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Writing exercise - story in an hour two hours. Because basically, I just needed to write something that wasn't Big Bang to retain my sanity.
Title: The Crowded Room
Rating: Adult (for themes and language)
Fandom: SPN
Category: Gen
Wordcount: 2,251
Summary: Dean never realised how right he was when he started thinking that there was a stranger in his passenger seat.
At first, Dean's pretty sure that Sam has gone insane.
It's not that he hasn't spent his whole life thinking that Sam was unique, because really, any thirteen year old worth his mustard would choose bow-hunting over soccer any day of the week. Dean knows he would ping pretty high on any weird-o-meter around but Sam...
Dean has about a half an hour of gut-wrenching terror when he wakes up in the motel room alone the morning after Jess's death. He finds Sam at the diner attached to the motel and for a moment he's not really sure what he's seeing.
Sam had been scarily silent and shutdown for most of the night, up until four in the morning when he'd locked himself in the bathroom and cried. Dean had put a pillow over his head to try and give Sam some small measure of privacy because the last thing Sam wanted right that moment was to be comforted no matter how badly Dean wanted to just wrap Sam up in his arms forever. Dean figured he'd fallen asleep again around five and had woken up at seven to an empty room.
Sam spots Dean hovering in the doorway and waves brightly. When Dean is closer he can see Sam is shovelling food into his face like Dean has never witnessed before. "Oh man, you gotta try these pancakes, they're awesome," Sam enthuses, gesturing manically for Dean to sit down and pushing a heaped plate in his direction.
"Sam?" Dean says slowly, gentle like you would speak to a wounded animal. He's wondering if this fierce cheerfulness is just a prelude to hysterics but Sam doesn’t seem to be phased by his caution.
"Seriously," Sam continues. "The syrup is so good I think they tapped a maple tree out the back or something."
"Sam, what's going on?" Dean tries again and Sam slows and takes a moment to frown at him, cheeks still stuffed.
"What?" he asks, now looking puzzled and then gestures at the plate in front of Dean. As Dean touches it, still not sure what to do, a waitress approaches. Sam looks up at her, swallowing quickly and wiping his hands down the front of his shirt which is such an un-Sam-like thing to do that Dean just stares at him. "Oh hey, hon," Sam says. "You wanna scoot on back to the kitchen and snag me and my brother some free pie?"
"Sure!" the woman chirrups, just looking plain thrilled about the idea and everything in Dean goes cold.
He’d been afraid that maybe Sam had cracked, broken clean in two by his grief. What he didn't realise until days later was that Sam had indeed not broken but shattered, into several large chunks, pieces of Sam with different names, different personalities, terrifyingly different powers.
Dean decided over the preceding weeks that this was something he could fix, something he could exorcise.
He just had to find out how.
+--+--+
That very first morning, before he knew quite what he was dealing with, Dean had met Andy.
Andy seemed to be a coping mechanism, someone Sam retreated into whenever there was too much pain. What was funny, if anything about this could be regarded as funny, was that Andy seemed completely unaware of Sam's height. He was forever bashing his head into lintels, top of the Impala's door, anything else that was below six-foot-a-million.
Andy could also inexplicably score pot no matter where they were.
Dean got along with Andy fine but his ability to make people do what he wanted just by asking filled Dean with dread every single time Andy surfaced. Dean was just waiting for Andy to demand to know what was going on in Dean's head and probably wouldn't have been too impressed with Dean's determination to rid Sam of all the hitchhikers.
For the first three days Andy had been all Dean had to deal with and he'd started to wonder if maybe Sam had basically split down the middle. As the days wore one, he'd started to worry that Andy was all that was left, Sam on some kind of permanent hiatus, but then Sam had emerged from the bathroom with a towel wrapped around his head like the way girls would wear it and Dean met Ava.
Of all the hitchhikers, Dean liked Ava the most so he should've known she would turn out to be the evil one.
+--+--+
In those first few weeks, apart from Andy's marathon three day run right after the fire, Sam shuffled through personalities like a deck of cards, never settling on one for more than a few hours at a time. Dean was hoping that it would calm down because trying to switch who he was dealing with and how he treated them was giving him a permanent migraine.
Ava and Andy were easy, the two of them apparently the calmest of the lot. Jake appeared to be the one to surface when Sam felt threatened and had even picked Dean up and thrown him across a room when they'd been arguing. Sam had immediately slid back into place like a curtain pulling down when it happened and been horrified by his actions.
Dean was only thankful that Sam and the others maintained some kind of awareness of what each other did and that tempered their reactions. Dean was Sam's brother and the others treated him accordingly, protective but still not entirely trusting. This separation was never more evident than when Lily surfaced. Mostly she locked herself in bathrooms and screamed at Dean to leave her alone.
Lily blamed herself for Jess’s death like Dean suspected Sam wanted to, but was the one that felt free to vocalise it.
Dean had been assuming Lily was mostly harmless but when she dropped down into Sam in the middle of Ava screaming about a rat in the shower and Dean watched her touch it and the thing go paws up, he had to revise his thinking.
+--+--+
Dean thinks that Sam's hitchhikers are the only ones with powers, right up until it's Sam staring him the face, eyes level, telling him they need to go back to Lawrence because he dreamed about a woman in danger and the old tree outside their house.
+--+--+
Dean doesn't like Scott.
Scott is twitchy, sweaty and talks about dreams he has, dreams about a man with yellow eyes wanting him to hurt things.
Scott reminds Dean of that kid everyone had avoided in school, the one that always looked at you funny and pulled the wings off insects during lunch.
Dean starts getting nervous when Scott is anywhere near pets and small children because like Lily, Scott can kill with just a touch.
His only redeeming quality seems to be that he can control it.
However, Lily's only ever killed accidentally. Dean's starting to count down the days to when Scott does it on purpose.
+--+--+
When Sam gets them a free lunch on an otherwise unassuming Thursday, he thinks Andy has surfaced. When Andy's usual good humor is not in evidence however, Dean meets Ansom for the first and only time.
Ansom is needy and suspicious. He also uses his mind mojo on Dean which to the other hitchhikers was the one thing they could agree on being taboo.
It's only to get the first shower when they're both literally caked in Swamp Thing guts but it's a bad precedent.
Ansom doesn't surface again and Dean doesn't miss him. What he actually misses is the warning Ansom's disappearance represents, mostly because he's just relieved to be rid of him. It's only when Lily also goes AWOL for a few weeks after that, that Dean thinks to ask about it.
Ava gazes at him from under Sam's bangs over their diner table, tearing the burger Jake had ordered delicately into tinier pieces.
"Gone, I guess," she says, sounding completely unconcerned. "I mean, c'mon. You don't really miss the screaming, the crying, the over the top guilt do you?"
"I guess not," Dean says slowly, and even though it's what he's wanted, for there to be less hitchhikers and more Sam, he's starting to get a very bad feeling about what's happening.
Mostly because he's not actually getting more Sam, just more Ava.
+--+--+
"What's it like, when you're not, y'know, driving?" Dean asks. Andy is usually lighter fare but Dean gets most of his information about how everyone is doing from the guy because Andy doesn't get caught up in the emotion of it all.
Andy is carefully packing a joint and Dean is tempted to take it off him since when Andy retreats and leaves Sam behind, it's Sam who barfs all over the place because he has no tolerance for weed.
"It's kinda... dark," Andy says, lifting one shoulder in a half-shrug. "Reminds me of an old, spooky, abandoned town. It's Sam's head so there's some scary shit in here too. Maybe you guys could try seeing a Romcom once in a while, maybe hug some puppies so Sam has some good memories to draw on."
Dean had been assuming for months that Jake was Sam's bodyguard because of his strength, but he's been slowly realising that it's actually Andy who is the shield. Andy has absolutely no idea who Jess is or much about Sam's past. He's a wall that nothing can get through because nothing rankles him. He's the opposite to Sam in almost every way so it's strange that of all the hitchhikers, Dean feels closest to Andy.
"Andy, is something happening to the others? Lily and Ansom seem to be gone and Ava's getting a little more than her fair share of-" Dean halts mid-sentence because although it's the same body in front of him, Sam shifts subtly and Dean recognises Ava in the posture, the way her mouth curls up a little on the side.
Ava's hand walks across the table they're sitting at on the fingers like it's a spider and Dean draws his own back, having unconsciously reached toward Andy while asking his questions. Ava is only supposed to have visions, like Sam, but Dean is starting to suspect what's going on and he's pretty sure that if Sam's hand touches him now, he'll be a corpse soon after.
Ava chuckles and there's nothing about her that's gentle or kind, like he first assumed her to be. With a jolt Dean realises that Ava is insane, has been for probably a while. Lily was the one who could externalise her grief but perhaps it was Ava that everything else poured into, all of Sam's anguish and confusion.
All of his hurt.
"Dean, Dean, Dean," she sighs, shaking her head. "I'm disappointed."
"What are you doing?" Dean grits out when he goes to move and feels his body turn sluggish and uncoordinated. If he only had suspicions before, he's got confirmation now. Ansom's power was similar to Andy's, but he could influence without words. Dean's body is locked down and he's a prisoner, sitting ram-rod straight, glued in place.
"I was hoping you'd have your head buried in the sand just a tiny bit longer. I can't have you warning any of the others what's coming so we're just going to go now. You're lucky I'm in such a merciful mood."
"No," Dean manages to grit out even though his jaw is clenched down like the rest of his body. Ava leans forward and holds a hand inches away from Dean's face, so close he can feel a crackle of energy jump between their skin.
"See ya later big brother," she says.
+--+--+
Sam disappears for two months.
Most of that time, Dean follows up any leads he can, calls Bobby and has the same argument over and over and basically has a meltdown of his own. To say he isn't prepared to find Sam sitting in his motel room when he comes back to it after midnight when it's exactly two months and one day is an understatement.
What worries him is from the way Sam is sitting, slumped and with his legs thrown out in front of him, Dean can't tell at first glance who exactly is in residence.
He does know when Sam looks up and smiles, the expression cracking caked on grime on his face and dimples digging deep.
He's looking at his brother.
Dean crosses the room, tugs him up by his arms and crushes Sam to him like he might change his mind and run screaming. Sam doesn't, merely slumps and drops his forehead onto Dean's shoulder like he's too exhausted to do anything else.
"Where have you been?" Dean asks, question muffled by Sam's unruly hair which is mostly smothering him and he couldn't care less.
"It's a long story," Sam says and then shrugs out of Dean's grip, but brings his own hands up to Dean's shoulders so Dean knows it isn't a rebuff. He's just getting some space. "I'm the only one that came back."
"You all alone in there kiddo?" Dean presses, wrapping a knuckle on Sam’s temple, because he kind of understands what Sam's saying but he wants to be sure.
"Alone?" Sam says, sounds the word out like it's a foreign thing and then chuckles. "Yeah, I guess you could say that."
"So, what about this long story then?" Dean asks and Sam smiles.
Title: The Crowded Room
Rating: Adult (for themes and language)
Fandom: SPN
Category: Gen
Wordcount: 2,251
Summary: Dean never realised how right he was when he started thinking that there was a stranger in his passenger seat.
At first, Dean's pretty sure that Sam has gone insane.
It's not that he hasn't spent his whole life thinking that Sam was unique, because really, any thirteen year old worth his mustard would choose bow-hunting over soccer any day of the week. Dean knows he would ping pretty high on any weird-o-meter around but Sam...
Dean has about a half an hour of gut-wrenching terror when he wakes up in the motel room alone the morning after Jess's death. He finds Sam at the diner attached to the motel and for a moment he's not really sure what he's seeing.
Sam had been scarily silent and shutdown for most of the night, up until four in the morning when he'd locked himself in the bathroom and cried. Dean had put a pillow over his head to try and give Sam some small measure of privacy because the last thing Sam wanted right that moment was to be comforted no matter how badly Dean wanted to just wrap Sam up in his arms forever. Dean figured he'd fallen asleep again around five and had woken up at seven to an empty room.
Sam spots Dean hovering in the doorway and waves brightly. When Dean is closer he can see Sam is shovelling food into his face like Dean has never witnessed before. "Oh man, you gotta try these pancakes, they're awesome," Sam enthuses, gesturing manically for Dean to sit down and pushing a heaped plate in his direction.
"Sam?" Dean says slowly, gentle like you would speak to a wounded animal. He's wondering if this fierce cheerfulness is just a prelude to hysterics but Sam doesn’t seem to be phased by his caution.
"Seriously," Sam continues. "The syrup is so good I think they tapped a maple tree out the back or something."
"Sam, what's going on?" Dean tries again and Sam slows and takes a moment to frown at him, cheeks still stuffed.
"What?" he asks, now looking puzzled and then gestures at the plate in front of Dean. As Dean touches it, still not sure what to do, a waitress approaches. Sam looks up at her, swallowing quickly and wiping his hands down the front of his shirt which is such an un-Sam-like thing to do that Dean just stares at him. "Oh hey, hon," Sam says. "You wanna scoot on back to the kitchen and snag me and my brother some free pie?"
"Sure!" the woman chirrups, just looking plain thrilled about the idea and everything in Dean goes cold.
He’d been afraid that maybe Sam had cracked, broken clean in two by his grief. What he didn't realise until days later was that Sam had indeed not broken but shattered, into several large chunks, pieces of Sam with different names, different personalities, terrifyingly different powers.
Dean decided over the preceding weeks that this was something he could fix, something he could exorcise.
He just had to find out how.
That very first morning, before he knew quite what he was dealing with, Dean had met Andy.
Andy seemed to be a coping mechanism, someone Sam retreated into whenever there was too much pain. What was funny, if anything about this could be regarded as funny, was that Andy seemed completely unaware of Sam's height. He was forever bashing his head into lintels, top of the Impala's door, anything else that was below six-foot-a-million.
Andy could also inexplicably score pot no matter where they were.
Dean got along with Andy fine but his ability to make people do what he wanted just by asking filled Dean with dread every single time Andy surfaced. Dean was just waiting for Andy to demand to know what was going on in Dean's head and probably wouldn't have been too impressed with Dean's determination to rid Sam of all the hitchhikers.
For the first three days Andy had been all Dean had to deal with and he'd started to wonder if maybe Sam had basically split down the middle. As the days wore one, he'd started to worry that Andy was all that was left, Sam on some kind of permanent hiatus, but then Sam had emerged from the bathroom with a towel wrapped around his head like the way girls would wear it and Dean met Ava.
Of all the hitchhikers, Dean liked Ava the most so he should've known she would turn out to be the evil one.
In those first few weeks, apart from Andy's marathon three day run right after the fire, Sam shuffled through personalities like a deck of cards, never settling on one for more than a few hours at a time. Dean was hoping that it would calm down because trying to switch who he was dealing with and how he treated them was giving him a permanent migraine.
Ava and Andy were easy, the two of them apparently the calmest of the lot. Jake appeared to be the one to surface when Sam felt threatened and had even picked Dean up and thrown him across a room when they'd been arguing. Sam had immediately slid back into place like a curtain pulling down when it happened and been horrified by his actions.
Dean was only thankful that Sam and the others maintained some kind of awareness of what each other did and that tempered their reactions. Dean was Sam's brother and the others treated him accordingly, protective but still not entirely trusting. This separation was never more evident than when Lily surfaced. Mostly she locked herself in bathrooms and screamed at Dean to leave her alone.
Lily blamed herself for Jess’s death like Dean suspected Sam wanted to, but was the one that felt free to vocalise it.
Dean had been assuming Lily was mostly harmless but when she dropped down into Sam in the middle of Ava screaming about a rat in the shower and Dean watched her touch it and the thing go paws up, he had to revise his thinking.
Dean thinks that Sam's hitchhikers are the only ones with powers, right up until it's Sam staring him the face, eyes level, telling him they need to go back to Lawrence because he dreamed about a woman in danger and the old tree outside their house.
Dean doesn't like Scott.
Scott is twitchy, sweaty and talks about dreams he has, dreams about a man with yellow eyes wanting him to hurt things.
Scott reminds Dean of that kid everyone had avoided in school, the one that always looked at you funny and pulled the wings off insects during lunch.
Dean starts getting nervous when Scott is anywhere near pets and small children because like Lily, Scott can kill with just a touch.
His only redeeming quality seems to be that he can control it.
However, Lily's only ever killed accidentally. Dean's starting to count down the days to when Scott does it on purpose.
When Sam gets them a free lunch on an otherwise unassuming Thursday, he thinks Andy has surfaced. When Andy's usual good humor is not in evidence however, Dean meets Ansom for the first and only time.
Ansom is needy and suspicious. He also uses his mind mojo on Dean which to the other hitchhikers was the one thing they could agree on being taboo.
It's only to get the first shower when they're both literally caked in Swamp Thing guts but it's a bad precedent.
Ansom doesn't surface again and Dean doesn't miss him. What he actually misses is the warning Ansom's disappearance represents, mostly because he's just relieved to be rid of him. It's only when Lily also goes AWOL for a few weeks after that, that Dean thinks to ask about it.
Ava gazes at him from under Sam's bangs over their diner table, tearing the burger Jake had ordered delicately into tinier pieces.
"Gone, I guess," she says, sounding completely unconcerned. "I mean, c'mon. You don't really miss the screaming, the crying, the over the top guilt do you?"
"I guess not," Dean says slowly, and even though it's what he's wanted, for there to be less hitchhikers and more Sam, he's starting to get a very bad feeling about what's happening.
Mostly because he's not actually getting more Sam, just more Ava.
"What's it like, when you're not, y'know, driving?" Dean asks. Andy is usually lighter fare but Dean gets most of his information about how everyone is doing from the guy because Andy doesn't get caught up in the emotion of it all.
Andy is carefully packing a joint and Dean is tempted to take it off him since when Andy retreats and leaves Sam behind, it's Sam who barfs all over the place because he has no tolerance for weed.
"It's kinda... dark," Andy says, lifting one shoulder in a half-shrug. "Reminds me of an old, spooky, abandoned town. It's Sam's head so there's some scary shit in here too. Maybe you guys could try seeing a Romcom once in a while, maybe hug some puppies so Sam has some good memories to draw on."
Dean had been assuming for months that Jake was Sam's bodyguard because of his strength, but he's been slowly realising that it's actually Andy who is the shield. Andy has absolutely no idea who Jess is or much about Sam's past. He's a wall that nothing can get through because nothing rankles him. He's the opposite to Sam in almost every way so it's strange that of all the hitchhikers, Dean feels closest to Andy.
"Andy, is something happening to the others? Lily and Ansom seem to be gone and Ava's getting a little more than her fair share of-" Dean halts mid-sentence because although it's the same body in front of him, Sam shifts subtly and Dean recognises Ava in the posture, the way her mouth curls up a little on the side.
Ava's hand walks across the table they're sitting at on the fingers like it's a spider and Dean draws his own back, having unconsciously reached toward Andy while asking his questions. Ava is only supposed to have visions, like Sam, but Dean is starting to suspect what's going on and he's pretty sure that if Sam's hand touches him now, he'll be a corpse soon after.
Ava chuckles and there's nothing about her that's gentle or kind, like he first assumed her to be. With a jolt Dean realises that Ava is insane, has been for probably a while. Lily was the one who could externalise her grief but perhaps it was Ava that everything else poured into, all of Sam's anguish and confusion.
All of his hurt.
"Dean, Dean, Dean," she sighs, shaking her head. "I'm disappointed."
"What are you doing?" Dean grits out when he goes to move and feels his body turn sluggish and uncoordinated. If he only had suspicions before, he's got confirmation now. Ansom's power was similar to Andy's, but he could influence without words. Dean's body is locked down and he's a prisoner, sitting ram-rod straight, glued in place.
"I was hoping you'd have your head buried in the sand just a tiny bit longer. I can't have you warning any of the others what's coming so we're just going to go now. You're lucky I'm in such a merciful mood."
"No," Dean manages to grit out even though his jaw is clenched down like the rest of his body. Ava leans forward and holds a hand inches away from Dean's face, so close he can feel a crackle of energy jump between their skin.
"See ya later big brother," she says.
Sam disappears for two months.
Most of that time, Dean follows up any leads he can, calls Bobby and has the same argument over and over and basically has a meltdown of his own. To say he isn't prepared to find Sam sitting in his motel room when he comes back to it after midnight when it's exactly two months and one day is an understatement.
What worries him is from the way Sam is sitting, slumped and with his legs thrown out in front of him, Dean can't tell at first glance who exactly is in residence.
He does know when Sam looks up and smiles, the expression cracking caked on grime on his face and dimples digging deep.
He's looking at his brother.
Dean crosses the room, tugs him up by his arms and crushes Sam to him like he might change his mind and run screaming. Sam doesn't, merely slumps and drops his forehead onto Dean's shoulder like he's too exhausted to do anything else.
"Where have you been?" Dean asks, question muffled by Sam's unruly hair which is mostly smothering him and he couldn't care less.
"It's a long story," Sam says and then shrugs out of Dean's grip, but brings his own hands up to Dean's shoulders so Dean knows it isn't a rebuff. He's just getting some space. "I'm the only one that came back."
"You all alone in there kiddo?" Dean presses, wrapping a knuckle on Sam’s temple, because he kind of understands what Sam's saying but he wants to be sure.
"Alone?" Sam says, sounds the word out like it's a foreign thing and then chuckles. "Yeah, I guess you could say that."
"So, what about this long story then?" Dean asks and Sam smiles.