Nights on the Ceiling, by fleshflutter
Nights on the Ceiling
(Sam/Dean, 2360, PG-13)
Psychic powers are not all they're cracked up to be.
It's not a dream he's had in a while. Maybe not since Dad died. The casualties were stacking up so much it kind of became hard to focus on a single death.
But it doesn't mean he doesn't know this dream.
The liquid blue light turns Jess's skin to cream-white, her eyes are empty and black. Her hair, splayed about the ceiling, is soft, butter-like curls. A single breath and then the fire, as blue and brilliant as electricity.
Sam jerks awake. The sheet of the motel bed is rumpled into creases beneath him. His skin is hot and damp, leaving him feeling vaguely feverish. The thud of his pulse bounces through him hard. It's difficult to breathe for a second, like he's been running. Slowly, gradually, he comes back to himself. He wets his lips and scrapes his sweat-damp hair out of his face.
He turns his head to the other bed, seeking out the familiar sprawled-out form of his brother. But Dean's not there.
The swell of panic that had just started to recede hits him again full force. He sits bolt upright in his bed and looks about. Their duffel bags are still piled by the TV where Dean dropped them last night. Dean's leather jacket is still hung over the back of the chair. The salt on the windowsill sparkles a little in the moonlight, an undisturbed line.
"Sam?"
Sam freezes, certain he's heard it but unable to locate the source. Then he looks up and sees Dean. Pinned to the ceiling. Dean's staring at him, fists clenched at his side. He's only wearing his underwear and Sam can see that every muscle in his body is tense - taut lines of sinew in his thighs and shoulders.
His brother's terrified.
"Sammy, put me down."
It's little more than a whisper and Sam's so fixated on the look of naked fear on Dean's face that he only sees his lips move for a second, doesn't take in the words. And when he does take them in, they don't make any sense.
Dean makes a strangled noise, half sob and half moan.
"Put me down."
"I… Dean… Am I doing that?"
Speaking the words breaks whatever it is. Sam doesn't get chance to react; Dean's body drops like a stone. The floor shakes as he hits it and Sam scrabbles off his bed to get to his side. The cheap carpet burns his knees as he scoots over to Dean. He helps turn him over and feels his throat close up when he sees the dark, sticky stain of blood on his fingers where he's touched him.
"Oh God… you're bleeding!"
Dean slaps him away and struggles to sit upright. He touches the heel of his hand to his jaw, wobbling it, and then glaring at Sam.
"Of course I'm freaking well bleeding! You dropped me seven foot off the ceiling!"
Sam sits there, feeling useless, while Dean stands up and dusts himself down. He's a bit wobbly on his feet and doesn’t look back at Sam when he stalks back to bed. Sam listens to the creak of mattress as Dean rolls over. He watches him tug the thin blanket back over himself.
He's still sitting there when Dean finally speaks to him again.
"Go back to bed, Sam," he mutters. "And you ever stick me on the ceiling again, I'll kick your ass from here to next Tuesday."
:::
Dean ends up on the ceiling again the next night. He doesn't speak at all to Sam the day after that.
When Dean starts handcuffing himself to the bed frame when he goes to sleep, Sam doesn't comment on it.
:::
It stops simply happening at night. It stops always being the ceiling.
Dean gets pinned to walls and doors, stuck to the spot in diners and as they walk down the street.
Sam doesn't know how he's doing it, only that Dean's running out of patience.
"You have got to get a grip on this," says Dean, as Sam releases him from the Impala. He slams the car door shut the whole car shudders. "I'm not a damn ragdoll."
"I'm not doing it on purpose!" Sam calls after him. "I don't even know how I'm doing it!"
"Well figure it out! And quickly!"
Dean disappears into the gas station and Sam sits in the Impala and sulks, feeling very hard done by. It's not that he's not been trying. He's tried very hard to think about Dean staying on the ground and that was when the whole 'frozen to the spot' thing started. And he tried once to think about Dean being loose and free, and Dean had apparently tripped over his feet and fallen down.
It's like trying to work a machine when you can't even see any buttons or controls. Something in Sam's head is doing it and he doesn’t know what.
:::
He knows what's doing it. He's doing it. The deep down him. He's known since the time he was arguing with Dean and Dean was being his usual bullheaded self. Dean tried to walk away from the argument, walk away from Sam without talking about it, and Sam stopped him.
He played dumb afterwards. Said he was sorry, wasn't his fault.
But he'd wanted to keep Dean in the room and he'd done it. Dean would be furious if he knew. Even Sam feels a touch of hot guilt when he thinks about it. But it doesn't seem to work as well on anything or anyone else. He's tried it on objects and random people and sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't.
It's easy with Dean though, and getting easier. It's still a blind swing whenever Sam tries something but he's beginning to figure out what he's trying to hit, he's beginning to recognise the prickle in his head and the tug in his belly when he's getting it.
It just takes practice.
:::
His mind is bad, dirty, wrong.
His mind does things that make him feel like he's a bad person. Like the time he's working at his laptop across the room from Dean. And his mind is slowly pushing Dean's t-shirt up, centimetre by centimetre. Sam doesn't mean to do it but every time he looks back at Dean, his t-shirt's a little further up again. Dean keeps frowning and tugging his t-shirt back down but he goes on reading Dad's journal.
It's almost amusing until suddenly, and very wrongly, it becomes arousing. He can undress his brother, strip him naked, and all without laying a hand on him.
Sam has to disappear into the shower then because he's so hard and sick to the stomach. He jerks off under the water's spray and tries to think of the girl he'd met at the library that afternoon, or the incredibly grateful daughter of the family whose poltergeist they'd been hunting last week.
But he thinks of Dean, sitting there still, half-curled over the journal that smells of their dad and of blood and alcohol. He thinks of the sliver of tanned skin between an olive-green t-shirt and faded jeans. He thinks of Dean's fist, pressed to his cheek as he props himself up while he reads, and he thinks of the dimpled red and white marks it'll leave along Dean's cheekbone.
He turns off the water and steps onto the tile, droplets of water rolling over his still too warm skin. He wraps a towel around his middle and stares at himself through the steam on the mirror. This is going to stop, he tells himself sternly.
He suspects, however, that his own mind is going to be the least responsive thing he tries controlling.
When he goes back into the room, Dean's as he left him. Dean's exactly as he left him. Dean does his best to glare at him but it's difficult when he's got his fist pressed into his cheek and his face is tilted towards the journal. Besides, there's something resigned about the set of his face.
"Defreeze me, Sam. Right now. Or at least turn the frickin' page for me."
Sam blinks and he sees Dean sag a little as he's released.
:::
Eventually it comes to an argument, as all problems do in the Winchester family. Dean's frustrated and scared more than angry but Sam's furious. He's furious because every single word Dean says on the subject just makes it clearer and clearer that Dean. Doesn't. Get. It.
Sam didn't ask for this to happen. Sam didn't want this to happen. And he's trying so hard to keep it from happening. Dean doesn't understand that Sam's mind has its own ideas. Sam's mind wants to do things like slam Dean against walls and ruffle his hair, not Sam.
And Dean lets it happen. Dean lets Sam's mind do it.
It's not Sam's fault.
"Come on," says Dean. "Explain it to me. Explain why I'm getting treated like a goddamn mannequin."
Sam ignores him, lets him rage and rant, towering above Sam for once because Sam doesn't even bother standing up. He lies on his bed, feeling hard done by and victimised. Dean's flushed and slightly breathless. All his storming isn't getting him anywhere and Sam thinks it serves him right.
It's clearly time for a new tactic and Dean sits down on the end of his bed, facing Sam. He spreads his hands and leans forward, forearms resting on his thighs.
"Just lay off throwing me around and we can figure something out. I know this must suck for you but you've gotta stop taking it out on me."
Sam huffs out a breath and turns his face away. Dean doesn't say anything for a long moment but Sam can still feel him watching him. Then he hears Dean stand up and cross the room, the rattle of the door as Dean opens it.
Sam makes the door slam shut and goes on staring at the wall.
"I did that on purpose," he says. "You should learn to recognise the difference."
:::
Dean keeps pushing for a while and as Sam's stress level rises, Dean spends more and more nights on the ceiling. He'll open his eyes in the night and see Dean stretched out above him and that fear in Dean's eyes never goes away. Sam wakes to the sound of the broken loop of handcuff scratching the ceiling as Dean struggles to get free, to the hushed sound of his name as Dean tries to gather his composure enough to speak.
When Dean strips off for the shower, Sam can see the bruises on his shoulders and stomach that he's accumulated from falling over and over again.
After Dean ends up pinned to the ceiling five nights in a row, he changes. The anger drains away into something quiet and quiescent. He turns inward with his thoughts and worries. Driving becomes silent-time, full only of the sound of the Impala's engine and the rush of wind whipping over them and past them.
Finally, when Sam is even beginning to miss the Metallica, he insists that Dean stop the car. They're on a road coming from nowhere and heading the same way. The sun's a burnt red coin in the sky and the clouds are stained orange by the sunset.
Dean gets out of the car when Sam tells him to, but it's more about obedience than obliging him and Sam feels angry and desperate. He can't help it when Dean goes flying back against the hood but it doesn't make him feel any better about the shadowy-eyed look Dean gives him.
Sam closes in on him before Dean gets chance to straighten up. He grips his face in his hands and presses Dean back down. He can feel the flutter of Dean's muscles beneath him - Dean's considering running, escape, but he stays where he is. He stays even when Sam pushes his lips to his in a hard, clumsy kiss.
"I don't want to be doing this to you. It's not my fault."
It's nothing more than a mumble but when he bows his head, fingers still knotted in the front of Dean's shirt, he feels the rough brush of Dean's mouth over his forehead.
"I get so scared, Sammy. I keep expecting to see your eyes go yellow. But it's you. It's you doing this."
That's it. That's the thing Sam hates too and it somehow makes it better that they're both hating the same thing, even if it can't do anything against the horror of what Sam's become. Dean's arm comes up around him, tentatively. There's something like forgiveness in his touch and Sam can't stand it, so he kisses Dean again, swallowing up the soft, startled noise he makes and biting his lips.
When Sam slips a hand under Dean's t-shirt, feels the jump of Dean's belly against his fingertips, Dean starts to try to wriggle out from under him. It's simple to pin Dean back where Sam wants him, easy without having to even having so much as a twitch. Simple and easy and monstrous and it proves Sam's point perfectly.
"You know why it works so well on you? Because you're so open to what I want," Sam tells him, all viciousness and misery. "You want what I want. You want me to be happy and your brain hears what my brain's telling it to do and it does it! I can make you do anything I want."
And Dean laughs at him. Laughs.
"That doesn't make you evil, Sammy. That makes you spoilt."
This time when Dean puts his lips to Sam's temple, it feels like benediction and Sam doesn't fight it. He lets out a breath and dares to be okay for the first time in months.
"Guess you're going to have to learn to tell me no," he says.
Dean laughs and pushes him back a step. He's got his eyebrow raised and is still propped up against the hood of the Impala. Sam stares at him for a second then flushes and looks away.
"You're still pinned to the 'pala, aren't you?"
~end
(Sam/Dean, 2360, PG-13)
Psychic powers are not all they're cracked up to be.
It's not a dream he's had in a while. Maybe not since Dad died. The casualties were stacking up so much it kind of became hard to focus on a single death.
But it doesn't mean he doesn't know this dream.
The liquid blue light turns Jess's skin to cream-white, her eyes are empty and black. Her hair, splayed about the ceiling, is soft, butter-like curls. A single breath and then the fire, as blue and brilliant as electricity.
Sam jerks awake. The sheet of the motel bed is rumpled into creases beneath him. His skin is hot and damp, leaving him feeling vaguely feverish. The thud of his pulse bounces through him hard. It's difficult to breathe for a second, like he's been running. Slowly, gradually, he comes back to himself. He wets his lips and scrapes his sweat-damp hair out of his face.
He turns his head to the other bed, seeking out the familiar sprawled-out form of his brother. But Dean's not there.
The swell of panic that had just started to recede hits him again full force. He sits bolt upright in his bed and looks about. Their duffel bags are still piled by the TV where Dean dropped them last night. Dean's leather jacket is still hung over the back of the chair. The salt on the windowsill sparkles a little in the moonlight, an undisturbed line.
"Sam?"
Sam freezes, certain he's heard it but unable to locate the source. Then he looks up and sees Dean. Pinned to the ceiling. Dean's staring at him, fists clenched at his side. He's only wearing his underwear and Sam can see that every muscle in his body is tense - taut lines of sinew in his thighs and shoulders.
His brother's terrified.
"Sammy, put me down."
It's little more than a whisper and Sam's so fixated on the look of naked fear on Dean's face that he only sees his lips move for a second, doesn't take in the words. And when he does take them in, they don't make any sense.
Dean makes a strangled noise, half sob and half moan.
"Put me down."
"I… Dean… Am I doing that?"
Speaking the words breaks whatever it is. Sam doesn't get chance to react; Dean's body drops like a stone. The floor shakes as he hits it and Sam scrabbles off his bed to get to his side. The cheap carpet burns his knees as he scoots over to Dean. He helps turn him over and feels his throat close up when he sees the dark, sticky stain of blood on his fingers where he's touched him.
"Oh God… you're bleeding!"
Dean slaps him away and struggles to sit upright. He touches the heel of his hand to his jaw, wobbling it, and then glaring at Sam.
"Of course I'm freaking well bleeding! You dropped me seven foot off the ceiling!"
Sam sits there, feeling useless, while Dean stands up and dusts himself down. He's a bit wobbly on his feet and doesn’t look back at Sam when he stalks back to bed. Sam listens to the creak of mattress as Dean rolls over. He watches him tug the thin blanket back over himself.
He's still sitting there when Dean finally speaks to him again.
"Go back to bed, Sam," he mutters. "And you ever stick me on the ceiling again, I'll kick your ass from here to next Tuesday."
:::
Dean ends up on the ceiling again the next night. He doesn't speak at all to Sam the day after that.
When Dean starts handcuffing himself to the bed frame when he goes to sleep, Sam doesn't comment on it.
:::
It stops simply happening at night. It stops always being the ceiling.
Dean gets pinned to walls and doors, stuck to the spot in diners and as they walk down the street.
Sam doesn't know how he's doing it, only that Dean's running out of patience.
"You have got to get a grip on this," says Dean, as Sam releases him from the Impala. He slams the car door shut the whole car shudders. "I'm not a damn ragdoll."
"I'm not doing it on purpose!" Sam calls after him. "I don't even know how I'm doing it!"
"Well figure it out! And quickly!"
Dean disappears into the gas station and Sam sits in the Impala and sulks, feeling very hard done by. It's not that he's not been trying. He's tried very hard to think about Dean staying on the ground and that was when the whole 'frozen to the spot' thing started. And he tried once to think about Dean being loose and free, and Dean had apparently tripped over his feet and fallen down.
It's like trying to work a machine when you can't even see any buttons or controls. Something in Sam's head is doing it and he doesn’t know what.
:::
He knows what's doing it. He's doing it. The deep down him. He's known since the time he was arguing with Dean and Dean was being his usual bullheaded self. Dean tried to walk away from the argument, walk away from Sam without talking about it, and Sam stopped him.
He played dumb afterwards. Said he was sorry, wasn't his fault.
But he'd wanted to keep Dean in the room and he'd done it. Dean would be furious if he knew. Even Sam feels a touch of hot guilt when he thinks about it. But it doesn't seem to work as well on anything or anyone else. He's tried it on objects and random people and sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't.
It's easy with Dean though, and getting easier. It's still a blind swing whenever Sam tries something but he's beginning to figure out what he's trying to hit, he's beginning to recognise the prickle in his head and the tug in his belly when he's getting it.
It just takes practice.
:::
His mind is bad, dirty, wrong.
His mind does things that make him feel like he's a bad person. Like the time he's working at his laptop across the room from Dean. And his mind is slowly pushing Dean's t-shirt up, centimetre by centimetre. Sam doesn't mean to do it but every time he looks back at Dean, his t-shirt's a little further up again. Dean keeps frowning and tugging his t-shirt back down but he goes on reading Dad's journal.
It's almost amusing until suddenly, and very wrongly, it becomes arousing. He can undress his brother, strip him naked, and all without laying a hand on him.
Sam has to disappear into the shower then because he's so hard and sick to the stomach. He jerks off under the water's spray and tries to think of the girl he'd met at the library that afternoon, or the incredibly grateful daughter of the family whose poltergeist they'd been hunting last week.
But he thinks of Dean, sitting there still, half-curled over the journal that smells of their dad and of blood and alcohol. He thinks of the sliver of tanned skin between an olive-green t-shirt and faded jeans. He thinks of Dean's fist, pressed to his cheek as he props himself up while he reads, and he thinks of the dimpled red and white marks it'll leave along Dean's cheekbone.
He turns off the water and steps onto the tile, droplets of water rolling over his still too warm skin. He wraps a towel around his middle and stares at himself through the steam on the mirror. This is going to stop, he tells himself sternly.
He suspects, however, that his own mind is going to be the least responsive thing he tries controlling.
When he goes back into the room, Dean's as he left him. Dean's exactly as he left him. Dean does his best to glare at him but it's difficult when he's got his fist pressed into his cheek and his face is tilted towards the journal. Besides, there's something resigned about the set of his face.
"Defreeze me, Sam. Right now. Or at least turn the frickin' page for me."
Sam blinks and he sees Dean sag a little as he's released.
:::
Eventually it comes to an argument, as all problems do in the Winchester family. Dean's frustrated and scared more than angry but Sam's furious. He's furious because every single word Dean says on the subject just makes it clearer and clearer that Dean. Doesn't. Get. It.
Sam didn't ask for this to happen. Sam didn't want this to happen. And he's trying so hard to keep it from happening. Dean doesn't understand that Sam's mind has its own ideas. Sam's mind wants to do things like slam Dean against walls and ruffle his hair, not Sam.
And Dean lets it happen. Dean lets Sam's mind do it.
It's not Sam's fault.
"Come on," says Dean. "Explain it to me. Explain why I'm getting treated like a goddamn mannequin."
Sam ignores him, lets him rage and rant, towering above Sam for once because Sam doesn't even bother standing up. He lies on his bed, feeling hard done by and victimised. Dean's flushed and slightly breathless. All his storming isn't getting him anywhere and Sam thinks it serves him right.
It's clearly time for a new tactic and Dean sits down on the end of his bed, facing Sam. He spreads his hands and leans forward, forearms resting on his thighs.
"Just lay off throwing me around and we can figure something out. I know this must suck for you but you've gotta stop taking it out on me."
Sam huffs out a breath and turns his face away. Dean doesn't say anything for a long moment but Sam can still feel him watching him. Then he hears Dean stand up and cross the room, the rattle of the door as Dean opens it.
Sam makes the door slam shut and goes on staring at the wall.
"I did that on purpose," he says. "You should learn to recognise the difference."
:::
Dean keeps pushing for a while and as Sam's stress level rises, Dean spends more and more nights on the ceiling. He'll open his eyes in the night and see Dean stretched out above him and that fear in Dean's eyes never goes away. Sam wakes to the sound of the broken loop of handcuff scratching the ceiling as Dean struggles to get free, to the hushed sound of his name as Dean tries to gather his composure enough to speak.
When Dean strips off for the shower, Sam can see the bruises on his shoulders and stomach that he's accumulated from falling over and over again.
After Dean ends up pinned to the ceiling five nights in a row, he changes. The anger drains away into something quiet and quiescent. He turns inward with his thoughts and worries. Driving becomes silent-time, full only of the sound of the Impala's engine and the rush of wind whipping over them and past them.
Finally, when Sam is even beginning to miss the Metallica, he insists that Dean stop the car. They're on a road coming from nowhere and heading the same way. The sun's a burnt red coin in the sky and the clouds are stained orange by the sunset.
Dean gets out of the car when Sam tells him to, but it's more about obedience than obliging him and Sam feels angry and desperate. He can't help it when Dean goes flying back against the hood but it doesn't make him feel any better about the shadowy-eyed look Dean gives him.
Sam closes in on him before Dean gets chance to straighten up. He grips his face in his hands and presses Dean back down. He can feel the flutter of Dean's muscles beneath him - Dean's considering running, escape, but he stays where he is. He stays even when Sam pushes his lips to his in a hard, clumsy kiss.
"I don't want to be doing this to you. It's not my fault."
It's nothing more than a mumble but when he bows his head, fingers still knotted in the front of Dean's shirt, he feels the rough brush of Dean's mouth over his forehead.
"I get so scared, Sammy. I keep expecting to see your eyes go yellow. But it's you. It's you doing this."
That's it. That's the thing Sam hates too and it somehow makes it better that they're both hating the same thing, even if it can't do anything against the horror of what Sam's become. Dean's arm comes up around him, tentatively. There's something like forgiveness in his touch and Sam can't stand it, so he kisses Dean again, swallowing up the soft, startled noise he makes and biting his lips.
When Sam slips a hand under Dean's t-shirt, feels the jump of Dean's belly against his fingertips, Dean starts to try to wriggle out from under him. It's simple to pin Dean back where Sam wants him, easy without having to even having so much as a twitch. Simple and easy and monstrous and it proves Sam's point perfectly.
"You know why it works so well on you? Because you're so open to what I want," Sam tells him, all viciousness and misery. "You want what I want. You want me to be happy and your brain hears what my brain's telling it to do and it does it! I can make you do anything I want."
And Dean laughs at him. Laughs.
"That doesn't make you evil, Sammy. That makes you spoilt."
This time when Dean puts his lips to Sam's temple, it feels like benediction and Sam doesn't fight it. He lets out a breath and dares to be okay for the first time in months.
"Guess you're going to have to learn to tell me no," he says.
Dean laughs and pushes him back a step. He's got his eyebrow raised and is still propped up against the hood of the Impala. Sam stares at him for a second then flushes and looks away.
"You're still pinned to the 'pala, aren't you?"
~end