a long second, and Dean is fully prepared to be insistent if he asks any more questions. But all he gets is a long, slow nod.
"The many world's hypothesis," Sam's staring at him, staring at him like maybe he's a thing, and Dean is half tempted to make him bleed for it.
"Make sense," he says simply.
"Parallel universes," Sam says softly, and he frowns, a soft frown that doesn't seem to really mean it.
"Science fiction?" Dean says dubiously.
"No-" Sam says carefully. "No, actually, a considerable number of scientists now believe that parallel universe have to exist, in order for the universe to work."
"So I'm falling through worlds?" Dean's hand twitches, unconsciously, towards his throat and Sam catches the movement. He's more observant than the stupid haircut would suggest.
"What is that?"
Sam reaches a hand out, and Dean-
"Don't touch it."
Sam pulls his hand back, leaves it on the table, and struggles not to look hurt.
"It's doing it somehow and I need to know why."
"Do you have any idea what it is? What mythology I mean."
"There are no markings."
"Are you sure?"
Dean stares at him hard.
"I'm sure," he says acidly, and Sam's expression falls in the middle, a soft, bright moment of surprise.
"I have to have something to look up."
Dean breathes, quiet and still, then draws the thing out onto the material of his t-shirt. Sam leans into the light, and stares at it, after a beat Dean turns it over.
Sam slides a pencil out of the pages of one of the books and carefully makes a sketch on the corner of the page.
"I'll see what I can find out."
"Better make it quick, I don't stay for long."
Sam raises his head, tilts an eyebrow at him.
"And then Dean comes back?"
He doesn't know, he really doesn't know. So he says nothing at all.
The pencil taps on the open page, over and over.
"So you don't have a brother in the world you come from, really?" Sam looks hurt, hurt at the universe for denying him existence, which Dean has no idea how to process. The thought that this boy would even want to live in the place he's come from.
"No."
"So none of the stuff with...none of the stuff with me ever happened." Sam's hiding something, something about him, about them. But Dean thinks it's personal stuff, not stuff he should care about, not stuff that's important, not to him.
Let him think Dean cares about his secrets if he wants to.
"There was no you," Dean says flatly, because he doesn't care about whatever history they have in this world, it's not important.
There was no him, no happy children, no long stretches of road clear of dead bodies and burning wreckage.
And he wonders if this world even has-
"Do we..." Dean tries to think of a way to ask if they kill monsters, without sounding like a fucking lunatic. Because so far he hasn't seen any evidence that the world is infested, he hasn't even seen a dead body.
He lays his fingers on the table, watches them turn white on the wood, because the thought of a world with no- with none of that, is too strange to believe in.
Sam waits for him, patiently, reading things in his face that he doesn't want to give away.
"Are there monsters?"
Sam breathes out, wet relief and sympathy.
"Yeah," he says simply. "There are monsters."
Dean grits his teeth and nods.
"You really don't have a brother?"
Dean barely has himself.
~~~
The Sam who knows him disappears, leaving Dean with a half-finished search, a handful of drawings which vanish with the world, and the warm, still unexplained press of beads on skin.
He spends the night staring at the ceiling, while Sam sleeps. Two different Sams that he knows of. Heartbeats sliding from steady to irregular.
Dean's body wants to sleep.
But he's been fighting that urge for a long time.
~~~
The world changes again at 8.07am, Dean's been trying to track if there's any significance, any reason to the changes, but they seem to be utterly random.
The pieces that are wrong, the pieces that change are the only way to tell one world from the next. But worlds that aren't that different at all. He has no way to tell how many of them he's moved through, or if he's moving all the time, flickering from one to the next between worlds.
Sam shuffles across the room, head buried in a book, he's muttering under his breath, bare feet endless on the shitty motel carpet.
Safe in his own world, and the fact that he doesn't know a stranger's wearing his brother's face disturbs Dean in a very real way.
~~~
It changes again at 11:58am according to the cracked clock above the television. Which seems like barely any time at all. Sam comes in through the door with a bag that smells like food, he's wearing different clothes and shoes, face tired like he wasn't the one that slept last night.
Dean turns back; stares into the mirror above the sink. Listens to his lost brother grumbling quietly about nothing at all.
Dean's not used to coping with the disorderly clatter of another human being.
He leans on the bathroom door, watches Sam fold himself into a chair, tumble paper wrapped packages out of his bag.
Dean could kill him like this, could reach over his shoulder and pull his jaw sideways and up, one hard crack and that whole long frame would slip down in the chair and crumple on the floor.
He wouldn't have a brother then.
Sam wouldn't see it coming, he'd never see it, and Dean is briefly horrified that maybe in this place he turns his back on people too.
He's become too used to killing things, he thinks. Feeling like you're drowning in a world where nothing wants your life, he's aware that that's wrong.
"Stop hovering," Sam tells him and there's nothing under the irritation.
Dean moves past him, and Sam pushes the paper-wrapped burger across the table without looking at him. Dean wonders if they have some sort of code, some word or expression, something that tells them whether they're really who they're supposed to be.
If they do he won't know it.
He'd know even less if Sam acts out of character.
He doesn't know who Sam is.
He stares at his own hands, and they are his own hands, or at least as far as he knows. How do you check if you're you, or if you're a different you?
"Are you ok?" Sam asks softly, and Dean tenses, waits for the suspicion, the accusation, waits for the quiet, bright morning to turn into threats, and violence.
Dean makes the mistake of looking at him, Sam's expression is soft, but intense.
"You seem...angry."
Dean thinks maybe Sam knows him well enough to see things.
He looks away, struggles for something to say, something right, something that feels like this Dean. And it's never a good day when you're struggling to act like a version of yourself.
"No, I'm good, just one of those days I guess."
Sam laughs, laughs like Dean hit it just right, and nods, elbows loose on the table.
"Yeah."
~~~
Dean doesn't want to sleep, he's gone too long without, but the thought of sleeping in the same room, as this smiling creature who knows him- that he doesn't know back, is impossible.
But his body protests otherwise.
~~~
He dreams of a stranger with flat black eyes, who knows him all the way through-
He dreams of himself, eyes run through with black, hands no more his own than a puppet's, slithering through red-
He dreams that he's being pulled apart piece by piece, and he's not real enough to bleed-
He dreams that his brother loves him-
He dreams that his brother loves him too much-
He dreams that he's the one with eyes full of hair, holding his own blood in while Sam stares down at him, like he doesn't know him, eyes flat and dark and bare-
He can't tell what's a dream and what's a new world, a terrifying world.
But he can't hang on to any of them, for long enough to know for sure.
Sammy-
The necklace burns against his chest.
The dream of his father, long curve of naked back, and click of bullets into a magazine, pushes Dean all the way awake.
~~~
Dean doesn't know if the change happened while he was asleep or when he woke up. The other bed is on the left side of him now. Sam's still a folded shape half under the sheet, long back bare.
He sleeps like a man who's never woken anywhere terrifying, never been dragged up by screaming.
Exactly what sort of a world lets a Winchester sleep like that?
Dean wonders if the other him here sleeps like that too.
He wonders, can't help wondering, what Sam would do if he knew he wasn't sleeping next to his brother. If he knew there was a stranger in the next bed, a stranger who doesn't look at him the way a brother should, but instead wonders, between the contemplation of one crack in the ceiling and the next, what noises he'd make, if Dean slipped across the room and slid in beside him.
Ruined the softness of his mouth....
It's wrong in some way, but not in any way he can make sense of, not in any way Dean can feel for himself.
He wonders if it matters.
He falls asleep to the sound of Sam breathing.
~~~
The next morning they get up and instead of the Impala there's a dark blue truck, Sam slides into the passenger seat like he's been riding there his whole life, and maybe he has.
He already has the paper open, scanning the obituaries, the local news stories with a frown.
Dean wonders how long he'll keep falling, before he ends up back where he started.
Before he ends up home.
It's not a comforting thought.
"Fifth disappearance in as many weeks," Sam says around the plastic length of a pen, puts his boot on the door when Dean turns onto the road. Doesn't look at him, doesn't give any sign that everything is wrong.
The day drags on, this world longer and warmer the more he stays in it. Long enough to hunt, to find the menacing tower of a warehouse and a girl, and a monster.
Dean feels like he's just been waiting for a chance.
Adrenaline fed by the smell of blood and screaming.
He leaves Sam in the room that smells like spilled human being, to chase the pale thing, a fragile collection of wet bones and skin. Dean knows when he's predator and when he's prey. Because if anything saves your life, it's knowing what you can kill.
Only one of them makes it back, Dean leaves a trail of white and red and glittering pieces of bone all the way back.
Sam's waiting by the car, furious and vibrant, and then horrified as Dean draws closer.
His huge coat is wrapped round the girl, who looks at Dean's hands and his face, and hides her own in Sam's shirt.
He'll make sure she's safe later, make sure she's still real, and if she's not, he'll kill her.
Sam looks at him, really looks at him and now there's a red line of suspicion in his face. It's the first time Sam's looked at him like that, and Dean wonders, in the bite of cold wind that dries the blood tacked to his face, what he did.
And just like that everything melts away-
~~~
The wind on Dean's face shivers over the skin and he can taste smoke on the air.
He can tell he's shifted again without turning around. He grits his teeth and does it anyway.
The car's ten feet back, resting on the road with her engine running. She looks like she's been ploughed through a field, and barely come out the other side.
Sam's nowhere to be seen.
Dean doesn't know if he's gone, dead or if he just never was.
He's not sure which one bothers him most.
Because Sam is clearly some sort of...constant.
Like his world is wrong in some way, for not having a Sam.
Which is a pretty fucked up conclusion to come to, considering he's only known him...hell Dean doesn't know him at all.
And how does time move when you're sliding through universes anyway?
He lifts a hand, and finds the press of bone and beads under his skin.
He thinks about calling Sam's name, but instead he just stands there in silence.
He gets back in the car and he drives, drives away from the wet smell of death and the dark clouds on the horizon. Aware for the first time that there are more than enough brittle dead world's to go around.
~~~
Five hours after sunset Sam's asleep in the backseat, long body contorted to fit the space, hair completely obscuring his face.
The smell of death is gone.
Dean breathes something he thinks is relief.
He didn't notice the change that time, and it unnerves him, that he can be falling through worlds and not even notice.
He's starting to feel like a parasite, invading his own lives.
He doesn't know what he's doing, or why, he doesn't know how to stop.
~~~
When the sun rises Sam is in the passenger seat.
Though it's not the same Sam, the hair is different, the boots are different, but it's still Sam.
Every damn world, the same slide of length and earnestness. The same hair, the same stupid guileless expression that looks at him like he's-
Dean's hands twist on the wheel, he grinds his teeth at the back.
He thinks maybe if Sam was more like him it would be easier to believe.
"Thirteen miles west," Sam doesn't look up from the passenger seat, one hand hooked over his knee the other tracing across the map in quick, competent movements. Though Dean shouldn't be surprised, his father wouldn't have raised kids any other way. But there are a million ways that Sam isn't him, that Sam isn't even close to him, that mess of hair that it's amazing he can fucking see through.
He turns his head and raises his eyebrows at him, a curious, relaxed gesture that's utterly devoid of suspicion. He should be suspicious, but he trusts Dean. He doesn't know any different, doesn't suspect any different.
Dean's never trusted anyone, not even his father, not after-
Trust gets you killed.
~~~
The next motel they stop at is a dark hollow space in the world, and Sam is a quiet, thin shadow. Dean knows that look, he's seen it enough times to know what it looks like on every face.
And he knows why, knows who.
John Winchester haunts the lot like he has nowhere else to be, and Dean watches him from the back of the room, through the curtains, like he's something evil come to ruin them.
Maybe he is?
Dean doesn't know what his agenda is here, doesn't know if he's the same John Winchester. The same man with the same twisted-
Dean stays back, stays back no matter how many times those eyes track him, fall on him and watch him.
Dean thinks that maybe he'll know his own son and call him on it.
But then- Dean is his son.
Dean stares at his guns, stares at the table until his father's boots have made their way back past the window again.
Then he very carefully loads them all.
He killed him once, if he has to, he can kill him again.
~~~
In the next change Dean thinks he dies...or the changes between universes are so close to the same that he stays dying, and he doesn't know how. The important piece of the puzzle lost between two world's, left for only one of those Dean's to know, not for him.
He can't get up, his hands are skidding in red, painting it everywhere and there's nowhere to go, no way to move away, but Dean refuses to be eaten, watching the over-bright swing of a dusty light bulb, and hearing the heavy thud of boots.
He doesn't have enough breath left to protest when there are hands, sliding on the red, then over him, over his, and pushing down until he makes a sound through his teeth that's bad, so fucking bad.
Wave of hair that Dean think's he's starting to know, stupid fucking haircut that makes no sense.
"Sam," he says, because he can, and it sounds strange in his mouth, alien and wrong, never said it before, but he relaxes without meaning to, lets Sam's hands keep his insides in, trusts Sam not to let him die on the grubby floor, and doesn't know why.
There's blood in his throat, and over his hands, and he can't breathe without coughing up half of it first, and it feels like his ribs want to come too.
"Dean, god damn it, Dean stay with me."
Dean knows that hard-edged demand. That certainty that Dean could do better, that he is better.
Daring him to be a disappointment.
Sam sounds exactly like his father.
He coughs blood and laughter, not sure which one hurts most.
Sam is his brother.
He thinks he dies-
~~~
He surges upright, sheets falling to his lap.
The room is dark but he picks out shapes, lines. Trying to catch his breath, when his chest still remembers what it feels like to die.
"Dean?"
Sam's a dark shape, folded at the end of the bed.
Dean doesn't twitch back away from him, doesn't slide his hands free of the sheets so they're in a better position to defend himself.
He just sits there.
"Dean you ok?"
He's breathing like he's been sprinting, hands damp and tight in the sheets. But he can take a breath, a full, deep breath.
"Yeah," he says simply.
Sam looks harder, like he doesn't quite believe him, or like he doesn't want to believe him, and Dean doesn't understand that, so he leaves it alone.
Sam's more familiar now than he has any right to be.
But Dean can't get that to jar like he thinks it should.
They sit like that for a long time.
And then Sam touches him. Slides a hand over his own in a way he's clearly, awkwardly unused to.
Dean's fingers twitch.
Sam's hand is warm, and the press of his fingers is somewhere past comrade, somewhere that Dean has always connected to adrenaline, and heat, and the wet, heavy conflict of sex. He stares at the fingers on his own for a long second, then slips free of them, drags himself into a more comfortable position.
But Sam doesn't pull back, he stays where he is, and Dean's shifting has brought them face to face, and there's something conflicted, and intent about his expression.
If Sam were anyone else, Dean would think he was going to kiss him.
But then he does.
Dean stills under the touch, brief, warm against his mouth, before Sam takes it away, pulls it away.
"Jesus," he says shakily, like he can't quite believe that he dared.
Dean frowns at him.
"I'm sorry," rasp of a voice, and in a quiet creak of springs, Sam is gone.
~~~
Dean decides that it's a fluke.
You live in places that are fucked up for long enough, the rules start to blur.
~~~
Only it's not.
A scatter of worlds later there's a Sam that wears the same expression, an expression that becomes more real, the colder the night gets.
Dean missed the day, missed whatever set that expression to anger and drinking, but he does nothing to stop it, and that seems to make it worse.
Dean doesn't know Sam well enough to tell him to stop.
He's not a part of the world, he's just passing through.
This isn't his life.
It's not his life on the angry silent walk back to the motel, not his life while the clock ticks and clicks overhead, and Sam gets quieter, and angrier, and more complicated.
What the fuck is he supposed to do?
Sam tastes like cheap beer, and anger, and the broken, ragged pieces of his own courage.
Dean kisses him back, takes advantage of someone else's brother. Digs his fingers into Sam's long, cold hair and holds it. Holds him there, kisses back hard enough to make Sam's mouth red, gets shuddering startled, relieved noises against the cold skin of his cheek and thinks maybe he's fucking this universe up for whoever comes back.
Fucking it up for good.
But it's been a long time.
~~~
He starts noticing that expression more often.
Sam hides it well, and sometimes it isn't there at all.
But mostly it is.
~~~
The next Sam points a gun at him.
Straight between his eyes like he's appeared in the motel doorway like a ghost.
Dean doesn't move for a long second, judging the likelihood of dying like this.
This Sam looks thin, broken, and hollow.
"You're dead," he says simply. Like he's explaining something that might be hard to understand. Though there's a low, horrified quality to the words.
Which answers the question of whether Dean's just taking someone else's place, if he's invading a space where a Dean should belong.
Because clearly there's no Dean here, not any more.
Dean takes the gun off of him.
He can't not punish him for it, that's not how it works. Shoulderblades slammed into the doorframe, and he's too thin under his clothes.
He doesn't resist.
His jaw feels fragile under Dean's hand. Like he could break it, with just an ounce too much pressure.
And Dean does something he hasn't done for an endless number of changes.
He tells the truth.
Sam stays still for a long time, face drifting between blank and confused, too fast to follow.
"What do you want?" he asks at last, and Dean shakes his head because he doesn't know, he doesn't want anything, he's just falling. But that's almost impossible to explain.
Sam turns his head, and Dean can't help but remember the dark, and the brother who kissed him first, one haunted, lost gesture, face conflicted.
He wonders if the other Dean will ever know.
If Sam will ever tell.
This Sam doesn't look at him like that, he looks at him in a way that's so needy it hurts and Dean doesn't know how to process that as a brother, doesn't know what it is to be needed like that.
He's never had to take care of anyone for longer than a job, a hunt, a salvage.
So he processes it the only way he knows how.
The hard edge of the door frame creaks under Sam's back, when Dean presses him into it, when he kisses the soft, cold edge of Sam's mouth.
Sam goes very still, draws a breath through his nose.
Dean doesn't know whether he'll say yes, or no. Doesn't know, but takes a chance, because clearly Sam is prepared to.
Sam makes a noise in his throat, half surprise and half pain, then relaxes. Like he'll do anything Dean asks, anything at all.
Dean knows that's fucked up, he knows it's wrong in a way that's taking advantage, taking something that isn't his. But when Sam makes a quiet, lost noise, and opens under his mouth, it doesn't feel wrong.
At least not to him.
Sam says yes.
Dean pulls him away from the doorframe, and into the middle of the room, fingers digging under his coat, and shirt. Sam's skin shifts and twitches under his fingers, under his nails. Dean can't help it, can't help that sliver of roughness.
He shouldn't know him this well, shouldn't have picked up so much of Sam's curious body language.
He knows the way Sam smells, the way he moves, knows what the smothered inhale means when Dean unbuckles his belt, and strips it free. Knows that when he tugs open button and zipper, and Sam stills, and swallows, it's not entirely arousal.
Dean should feel bad about that.
But long hands rise, uncertainly, slide his shirt up his body in one slow movement, Sam breaks away, long enough to pull it over his head.
He's awkward, learning the shape of Dean, while Dean fists hands in his hair and kisses him like he needs it. And he doesn't know if he does or not. He doesn't know anything any more.
Sam's awkward but not unwilling, or at least not unwilling enough to stop.
Not unwilling enough to stop touching, and Dean doesn't know whether he's playing on grief, or something else, something different that he doesn't have any words for.
Either way Sam lets him, follows where he pushes, lets him strip him down, and steer him over, and down onto the bed.
He lets Dean press him down with hands and thighs. Let's him lay mouth and teeth across every inch of his skin, while his breath shudders out in long waves.
Then Sam turns over, legs sliding where Dean pushes them. When Dean finally presses into him he makes a thick, half-lost noise.
Sam stops letting him then, and joins in, pushes back and breathes so damn hard, whispers Dean's name, over and over, like he needs to believe it.
Dean lays hands on the solid length of his back, digs his fingers in and pushes.
Sam comes before Dean does, makes guilty breathless noises into the pillow when Dean follows him. Pushes him all the way down into the bed, with weight and sensation.
The sweat is cooling on Sam's back when Dean slides free, slowly, carefully, but Sam still makes a noise, lost in his own arm.
Dean shifts back, runs a hand through his hair.
He wonders exactly how wrong it is, to fuck your own brother. Even one you don't know.
Sam's fingers stay on his arm, curved into the muscle like he can't let go, even when Dean moves, sits up in a tangle of sheet, and stares at the flat muddy carpet.
"Why do you love me?" Dean asks roughly. The sheets make a soft, loose noise when Sam shifts behind him, and every inch of Dean's back tenses, vertebrae ratching together like beads on a rosary. But he doesn't turn.
Sam doesn't touch him.
"You're my brother," Sam says simply, which is pretty fucked up considering what they've just done, what Sam let him do.
Dean makes a dismissive noise in his throat, because it doesn't mean anything to him, nothing at all.
"I'm not your brother."
Sam does touch him then, lays a hand on his shoulder like some sort of fucked up benediction.
"You'll always be my brother, no matter where you come from."
Dean swallows, and refuses to let that flare of guilt through his teeth.
"Maybe I don't want to be your brother," he says fiercely.
There's an endless silence, and then Sam makes a noise, something quiet and certain.
"I'll take that over nothing," he says, and the words should sound hollow, they should sound broken and empty, because this isn't- this is not the sort of thing you do to your brother.
But instead, it just sounds like please.
"Dean?" Sam's hand moves, fingertips tracing the hard lines of scar tissue, bullet wounds, and ragged puncture marks.
His hand finally comes to rest on the back of Dean's neck, strong fingers that pull, endlessly, until Sam can press his forehead against his own.
"Stay with me."
And no one has ever asked him that before.
Dean raises a hand, hooks it round the end of the necklace.
The string of wood and bone comes apart in his hands.
Fandom: Supernatural
Rating: NC-17
Pairing: Sam/Dean
Warnings: Incest
Disclaimer: In no way mine or anything to do with me. I own nothing.
Summary: Like his world is wrong in some way, for not having a Sam.
AN: Written for paxlux for Christmas. For the prompt 'crash' and the request for 'plot' I really hope 'this thing rambled itself out' counts as plot, but I managed to finish it for you, before Christmas.
The place is a maze, one smoke-filled corridor leads to another, and Dean's shifting through them at a pace, shoulder slamming into the wall on every turn.
He's not sure how far behind the creature is, but he's not stopping to find out, not when the thing has to smash through every wide doorway, not when it has all the momentum of a truck.
So he keeps going, keeps twisting, sliding down every stairway he finds, with only the barest idea of where he's going.
He knows it's down, all the way down, down to the basement to meet someone who's promised that he can help, and though Dean isn't exactly a hundred percent certain of that he's taking the chance.
He skids past a window, half-buried under medical equipment, and a fall of unhappy blue curtains.
The sky outside is an angry smudged grey, flames curl up high on either side, outlining the rest of the world in a sickly unwelcome light, the fire leaves trails of thicker, harder grey.
Dean slides a hand across the windowsill, and moves on, boots loud on the floor.
The lower he goes the darker it gets, and he's not exactly happy at the prospect of working his way back up again.
But when he drops down to the ground floor he finds the reception area, finds the office.
There's a shape, propped up against the other door, at the end of a long smear of red.
The man he's come to find.
Dean drops to his knees, but the old man isn't getting up again, the mess under his shirt can't be fixed, not by him, and not in a half-collapsed building with the shriek of teeth and fury echoing through the walls.
The floor shakes.
There's nothing Dean can say, but he doesn't have to. The man knows he's finished.
"You must- you must take this." He tugs at something folded inside his coat, a necklace that comes free in a tumble of small shapes, curling over his thin fingers. His hands are shaking, and the damp shock pale skin of his face, tells Dean he doesn't have long.
"What is it?" Dean demands.
The old man coughs, and presses the necklace into Dean's hands. A jumbled mixture of bone and beads, skin-warm and grating together in tiny clicks. Dean wraps his hand around it without thought.
"Escape." The man's expression is a fierce mixture of earnestness and pain, and then both of them melt away, until it's completely utterly flat.
His hands slide from Dean's, fall against the bunched fabric of his coat, and rest there.
Then the whole world explodes, and everything goes black.
~~~
The blackness is shot through with light, a thousand tiny sparkling pinpricks.
It takes Dean a long second to realise he's looking up at the sky. And like that's some sort of trigger, it's suddenly cold, the long deep cold of dirt under his back, and night air in his lungs.
He shifts an arm, finds dirt, grass and the encouragement that his fingers work just fine.
He tries for a hat trick by easing himself to a sit.
It's not fun, every bone in his body protests and his neck twinges painfully. He'd bet money he fell, or was thrown, a long way, but still, he's alive.
Alive is all that matters.
Dragging himself to his feet is an unpleasant collection of sensations, but he doesn't feel sick, though the back of his mouth tastes like blood.
The world is cold, flat and...wrong.
It's quiet and dark as far as the eye can see, nothing is burning. Dean has gotten so used to the world burning, the darkness leaves him uneasy.
He lifts a hand, finds the necklace round his own throat, and for a moment he holds it.
It's a strange weight where no weight has ever been.
But the old man didn't lie. Wherever this is, it isn't where he was.
He lets it drop, and starts back towards the road.
The Impala is canted at an ugly angle just on the grass, starburst hole in the windshield that Dean suspects he went through, and a force impact indent in the front, where he hit something, hit something hard.
Though the road is clear from end to end, no blood or body.
Dean's lucky to be alive.
But that's not the strangest thing about her, aside from the crash damage she's a rich flat black, shiny, there's no sign of the scratches, dents and holes, that he has memorised. She's slippery flat from end to end.
She's also not empty.
Dean's hand goes to the back of his jeans, finds nothing there but the wet edge of his shirt, and the scraped up skin of his back.
Instead of the usual mess Dean has dumped in the passenger seat, there's the long frame of a man. Untidy mess of limbs that Dean can tell, even folded up, skips over six feet and keeps on going. There's a mess of hair over his face, but even through the dim interior Dean can see the trail of blood down his temple.
He's out cold, or faking better than Dean has ever seen.
Dean doesn't know him.
The Impala hasn't looked this good for years.
Maybe that's the answer, maybe-
That's a pretty fucked up maybe.
Dean slides into the car, shoves the stranger against the passenger window and goes through his pockets.
He's carrying more than one ID, so not a job, not a ride...the date...the date's recent. So Dean hasn't, in some messed up mockery of his whole damn life, slipped back in time, to when the Impala was a shiny new toy.
One mystery at a time.
He lets the other man fall back against the seat.
A hunter? It's possible, but he looks too young, too clean, his face is made entirely of smooth edges and soft curves under his hair. Could be a psychic, they've used them before, and they never fail to look fragile under the wrong light. Like they've been filled up wrong, human batteries threaded through with death and secrets. Best to use them up and throw them away, before the demons get inside them, turn them against you.
Dean doesn't trust psychics.
He sits in the drivers seat, hands twisting and clenching on the wheel.
The car clicks and ticks quietly, as it settles, out in the open like this, Dean should feel something, you don't just sit out in the open without something trying to dig in and rip you to pieces.
The world isn't...safe.
But sitting there with the door half-open, and sweat cooling on his back, he can't feel anything but the breeze. Can't smell anything but dirt, and wet grass, and leather.
The stranger in the passenger seat shifts, murmurs his name.
Dean stares at him for a long time, the steady thrum in his head barely loud enough to be a thought.
He pulls the door shut, tries twice to start the car, it bites the third time.
Safe place or not Dean can't stay on the road like this. Being forced to sit still in the middle of nowhere, will shred his nerves to pieces.
There's a steady ache in the back of his neck and shoulder, and one of his arms doesn't feel quite right, fractured maybe?
He'll have to remember not to lean on it, not to let anything grab a hold of it.
Not to let it compromise him.
He pulls on to the road, glass showering over the dash and into the car, as it reluctantly but obediently picks up speed.
Twenty miles down the road. There's a shiver of...something, and the windscreen impossibly, disturbingly, rebuilds itself on a wave.
~~~
Dean stamps on the brake, hard.
The car screech-shudders to a stop, and the man in the passenger seat jerks awake, one hand sliding out to brace himself.
"What is it?"
There's no blood on his face, no indication he was ever in a crash.
Dean's forearm is fine, the solid ache in the back of his neck and shoulder is completely gone.
"Dean?" The man he doesn't know has one hand on the dash, alert, ready.
Dean stares at the windscreen for a heartbeat, shifts under his jacket, testing the bruises that aren't there any more.
"It's nothing," Dean says flatly. "Go back to sleep."
~~~
Dean chooses where to stop, motel half-dark under the hang of a taller building, doesn't say a word when the stranger wakes, shifts against the leather and follows him inside like he has nowhere else to go.
He doesn't resist being slammed into the wall, doesn't resist at all and Dean isn't prepared for that, uses too much force, leaves him wheezing against the cheap plaster, breathing against the edge of Dean's forearm, wide eyes angry, and wary, and confused.
"Who are you?" Dean says tightly, shifts his grip, makes sure.
"Dean," the voice is soft, softer than he expects, considering how much height he has on him. One hand skids along Dean's wrist, testing his hold, but not digging in, not trying to claw himself free. Dean can't tell if that's an honest lack of self-preservation, or a pause before the violence.
"Who are you?" Dean says fiercely, half-tempted to tighten his grip, to push his knuckles up until they're pressed into that long throat, that's giving him nothing.
"What the hell Dean, what-"
Dean slams him into the wall.
"What's your name?!"
The expression twists into something startled.
"Dean?" shove of knuckles through the shirt and into the middle of his chest.
"Name!"
"Sam," the stranger says slowly. "My name is Sam."
"Sam what?"
Flicker of honest confusion on the face, and he quickly, uncertainly licks his lips.
"Sam Winchester."
Dean's hand spasms in his shirt, tight on damp fabric, nails digging into his own palm.
"Who are you?"
Taut pause before the answer, slid out in surprised reluctance.
"I'm your brother."
"I don't have a brother."
"Yes...you do," Sam says stupidly, twitches his head to the side, which seems to be a pointed gesture to let him go. Or at least a protest at being crushed into the wall.
Dean ignores it.
Sam does it again and then frowns, shoulders shifting.
"Are you going to let go of me?" Sam spreads his hands slowly, he has large hands, makes a show of harmlessness. Dean doesn't buy it. If he really is a Winchester, in any shape or form, harmless is the last fucking thing he is.
"Dean?"
Dean lets him down off of the wall. Steps back, but he's fully prepared to put him down if he gives any indication at all-
Sam reads his body language, and folds in on himself, just a fraction.
"I'm not your enemy Dean."
"I don't know what you are," Dean tells him honestly.
He wants to think it's some demonic trick.
~~~
But it's the same in the next change.
~~~
And the next.
~~~
The man is always Sam Winchester.
~~~
Sam Winchester-
A truck slides past in a roar of sound and water droplets, cab shifting from black to white in a shiver, that leaves Dean staring into the distance after it. Wondering if anyone else in the world is falling too.
The necklace is warm against his skin and he knows its a weakness leaving it on. He knows better than this. Knows better than to trust any magical object without questioning, without wondering
But there are children playing in the street.
It's been a long time since Dean's seen that.
He watches them for as long as he can get away with, then crosses and slides back into the semi-darkness of the motel.
Sam is folded over his laptop, a modern computer for a modern world, that's never had to worry about going out after dark.
Dean sits down opposite him.
"I'm not who you think I am," he says calmly.
Sam gives him a look. All calm indulgence, but his shoulder's twitch together, fingers shifting on his knee. If he doesn't like whatever Dean says next he'll try and put him down.
This Dean understands.
"Who are you?"
"I'm Dean Winchester."
This Sam is quicker than the one before, harder. He knows how to hurt things, and though there's a faint hesitation in his eyes Dean knows he'll do it. If he has to.
But Dean has been hurting things for a long time.
He has Sam's hand against the wood, twisted to one side. Dean presses against the bone and Sam tests the hold, tests his strength.
"Don't make me break your wrist, I've done it before."
Sam's arm settles, though the rest of him is still wound up tight.
His skin is warm.
"My name is Dean Winchester, but I'm not this Dean Winchester. I've been slipping through different variations of the world for four days now."
Sam's hand shifts under his own, and Dean judges his expression ruthlessly before letting it go.
"Slipping?"
"Find me a better word and I'll use it, the world just...changes." Dean shrugs.
Sam tips his head back.
"Tell me something-"
"That only he would know? It won't work," Dean says flatly. "We've tried this before, I didn't grow up with you, or in the same places, our histories are different. I'm not your brother."
Sam makes a noise, like he doesn't quite believe him.
"Where are you from?" Sam asks quietly.
"Somewhere worse," Dean says. "Now, since you've been Sam Winchester in five different versions of the world I'm going to work on the assumption that you are. If I come to regret that assumption so will you."
Sam's looking at him, looking at him hard, like he's trying to find differences.
Dean's already done that. Stripped down in front of the mirror, staring at every scar and line of flesh. Dean thinks he can't be both himself and the Dean that this Sam knows. He can't be both.
He's lived a hard fucking life and he has too many scars.
One of them has to be wrong.
But Sam clearly doesn't find anything.
"You have this-" Dean pushes the laptop across the table. "And this." The stack of books follows it. "Which gives me some idea of what you are, so tell me what the hell is going on.
Sam stares at him for a long second, and Dean is fully prepared to be insistent if he asks any more questions. But all he gets is a long, slow nod.
"The many world's hypothesis," Sam's staring at him, staring at him like maybe he's a thing, and Dean is half tempted to make him bleed for it.
"Make sense," he says simply.
"Parallel universes," Sam says softly, and he frowns, a soft frown that doesn't seem to really mean it.
"Science fiction?" Dean says dubiously.
"No-" Sam says carefully. "No, actually, a considerable number of scientists now believe that parallel universe have to exist, in order for the universe to work."
"So I'm falling through worlds?" Dean's hand twitches, unconsciously, towards his throat and Sam catches the movement. He's more observant than the stupid haircut would suggest.
"What is that?"
Sam reaches a hand out, and Dean-
"Don't touch it."
Sam pulls his hand back, leaves it on the table, and struggles not to look hurt.
"It's doing it somehow and I need to know why."
"Do you have any idea what it is? What mythology I mean."
"There are no markings."
"Are you sure?"
Dean stares at him hard.
"I'm sure," he says acidly, and Sam's expression falls in the middle, a soft, bright moment of surprise.
"I have to have something to look up."
Dean breathes, quiet and still, then draws the thing out onto the material of his t-shirt. Sam leans into the light, and stares at it, after a beat Dean turns it over.
Sam slides a pencil out of the pages of one of the books and carefully makes a sketch on the corner of the page.
"I'll see what I can find out."
"Better make it quick, I don't stay for long."
Sam raises his head, tilts an eyebrow at him.
"And then Dean comes back?"
He doesn't know, he really doesn't know. So he says nothing at all.
The pencil taps on the open page, over and over.
"So you don't have a brother in the world you come from, really?" Sam looks hurt, hurt at the universe for denying him existence, which Dean has no idea how to process. The thought that this boy would even want to live in the place he's come from.
"No."
"So none of the stuff with...none of the stuff with me ever happened." Sam's hiding something, something about him, about them. But Dean thinks it's personal stuff, not stuff he should care about, not stuff that's important, not to him.
Let him think Dean cares about his secrets if he wants to.
"There was no you," Dean says flatly, because he doesn't care about whatever history they have in this world, it's not important.
There was no him, no happy children, no long stretches of road clear of dead bodies and burning wreckage.
And he wonders if this world even has-
"Do we..." Dean tries to think of a way to ask if they kill monsters, without sounding like a fucking lunatic. Because so far he hasn't seen any evidence that the world is infested, he hasn't even seen a dead body.
He lays his fingers on the table, watches them turn white on the wood, because the thought of a world with no- with none of that, is too strange to believe in.
Sam waits for him, patiently, reading things in his face that he doesn't want to give away.
"Are there monsters?"
Sam breathes out, wet relief and sympathy.
"Yeah," he says simply. "There are monsters."
Dean grits his teeth and nods.
"You really don't have a brother?"
Dean barely has himself.
~~~
The Sam who knows him disappears, leaving Dean with a half-finished search, a handful of drawings which vanish with the world, and the warm, still unexplained press of beads on skin.
He spends the night staring at the ceiling, while Sam sleeps. Two different Sams that he knows of. Heartbeats sliding from steady to irregular.
Dean's body wants to sleep.
But he's been fighting that urge for a long time.
~~~
The world changes again at 8.07am, Dean's been trying to track if there's any significance, any reason to the changes, but they seem to be utterly random.
The pieces that are wrong, the pieces that change are the only way to tell one world from the next. But worlds that aren't that different at all. He has no way to tell how many of them he's moved through, or if he's moving all the time, flickering from one to the next between worlds.
Sam shuffles across the room, head buried in a book, he's muttering under his breath, bare feet endless on the shitty motel carpet.
Safe in his own world, and the fact that he doesn't know a stranger's wearing his brother's face disturbs Dean in a very real way.
~~~
It changes again at 11:58am according to the cracked clock above the television. Which seems like barely any time at all. Sam comes in through the door with a bag that smells like food, he's wearing different clothes and shoes, face tired like he wasn't the one that slept last night.
Dean turns back; stares into the mirror above the sink. Listens to his lost brother grumbling quietly about nothing at all.
Dean's not used to coping with the disorderly clatter of another human being.
He leans on the bathroom door, watches Sam fold himself into a chair, tumble paper wrapped packages out of his bag.
Dean could kill him like this, could reach over his shoulder and pull his jaw sideways and up, one hard crack and that whole long frame would slip down in the chair and crumple on the floor.
He wouldn't have a brother then.
Sam wouldn't see it coming, he'd never see it, and Dean is briefly horrified that maybe in this place he turns his back on people too.
He's become too used to killing things, he thinks. Feeling like you're drowning in a world where nothing wants your life, he's aware that that's wrong.
"Stop hovering," Sam tells him and there's nothing under the irritation.
Dean moves past him, and Sam pushes the paper-wrapped burger across the table without looking at him. Dean wonders if they have some sort of code, some word or expression, something that tells them whether they're really who they're supposed to be.
If they do he won't know it.
He'd know even less if Sam acts out of character.
He doesn't know who Sam is.
He stares at his own hands, and they are his own hands, or at least as far as he knows. How do you check if you're you, or if you're a different you?
"Are you ok?" Sam asks softly, and Dean tenses, waits for the suspicion, the accusation, waits for the quiet, bright morning to turn into threats, and violence.
Dean makes the mistake of looking at him, Sam's expression is soft, but intense.
"You seem...angry."
Dean thinks maybe Sam knows him well enough to see things.
He looks away, struggles for something to say, something right, something that feels like this Dean. And it's never a good day when you're struggling to act like a version of yourself.
"No, I'm good, just one of those days I guess."
Sam laughs, laughs like Dean hit it just right, and nods, elbows loose on the table.
"Yeah."
~~~
Dean doesn't want to sleep, he's gone too long without, but the thought of sleeping in the same room, as this smiling creature who knows him- that he doesn't know back, is impossible.
But his body protests otherwise.
~~~
He dreams of a stranger with flat black eyes, who knows him all the way through-
He dreams of himself, eyes run through with black, hands no more his own than a puppet's, slithering through red-
He dreams that he's being pulled apart piece by piece, and he's not real enough to bleed-
He dreams that his brother loves him-
He dreams that his brother loves him too much-
He dreams that he's the one with eyes full of hair, holding his own blood in while Sam stares down at him, like he doesn't know him, eyes flat and dark and bare-
He can't tell what's a dream and what's a new world, a terrifying world.
But he can't hang on to any of them, for long enough to know for sure.
Sammy-
The necklace burns against his chest.
The dream of his father, long curve of naked back, and click of bullets into a magazine, pushes Dean all the way awake.
~~~
Dean doesn't know if the change happened while he was asleep or when he woke up. The other bed is on the left side of him now. Sam's still a folded shape half under the sheet, long back bare.
He sleeps like a man who's never woken anywhere terrifying, never been dragged up by screaming.
Exactly what sort of a world lets a Winchester sleep like that?
Dean wonders if the other him here sleeps like that too.
He wonders, can't help wondering, what Sam would do if he knew he wasn't sleeping next to his brother. If he knew there was a stranger in the next bed, a stranger who doesn't look at him the way a brother should, but instead wonders, between the contemplation of one crack in the ceiling and the next, what noises he'd make, if Dean slipped across the room and slid in beside him.
Ruined the softness of his mouth....
It's wrong in some way, but not in any way he can make sense of, not in any way Dean can feel for himself.
He wonders if it matters.
He falls asleep to the sound of Sam breathing.
~~~
The next morning they get up and instead of the Impala there's a dark blue truck, Sam slides into the passenger seat like he's been riding there his whole life, and maybe he has.
He already has the paper open, scanning the obituaries, the local news stories with a frown.
Dean wonders how long he'll keep falling, before he ends up back where he started.
Before he ends up home.
It's not a comforting thought.
"Fifth disappearance in as many weeks," Sam says around the plastic length of a pen, puts his boot on the door when Dean turns onto the road. Doesn't look at him, doesn't give any sign that everything is wrong.
The day drags on, this world longer and warmer the more he stays in it. Long enough to hunt, to find the menacing tower of a warehouse and a girl, and a monster.
Dean feels like he's just been waiting for a chance.
Adrenaline fed by the smell of blood and screaming.
He leaves Sam in the room that smells like spilled human being, to chase the pale thing, a fragile collection of wet bones and skin. Dean knows when he's predator and when he's prey. Because if anything saves your life, it's knowing what you can kill.
Only one of them makes it back, Dean leaves a trail of white and red and glittering pieces of bone all the way back.
Sam's waiting by the car, furious and vibrant, and then horrified as Dean draws closer.
His huge coat is wrapped round the girl, who looks at Dean's hands and his face, and hides her own in Sam's shirt.
He'll make sure she's safe later, make sure she's still real, and if she's not, he'll kill her.
Sam looks at him, really looks at him and now there's a red line of suspicion in his face. It's the first time Sam's looked at him like that, and Dean wonders, in the bite of cold wind that dries the blood tacked to his face, what he did.
And just like that everything melts away-
~~~
The wind on Dean's face shivers over the skin and he can taste smoke on the air.
He can tell he's shifted again without turning around. He grits his teeth and does it anyway.
The car's ten feet back, resting on the road with her engine running. She looks like she's been ploughed through a field, and barely come out the other side.
Sam's nowhere to be seen.
Dean doesn't know if he's gone, dead or if he just never was.
He's not sure which one bothers him most.
Because Sam is clearly some sort of...constant.
Like his world is wrong in some way, for not having a Sam.
Which is a pretty fucked up conclusion to come to, considering he's only known him...hell Dean doesn't know him at all.
And how does time move when you're sliding through universes anyway?
He lifts a hand, and finds the press of bone and beads under his skin.
He thinks about calling Sam's name, but instead he just stands there in silence.
He gets back in the car and he drives, drives away from the wet smell of death and the dark clouds on the horizon. Aware for the first time that there are more than enough brittle dead world's to go around.
~~~
Five hours after sunset Sam's asleep in the backseat, long body contorted to fit the space, hair completely obscuring his face.
The smell of death is gone.
Dean breathes something he thinks is relief.
He didn't notice the change that time, and it unnerves him, that he can be falling through worlds and not even notice.
He's starting to feel like a parasite, invading his own lives.
He doesn't know what he's doing, or why, he doesn't know how to stop.
~~~
When the sun rises Sam is in the passenger seat.
Though it's not the same Sam, the hair is different, the boots are different, but it's still Sam.
Every damn world, the same slide of length and earnestness. The same hair, the same stupid guileless expression that looks at him like he's-
Dean's hands twist on the wheel, he grinds his teeth at the back.
He thinks maybe if Sam was more like him it would be easier to believe.
"Thirteen miles west," Sam doesn't look up from the passenger seat, one hand hooked over his knee the other tracing across the map in quick, competent movements. Though Dean shouldn't be surprised, his father wouldn't have raised kids any other way. But there are a million ways that Sam isn't him, that Sam isn't even close to him, that mess of hair that it's amazing he can fucking see through.
He turns his head and raises his eyebrows at him, a curious, relaxed gesture that's utterly devoid of suspicion. He should be suspicious, but he trusts Dean. He doesn't know any different, doesn't suspect any different.
Dean's never trusted anyone, not even his father, not after-
Trust gets you killed.
~~~
The next motel they stop at is a dark hollow space in the world, and Sam is a quiet, thin shadow. Dean knows that look, he's seen it enough times to know what it looks like on every face.
And he knows why, knows who.
John Winchester haunts the lot like he has nowhere else to be, and Dean watches him from the back of the room, through the curtains, like he's something evil come to ruin them.
Maybe he is?
Dean doesn't know what his agenda is here, doesn't know if he's the same John Winchester. The same man with the same twisted-
Dean stays back, stays back no matter how many times those eyes track him, fall on him and watch him.
Dean thinks that maybe he'll know his own son and call him on it.
But then- Dean is his son.
Dean stares at his guns, stares at the table until his father's boots have made their way back past the window again.
Then he very carefully loads them all.
He killed him once, if he has to, he can kill him again.
~~~
In the next change Dean thinks he dies...or the changes between universes are so close to the same that he stays dying, and he doesn't know how. The important piece of the puzzle lost between two world's, left for only one of those Dean's to know, not for him.
He can't get up, his hands are skidding in red, painting it everywhere and there's nowhere to go, no way to move away, but Dean refuses to be eaten, watching the over-bright swing of a dusty light bulb, and hearing the heavy thud of boots.
He doesn't have enough breath left to protest when there are hands, sliding on the red, then over him, over his, and pushing down until he makes a sound through his teeth that's bad, so fucking bad.
Wave of hair that Dean think's he's starting to know, stupid fucking haircut that makes no sense.
"Sam," he says, because he can, and it sounds strange in his mouth, alien and wrong, never said it before, but he relaxes without meaning to, lets Sam's hands keep his insides in, trusts Sam not to let him die on the grubby floor, and doesn't know why.
There's blood in his throat, and over his hands, and he can't breathe without coughing up half of it first, and it feels like his ribs want to come too.
"Dean, god damn it, Dean stay with me."
Dean knows that hard-edged demand. That certainty that Dean could do better, that he is better.
Daring him to be a disappointment.
Sam sounds exactly like his father.
He coughs blood and laughter, not sure which one hurts most.
Sam is his brother.
He thinks he dies-
~~~
He surges upright, sheets falling to his lap.
The room is dark but he picks out shapes, lines. Trying to catch his breath, when his chest still remembers what it feels like to die.
"Dean?"
Sam's a dark shape, folded at the end of the bed.
Dean doesn't twitch back away from him, doesn't slide his hands free of the sheets so they're in a better position to defend himself.
He just sits there.
"Dean you ok?"
He's breathing like he's been sprinting, hands damp and tight in the sheets. But he can take a breath, a full, deep breath.
"Yeah," he says simply.
Sam looks harder, like he doesn't quite believe him, or like he doesn't want to believe him, and Dean doesn't understand that, so he leaves it alone.
Sam's more familiar now than he has any right to be.
But Dean can't get that to jar like he thinks it should.
They sit like that for a long time.
And then Sam touches him. Slides a hand over his own in a way he's clearly, awkwardly unused to.
Dean's fingers twitch.
Sam's hand is warm, and the press of his fingers is somewhere past comrade, somewhere that Dean has always connected to adrenaline, and heat, and the wet, heavy conflict of sex. He stares at the fingers on his own for a long second, then slips free of them, drags himself into a more comfortable position.
But Sam doesn't pull back, he stays where he is, and Dean's shifting has brought them face to face, and there's something conflicted, and intent about his expression.
If Sam were anyone else, Dean would think he was going to kiss him.
But then he does.
Dean stills under the touch, brief, warm against his mouth, before Sam takes it away, pulls it away.
"Jesus," he says shakily, like he can't quite believe that he dared.
Dean frowns at him.
"I'm sorry," rasp of a voice, and in a quiet creak of springs, Sam is gone.
~~~
Dean decides that it's a fluke.
You live in places that are fucked up for long enough, the rules start to blur.
~~~
Only it's not.
A scatter of worlds later there's a Sam that wears the same expression, an expression that becomes more real, the colder the night gets.
Dean missed the day, missed whatever set that expression to anger and drinking, but he does nothing to stop it, and that seems to make it worse.
Dean doesn't know Sam well enough to tell him to stop.
He's not a part of the world, he's just passing through.
This isn't his life.
It's not his life on the angry silent walk back to the motel, not his life while the clock ticks and clicks overhead, and Sam gets quieter, and angrier, and more complicated.
What the fuck is he supposed to do?
Sam tastes like cheap beer, and anger, and the broken, ragged pieces of his own courage.
Dean kisses him back, takes advantage of someone else's brother. Digs his fingers into Sam's long, cold hair and holds it. Holds him there, kisses back hard enough to make Sam's mouth red, gets shuddering startled, relieved noises against the cold skin of his cheek and thinks maybe he's fucking this universe up for whoever comes back.
Fucking it up for good.
But it's been a long time.
~~~
He starts noticing that expression more often.
Sam hides it well, and sometimes it isn't there at all.
But mostly it is.
~~~
The next Sam points a gun at him.
Straight between his eyes like he's appeared in the motel doorway like a ghost.
Dean doesn't move for a long second, judging the likelihood of dying like this.
This Sam looks thin, broken, and hollow.
"You're dead," he says simply. Like he's explaining something that might be hard to understand. Though there's a low, horrified quality to the words.
Which answers the question of whether Dean's just taking someone else's place, if he's invading a space where a Dean should belong.
Because clearly there's no Dean here, not any more.
Dean takes the gun off of him.
He can't not punish him for it, that's not how it works. Shoulderblades slammed into the doorframe, and he's too thin under his clothes.
He doesn't resist.
His jaw feels fragile under Dean's hand. Like he could break it, with just an ounce too much pressure.
And Dean does something he hasn't done for an endless number of changes.
He tells the truth.
Sam stays still for a long time, face drifting between blank and confused, too fast to follow.
"What do you want?" he asks at last, and Dean shakes his head because he doesn't know, he doesn't want anything, he's just falling. But that's almost impossible to explain.
Sam turns his head, and Dean can't help but remember the dark, and the brother who kissed him first, one haunted, lost gesture, face conflicted.
He wonders if the other Dean will ever know.
If Sam will ever tell.
This Sam doesn't look at him like that, he looks at him in a way that's so needy it hurts and Dean doesn't know how to process that as a brother, doesn't know what it is to be needed like that.
He's never had to take care of anyone for longer than a job, a hunt, a salvage.
So he processes it the only way he knows how.
The hard edge of the door frame creaks under Sam's back, when Dean presses him into it, when he kisses the soft, cold edge of Sam's mouth.
Sam goes very still, draws a breath through his nose.
Dean doesn't know whether he'll say yes, or no. Doesn't know, but takes a chance, because clearly Sam is prepared to.
Sam makes a noise in his throat, half surprise and half pain, then relaxes. Like he'll do anything Dean asks, anything at all.
Dean knows that's fucked up, he knows it's wrong in a way that's taking advantage, taking something that isn't his. But when Sam makes a quiet, lost noise, and opens under his mouth, it doesn't feel wrong.
At least not to him.
Sam says yes.
Dean pulls him away from the doorframe, and into the middle of the room, fingers digging under his coat, and shirt. Sam's skin shifts and twitches under his fingers, under his nails. Dean can't help it, can't help that sliver of roughness.
He shouldn't know him this well, shouldn't have picked up so much of Sam's curious body language.
He knows the way Sam smells, the way he moves, knows what the smothered inhale means when Dean unbuckles his belt, and strips it free. Knows that when he tugs open button and zipper, and Sam stills, and swallows, it's not entirely arousal.
Dean should feel bad about that.
But long hands rise, uncertainly, slide his shirt up his body in one slow movement, Sam breaks away, long enough to pull it over his head.
He's awkward, learning the shape of Dean, while Dean fists hands in his hair and kisses him like he needs it. And he doesn't know if he does or not. He doesn't know anything any more.
Sam's awkward but not unwilling, or at least not unwilling enough to stop.
Not unwilling enough to stop touching, and Dean doesn't know whether he's playing on grief, or something else, something different that he doesn't have any words for.
Either way Sam lets him, follows where he pushes, lets him strip him down, and steer him over, and down onto the bed.
He lets Dean press him down with hands and thighs. Let's him lay mouth and teeth across every inch of his skin, while his breath shudders out in long waves.
Then Sam turns over, legs sliding where Dean pushes them. When Dean finally presses into him he makes a thick, half-lost noise.
Sam stops letting him then, and joins in, pushes back and breathes so damn hard, whispers Dean's name, over and over, like he needs to believe it.
Dean lays hands on the solid length of his back, digs his fingers in and pushes.
Sam comes before Dean does, makes guilty breathless noises into the pillow when Dean follows him. Pushes him all the way down into the bed, with weight and sensation.
The sweat is cooling on Sam's back when Dean slides free, slowly, carefully, but Sam still makes a noise, lost in his own arm.
Dean shifts back, runs a hand through his hair.
He wonders exactly how wrong it is, to fuck your own brother. Even one you don't know.
Sam's fingers stay on his arm, curved into the muscle like he can't let go, even when Dean moves, sits up in a tangle of sheet, and stares at the flat muddy carpet.
"Why do you love me?" Dean asks roughly. The sheets make a soft, loose noise when Sam shifts behind him, and every inch of Dean's back tenses, vertebrae ratching together like beads on a rosary. But he doesn't turn.
Sam doesn't touch him.
"You're my brother," Sam says simply, which is pretty fucked up considering what they've just done, what Sam let him do.
Dean makes a dismissive noise in his throat, because it doesn't mean anything to him, nothing at all.
"I'm not your brother."
Sam does touch him then, lays a hand on his shoulder like some sort of fucked up benediction.
"You'll always be my brother, no matter where you come from."
Dean swallows, and refuses to let that flare of guilt through his teeth.
"Maybe I don't want to be your brother," he says fiercely.
There's an endless silence, and then Sam makes a noise, something quiet and certain.
"I'll take that over nothing," he says, and the words should sound hollow, they should sound broken and empty, because this isn't- this is not the sort of thing you do to your brother.
But instead, it just sounds like please.
"Dean?" Sam's hand moves, fingertips tracing the hard lines of scar tissue, bullet wounds, and ragged puncture marks.
His hand finally comes to rest on the back of Dean's neck, strong fingers that pull, endlessly, until Sam can press his forehead against his own.
"Stay with me."
And no one has ever asked him that before.
Dean raises a hand, hooks it round the end of the necklace.
The string of wood and bone comes apart in his hands.