alwaysenduphere (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
alwaysenduphere) wrote2010-03-13 06:47 pm
alwaysenduphere) wrote2010-03-13 06:47 pm
Entry tags:
fic: memories of me are more like bad dreams
Title: memories of me are more like bad dreams
Rating: R
Warnings: Wincest. Sam and Dean as old geezers. Schmoop with a happy ending.
Pairing: Dean/Sam
Summary: Dean has a fever. While Sam is tending to him, he says some unpleasant things in his sleep.
Notes: 2,494 words. Written for the![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
samdeanexchange, originally posted here. Lame summary is lame. Many thanks to ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
jacyevans for the beta. Title from Death Cab.
Sam wakes to the moans of a scared animal - if that scared animal were a person, and that person were Dean.
Dean used to be a light sleeper, when he managed to sleep at all. Sam would get up in the middle of the night and do his best tip-toe to the bathroom trying not to wake Dean. Dean's arm would tighten on the gun under the pillow before his sleep-weary brain caught up to the fact that there was no threat, just Sam, and his hand relaxed and fell. Some nights, Sam would wake to the sound of Dean cleaning the guns or tossing in his sleep, sure that visions of hell were playing under Dean's eyelids.
But things change. They've grown older, reactions not what they used to be. Dean still goes for his gun when he wakes up unexpectedly, but Sam's more frequent trips to the bathroom in the middle of the night don't register to Dean anymore. Sam knows hell kept Dean up most nights, memories of being there, fears of going back. The fear is gone, but the memories remain, they just don't surface except on some nights.
They still get rooms with two double beds, more out of comfort than anything else. Sam would love to spend every night going to sleep and waking up with Dean safe in bed beside him, but his knees complain if he doesn't have proper room to sprawl out in his sleep. He knows Dean doesn't mind separate beds either, since his back prefers him to lay flat and he always had trouble not curling into a ball against Sam when they slept together. He'd never admit this of course, but Sam knows it’s true like he knows from the current sounds Dean's making what he's dreaming of.
Sam pulls the sheet with him as he climbs out of bed, knowing they've left the room temperature just a little colder than comfortable. His bladder practically screams at him, so he hurries to the bathroom first before waking Dean. The sheet's not coming back into bed with him after being on the dirty tiled floor of the bathroom, so he leaves it in a pile beside Dean's bed and apologizes in advance to his knees as he climbs in bed and curls into Dean. He immediately recoils back, because Dean is hot, as though hell is climbing up through his dreams and manifesting itself. Sam brushes Dean's forehead, feels moisture and heat under his fingertips. Dean moans at the touch, mumbles something that Sam doesn't quite catch. He wonders momentarily where Dean picked up the flu, wonders if maybe it’s serious and should he take Dean to a hospital, but because years and years of flying low and playing self-doctor speak volumes to him, he goes for the wet towel instead and resigns himself to getting limited sleep for a few days.
***
Dean wakes up shortly after sunrise. Sam watches from the bedside as Dean squints into the daylight, his forehead crinkled with frown lines. "'m sick?" His voice is rough and shaky. "My body feels like I got dragged through a graveyard."
Sam nods. "Fever'll do that, Dean. We haven't been in a cemetery for at least a week. Hopefully, this is some short-term thing you picked up somewhere and it'll go away soon."
"Yeah." Dean throws the sheets half-off him in a grand gesture, mumbles that he's warm. He's asleep again in seconds, bare arms and one sweaty leg sticking out from underneath the hotel sheet.
***
Because this is not the first time Sam has ever had to tend to a feverish Dean, he knows that Dean's dreams sometimes get the best of him. Since the success of the plan that shouldn't have worked but did, Sam hoped that the weight Dean carried on his shoulders would slowly slip off, no more angels, demons, or destinies pressing at him. He thinks that weight has lessened some through the years, but he also knows that Dean doesn't give up anything easily.
Dean’s speaking to something that isn't him in his dream, but the words still hit home.
"You're a monster, Sam. You are. You belong down here with all the rest of them, with their lies, filth, and desecration. Alastair told me you came looking for me, but when you found me with this knife in my hand, ripping into someone the way he taught me, you were too disgusted and just left me here."
Sam turns up the volume on the television, old reruns of MASH, a poor attempt to block out Dean. Three or four episodes go by, the only sounds in the room. After the MASH marathon ends, Sam flips through the channels aimlessly for a while. Dean hasn’t so much as mumbled in hours, so he considers getting some sleep himself once or twice, but decides against it in case Dean wakes up disoriented. There’s an old war movie playing on TMC, the color washed out thanks to the TV being well past its prime, and he settles there, lets his head loll back against the wall and tries to interest himself in the story. He gets caught up in it around the time the main character is killed, and Sam grunts, turns the TV off and throws the remote on the nightstand. Then, Dean shifts on the bed, curling into himself.
"Sammy, I didn't mean it. I just don't know what to do around you anymore. You scare me, with the blood and the 'give 'em hell' attitude. I know I've said this before, but I truly don't even know you anymore. I just want my brother back."
Sam wants to go to Dean, climb into bed and comfort him, but he knows that won’t help, not really. Dean needs the rest, however turmoiled it may be, not Sam wrapped around his already warm body. So, Sam just hovers by the bed instead, curling his hand around one of Dean’s slightly smaller ones. Dean quiets momentarily and Sam accredits it to his touch. Then, Dean starts talking again, and this time the words are clear and precise, not the mumbles he’s heard the rest of the evening.
"First, I'm gonna cut out your tongue. Normally, I kinda enjoy the screaming, sets the atmosphere, that sort of thing, but today I'm not feeling it. Sam, my little brother, he used to talk a lot, just go on and on about mundane things, the weather in Buffalo, how some kid at school said something that wasn't true. Then later, he'd talk about his destiny and you know what I've realized lately? He just talked too much. And I wish I'd done something, said something to just make him shut. Up. So, I'm just gonna make a little cut so I don't have to have this epiphany later when I'm knuckle deep in your intestines and you're screaming in my ear."
Sam can't take it anymore, and he practically runs to the bathroom, bumping into the foot of Dean's bed on the way there. Nothing he heard was really a surprise, but there's a difference between knowing and hearing the play by play. He knows he can't sleep now with that image seared into his mind. He splashes some water on his face, stares at himself hard in the mirror before opening the bathroom door. When he steps out, Dean's awake on the bed, knees curled to his chest, staring straight at Sam.
"What did I say?" he croaks. Sam points to the cup of water on the nightstand, and waits until Dean grabs for it to turn around and grab the package of crackers he'd procured from the vending machine.
He tries to keep his voice casual. "Nothing I hadn't already heard somewhere. Eat these."
***
The fever breaks some time before Sam wakes up the next morning. When he goes to check on Dean, one of Dean's hands reaches up and flicks some of his greasy hair out of his face. "Need a haircut 'fore you start looking like even more of a girl, Sammy." Sam sighs in relief.
"Haha, at least I don't smell like I spent the last two days rolling with the pigs." It's a slight exaggeration, as Sam has been doing his best to towel the sweat off of Dean whenever possible. Even knowing every part of Dean intimately for decades, there are still some places where Sam will not sponge bath. "You feel well enough to shower?"
Dean leers at him. "Not five minutes and you're already making a play to jump my aching bones."
"Dean."
"No, its okay, Sam, you can admit it, you still want me, even if I do smell like a garbage chute. I wouldn't be against it, really." Dean starts untangling himself from the sheets, and Sam finds some amusement watching Dean's hands hit the stiff dried-sweat stained parts of the sheet, as well as the not-so-dry parts. He doesn't offer to help Dean stand up; he knows that would just lead to a futile argument with no real heat behind it. He sits on the edge of the bed, hands folded in his lap as Dean stretches one leg then the other and starts to stagger to the bathroom. "In fact, I'm kinda for it. Crap." Dean sags against the bathroom doorway.
Sam debates on whether to offer assistance now or wait to be prompted. Dean's been a lot touchier lately about the getting old thing, and while being weakened by fever is in no way related to age, Sam's afraid his offer would still be taken in the same manner. So he waits, and Dean, predictable to Sam as always, says, "Looks like you don't have a choice in the matter. You want me clean and showered, you support me while I'm standing, since apparently my legs have forgotten how to."
***
The water’s only lukewarm, a product of running slowly through pipes probably older than either of them. Sam’s got his head ducked, too many past experiences of hitting the shower head with his tall frame. He’s not supporting Dean so much as supervising, but Dean is wobbly enough on his feet that Sam’s constantly touching him somehow. It’s not touching fire like things used to be between them, more like that dull ache after a good sprint, but it’s still Dean, open and unprotected.
Sam’s still watching the tiny shampoo bubbles rinse down the drain, his hand resting on Dean’s back, when Dean’s face appears in his view. “You know, I’m not stupid.”
Any other time, Sam would probably take a crack at that comment, could think of a hundred ways to point out all the ways in which Dean can be stupid, but the timing is off and the honest look Dean gives him tells him now is not the time. He hedges, “Yes,” and hopes Dean will continue.
He does. “Your face when I woke up. It’s not the first time I’ve seen that expression. What did I say, Sam?”
“You know you talk in your sleep?”
Dean says, “You’ve mentioned it before.” The look on his face betrays the lie.
Sam’s pretty sure he’s kept that detail to himself for years, worried enough about the quality of Dean’s rest, afraid that Dean knowing he might reveal some deep, dark secret of himself would drive him deeper into a bottle and further away from normal. “No, no I haven’t. I didn’t want you to worry. Besides, they’re just dreams.”
“About hell? Because whatever I said today, I know what I was dreaming. And I did mean them.”
“What?”
“When I was in hell, I probably did mean whatever I said. That doesn’t mean anything now, though, because hell…not fun. You’re it, man, you’re fun, you’re the reason I’m totally opening myself up to this deep and meaningful conversation. Because I know everything about you, and the look on your face when I woke up…I don’t want to see that every time I wake up. So whatever I said, I’m sorry.”
Sam’s really not sure what to say. The whole conversation is more than Dean’s said about hell in years, and he finds it moving that all it took was a simple expression on his face. “Even in hell, all you thought about was me.”
“Well, of course. You’re my brother. You’re everything.”
Sam smiles. “You sap.” Dean’s hand comes up as though to playfully smack Sam, but at the last minute, he cups Sam’s face instead, pulls them into a kiss. “Hey, you started this heart-to-heart. I’m just saying. You’re getting awful soft in your old age.”
“Soft, huh.” Dean leans himself back against the tile of the shower, still not quite steady on his feet. He gives Sam a once over look, lingering obviously to where Sam is anything but soft. Sam wants to say, you’ve been sick, don’t mind my body’s ridiculous reaction to your nakedness, you need food and rest. Instead, Sam kisses him. He runs his hand through Dean’s hair as they kiss, picks up the lingering suds Dean’s since forgotten were there. He pushes Dean against the wall, pulling them so close together, they have no beginning or end. The leftover shampoo isn’t enough to abate the friction, really, when he’s wrapping his hand around them both, but that doesn’t seem to matter. Dean’s practically whimpering under him in seconds and he’s left trying to hold himself and Dean up at the same time.
Dean’s clinging to him, calling his name in a way that will never ever get old. By the time they’re both close to coming, the water is running straight cold and Dean is shivering and bucking into him, his fingertips leaving little white half-moons on Sam’s arms.
***
Later, after Sam’s gone to the diner down the street and brought Dean back chicken soup even though Dean swore he felt well enough to eat a whole cow, Dean curls into him as they’re laying on one bed together. Sam thinks Dean’s doing it in his sleep, but when he turns his head to look, he’s met with Dean’s green eyes.
“Don’t keep stuff from me, just because you know it will hurt me. I would think, after all this time, you’d know that.”
It’s a sentence they’ve both said to each other hundreds of times in various degrees, the thought always ringing true but the follow-through lacking. This time, though, Sam just nods, the intensity in Dean’s face rendering him speechless.
Finally, he says, “I don’t have anything left to hide now, so I think you're safe.”
Dean smiles, then closes his eyes and throws an arm over Sam. Sam wants to remind him how this is cuddling, maybe tell him his body’s still running a little warm, but then Dean closes his eyes and says, “I don’t either,” so he stays quiet and looks forward to the morning.
***
Rating: R
Warnings: Wincest. Sam and Dean as old geezers. Schmoop with a happy ending.
Pairing: Dean/Sam
Summary: Dean has a fever. While Sam is tending to him, he says some unpleasant things in his sleep.
Notes: 2,494 words. Written for the
samdeanexchange, originally posted here. Lame summary is lame. Many thanks to jacyevans for the beta. Title from Death Cab.Sam wakes to the moans of a scared animal - if that scared animal were a person, and that person were Dean.
Dean used to be a light sleeper, when he managed to sleep at all. Sam would get up in the middle of the night and do his best tip-toe to the bathroom trying not to wake Dean. Dean's arm would tighten on the gun under the pillow before his sleep-weary brain caught up to the fact that there was no threat, just Sam, and his hand relaxed and fell. Some nights, Sam would wake to the sound of Dean cleaning the guns or tossing in his sleep, sure that visions of hell were playing under Dean's eyelids.
But things change. They've grown older, reactions not what they used to be. Dean still goes for his gun when he wakes up unexpectedly, but Sam's more frequent trips to the bathroom in the middle of the night don't register to Dean anymore. Sam knows hell kept Dean up most nights, memories of being there, fears of going back. The fear is gone, but the memories remain, they just don't surface except on some nights.
They still get rooms with two double beds, more out of comfort than anything else. Sam would love to spend every night going to sleep and waking up with Dean safe in bed beside him, but his knees complain if he doesn't have proper room to sprawl out in his sleep. He knows Dean doesn't mind separate beds either, since his back prefers him to lay flat and he always had trouble not curling into a ball against Sam when they slept together. He'd never admit this of course, but Sam knows it’s true like he knows from the current sounds Dean's making what he's dreaming of.
Sam pulls the sheet with him as he climbs out of bed, knowing they've left the room temperature just a little colder than comfortable. His bladder practically screams at him, so he hurries to the bathroom first before waking Dean. The sheet's not coming back into bed with him after being on the dirty tiled floor of the bathroom, so he leaves it in a pile beside Dean's bed and apologizes in advance to his knees as he climbs in bed and curls into Dean. He immediately recoils back, because Dean is hot, as though hell is climbing up through his dreams and manifesting itself. Sam brushes Dean's forehead, feels moisture and heat under his fingertips. Dean moans at the touch, mumbles something that Sam doesn't quite catch. He wonders momentarily where Dean picked up the flu, wonders if maybe it’s serious and should he take Dean to a hospital, but because years and years of flying low and playing self-doctor speak volumes to him, he goes for the wet towel instead and resigns himself to getting limited sleep for a few days.
***
Dean wakes up shortly after sunrise. Sam watches from the bedside as Dean squints into the daylight, his forehead crinkled with frown lines. "'m sick?" His voice is rough and shaky. "My body feels like I got dragged through a graveyard."
Sam nods. "Fever'll do that, Dean. We haven't been in a cemetery for at least a week. Hopefully, this is some short-term thing you picked up somewhere and it'll go away soon."
"Yeah." Dean throws the sheets half-off him in a grand gesture, mumbles that he's warm. He's asleep again in seconds, bare arms and one sweaty leg sticking out from underneath the hotel sheet.
***
Because this is not the first time Sam has ever had to tend to a feverish Dean, he knows that Dean's dreams sometimes get the best of him. Since the success of the plan that shouldn't have worked but did, Sam hoped that the weight Dean carried on his shoulders would slowly slip off, no more angels, demons, or destinies pressing at him. He thinks that weight has lessened some through the years, but he also knows that Dean doesn't give up anything easily.
Dean’s speaking to something that isn't him in his dream, but the words still hit home.
"You're a monster, Sam. You are. You belong down here with all the rest of them, with their lies, filth, and desecration. Alastair told me you came looking for me, but when you found me with this knife in my hand, ripping into someone the way he taught me, you were too disgusted and just left me here."
Sam turns up the volume on the television, old reruns of MASH, a poor attempt to block out Dean. Three or four episodes go by, the only sounds in the room. After the MASH marathon ends, Sam flips through the channels aimlessly for a while. Dean hasn’t so much as mumbled in hours, so he considers getting some sleep himself once or twice, but decides against it in case Dean wakes up disoriented. There’s an old war movie playing on TMC, the color washed out thanks to the TV being well past its prime, and he settles there, lets his head loll back against the wall and tries to interest himself in the story. He gets caught up in it around the time the main character is killed, and Sam grunts, turns the TV off and throws the remote on the nightstand. Then, Dean shifts on the bed, curling into himself.
"Sammy, I didn't mean it. I just don't know what to do around you anymore. You scare me, with the blood and the 'give 'em hell' attitude. I know I've said this before, but I truly don't even know you anymore. I just want my brother back."
Sam wants to go to Dean, climb into bed and comfort him, but he knows that won’t help, not really. Dean needs the rest, however turmoiled it may be, not Sam wrapped around his already warm body. So, Sam just hovers by the bed instead, curling his hand around one of Dean’s slightly smaller ones. Dean quiets momentarily and Sam accredits it to his touch. Then, Dean starts talking again, and this time the words are clear and precise, not the mumbles he’s heard the rest of the evening.
"First, I'm gonna cut out your tongue. Normally, I kinda enjoy the screaming, sets the atmosphere, that sort of thing, but today I'm not feeling it. Sam, my little brother, he used to talk a lot, just go on and on about mundane things, the weather in Buffalo, how some kid at school said something that wasn't true. Then later, he'd talk about his destiny and you know what I've realized lately? He just talked too much. And I wish I'd done something, said something to just make him shut. Up. So, I'm just gonna make a little cut so I don't have to have this epiphany later when I'm knuckle deep in your intestines and you're screaming in my ear."
Sam can't take it anymore, and he practically runs to the bathroom, bumping into the foot of Dean's bed on the way there. Nothing he heard was really a surprise, but there's a difference between knowing and hearing the play by play. He knows he can't sleep now with that image seared into his mind. He splashes some water on his face, stares at himself hard in the mirror before opening the bathroom door. When he steps out, Dean's awake on the bed, knees curled to his chest, staring straight at Sam.
"What did I say?" he croaks. Sam points to the cup of water on the nightstand, and waits until Dean grabs for it to turn around and grab the package of crackers he'd procured from the vending machine.
He tries to keep his voice casual. "Nothing I hadn't already heard somewhere. Eat these."
***
The fever breaks some time before Sam wakes up the next morning. When he goes to check on Dean, one of Dean's hands reaches up and flicks some of his greasy hair out of his face. "Need a haircut 'fore you start looking like even more of a girl, Sammy." Sam sighs in relief.
"Haha, at least I don't smell like I spent the last two days rolling with the pigs." It's a slight exaggeration, as Sam has been doing his best to towel the sweat off of Dean whenever possible. Even knowing every part of Dean intimately for decades, there are still some places where Sam will not sponge bath. "You feel well enough to shower?"
Dean leers at him. "Not five minutes and you're already making a play to jump my aching bones."
"Dean."
"No, its okay, Sam, you can admit it, you still want me, even if I do smell like a garbage chute. I wouldn't be against it, really." Dean starts untangling himself from the sheets, and Sam finds some amusement watching Dean's hands hit the stiff dried-sweat stained parts of the sheet, as well as the not-so-dry parts. He doesn't offer to help Dean stand up; he knows that would just lead to a futile argument with no real heat behind it. He sits on the edge of the bed, hands folded in his lap as Dean stretches one leg then the other and starts to stagger to the bathroom. "In fact, I'm kinda for it. Crap." Dean sags against the bathroom doorway.
Sam debates on whether to offer assistance now or wait to be prompted. Dean's been a lot touchier lately about the getting old thing, and while being weakened by fever is in no way related to age, Sam's afraid his offer would still be taken in the same manner. So he waits, and Dean, predictable to Sam as always, says, "Looks like you don't have a choice in the matter. You want me clean and showered, you support me while I'm standing, since apparently my legs have forgotten how to."
***
The water’s only lukewarm, a product of running slowly through pipes probably older than either of them. Sam’s got his head ducked, too many past experiences of hitting the shower head with his tall frame. He’s not supporting Dean so much as supervising, but Dean is wobbly enough on his feet that Sam’s constantly touching him somehow. It’s not touching fire like things used to be between them, more like that dull ache after a good sprint, but it’s still Dean, open and unprotected.
Sam’s still watching the tiny shampoo bubbles rinse down the drain, his hand resting on Dean’s back, when Dean’s face appears in his view. “You know, I’m not stupid.”
Any other time, Sam would probably take a crack at that comment, could think of a hundred ways to point out all the ways in which Dean can be stupid, but the timing is off and the honest look Dean gives him tells him now is not the time. He hedges, “Yes,” and hopes Dean will continue.
He does. “Your face when I woke up. It’s not the first time I’ve seen that expression. What did I say, Sam?”
“You know you talk in your sleep?”
Dean says, “You’ve mentioned it before.” The look on his face betrays the lie.
Sam’s pretty sure he’s kept that detail to himself for years, worried enough about the quality of Dean’s rest, afraid that Dean knowing he might reveal some deep, dark secret of himself would drive him deeper into a bottle and further away from normal. “No, no I haven’t. I didn’t want you to worry. Besides, they’re just dreams.”
“About hell? Because whatever I said today, I know what I was dreaming. And I did mean them.”
“What?”
“When I was in hell, I probably did mean whatever I said. That doesn’t mean anything now, though, because hell…not fun. You’re it, man, you’re fun, you’re the reason I’m totally opening myself up to this deep and meaningful conversation. Because I know everything about you, and the look on your face when I woke up…I don’t want to see that every time I wake up. So whatever I said, I’m sorry.”
Sam’s really not sure what to say. The whole conversation is more than Dean’s said about hell in years, and he finds it moving that all it took was a simple expression on his face. “Even in hell, all you thought about was me.”
“Well, of course. You’re my brother. You’re everything.”
Sam smiles. “You sap.” Dean’s hand comes up as though to playfully smack Sam, but at the last minute, he cups Sam’s face instead, pulls them into a kiss. “Hey, you started this heart-to-heart. I’m just saying. You’re getting awful soft in your old age.”
“Soft, huh.” Dean leans himself back against the tile of the shower, still not quite steady on his feet. He gives Sam a once over look, lingering obviously to where Sam is anything but soft. Sam wants to say, you’ve been sick, don’t mind my body’s ridiculous reaction to your nakedness, you need food and rest. Instead, Sam kisses him. He runs his hand through Dean’s hair as they kiss, picks up the lingering suds Dean’s since forgotten were there. He pushes Dean against the wall, pulling them so close together, they have no beginning or end. The leftover shampoo isn’t enough to abate the friction, really, when he’s wrapping his hand around them both, but that doesn’t seem to matter. Dean’s practically whimpering under him in seconds and he’s left trying to hold himself and Dean up at the same time.
Dean’s clinging to him, calling his name in a way that will never ever get old. By the time they’re both close to coming, the water is running straight cold and Dean is shivering and bucking into him, his fingertips leaving little white half-moons on Sam’s arms.
***
Later, after Sam’s gone to the diner down the street and brought Dean back chicken soup even though Dean swore he felt well enough to eat a whole cow, Dean curls into him as they’re laying on one bed together. Sam thinks Dean’s doing it in his sleep, but when he turns his head to look, he’s met with Dean’s green eyes.
“Don’t keep stuff from me, just because you know it will hurt me. I would think, after all this time, you’d know that.”
It’s a sentence they’ve both said to each other hundreds of times in various degrees, the thought always ringing true but the follow-through lacking. This time, though, Sam just nods, the intensity in Dean’s face rendering him speechless.
Finally, he says, “I don’t have anything left to hide now, so I think you're safe.”
Dean smiles, then closes his eyes and throws an arm over Sam. Sam wants to remind him how this is cuddling, maybe tell him his body’s still running a little warm, but then Dean closes his eyes and says, “I don’t either,” so he stays quiet and looks forward to the morning.
***