tigriswolf: (JA walking)
tigriswolf ([personal profile] tigriswolf) wrote2006-11-13 10:07 pm

Ares - SN/Devour crossover - PG13

Title: Ares
Fandom: "Supernatural"/Devour crossover
Disclaimer: none of them pretty boys or their playmates are mine, alas.
Warnings: spoilers for Devour
Pairings: none
Rating: PG-13
Wordcount: 1230
Point of view: third

Sam can’t explain and it hurts his head to even try. But there’s Dean and there’s Jake and somehow they both exist, identical except Dean’s twenty-eight and Jake’s twenty-two. 

It doesn’t make sense.

Jake’s tightlipped and Dean’s wary. Dean refuses to leave Sam alone with Jake and Jake refuses to be alone with Dean. Sam’s running low on patience and sleep, and Dean keeps all the weapons away from Jake.

Jake doesn’t say a thing about where he’s from or what happened in his past, but one time he mentions something in passing to Sam and then it happens. So, with Dean hovering in the background, half mother hen and half guard dog, Sam starts talking about his nightmares that come true. And sometimes happen while he’s awake.

Jake’s eyes go to Dean and Sam practically begs Dean to leave. It takes pleading, assurance, and puppy eyes, but finally Dean says he’ll be gone for five minutes tops.

And Jake spills all. He tells Sam about his waking nightmares and his family dying and his friends dying and his mother who called herself the devil. He tells Sam about the arrest and then release because of lack of evidence.

Sam listens, silent and non-judgmental.

By the time Dean comes back, Jake is quiet again. But his eyes—the same as Dean’s when Sam left for Stanford—linger on Sam’s face.

He didn’t ask Sam to keep it from Dean.

-

When he sleeps, Sam dreams of a life that’s not his. A warm mother who’s paralyzed from the neck down, a stern father who sometimes drinks too much, a best friend who’s abused, a fuck-buddy whose father rapes her—and waking nightmares that always eventually come true.

It isn’t a good life he dreams of. And everyone calls him Jake.

-

Sam tells Dean about Jake while Jake takes a shower.

Dean raises an eyebrow and drawls, “Right.”

But Sam says, “Dean, I believe him,” and Dean looks away, at the bathroom door. He’s quiet for a minute, the kind of quiet Sam associates with death and danger. Still in a way only the greatest of predators can be.

“I won’t let you kill him,” Sam murmurs and Dean meets his eyes, smirks.

“Wasn’t plannin’ to, Sammy,” he answers and Sam knows it’s the truth.

-

He still doesn’t know how it happened. But the vision woke him up screaming and he told Dean they had to go now. Driving down the highway in the middle of Montana, they found Jake, bloodied and bruised and broken in a way neither of them ever had been.

Jake who looked like Dean did years ago. Exactly the same.

Dean wasn’t sure what to do, but Sam said they had to pick him up.

And it didn’t take much convincing; Jake was so worn-out, so run-down, so weary—he just wanted to rest. He fell asleep in the back seat, even with Dean’s music shrieking, and slept for over twenty-four hours.

When he woke up, he was a part of them. Dean wouldn’t turn his back, convinced for a while it was a trick, and then not turning his back was habit. Sometimes, Sam dreamed and knew it was actually Jake, but he didn’t know how to start the conversation. He thought it was him, not Jake, and then Jake’s waking nightmares…

He watches Jake and Dean, noting the similarities and differences. Jake isn’t as hard as Dean, but seems just as weary. He has less scars, that’s for sure, but not by much. Dean’s sense of humor is darker; Jake’s temper doesn’t fray as swiftly. They both like him and they don’t like each other.

But they do like the same kinds of movies, the same food, the same music. They both rag on him, though Jake is hesitant at first. Sam takes it all gracefully, hoping they’ll click.

And then one day he wakes up and they do.

-

It’s almost like Sam has two brothers, one older and one younger. And he finally understands how Dean must have felt all those years playing mediator.

It’s damn tiring.

But this new thing, three again instead of two—it fits. Jake blends in. They teach him to fight and he gives them a taste of normality, because until his real mom showed up, that’s mostly what he was.

When he wakes up from memory-dreams, Sam isn’t always the one to comfort him. Listening to Dean quietly assure Jake that it’s over, that nothing can hurt him anymore, Sam feels at a loss. It’s what Dean does for him, he knows, but he’s never heard it from this side before.

-

People have always looked at them, Sam and Dean. But now they get double takes.

The waitresses, and some waiters, don’t know which to hit on, Dean or Jake, and Sam just laughs.

Dean’s always used his looks, his natural charm, and his acting ability, but Jake hadn’t. Under Dean’s tutelage, Jake learns swiftly.

With them working together, Sam knows, the world doesn’t have a chance.

-

Jake’s first hunt is sixth months after he joins them on the road.

It’s a routine haunting, a malicious poltergeist, but they’d missed part of the story when they’d researched the history of the house and Dean ends up flying out the second story window.

It’s Jake who reacts instead of Sam, Jake’s hand that reaches out and keeps Dean from hitting the ground, Jake whose anger snaps like a whip and sends the poltergeist to hell like it always should have been.

Dean doesn’t remember his near swan-dive and Sam doesn’t feel like telling him. Jake doesn’t mention his sudden telekinesis and neither does Sam.

-

After, Sam wonders how he didn’t see it coming, why the dreams didn’t warn him, why Jake didn’t.

After, Sam doesn’t know who he hates more, himself, Dean, or Jake.

After, Sam has no clue what to do, where to go.

After, Sam just sits in the middle of the room his brother died in and weeps.

-

Jake, of course, survived. Sam wonders if he can die.

Sam survived, too. He knows he hates himself for that.

-

Dean never was normal, but he was more normal than Sam. After all, he didn’t have ‘abilities.’ No telekinesis, no telepathy, no premonitions—nothing but a hunter’s intuition and a brother’s instinct.

Jake apologizes every day and Sam can’t look at him.

Not with Jake having Dean’s eyes and Dean’s hair and Dean’s voice.

Marisol pokes her head in sometimes, and Sam can barely restrain himself from attacking her, from trying to kill her.

Jake watches him uncertainly and Sam wonders if Jake will warn Marisol when he finally does choose it’s time.

Remembering Jake’s memories of Connie, Sam doubts it.

-

Sam can’t explain and it hurts his head to even try. But there’s Dean and there’s Jake and somehow they both exist, identical except Dean’s twenty-eight and Jake’s twenty-two.

It doesn’t make sense.

-

Three years after Dean dies, killed by Marisol and her plans for world domination, killed by Mom’s killer and lies, killed by his own bull-headed overprotectiveness, Sam gets his vengeance.

Jake smirks Dean’s smirk and watches his mother die. Then he and Sam leave together, get in Dean’s car and drive away.

Dean’s music plays and they don’t know where they’re going.

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