[fic] Indigo Dreams || Sam/Dean, R || 1/1
Feb. 7th, 2014 11:02 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
hybridshadeTitle: Indigo Dreams
Pairing: Sam/Dean
Rating: R
Genre/Warnings: creepy case!fic, some hurt!Dean, some messing around with canon monster lore (but canon does that anyway...)
Word count: 7.2k
Summary: When the Winchesters' case drags them down below the surface of the city, Dean finds himself in a battle between nightmares and reality, and it's doing his head in.
A/N: Written for the![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
spn_reversebang, prompted by art from the lovely ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
lightthesparks! It's been awesome working with you my dear! I hope you've had as much fun working on your art as I've had writing this, and hopefully you like the finished product~ *cue vast amounts of squee* \o/
EDIT: AO3 link
Dean reeled back as Sam heaved the manhole cover the rest of the way off, the sudden sewer-smell assaulting him like a fist to the face. Enough years had passed since he'd last had to deal with this type of shit, he'd kind of held on to the notion that he'd possibly never have to do this sort of dirty work again. The world, universe, whatever, had become exponentially bigger in recent times, it had been almost too easy to forget that these sort of bottom-feeder hunts they'd grown up with still existed.
But, hey, as long as it was still something he could shoot, stab or decapitate, he could deal. Didn't mean he had to like it, though, right?
"I can not fuckin' believe we gotta stoop back to this level. I mean, Heaven, Hell, Purgatory? Them's small beans. This is the goddamn sewer system."
Sam snorted. "Come on, Indiana. You lost the bet, you get first dibs whether you like it or not."
"Fine. Jeez, stop with the heckling already."
He brushed his jacket off and rubbed his palms over his jeans – not that it would matter in ten second's time – and lined himself up with the steel rungs bolted to the inner stone wall. The first few steps down were the hardest part, but once he got his shoulders below ground level and his hands on the rungs it became easier. The manhole shaft itself was pretty snug and the stone wall scraped at his back and elbows here and there – Sam was going to have to breathe in a bit on his way down because Dean was so not hauling his giant ass back out if he got himself stuck.
Once he reached the bottom of the ladder he found he had to jump the rest of the way – only a few feet, thankfully – and his boots splashed into murky water as he landed. It was a good thing the jeans he was wearing weren't his favourites, because there was no way he was hanging onto them once they got back outta there.
He pulled out the torch he'd tucked into his belt and shone the light back up the shaft toward his brother, who then dropped their supply bag down into his arms. Dean removed his gun and the pre-prepared silver dagger from the bag as Sam made his way down, and tossed him the bag and the remainder of its contents once he made the jump to the ground.
Sam, too, winced as the sewer water splashed up onto the bottom of his jeans, but it was quickly forgotten as he retrieved weapons for himself and turned back to Dean. His half-grin had Dean tempted to ask what he was so chipper about, but he decided not to spoil Sam's moderately good mood, wherever it may have appeared from. Likely he'd only get some sort of irritated huff in return anyway, so there was really no point to begin with.
"Alright then," Dean said, clearing his throat, "Let's get this show on the road."
Keeping their stances wide to avoid some of the water, they followed the length of the tunnel stretching out before them, two beams of damp grey torchlight leading the way.
"Let's get this done, already."
Dean pulled his tie straight and headed off at a brisk pace. The fact that he wasn't entirely sure where they were going was irrelevant, but he heard Sam swear from behind him, the turn of keys in the motel door lock and then his brother's long strides on the pavement as he caught up to his side.
"I'm can't believe I'm the one saying this but, seriously, chill out a minute. It's just a—"
"A what? A walk through the city? Yeah, maybe to all these other zombies around here but not to me, not to us. There's good fucking reason why we stay out of populated areas like this – everyone's a potential meatsuit."
"Nothing about why we're here points to the presence of angels or demons."
"As if we aren't enough of a homing beacon on our own."
Dean's jaw was clenched tight, his back stiff as they trudged along the sidewalk in their FBI get-ups. They'd arrived that morning and chosen a motel on the outskirts of the city, Dean mentioning something about not wanting to feel trapped, and now they were walking to the coroner's office which happened to be nearby. Dean had grudgingly agreed to forego the car once Sam had reminded him that cities – as opposed to the smaller towns that were their usual fare – were pretty well stocked with parking meters. They were already running pretty low on cash, it was no good wasting it on something as unnecessary as parking.
"Remind me again, why we're here?"
Sam blinked. "I just told you, like, a few minutes ago—"
"Yeah, well, guess I'm getting' senile in my old age. So start talkin'."
It took a second before the intention behind Dean's words finally clicked, that he needed the distraction more than the actual information, so Sam nodded to himself and began running through the full list of facts for the second time in as many hours.
"Right, so we've got four dead bodies at last count – one male, three female. All somewhere between the ages of eighteen and forty-five and they all went missing for about a week before turning up dead, their bodies dumped in random back alleys all over the city centre. All of them were still dressed in the same clothes they went missing in, and they all showed signs of exhaustion and dehydration, and there were signs that their skin had been in contact with water for a while right before their death."
"What exactly is the part that makes it something we're interested in?"
"It's not much, but there were high levels of heavy metals found in their blood, enough to be poisonous, and the medical examiner they quoted in the papers said that all of them showed damage to the heart tissue and that on first glance, if he weren't trying to be objective about it, he would have said they looked like they'd been scared to death."
That sure got Dean's attention.
"Wouldn't be the first time we've seen that. Think we're lookin' at another bout of ghost sickness or somethin'?"
Sam shrugged. "I've got a hunch that it's something much worse than that. I just hope I'm wrong."
"So, now what?"
Dean stood with one hand on his hip, the other flipping his torch back and forth between the intersection of two tunnels that had appeared before them.
"The logical thing would be to split up, but I don't know if that's the best idea. It's a bit of a maze down here."
"Yeah, no kidding."
Sam pulled out the copies of the blueprints he'd dug up at the library, pouring over them with his torch. He pointed out where he guessed they currently were and then to the couple of places he'd circled earlier, areas where the sewer pipes supposedly opened up into a larger 'room', somewhere with space enough for their hunt to both make a nest for itself and keep its victim tethered while it played with them.
A cold shudder made its way down Dean's back and he pulled his phone from his pocket just to give his mind something else to focus on for a moment. He pulled up the home screen and watched with annoyance as it flickered between no signal and a single bar. Hardly surprising considering how far underground they were. The fact he could even get that one bar to register was nothing short of amazing.
"I think we should go here first," Sam said, indicating one of the points he'd circled on the map, "It's the closest one. We need to go left, then I think we should split up so we can come at it from either side."
Dean was down with that plan, so he headed into the tunnel going left, Sam close at his back.
All was going well until they came to the next fork in the road and headed their separate ways. Sam hadn't seemed worried in the slightest, but the moment his brother was out of sight Dean got the strangest sensation of something heavy dropping in his gut, dread falling through him like a stone. It was sudden enough to nearly have him on his knees. He hurried along the path he'd been told – right, left, right, right – keeping his pace swift but not quite at a run. If he got to their destination and Sam asked why he was panting for breath… Yeah, well, there was no explaining that away. Not to his brother, anyway.
Sure enough, he took the last right turn and found himself in a large stone-walled cavern, just as expected. He found rags and threadbare blankets pushed into one corner of the floor as well as an empty blood bag and plastic tubing scattered around. Oh, and it reeked of piss.
Jackpot.
"Sammy!"
Dean's voice echoed off the smooth walls, louder than he might have expected. The stone in his belly quickly doubled in weight when he found himself waiting far too long for some sort of response.
He smartly turned to go back the way he'd come when he was met with the vision of Sam's smiling face.
"Son-of-a-bitch!" Dean grabbed at his chest, slumping over as he attempted to gain back his stolen breath. "You tryin' to give me a goddamn heart attack? 'Cause that came pretty flippin' close!"
"Just keeping you on your toes, dude." Sam strut his way over to the corner and bent down to take a closer look at the blood bag and tubes. "Looks like I brought you to the right place, too. How do you plan on thanking me?"
Oh, Hell no. His brother didn't get to be so smug and get away with it. He headed back out into the tunnels leaving only a middle finger in his wake.
Getting into the coroner's was a piece of cake.
Even more so than usual, which Dean attributed to the sheer amount of people wandering through the hallways, probably passing through to the hospital located on the floors above them. (Naturally the morgue was in the basement – where else would it be?)
Somehow they'd managed to get rid of the medical examiner without any trouble, and they locked the door behind him, not wanting to be disturbed while they examined the bodies for themselves. Dean flipped through the paper files while Sam went about locating the actual bodies, and he could see immediately why the doctor had told the local news that he thought the victims had been frightened to death – the expression frozen on to all their faces when they'd been found was obvious. Sheer terror.
It should have been straight forward, right? If it wasn't another Buruburu then what else could it be?
And yet, something about it didn't sit right in his gut. Sam had already said that he had an inkling it was worse than the obvious, and now Dean was beginning to get that, too.
"Right," Sam cleared his throat, drawing Dean's attention, "So these are the three bodies that are still here. The three most recent victims, all killed within the last month."
On closer inspection they found bruising around the temple area of all three, like someone had knocked them out with something. And there was a single puncture wound on each of their necks.
"What're you thinking? You said earlier that you had a feeling…"
"I do," Sam said, standing over by the furthest body, "And I was right."
Dean waited. "And?"
"You're not gonna like it."
Moving over to his brother's side Dean glanced down at the woman's lifeless face, Sam's gloved fingers prying her eyelids apart. The eye beneath was cloudy white.
"Oh, fuck no. This is so not cool."
Dean's anger was interrupted by the shrill ring of Sam's phone, and a none-too-happy look directed his way.
"What is it now?"
"Another girl's been reported missing."
"This bastard ain't wasting any time," Dean hissed through grit teeth, putting the files back where he found them and heading toward the door. They had badges to flash and recon to do.
Dean waited back on ground level for his brother to join him, the two of them sliding the manhole cover back in place once they were ready to leave. Now that they knew for certain what they were dealing with and where it was holed up, they had some more planning to do and a net to cast into the water.
"I'm pretty sure it's already got its eye on us. More so now that we've disturbed its home. Now we just have to make ourselves more alluring as bait."
Dean grunted, making his displeasure known. "Not sure how I feel about making myself 'more alluring' to our monster-of-the-week, but, hey, I'm a goddamn Winchester. I've already got a target for the supernatural on my back that's brighter than a nuke."
Sam slapped him on the back, a smirk slipping over his lips like he'd just thought of something funny. "Won't have to try too hard then, will you? Dean Winchester, supernatural catnip."
"So."
"So?"
"All the victims were last seen somewhere on this block." Sam pulled a hand from his pocket and pointed in succession. "There's two bars, a diner, then another bar. An alleyway runs from this end all the way around the back of the block, so that must be where they were taken from."
Dean hummed to himself as they started walking toward the closest bar, considering their plan of attack. "Don't suppose there's any abandoned warehouses nearby? Might make our next port-of-call a little more straightforward."
"'Fraid not," Sam said with a tilt of his head, "Or, well, not any warehouses per se. There's plenty of decrepit apartment blocks around that it could be hiding in, though."
"Great. Just awesome."
"No need to sound so excited about it."
"Yeah, well, you know me," Dean groused, "I just can't contain myself sometimes."
Sam ignored his mood and focussed on the task at hand.
"So do we split up or check one at a time?"
"When it comes to these bastards I ain't takin' any chances. We go one at a time."
Dean was in the bar on the end, furthest from where they had parked the Impala. It was the trendiest of the three and it was packed with barely-legals who were barely dressed, writhing against one another in a haze of whatever was going around.
He was completely out of place in his jeans and neutral-coloured jacket, but it wasn't just his clothes. Sure, when he'd been that age he'd been all about drinking and making nice with the ladies, but now the neon cocktails and the hardcore tattoos and crazy piercings littering most of the girls' bodies really threw him for a loop. It was unlikely any of them would be paying him any attention, yet it didn't stop him feeling like a creepy perv skulking around in the shadows like he was.
Moving further around the room he stopped when he found himself a decent vantage point, leaning back against the wall and crossing one ankle casually over the other. He was closer to the dance floor at that spot, multi-coloured spotlights drifting over him and around and around randomly. Had he not been pressed along the wall and partly dressed in shadow no doubt the lights would've had his head all swirly and achy in no time. He didn't like to think about his age at the best of times but being there in that type of place amongst those types of people was driving the point home a little too forcefully.
Dean let his mind wander as he kept an eye on the crowd, the lights and music fading into a dull roar, melding together in the background. He was shot straight back into the present however, when half the wall he was leaning on slammed right into the back of his arm – of course there was a staff door hidden directly behind where he was standing. The bartender coming out held his hand up in apology, but Dean shook it off with a shrug. Until his arm started to burn, that is.
He tried to wait it out, but the prickling sensation only intensified. Pulling his sleeves back in a hurry he could feel that his forearm was hot to the touch, the veins on the underside of his wrist were pulsing out of his skin and they looked a strange colour, although with the lights overhead flashing around like a convulsing rainbow he couldn't be sure.
Looking up to find the quickest way out, Dean paused when something strange caught his attention. A man with what looked to be a scar down the side of his face was looking straight at him from across the room. Dean had no idea how he could tell from such a distance, but he would've sworn that the man's eyes were the most piercing blue he'd ever seen.
He blinked, and suddenly the man was gone.
Stepping away from the wall Dean squinted into the dark in search of him just as the music took on a drastic change, the lighting fading into an icy blue to match the mood. He cursed as everything in sight was doused in hues of cerulean, but just as Dean took a second step forward he caught a sliver of yellow as a door slipped shut.
He cut around the edge of the dance floor as quickly as he was able, not even caring how many high heel-clad toes he stepped on. Once he reached the door he all but threw himself into it, stumbling out into the alleyway and headlong into Sam's chest.
"Dude, what—"
"I saw some weird guy with a scar on his face. Came out this way less than a minute ago."
Sam stared at him with a confused expression on his face, and Dean was close enough to smell beer on his breath.
"But I thought I saw some weird guy in the other bar."
Rocking back on his heels, Dean took a moment to think and collect himself.
"So maybe there's just a lot of weird guys around here. We don't know for sure that either of them is our guy."
"Well," Sam said with a long sigh, "There's one way to find out."
Dean watched as his brother's gaze shifted over to somewhere on the ground behind him. He followed Sam's line of sight and scowled, looking down at the manhole with derision, as if the whole infernal situation was all the goddamn sewer's fault.
"Guess there's no other option then. Back down the rabbit hole we go."
Dean listened in as Sam took yet another call from the police investigator in charge of the case. Their story was that they were doing a little undercover work, but the officer hadn't seemed to care one whit what they were up to. Which could only have been for the best.
He couldn't hear what was being said on the other end of the line, but going by the changing expressions on Sam's face it wasn't at all what they were expecting. He stared at Sam expectantly when the call ended and his phone slipped away into his jeans' pocket.
"The girl that went missing earlier? She's been found."
Dean blinked in surprise. "Already? Man, that was—"
"Alive, Dean. She's got a pretty nasty egg on her head and she's been poisoned like the others but they think she might still pull through."
"We gotta be missing something, then. There's no way she'd be found alive if our beasty-of-the-week didn't have its eyes on its next target already."
Sam sighed, his shoulders slumping in defeat. "I agree. But a sudden change in pattern can't be a good sign."
"We have to find out what, or who it's after, and quick."
"I think we need to get a look outside in the alley."
"Good thinkin' 99."
~
"So here we are… Now what are we looking for?"
Dean scanned around the laneway, finding little more than the expected garbage bins and murky-yellow lamps lighting their way. Sam seemed to disappear into the dark for a moment, before reappearing again, hand pointing toward the ground somewhere. It wasn't until he moved closer that he got a look at the object in question, hidden amongst the shadows.
"That. We're looking for that."
A manhole.
Straight down into the sewers. No empty warehouses or abandoned apartment blocks required. Their monster had the perfect route in and out of his hunting ground without being seen. And honestly, Dean could've kicked himself for not thinking of it sooner. It wouldn't be the first hunt where they'd ended up down below.
But speaking of being seen, where the fuck had Sam disappeared to? They had a goddamn Djinn to hunt.
The blow from behind came out of nowhere.
Dean woke to blackness. It dispersed into a damp, blue glow as his vision cleared, though as the pain in his head set in it became difficult to keep his eyes open.
He tried to touch his head to see if there was a wound, any blood, but his arms wouldn't obey and it soon became clear that they were tied above him. Flexing his muscles brought about the sound of tinkling chains, but also pins-and-needles buried from deep within two very numb limbs – seemingly his arms were the only things keeping him upright.
Dean had a pretty fair idea about where he was by now, and while that was worrying enough in itself, he was somewhat more worried about the fact that he hadn't a clue how he got there. He remembered chasing a figure out the back door of the club and running into Sam, then Sam had grabbed his arm to drag him over to the manhole and that's when everything went hazy. His arm had flared with pain again and he had only a vague recollection of the manhole being pushed aside, Sam saying he'd go first since Dean had gone first before. Everything was a total blank after that.
There was a lump in his throat which he forcefully swallowed back down, prompting the side of his neck to start stinging like he'd been jabbed with a hot poker. Fuck, but Dean hated needles. Nothing good ever came about from being anywhere near them, let alone stuck with one under the skin. He tried not to think about it, to think about something bright and sunny instead, but perhaps thinking was the last thing he should have been doing. It was, after all, a Djinn that had him in its clutches and all trussed up, ready to play.
The Djinn was nowhere in his field of vision but he could still sense it close by. Too close for comfort, in fact. Close enough to already be eating away at his thoughts.
"This is quite some rabbit hole," he mumbled into the gloom.
"It's so much more than that, Winchester."
Dean's head whipped around. His arm was in the way but he could still clearly make out the blue-skinned creature slinking towards him, its tattoos curving and stretching across his flesh almost as if they were alive.
"It's home."
"Yeah, and it stinks," Dean said, turning his nose away in disgust. The Djinn could take his words any way it wanted – in his opinion it worked in pretty much every sense.
"Thankfully," the Djinn began, its voice so deep and rumbling Dean thought he could feel it in his toes, "The smell of a place does not affect my use of it… as you will discover soon enough."
Blue fingers tugged at the plastic tubing attached to Dean's neck and the site of insertion suddenly turned cold.
His eyes drooped, but he caught himself, forcing them back open.
And finding himself face to face with his brother.
His very worried-looking, wrinkly-foreheaded brother.
"Jesus, Dean, you alright?"
"Whuh t' ya so 'ong?"
"Dude, you remember how much of a maze this place is? You're lucky I found you as quickly as I did."
Sam fiddled with the tubes at his neck and then with something overhead, and without warning he tipped forward, landing in Sam's outstretched arms. There was a moment of struggle as Sam got Dean's limp body tucked into his side and then dragged them both out into the sewer pipes, Dean barely catching a glimpse of a dark figure somewhere on the stony ground. Luckily by the time they reached their chosen exit Dean had some feeling back in his limbs, though Sam still ended up pushing a majority of his weight up the ladder and through the manhole, back onto street level.
They were back in the motel in no time, although Dean partially attributed the swift passing of time to his occasion lapses of consciousness. He felt completely drained of energy, constantly on the verge of falling asleep, or passing out. One or the other. But Sam fixed him up good. Got him a beer, gave him food, patched up the needle hole on his neck.
"Think we better get some shut-eye, huh?"
Dean had to agree with that. But in trying to push himself out of his chair, he only got as far as a couple of inches above the seat before he went straight back down again, knocking his empty beer bottle over in the process. His brother gave a loud sigh – half irritation, half resignation – and heaved him up onto his feet, practically carrying him over to the nearest of the twin beds.
"Lucky I'm not you," Dean joked, despite that he'd managed to carry his sasquatch of a brother plenty of times before.
"Not that I'd ever call you light," Sam poked back, and proceeded to help Dean out of his boots and jacket.
No sooner had he pulled back one side of Dean's over shirt, however, than he fell back on his heels, one hand rising to his temple. Sam flicked his hair back and Dean could see the momentary pain on his face, but he quickly shook it off, getting the other sleeve. There was a second where they both paused, Sam's torso fitted in between Dean's knees, but then Sam was hissing in pain again, pressing his thumbs into his eye sockets.
"Sammy, what—"
"What the fuck, Dean?"
Dean reeled. "What? What! Whaddid I do?"
"You…" Sam pushed his hair back and his eyes went wide, staring at Dean's arms. "Oh, shit, oh shit!"
He stumbled backward and dove for the weapons bag, Dean's brain only just catching up as a stained silver dagger was pulled into view. Glancing down he saw the blue decorating his lower arms, abnormally vivid bruises of cobalt, spreading larger by the minute.
Breath caught in his throat, some far off memory of a club and a door slamming his arm blaring to life in his mind, but then Sam was in front of him again, eyes ablaze with rage.
"What are you! Where's my brother? What have you done with him!"
"I am your brother, fuckdammit!"
But Sam wasn't listening. He was shaking his head in denial, rocking unsteadily on his feet, back-and-forth. And the last thing Dean felt besides the flat-out horror of the situation was the cold touch of metal as the lamb's blood-coated dagger slid home.
~
His eyes blinked open and all he could see were slime-caked stone walls. The smell of dampness and stale urine lingering in his nose.
Dean found himself having trouble catching his breath, but he fought to calm himself, and then like a dam breaking down it all came back in a rush.
Dean wanted to kick and scream but he could barely manage to lift his head and his limbs wouldn't budge. He could sense the Djinn somewhere nearby, watching from the shadows, and he attempted to curse at it but his 'son-of-a-bitch' came out completely mangled and sounding more like a whimper than anything.
"You can't fight me, Dean. I won't let you."
The Djinn sounded far off, but Dean knew better. And his suspicions were confirmed when it moved out into the gloomy light of the cavern.
"How could I when you're so perfect for me? The artist in me longs for perfection."
It stepped closer and the flesh around its hands crackled blue like live electricity. Dean noted idly that the blood bag hanging beside him was drained dry, but the Djinn didn't even spare it a glance, only taking Dean's chin in its grasp and forcing him to look it in the eyes radiant blue and bright like a flare in the darkness.
"Those girls, that boy, were all delicious in their own way… But not like you. So full of burdensome memories, poison thoughts, and yet so hollow and empty."
Its fingers squeezed, little elastic-like stings zapping at his skin, and Dean felt himself slipping.
"My perfect canvas."
Time seemed to stop and start after that, Dean's head throbbing as he tried to keep abreast of whatever 'vision' the Djinn decided to ploy him with.
Mostly it was just taking on Sam's likeness, taunting him with words – would he save him? Would he leave Dean to rot? And then it was the forms of other people, random faces plucked from his thoughts and memories. It was a violation, and it hurt more than Dean could stand it, but the Djinn just kept on changing his face. Over and over. So quickly and so often it made Dean sick with it.
But always it comes back to Sam.
Sam's face, Sam's hands.
Pulling him down from his shackles and carting him out of that dank, cold box filled with shadows made of indigo and fear.
They'd talked earlier about whether this Djinn they were hunting was the dream-feeding kind or the nightmare kind, and after plenty of discussion – or was it arguing? – they'd decided it was somewhere in the middle. But now, after being subjected to its whims, Dean had changed his mind. Perhaps the creature was capable of both, feeding off of both dreams and nightmares, but he could say with absolute certainty that this Djinn enjoyed the taste of terror and distress far more than anything else.
Dean's eyes were getting heavy again, his thoughts drifting, but there was just time enough for him to see one last play-through of Sam's doomed-to-fail rescue. His brother's pinched expression and outstretched arms bowling in to save him for the umpteenth time, only to melt away before his very eyes, Sam's body dripping down until it was nothing more than vapour. Gone completely.
"Dean? …Dean, wake up!"
Dean's eyes snapped open in an instant, only to squeeze shut again when the weak light of a torch proved just enough to start his head aching.
"Dean, it's me. We need to go."
"Go 'way, Sammy."
His arms weren't strung up above his head anymore and Dean reached out to push limply at his brother's chest. He'd had enough of phantom brothers telling him they had to go.
But Sam didn't budge. Didn't fade away into the shadows. He only wrapped his arms around Dean's middle and hauled him to his feet in a way that only a guy as big – and as real – as Sam could manage.
"Wuh…?"
"It's over, alright? I killed it."
Prying one eye back open, Dean spotted the body curled up and deathly still on the ground, and then the bloodied knife nearby. Maybe it wasn't too much to hope?
"I don't know what you saw, Dean, but it's really me and I'm really here to get you out."
"Nnnyeah, but, thas what you b'n sayin' f' hours already."
Sam frowned at that but carried on dragging his dead weight out of there all the same. Getting out of the sewers that time was even harder than Dean remembered it being, but he supposed you had to expect that sort of weirdness from a dream – reality was always a kick in the teeth comparatively. They got out of there eventually, though, with Dean barely conscious and Sam practically throwing him into the back seat and strapping him in. He hardly remembered the ride back to the motel. In fact, all he recalled were a few flashes of sunny sky followed by the subsequent mould-speckled beige of their motel room.
Although he only saw flashes of it, things progressed as Dean would have expected them to - Sam making him eat something, Sam patching up the wounds on his head and neck, Sam putting him to bed...
It was that last one that changed things, though. Where in his earlier dream it had only gone as far as Sam kneeling between his thighs, this time Sam didn't move away, didn't fall back in horror when he touched Dean's skin. This time he pressed in close, large hands smoothing up the side of Dean's waist, lips brushing the underside of his jawline.
"Sammy?"
"I know." His brother's breath was warm against his throat. "It's been a long time, but... it's been a while since I saw you strung up like that and I guess it drove a few things home, y'know?"
"Yeah, I get it."
He was perched precariously on the edge of the mattress, so Dean dared not move for fear of his body collapsing or falling onto the floor and the last thing he wanted to do was break the moment. Instead he just let Sam do the work, pressing their lips together in a dry kiss, then opening him up to the warm wetness of his mouth, the clashing of tongues and teeth.
Dean lost time again, though he didn't remember losing consciousness, it was just that one minute he was sitting there with Sam between his knees and the next he was flat on his back, both of them clad in nothing but boxers and their undershirts.
Sam's hips moved fluidly in slow rotations, pressing their hard cocks together through threadbare cotton, warm and distracting in the best possible way. Then Dean's caught in the groove of Sam's thigh and it made his mind swim with dizzy pleasure, his head slumping back heavily on the pillow.
"We should stop," Sam whispered into his hair.
Dean moaned in protest but Sam was already sliding them under the covers, settling in to spoon him from behind.
"I promise we'll finish it tomorrow. I promise."
With that in mind Dean let himself calm back down and indulge in the heat radiating from his back, letting the comfort draw him under, for once voluntarily allowing his eyes to drop shut.
When he woke it was to the sensation of the mattress shaking. At first he thought Sam must have been getting up, but when the shaking carried on for more than a minute he started to worry. His body was still heavy with sleep, but Dean could feel the difference from the day before and he rolled over and off the mattress in one move, landing in a crouch.
What he found was not at all what he expected.
Sam was still on the mattress, seemingly still asleep, but he was shivering as if he were cold and his limbs twitched and flailed as though he were fighting off some invisible enemy. And perhaps he was. Dean made to reach out and touch him, to shake Sam back into the waking world, but Dean stopped just short of making contact, breath catching in his throat.
Clear, mid-morning light filtered through the orange curtains at the front of their room, making the intricate blue lines painting his wrist stand out in stark contrast.
His head shook in constant denial as he reached out to Sam, pinning him down. His brother's body jerked in reaction, but Dean didn't back away this time. He pressed his fingers to Sam's face and pried open one eyelid, gasping aloud as he found the iris milky-white in colour.
"No... No, no, no, no..."
He pulled at his hair, pacing the room for some inordinate amount of time. Until Sam's body suddenly ceased shaking, stilling altogether.
Dean stopped. Stared. Noticed the duffel bag in edging into his peripheral vision.
Was he still...?
But how would he know?
He looked to the bed and swallowed down the rising sickness. Even if he gambled wrong, it didn't matter either way now, did it?
The bite of a silver blade was becoming much more familiar than he'd like.
Dean gasped awake, head spinning as blood suddenly rushed through his veins, heart thumping like the hooves of a racehorse.
He looked around fretfully, body taut and on edge, only to come to the conclusion that he was in the motel in the bathtub – he recognised the oh-so-classy art deco print of the shower curtain.
There was a moment of intense déjà vu as he followed the tube protruding from his neck, all the way up to where a bag of blue liquid hung from the curtain rod above him.
Now that was definitely different from last time.
Glancing down at his arms - just to be sure - he let go a relieved sigh when there were no freaky tattoos in sight, but his heart did skip a beat when he noticed the distinctly dark shade of the veins in his wrist. That had to be because of the I.V., and hopefully it would sort itself out once he disconnected himself from the blood bag.
Despite the one hiccup, this had to be the end of the line. Surely. This had to be reality - it certainly felt fucked-up enough, and his body was certainly screaming with enough pain that it at least felt real.
He shook his arms loose and carefully pried the needle from his neck, hurling the thing as far away as he could manage before hauling himself out of the tub. It took all his strength to keep himself upright as he stumbled out into the main room, finding it empty and in disarray, as if there'd been a struggle. And perhaps there had. Considering the position he'd found himself in, it was pretty safe to say that the Djinn had gotten its grimy, poisonous hands on his brother.
Glancing around he noticed the blueprints of the city sewer system on the bed beside Sam's laptop, and it made him feel more than a little sick to the stomach to think that while in reality he had never actually been into the sewers here, once he got down there he would know exactly how to get where he was going. It might have been in his head, but he'd been there before all the same.
Just as he'd been pressed against his brother's body in the same bed under the same covers during what he supposed was the night before. Once upon a time Sam had punched him so hard he'd pissed blood, that was after Dean had said that they couldn't be that way anymore. Things were going to change after this.
But those thoughts would have to wait. Grabbing the blueprints and the supplies he needed, he jumped in the car – fuck the parking meters – and headed to the alleyway behind the three bars and one diner. Getting down into the sewers was surprisingly easy, and he found the Djinn's lair without trouble.
But it wasn't quite as empty as the last time they'd 'found' it.
Strung up from the ceiling was Sam's body, limp with unconsciousness, a red blood bag feeding into his neck.
He was able to pull the needle from his brother's neck, but only got as far as unlatching one of the shackles before he sensed a second presence, glowing blue eyes watching him from somewhere amidst the dark.
"So you've escaped."
Dean shuddered as those rumbling tones rolled over him - he'd recognise that voice anywhere.
"What did you do to me, you yellow-bellied bastard?"
The Djinn stepped out of the shadows and into the dull light of the cavern. He wasn't happy. "You were going to be mine, Winchester. I gave you pleasant dreams. I was creating you. I was making you mine."
"Gonna have to try a little harder, Navi bitch."
He was momentarily distracted when Sam whimpered from beside him, his dream-state in the process of fading away. But it was just enough time for the Djinn to get the jump on him, its hand wrapping around his neck and slamming him down onto the cold ground.
Dean kneed it in the groin and kicked at its legs, but the Djinn was one stubborn son of a bitch and its hand only clenched down harder, cutting off his air. His vision swam and he could feel the slight electrical pulses as it geared up to drag him down into another nightmare world, dark and terrible.
The light was fading from sight when his noose suddenly went slack, and the weight of one fully-grown Djinn slumped down atop his chest, pushing even more air from his lungs.
But then Sam's face came in to focus, pulling the body away so Dean could breathe again. The silver knife was still lodged in the genie's body - it must have fallen from his pocket when he was taken down, Sam must have seen it and gotten himself loose from the shackles. And Dean was damn glad he did or he'd be toast by now.
Dean pushed himself to his feet, dizzy but mostly stable. He had no idea what he must look like, and whatever funky shit had been going on with his veins had dissipated along with the Djinn, but Sam looked drawn and pale, definitely in need of some intense beauty sleep.
"Wanna get out of here, Sleeping Beauty?"
Sam grinned, though the small movement looked like it pained him. "I s'pose you're meant to be the prince who gave me the kiss of life?"
"Well, obviously. But if you were looking for something a bit more literal you're gonna have to come over here to get it."
Slapping him upside the head, Sam grabbed his wrist and pulled. "While I'm down with that plan, I'd rather we not go at it in the sewers."
They trudged back through the tunnels, weary and worn, and the moment his head breached the manhole, Dean greedily inhaled the clean air and indulged in feeling the sun on his face. Sam immediately lent him a hand and pulled him up, the two of them pausing a minute just to breathe. The sky above them was clear, pearly blue, and nowhere near the deep, murky colours he'd been forcibly immersed in over the past however-long. Nowhere near the colours of his nightmares.
~///~
A/N: If you haven't already, please take a look atlightthesparks artwork here at her LJ and leave her some love :)
Pairing: Sam/Dean
Rating: R
Genre/Warnings: creepy case!fic, some hurt!Dean, some messing around with canon monster lore (but canon does that anyway...)
Word count: 7.2k
Summary: When the Winchesters' case drags them down below the surface of the city, Dean finds himself in a battle between nightmares and reality, and it's doing his head in.
A/N: Written for the
spn_reversebang, prompted by art from the lovely lightthesparks! It's been awesome working with you my dear! I hope you've had as much fun working on your art as I've had writing this, and hopefully you like the finished product~ *cue vast amounts of squee* \o/EDIT: AO3 link
Dean reeled back as Sam heaved the manhole cover the rest of the way off, the sudden sewer-smell assaulting him like a fist to the face. Enough years had passed since he'd last had to deal with this type of shit, he'd kind of held on to the notion that he'd possibly never have to do this sort of dirty work again. The world, universe, whatever, had become exponentially bigger in recent times, it had been almost too easy to forget that these sort of bottom-feeder hunts they'd grown up with still existed.
But, hey, as long as it was still something he could shoot, stab or decapitate, he could deal. Didn't mean he had to like it, though, right?
"I can not fuckin' believe we gotta stoop back to this level. I mean, Heaven, Hell, Purgatory? Them's small beans. This is the goddamn sewer system."
Sam snorted. "Come on, Indiana. You lost the bet, you get first dibs whether you like it or not."
"Fine. Jeez, stop with the heckling already."
He brushed his jacket off and rubbed his palms over his jeans – not that it would matter in ten second's time – and lined himself up with the steel rungs bolted to the inner stone wall. The first few steps down were the hardest part, but once he got his shoulders below ground level and his hands on the rungs it became easier. The manhole shaft itself was pretty snug and the stone wall scraped at his back and elbows here and there – Sam was going to have to breathe in a bit on his way down because Dean was so not hauling his giant ass back out if he got himself stuck.
Once he reached the bottom of the ladder he found he had to jump the rest of the way – only a few feet, thankfully – and his boots splashed into murky water as he landed. It was a good thing the jeans he was wearing weren't his favourites, because there was no way he was hanging onto them once they got back outta there.
He pulled out the torch he'd tucked into his belt and shone the light back up the shaft toward his brother, who then dropped their supply bag down into his arms. Dean removed his gun and the pre-prepared silver dagger from the bag as Sam made his way down, and tossed him the bag and the remainder of its contents once he made the jump to the ground.
Sam, too, winced as the sewer water splashed up onto the bottom of his jeans, but it was quickly forgotten as he retrieved weapons for himself and turned back to Dean. His half-grin had Dean tempted to ask what he was so chipper about, but he decided not to spoil Sam's moderately good mood, wherever it may have appeared from. Likely he'd only get some sort of irritated huff in return anyway, so there was really no point to begin with.
"Alright then," Dean said, clearing his throat, "Let's get this show on the road."
Keeping their stances wide to avoid some of the water, they followed the length of the tunnel stretching out before them, two beams of damp grey torchlight leading the way.
"Let's get this done, already."
Dean pulled his tie straight and headed off at a brisk pace. The fact that he wasn't entirely sure where they were going was irrelevant, but he heard Sam swear from behind him, the turn of keys in the motel door lock and then his brother's long strides on the pavement as he caught up to his side.
"I'm can't believe I'm the one saying this but, seriously, chill out a minute. It's just a—"
"A what? A walk through the city? Yeah, maybe to all these other zombies around here but not to me, not to us. There's good fucking reason why we stay out of populated areas like this – everyone's a potential meatsuit."
"Nothing about why we're here points to the presence of angels or demons."
"As if we aren't enough of a homing beacon on our own."
Dean's jaw was clenched tight, his back stiff as they trudged along the sidewalk in their FBI get-ups. They'd arrived that morning and chosen a motel on the outskirts of the city, Dean mentioning something about not wanting to feel trapped, and now they were walking to the coroner's office which happened to be nearby. Dean had grudgingly agreed to forego the car once Sam had reminded him that cities – as opposed to the smaller towns that were their usual fare – were pretty well stocked with parking meters. They were already running pretty low on cash, it was no good wasting it on something as unnecessary as parking.
"Remind me again, why we're here?"
Sam blinked. "I just told you, like, a few minutes ago—"
"Yeah, well, guess I'm getting' senile in my old age. So start talkin'."
It took a second before the intention behind Dean's words finally clicked, that he needed the distraction more than the actual information, so Sam nodded to himself and began running through the full list of facts for the second time in as many hours.
"Right, so we've got four dead bodies at last count – one male, three female. All somewhere between the ages of eighteen and forty-five and they all went missing for about a week before turning up dead, their bodies dumped in random back alleys all over the city centre. All of them were still dressed in the same clothes they went missing in, and they all showed signs of exhaustion and dehydration, and there were signs that their skin had been in contact with water for a while right before their death."
"What exactly is the part that makes it something we're interested in?"
"It's not much, but there were high levels of heavy metals found in their blood, enough to be poisonous, and the medical examiner they quoted in the papers said that all of them showed damage to the heart tissue and that on first glance, if he weren't trying to be objective about it, he would have said they looked like they'd been scared to death."
That sure got Dean's attention.
"Wouldn't be the first time we've seen that. Think we're lookin' at another bout of ghost sickness or somethin'?"
Sam shrugged. "I've got a hunch that it's something much worse than that. I just hope I'm wrong."
"So, now what?"
Dean stood with one hand on his hip, the other flipping his torch back and forth between the intersection of two tunnels that had appeared before them.
"The logical thing would be to split up, but I don't know if that's the best idea. It's a bit of a maze down here."
"Yeah, no kidding."
Sam pulled out the copies of the blueprints he'd dug up at the library, pouring over them with his torch. He pointed out where he guessed they currently were and then to the couple of places he'd circled earlier, areas where the sewer pipes supposedly opened up into a larger 'room', somewhere with space enough for their hunt to both make a nest for itself and keep its victim tethered while it played with them.
A cold shudder made its way down Dean's back and he pulled his phone from his pocket just to give his mind something else to focus on for a moment. He pulled up the home screen and watched with annoyance as it flickered between no signal and a single bar. Hardly surprising considering how far underground they were. The fact he could even get that one bar to register was nothing short of amazing.
"I think we should go here first," Sam said, indicating one of the points he'd circled on the map, "It's the closest one. We need to go left, then I think we should split up so we can come at it from either side."
Dean was down with that plan, so he headed into the tunnel going left, Sam close at his back.
All was going well until they came to the next fork in the road and headed their separate ways. Sam hadn't seemed worried in the slightest, but the moment his brother was out of sight Dean got the strangest sensation of something heavy dropping in his gut, dread falling through him like a stone. It was sudden enough to nearly have him on his knees. He hurried along the path he'd been told – right, left, right, right – keeping his pace swift but not quite at a run. If he got to their destination and Sam asked why he was panting for breath… Yeah, well, there was no explaining that away. Not to his brother, anyway.
Sure enough, he took the last right turn and found himself in a large stone-walled cavern, just as expected. He found rags and threadbare blankets pushed into one corner of the floor as well as an empty blood bag and plastic tubing scattered around. Oh, and it reeked of piss.
Jackpot.
"Sammy!"
Dean's voice echoed off the smooth walls, louder than he might have expected. The stone in his belly quickly doubled in weight when he found himself waiting far too long for some sort of response.
He smartly turned to go back the way he'd come when he was met with the vision of Sam's smiling face.
"Son-of-a-bitch!" Dean grabbed at his chest, slumping over as he attempted to gain back his stolen breath. "You tryin' to give me a goddamn heart attack? 'Cause that came pretty flippin' close!"
"Just keeping you on your toes, dude." Sam strut his way over to the corner and bent down to take a closer look at the blood bag and tubes. "Looks like I brought you to the right place, too. How do you plan on thanking me?"
Oh, Hell no. His brother didn't get to be so smug and get away with it. He headed back out into the tunnels leaving only a middle finger in his wake.
Getting into the coroner's was a piece of cake.
Even more so than usual, which Dean attributed to the sheer amount of people wandering through the hallways, probably passing through to the hospital located on the floors above them. (Naturally the morgue was in the basement – where else would it be?)
Somehow they'd managed to get rid of the medical examiner without any trouble, and they locked the door behind him, not wanting to be disturbed while they examined the bodies for themselves. Dean flipped through the paper files while Sam went about locating the actual bodies, and he could see immediately why the doctor had told the local news that he thought the victims had been frightened to death – the expression frozen on to all their faces when they'd been found was obvious. Sheer terror.
It should have been straight forward, right? If it wasn't another Buruburu then what else could it be?
And yet, something about it didn't sit right in his gut. Sam had already said that he had an inkling it was worse than the obvious, and now Dean was beginning to get that, too.
"Right," Sam cleared his throat, drawing Dean's attention, "So these are the three bodies that are still here. The three most recent victims, all killed within the last month."
On closer inspection they found bruising around the temple area of all three, like someone had knocked them out with something. And there was a single puncture wound on each of their necks.
"What're you thinking? You said earlier that you had a feeling…"
"I do," Sam said, standing over by the furthest body, "And I was right."
Dean waited. "And?"
"You're not gonna like it."
Moving over to his brother's side Dean glanced down at the woman's lifeless face, Sam's gloved fingers prying her eyelids apart. The eye beneath was cloudy white.
"Oh, fuck no. This is so not cool."
Dean's anger was interrupted by the shrill ring of Sam's phone, and a none-too-happy look directed his way.
"What is it now?"
"Another girl's been reported missing."
"This bastard ain't wasting any time," Dean hissed through grit teeth, putting the files back where he found them and heading toward the door. They had badges to flash and recon to do.
Dean waited back on ground level for his brother to join him, the two of them sliding the manhole cover back in place once they were ready to leave. Now that they knew for certain what they were dealing with and where it was holed up, they had some more planning to do and a net to cast into the water.
"I'm pretty sure it's already got its eye on us. More so now that we've disturbed its home. Now we just have to make ourselves more alluring as bait."
Dean grunted, making his displeasure known. "Not sure how I feel about making myself 'more alluring' to our monster-of-the-week, but, hey, I'm a goddamn Winchester. I've already got a target for the supernatural on my back that's brighter than a nuke."
Sam slapped him on the back, a smirk slipping over his lips like he'd just thought of something funny. "Won't have to try too hard then, will you? Dean Winchester, supernatural catnip."
"So."
"So?"
"All the victims were last seen somewhere on this block." Sam pulled a hand from his pocket and pointed in succession. "There's two bars, a diner, then another bar. An alleyway runs from this end all the way around the back of the block, so that must be where they were taken from."
Dean hummed to himself as they started walking toward the closest bar, considering their plan of attack. "Don't suppose there's any abandoned warehouses nearby? Might make our next port-of-call a little more straightforward."
"'Fraid not," Sam said with a tilt of his head, "Or, well, not any warehouses per se. There's plenty of decrepit apartment blocks around that it could be hiding in, though."
"Great. Just awesome."
"No need to sound so excited about it."
"Yeah, well, you know me," Dean groused, "I just can't contain myself sometimes."
Sam ignored his mood and focussed on the task at hand.
"So do we split up or check one at a time?"
"When it comes to these bastards I ain't takin' any chances. We go one at a time."
Dean was in the bar on the end, furthest from where they had parked the Impala. It was the trendiest of the three and it was packed with barely-legals who were barely dressed, writhing against one another in a haze of whatever was going around.
He was completely out of place in his jeans and neutral-coloured jacket, but it wasn't just his clothes. Sure, when he'd been that age he'd been all about drinking and making nice with the ladies, but now the neon cocktails and the hardcore tattoos and crazy piercings littering most of the girls' bodies really threw him for a loop. It was unlikely any of them would be paying him any attention, yet it didn't stop him feeling like a creepy perv skulking around in the shadows like he was.
Moving further around the room he stopped when he found himself a decent vantage point, leaning back against the wall and crossing one ankle casually over the other. He was closer to the dance floor at that spot, multi-coloured spotlights drifting over him and around and around randomly. Had he not been pressed along the wall and partly dressed in shadow no doubt the lights would've had his head all swirly and achy in no time. He didn't like to think about his age at the best of times but being there in that type of place amongst those types of people was driving the point home a little too forcefully.
Dean let his mind wander as he kept an eye on the crowd, the lights and music fading into a dull roar, melding together in the background. He was shot straight back into the present however, when half the wall he was leaning on slammed right into the back of his arm – of course there was a staff door hidden directly behind where he was standing. The bartender coming out held his hand up in apology, but Dean shook it off with a shrug. Until his arm started to burn, that is.
He tried to wait it out, but the prickling sensation only intensified. Pulling his sleeves back in a hurry he could feel that his forearm was hot to the touch, the veins on the underside of his wrist were pulsing out of his skin and they looked a strange colour, although with the lights overhead flashing around like a convulsing rainbow he couldn't be sure.
Looking up to find the quickest way out, Dean paused when something strange caught his attention. A man with what looked to be a scar down the side of his face was looking straight at him from across the room. Dean had no idea how he could tell from such a distance, but he would've sworn that the man's eyes were the most piercing blue he'd ever seen.
He blinked, and suddenly the man was gone.
Stepping away from the wall Dean squinted into the dark in search of him just as the music took on a drastic change, the lighting fading into an icy blue to match the mood. He cursed as everything in sight was doused in hues of cerulean, but just as Dean took a second step forward he caught a sliver of yellow as a door slipped shut.
He cut around the edge of the dance floor as quickly as he was able, not even caring how many high heel-clad toes he stepped on. Once he reached the door he all but threw himself into it, stumbling out into the alleyway and headlong into Sam's chest.
"Dude, what—"
"I saw some weird guy with a scar on his face. Came out this way less than a minute ago."
Sam stared at him with a confused expression on his face, and Dean was close enough to smell beer on his breath.
"But I thought I saw some weird guy in the other bar."
Rocking back on his heels, Dean took a moment to think and collect himself.
"So maybe there's just a lot of weird guys around here. We don't know for sure that either of them is our guy."
"Well," Sam said with a long sigh, "There's one way to find out."
Dean watched as his brother's gaze shifted over to somewhere on the ground behind him. He followed Sam's line of sight and scowled, looking down at the manhole with derision, as if the whole infernal situation was all the goddamn sewer's fault.
"Guess there's no other option then. Back down the rabbit hole we go."
Dean listened in as Sam took yet another call from the police investigator in charge of the case. Their story was that they were doing a little undercover work, but the officer hadn't seemed to care one whit what they were up to. Which could only have been for the best.
He couldn't hear what was being said on the other end of the line, but going by the changing expressions on Sam's face it wasn't at all what they were expecting. He stared at Sam expectantly when the call ended and his phone slipped away into his jeans' pocket.
"The girl that went missing earlier? She's been found."
Dean blinked in surprise. "Already? Man, that was—"
"Alive, Dean. She's got a pretty nasty egg on her head and she's been poisoned like the others but they think she might still pull through."
"We gotta be missing something, then. There's no way she'd be found alive if our beasty-of-the-week didn't have its eyes on its next target already."
Sam sighed, his shoulders slumping in defeat. "I agree. But a sudden change in pattern can't be a good sign."
"We have to find out what, or who it's after, and quick."
"I think we need to get a look outside in the alley."
"Good thinkin' 99."
~
"So here we are… Now what are we looking for?"
Dean scanned around the laneway, finding little more than the expected garbage bins and murky-yellow lamps lighting their way. Sam seemed to disappear into the dark for a moment, before reappearing again, hand pointing toward the ground somewhere. It wasn't until he moved closer that he got a look at the object in question, hidden amongst the shadows.
"That. We're looking for that."
A manhole.
Straight down into the sewers. No empty warehouses or abandoned apartment blocks required. Their monster had the perfect route in and out of his hunting ground without being seen. And honestly, Dean could've kicked himself for not thinking of it sooner. It wouldn't be the first hunt where they'd ended up down below.
But speaking of being seen, where the fuck had Sam disappeared to? They had a goddamn Djinn to hunt.
The blow from behind came out of nowhere.
Dean woke to blackness. It dispersed into a damp, blue glow as his vision cleared, though as the pain in his head set in it became difficult to keep his eyes open.
He tried to touch his head to see if there was a wound, any blood, but his arms wouldn't obey and it soon became clear that they were tied above him. Flexing his muscles brought about the sound of tinkling chains, but also pins-and-needles buried from deep within two very numb limbs – seemingly his arms were the only things keeping him upright.
Dean had a pretty fair idea about where he was by now, and while that was worrying enough in itself, he was somewhat more worried about the fact that he hadn't a clue how he got there. He remembered chasing a figure out the back door of the club and running into Sam, then Sam had grabbed his arm to drag him over to the manhole and that's when everything went hazy. His arm had flared with pain again and he had only a vague recollection of the manhole being pushed aside, Sam saying he'd go first since Dean had gone first before. Everything was a total blank after that.
There was a lump in his throat which he forcefully swallowed back down, prompting the side of his neck to start stinging like he'd been jabbed with a hot poker. Fuck, but Dean hated needles. Nothing good ever came about from being anywhere near them, let alone stuck with one under the skin. He tried not to think about it, to think about something bright and sunny instead, but perhaps thinking was the last thing he should have been doing. It was, after all, a Djinn that had him in its clutches and all trussed up, ready to play.
The Djinn was nowhere in his field of vision but he could still sense it close by. Too close for comfort, in fact. Close enough to already be eating away at his thoughts.
"This is quite some rabbit hole," he mumbled into the gloom.
"It's so much more than that, Winchester."
Dean's head whipped around. His arm was in the way but he could still clearly make out the blue-skinned creature slinking towards him, its tattoos curving and stretching across his flesh almost as if they were alive.
"It's home."
"Yeah, and it stinks," Dean said, turning his nose away in disgust. The Djinn could take his words any way it wanted – in his opinion it worked in pretty much every sense.
"Thankfully," the Djinn began, its voice so deep and rumbling Dean thought he could feel it in his toes, "The smell of a place does not affect my use of it… as you will discover soon enough."
Blue fingers tugged at the plastic tubing attached to Dean's neck and the site of insertion suddenly turned cold.
His eyes drooped, but he caught himself, forcing them back open.
And finding himself face to face with his brother.
His very worried-looking, wrinkly-foreheaded brother.
"Jesus, Dean, you alright?"
"Whuh t' ya so 'ong?"
"Dude, you remember how much of a maze this place is? You're lucky I found you as quickly as I did."
Sam fiddled with the tubes at his neck and then with something overhead, and without warning he tipped forward, landing in Sam's outstretched arms. There was a moment of struggle as Sam got Dean's limp body tucked into his side and then dragged them both out into the sewer pipes, Dean barely catching a glimpse of a dark figure somewhere on the stony ground. Luckily by the time they reached their chosen exit Dean had some feeling back in his limbs, though Sam still ended up pushing a majority of his weight up the ladder and through the manhole, back onto street level.
They were back in the motel in no time, although Dean partially attributed the swift passing of time to his occasion lapses of consciousness. He felt completely drained of energy, constantly on the verge of falling asleep, or passing out. One or the other. But Sam fixed him up good. Got him a beer, gave him food, patched up the needle hole on his neck.
"Think we better get some shut-eye, huh?"
Dean had to agree with that. But in trying to push himself out of his chair, he only got as far as a couple of inches above the seat before he went straight back down again, knocking his empty beer bottle over in the process. His brother gave a loud sigh – half irritation, half resignation – and heaved him up onto his feet, practically carrying him over to the nearest of the twin beds.
"Lucky I'm not you," Dean joked, despite that he'd managed to carry his sasquatch of a brother plenty of times before.
"Not that I'd ever call you light," Sam poked back, and proceeded to help Dean out of his boots and jacket.
No sooner had he pulled back one side of Dean's over shirt, however, than he fell back on his heels, one hand rising to his temple. Sam flicked his hair back and Dean could see the momentary pain on his face, but he quickly shook it off, getting the other sleeve. There was a second where they both paused, Sam's torso fitted in between Dean's knees, but then Sam was hissing in pain again, pressing his thumbs into his eye sockets.
"Sammy, what—"
"What the fuck, Dean?"
Dean reeled. "What? What! Whaddid I do?"
"You…" Sam pushed his hair back and his eyes went wide, staring at Dean's arms. "Oh, shit, oh shit!"
He stumbled backward and dove for the weapons bag, Dean's brain only just catching up as a stained silver dagger was pulled into view. Glancing down he saw the blue decorating his lower arms, abnormally vivid bruises of cobalt, spreading larger by the minute.
Breath caught in his throat, some far off memory of a club and a door slamming his arm blaring to life in his mind, but then Sam was in front of him again, eyes ablaze with rage.
"What are you! Where's my brother? What have you done with him!"
"I am your brother, fuckdammit!"
But Sam wasn't listening. He was shaking his head in denial, rocking unsteadily on his feet, back-and-forth. And the last thing Dean felt besides the flat-out horror of the situation was the cold touch of metal as the lamb's blood-coated dagger slid home.
~
His eyes blinked open and all he could see were slime-caked stone walls. The smell of dampness and stale urine lingering in his nose.
Dean found himself having trouble catching his breath, but he fought to calm himself, and then like a dam breaking down it all came back in a rush.
Dean wanted to kick and scream but he could barely manage to lift his head and his limbs wouldn't budge. He could sense the Djinn somewhere nearby, watching from the shadows, and he attempted to curse at it but his 'son-of-a-bitch' came out completely mangled and sounding more like a whimper than anything.
"You can't fight me, Dean. I won't let you."
The Djinn sounded far off, but Dean knew better. And his suspicions were confirmed when it moved out into the gloomy light of the cavern.
"How could I when you're so perfect for me? The artist in me longs for perfection."
It stepped closer and the flesh around its hands crackled blue like live electricity. Dean noted idly that the blood bag hanging beside him was drained dry, but the Djinn didn't even spare it a glance, only taking Dean's chin in its grasp and forcing him to look it in the eyes radiant blue and bright like a flare in the darkness.
"Those girls, that boy, were all delicious in their own way… But not like you. So full of burdensome memories, poison thoughts, and yet so hollow and empty."
Its fingers squeezed, little elastic-like stings zapping at his skin, and Dean felt himself slipping.
"My perfect canvas."
Time seemed to stop and start after that, Dean's head throbbing as he tried to keep abreast of whatever 'vision' the Djinn decided to ploy him with.
Mostly it was just taking on Sam's likeness, taunting him with words – would he save him? Would he leave Dean to rot? And then it was the forms of other people, random faces plucked from his thoughts and memories. It was a violation, and it hurt more than Dean could stand it, but the Djinn just kept on changing his face. Over and over. So quickly and so often it made Dean sick with it.
But always it comes back to Sam.
Sam's face, Sam's hands.
Pulling him down from his shackles and carting him out of that dank, cold box filled with shadows made of indigo and fear.
They'd talked earlier about whether this Djinn they were hunting was the dream-feeding kind or the nightmare kind, and after plenty of discussion – or was it arguing? – they'd decided it was somewhere in the middle. But now, after being subjected to its whims, Dean had changed his mind. Perhaps the creature was capable of both, feeding off of both dreams and nightmares, but he could say with absolute certainty that this Djinn enjoyed the taste of terror and distress far more than anything else.
Dean's eyes were getting heavy again, his thoughts drifting, but there was just time enough for him to see one last play-through of Sam's doomed-to-fail rescue. His brother's pinched expression and outstretched arms bowling in to save him for the umpteenth time, only to melt away before his very eyes, Sam's body dripping down until it was nothing more than vapour. Gone completely.
"Dean? …Dean, wake up!"
Dean's eyes snapped open in an instant, only to squeeze shut again when the weak light of a torch proved just enough to start his head aching.
"Dean, it's me. We need to go."
"Go 'way, Sammy."
His arms weren't strung up above his head anymore and Dean reached out to push limply at his brother's chest. He'd had enough of phantom brothers telling him they had to go.
But Sam didn't budge. Didn't fade away into the shadows. He only wrapped his arms around Dean's middle and hauled him to his feet in a way that only a guy as big – and as real – as Sam could manage.
"Wuh…?"
"It's over, alright? I killed it."
Prying one eye back open, Dean spotted the body curled up and deathly still on the ground, and then the bloodied knife nearby. Maybe it wasn't too much to hope?
"I don't know what you saw, Dean, but it's really me and I'm really here to get you out."
"Nnnyeah, but, thas what you b'n sayin' f' hours already."
Sam frowned at that but carried on dragging his dead weight out of there all the same. Getting out of the sewers that time was even harder than Dean remembered it being, but he supposed you had to expect that sort of weirdness from a dream – reality was always a kick in the teeth comparatively. They got out of there eventually, though, with Dean barely conscious and Sam practically throwing him into the back seat and strapping him in. He hardly remembered the ride back to the motel. In fact, all he recalled were a few flashes of sunny sky followed by the subsequent mould-speckled beige of their motel room.
Although he only saw flashes of it, things progressed as Dean would have expected them to - Sam making him eat something, Sam patching up the wounds on his head and neck, Sam putting him to bed...
It was that last one that changed things, though. Where in his earlier dream it had only gone as far as Sam kneeling between his thighs, this time Sam didn't move away, didn't fall back in horror when he touched Dean's skin. This time he pressed in close, large hands smoothing up the side of Dean's waist, lips brushing the underside of his jawline.
"Sammy?"
"I know." His brother's breath was warm against his throat. "It's been a long time, but... it's been a while since I saw you strung up like that and I guess it drove a few things home, y'know?"
"Yeah, I get it."
He was perched precariously on the edge of the mattress, so Dean dared not move for fear of his body collapsing or falling onto the floor and the last thing he wanted to do was break the moment. Instead he just let Sam do the work, pressing their lips together in a dry kiss, then opening him up to the warm wetness of his mouth, the clashing of tongues and teeth.
Dean lost time again, though he didn't remember losing consciousness, it was just that one minute he was sitting there with Sam between his knees and the next he was flat on his back, both of them clad in nothing but boxers and their undershirts.
Sam's hips moved fluidly in slow rotations, pressing their hard cocks together through threadbare cotton, warm and distracting in the best possible way. Then Dean's caught in the groove of Sam's thigh and it made his mind swim with dizzy pleasure, his head slumping back heavily on the pillow.
"We should stop," Sam whispered into his hair.
Dean moaned in protest but Sam was already sliding them under the covers, settling in to spoon him from behind.
"I promise we'll finish it tomorrow. I promise."
With that in mind Dean let himself calm back down and indulge in the heat radiating from his back, letting the comfort draw him under, for once voluntarily allowing his eyes to drop shut.
When he woke it was to the sensation of the mattress shaking. At first he thought Sam must have been getting up, but when the shaking carried on for more than a minute he started to worry. His body was still heavy with sleep, but Dean could feel the difference from the day before and he rolled over and off the mattress in one move, landing in a crouch.
What he found was not at all what he expected.
Sam was still on the mattress, seemingly still asleep, but he was shivering as if he were cold and his limbs twitched and flailed as though he were fighting off some invisible enemy. And perhaps he was. Dean made to reach out and touch him, to shake Sam back into the waking world, but Dean stopped just short of making contact, breath catching in his throat.
Clear, mid-morning light filtered through the orange curtains at the front of their room, making the intricate blue lines painting his wrist stand out in stark contrast.
His head shook in constant denial as he reached out to Sam, pinning him down. His brother's body jerked in reaction, but Dean didn't back away this time. He pressed his fingers to Sam's face and pried open one eyelid, gasping aloud as he found the iris milky-white in colour.
"No... No, no, no, no..."
He pulled at his hair, pacing the room for some inordinate amount of time. Until Sam's body suddenly ceased shaking, stilling altogether.
Dean stopped. Stared. Noticed the duffel bag in edging into his peripheral vision.
Was he still...?
But how would he know?
He looked to the bed and swallowed down the rising sickness. Even if he gambled wrong, it didn't matter either way now, did it?
The bite of a silver blade was becoming much more familiar than he'd like.
Dean gasped awake, head spinning as blood suddenly rushed through his veins, heart thumping like the hooves of a racehorse.
He looked around fretfully, body taut and on edge, only to come to the conclusion that he was in the motel in the bathtub – he recognised the oh-so-classy art deco print of the shower curtain.
There was a moment of intense déjà vu as he followed the tube protruding from his neck, all the way up to where a bag of blue liquid hung from the curtain rod above him.
Now that was definitely different from last time.
Glancing down at his arms - just to be sure - he let go a relieved sigh when there were no freaky tattoos in sight, but his heart did skip a beat when he noticed the distinctly dark shade of the veins in his wrist. That had to be because of the I.V., and hopefully it would sort itself out once he disconnected himself from the blood bag.
Despite the one hiccup, this had to be the end of the line. Surely. This had to be reality - it certainly felt fucked-up enough, and his body was certainly screaming with enough pain that it at least felt real.
He shook his arms loose and carefully pried the needle from his neck, hurling the thing as far away as he could manage before hauling himself out of the tub. It took all his strength to keep himself upright as he stumbled out into the main room, finding it empty and in disarray, as if there'd been a struggle. And perhaps there had. Considering the position he'd found himself in, it was pretty safe to say that the Djinn had gotten its grimy, poisonous hands on his brother.
Glancing around he noticed the blueprints of the city sewer system on the bed beside Sam's laptop, and it made him feel more than a little sick to the stomach to think that while in reality he had never actually been into the sewers here, once he got down there he would know exactly how to get where he was going. It might have been in his head, but he'd been there before all the same.
Just as he'd been pressed against his brother's body in the same bed under the same covers during what he supposed was the night before. Once upon a time Sam had punched him so hard he'd pissed blood, that was after Dean had said that they couldn't be that way anymore. Things were going to change after this.
But those thoughts would have to wait. Grabbing the blueprints and the supplies he needed, he jumped in the car – fuck the parking meters – and headed to the alleyway behind the three bars and one diner. Getting down into the sewers was surprisingly easy, and he found the Djinn's lair without trouble.
But it wasn't quite as empty as the last time they'd 'found' it.
Strung up from the ceiling was Sam's body, limp with unconsciousness, a red blood bag feeding into his neck.
He was able to pull the needle from his brother's neck, but only got as far as unlatching one of the shackles before he sensed a second presence, glowing blue eyes watching him from somewhere amidst the dark.
"So you've escaped."
Dean shuddered as those rumbling tones rolled over him - he'd recognise that voice anywhere.
"What did you do to me, you yellow-bellied bastard?"
The Djinn stepped out of the shadows and into the dull light of the cavern. He wasn't happy. "You were going to be mine, Winchester. I gave you pleasant dreams. I was creating you. I was making you mine."
"Gonna have to try a little harder, Navi bitch."
He was momentarily distracted when Sam whimpered from beside him, his dream-state in the process of fading away. But it was just enough time for the Djinn to get the jump on him, its hand wrapping around his neck and slamming him down onto the cold ground.
Dean kneed it in the groin and kicked at its legs, but the Djinn was one stubborn son of a bitch and its hand only clenched down harder, cutting off his air. His vision swam and he could feel the slight electrical pulses as it geared up to drag him down into another nightmare world, dark and terrible.
The light was fading from sight when his noose suddenly went slack, and the weight of one fully-grown Djinn slumped down atop his chest, pushing even more air from his lungs.
But then Sam's face came in to focus, pulling the body away so Dean could breathe again. The silver knife was still lodged in the genie's body - it must have fallen from his pocket when he was taken down, Sam must have seen it and gotten himself loose from the shackles. And Dean was damn glad he did or he'd be toast by now.
Dean pushed himself to his feet, dizzy but mostly stable. He had no idea what he must look like, and whatever funky shit had been going on with his veins had dissipated along with the Djinn, but Sam looked drawn and pale, definitely in need of some intense beauty sleep.
"Wanna get out of here, Sleeping Beauty?"
Sam grinned, though the small movement looked like it pained him. "I s'pose you're meant to be the prince who gave me the kiss of life?"
"Well, obviously. But if you were looking for something a bit more literal you're gonna have to come over here to get it."
Slapping him upside the head, Sam grabbed his wrist and pulled. "While I'm down with that plan, I'd rather we not go at it in the sewers."
They trudged back through the tunnels, weary and worn, and the moment his head breached the manhole, Dean greedily inhaled the clean air and indulged in feeling the sun on his face. Sam immediately lent him a hand and pulled him up, the two of them pausing a minute just to breathe. The sky above them was clear, pearly blue, and nowhere near the deep, murky colours he'd been forcibly immersed in over the past however-long. Nowhere near the colours of his nightmares.
~///~
A/N: If you haven't already, please take a look at
lightthesparks artwork here at her LJ and leave her some love :)
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