![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
crime_and_ink) wrote2011-05-16 01:43 pm
Fic: Underneath Your Skin (4/10) (Supernatural)
Rating: R
Genre: AU (college).
Pairings: Sam/Gabriel with hints of Dean/Castiel.
Warnings: Severe mental health problems, past child abuse.
Summary: Gabriel’s never minded missing entire chunks of time- at least until he wakes up in hospital and discovers the reason behind them. College is hard enough without therapy and other students acting like you’re a bomb about to go off. Sam Winchester wants to help, or at least prove that not everyone’s got the wrong idea, but isn’t getting very far.
Notes: I do not have the psychiatric disorder featured in this fic, and there will probably be mistakes, so I apologise to anyone offended by them in advance.
This chapter’s a bit shorter than the others, and I’m sorry for the delay. :P The next chapter should be up a lot faster (not that that’ll be hard.)
The bottle cap rolled off the desk and hit the floor before rolling under the bed. Gabriel’s bed. Sam stared at the boxes and bags that were just poking out from under it. He’d stayed away from them, mainly because Gabriel had only just started staying in the room when Sam was there. They didn’t talk very often, but it was more of a comfortable silence than an awkward one. A silence that was likely to be ruined if Gabriel caught Sam going through the boxes of DVDs and notepads. The only time he’d tried to talk to Gabriel about anything to do with his DID, Gabriel had clammed up so quickly that Sam had know that he wasn’t going to find anything out before he’d even finished his sentence.
“Sam, get a move on!” Dean yelled from down the hall. Probably sitting on the banister again, despite Ellen having told him not to every time he’d done it. “We don’t have all day.”
“In a minute!”
Sam dug around under the bags, searching for bottle cap and hoping that he didn’t have to move anything. Just as he managed to find it, something in the top of the bag caught his eye. It was a bus ticket. He recognised it as almost identical to the ones he and Dean had purchased to get to the university. Going against the part of his brain that said that this was the worst idea Sam had had in his life, he looked in the bag, the bottle cap still in his hand. Several pairs of jeans, t-shirts, a jacket tucked behind the bag, the bus ticket, some money. Like he was going on a trip. Kansas. Wasn’t that where Castiel had said their family was originally from, before they’d ended up with their uncle? Sam was sure it was, mainly because, when they were at school, he’d found it funny that four kids who’d spent their lives moving all over the country had somehow managed to meet twice. Castiel had said something about growing up elsewhere, though...
“What are you doing?”
Sam’s head snapped up as he dropped the bag. Gabriel was standing in the doorway, clutching what Sam assumed to be the latest DVD in one hand, and his key in the other. His eyes were wide but guarded and fixed on the bag.
He held up the bottle cap. “I dropped it. I didn’t mean to go looking, but when I moved them, one of the boxes broke and the DVDs fell out, and when I tried to put them in another bag it was full.”
The bag still sat between them, an unasked and unanswered question. Gabriel’s eyes darted from the bag to Sam, to the DVDs and back to Sam. Heart pounding and feeling like he was standing on a tightrope, Sam waited for him to switch, for one of the other personalities to surface. Nothing happened. Gabriel just kept staring at him, as if was waiting for Sam to react.
“Are you going somewhere?”
“It’s none of your business.”
That’s not a denial. That’s a yes.
“I spent entire days stuck in a room while my brother eye-fucked your brother so that you could have some space and now you’re just going to take off?”
Gabriel blinked at him, and for almost a minute Sam actually thought he’d rendered him speechless. Until –
“You think giving me space is going to work? I’ve got some bad news for you, kiddo, this doesn’t get fixed by space. It doesn’t get fixed by time. It probably won’t even get fixed by the hours I spend going through Hell in a therapist’s office while half the campus talks about how crazy I am. I’d love to be able to stay with my brother if it meant that I’d never have to another therapy session, but I don’t get to do that. I’ve got to write essays, go to lectures, go to therapy and find time to study , sleep and eat at some point. It’s going to easier like this.”
Sam grabbed for the bag, but Gabriel got between the two, and Sam caught his hand instead, squeezing too tightly to be comfortable. Gabriel didn’t even wince.
“I thought I was the one leaving, not you.”
“You’re just going to walk out because it’s difficult? Fine.” Sam picked up the duffel bag of clothes, thankful that he’d not had a chance to take his clean laundry out and put it in the small closet yet. “I’m out of here.”
“Do I need to write down that I’m the one leaving?”
Sam’s expression would have made someone who hadn’t grown up around Zachariah flinch, Gabriel was sure.
“I’m going to Castiel and Dean’s until you realise that you’re making a mistake.”
“Then you should move out all your stuff, because I’m not changing my mind!” Gabriel yelled after him. Andy peeked around the doorframe, holding the textbook he’d borrowed from Gabriel after spilling beer on his own, out like a shield.
“I, uh, brought back your book,” he said.
“You’re a coward.”
“Don’t you ever knock?” Gabriel folded up the next t-shirt and slid it down the side of his bag. He’d probably be able to fit a couple of weeks’ worth of clothing in it; he’d managed it before. The only difference between this time and the ones before was that he intended to stay away for more than a few days. “Of course you don’t. No one ever told you to,” he added under his breath. It had been all about staying in the room until the sounds of us being beaten up stop, but don’t come out for another house. “Sam told you, then?”
“About your plans to disappear in the middle of the night? Yes, I think he mentioned it at some point between turning up at the door and refusing to come back until I talked some sense into you.”
Gabriel knew without looking up that Castiel was straightening Sam’s bedcovers. Some habits really couldn’t be lost, no matter how long they’d been away from Zachariah’s house.
If you’re not coming back in the next half hour, make your beds and if I find one pillow out of place-
There was something stuck in one of the zips. Something bright pink and fluffy, that looked like the Trickster’s idea of a joke. Gabriel yanked it out, saying, “Are you going to?”
“I can’t. You never listen to me.”
“Now that isn’t true. I tried to tell someone about Zachariah that time, and all I got out of it was some broken ribs, two black eyes and more bruises than I can remember.”
Castiel gazed at him reproachfully and Gabriel avoided looking at him. That had been a low blow and Gabriel knew it, but he didn’t care. Why couldn’t Cas just leave it alone?
“Listen to me, you’re at college, you’ve got a normal life, and a roommate you want to screw. If I leave, you don’t have to. You can stay and you won’t even have to worry about Loki or the Trickster screwing it up for you.” Now there was the problem of what to do with the notebooks and DVDs. He couldn’t just leave them lying around where anybody could find them. Even if he’d want to leave them with Castiel, the dorms weren’t the most secure places. It wouldn’t be hard for someone to break in and steal them. Plus, he needed the latest notebook to try and keep track of the triggers.
Castiel say moved between the beds and sat down on Gabriel’s, right beside him so that there was no way Gabriel could move and still keep packing.
“I only came because you told me you’d come as well.”
No. He couldn’t hear this. This was Castiel’s chance, and Gabriel wasn’t going to let it be reduced to a guilt trip to get him to stay. “Don’t.”
“I got an offer from New York, but I spoke to one of the doctors while you were in hospital and they said that Doctor Kindle was one of the best therapists, particularly when dissociative identity disorder is suspected. I accepted this place instead of the one in New York because I wanted to be with you.ˮ
Gabriel closed his eyes. New York had been Castiel’s plan from the beginning. From the second the Shurleys had announced that they would help pay for college, Gabriel and even Balthazar had encouraged Castiel to look at the brochures, and New York had always been in the top three at the very least.
Harvelle College had been near the end of the top ten.
“Why?”
“You were the only reason Balthazar and I made it out of Zachariah’s house alive. You took care of us. You convinced me to go to college. I wanted you to do the same, even if it meant that I had to be there to make sure you did. You’re my brother, Gabriel.”
Gabriel threw the DVD of the first session Loki had surfaced during on top of the bag. “And what the hell is that supposed to mean? I’m supposed to stick around because you gave up a place at a better college for me? I should take care of you for the rest of our lives because I spent too damn long doing it before, Cas, and don’t even think about trying to take care of me.”
“I didn’t say that. That’s not what I mean.”
“Then what are you trying to say, or should I find a translator?”
“You shouldn’t go back just because it’s hard. What you did for us when we were kids was usually worse. You can’t expect me to take advantage of every single chance if you’re going to pass on them. It doesn’t work like that.”
Resigned, Gabriel avoided looking at his brother and muttered, “I’ll think about it,” but knew that Castiel had already won. He usually did, when the argument meant something to him. Maybe if they’d had a normal childhood, Castiel would have been the captain of the debate team or something like that. It would have suited him.
“You should call Charlie and Marie, too,” Castiel said, hesitating at the door. “They called me yesterday, asking about you and wondering why you hadn’t used any of the money in the account since you got out of the hospital. They’re worried.”
Gabriel had refused point blank to let the Shurleys give them the money for college because, in his experience, even the nicest people wanted something in return eventually. Hell, they didn’t even know about the DID. As far as they knew, it had been another fight that had gone wrong. There had been a lot of those. They’d been kind enough to adopt three kids who’d been kicked around in the system for so long that it had taken even Castiel – who had always been so damn hopeful that Gabriel had wanted to shake him and tell him that no one was going to adopt them because most people only wanted babies, rarely wanted three boys, and wanted two of the three when they were said to have problems even less – to unpack. They were good people, and they didn’t need the extra costs of paying for therapy, especially for someone who wasn’t even their kid.
“Sure,” he lied. “I’ll do it soon.”
It was almost midnight before Sam finally returned. Gabriel closed his eyes against the sudden blast of light when Sam switched on one of the lamps, muttering apologies as he got changed and crawled into his bed. Gabriel thanked a god he couldn’t bring himself to believe in most of the time, that he’d managed to escape any questions or, his worst nightmare helpful advice. If he had one more person try and give him helpful advice then he’d kill them. Thankfully, Sam was one of the people who wasn’t annoying enough to think that his helpful advice would be some amazing, life-altering thing.
“Gabriel?”
Shit.
“What?”
“Why Kansas?”
That’s not so bad. At least he wasn’t wondering if it had really been Gabriel earlier, which was more than Gabriel could say about some people. At least three people he knew didn’t know the difference between Loki and Gabriel. He did have a point earlier. I shouldn’t run whenever I remember that I can. I shouldn’t lie.
“Why not?” He sighed. “When our dad left us with our uncle, he said that he was going to take a job in Kansas City and come back for us when he had enough money to take care of us. I never told Cas where he was because Cas was the sort of kid who’d have gone to Kansas to look for him. Hell, he’d probably still do it now. I guess I still want to find him.”
Sam coughed. “You want to know why he never came back for you.”
“I don’t know why. He didn’t care enough to come back, why should I care enough to find him now? He didn’t give a damn about us.” I should hope he’s dead in a ditch somewhere, or buried in a shallow grave in the middle of nowhere. I should want him to have gone through a tenth of what we went through after he left us, but I don’t. I just want to know why he didn’t come back.
“Dean and I, we grew up with one of our dad’s. He didn’t adopt us, but whenever our dad was drunk, and that was a lot, Bobby was the one who took care of us. He practically raised us after we moved to Sioux Falls. Our dad was hardly around, and he disappeared for good when I was twelve. Bobby got a friend to pull some strings and we got to stay with him.” He coughed again, but Gabriel knew that it was just so that he could have a break. Showing your hand to someone had a habit of making you do that. “My dad missed my high school graduation. He always promised he’d be there. We looked for him for a couple of months before we gave up. I know what it’s like to want to find someone who’s let you down.”
“I don’t know what I’m doing here,” Gabriel admitted into the darkness. Sam stopped whatever he was doing and swallowed audibly. “I only came because Cas convinced me to. I didn’t care about college until just before I came.”
There was only silence, and Gabriel started to wonder if Sam didn’t know how to respond, if he was beginning to think that Gabriel had been right and leaving was a good idea, or maybe he’d just stopped listening altogether.
“Whatever you’re doing, you’re doing it. That counts for a lot,” Sam said eventually, something unspoken force behind the words.
Gabriel said nothing, but thought about the way Sam’s fingers had curled around his when he’d tried to grab the handle earlier, and smiled.
Yeah, I’m doing it. Whatever it is.
(5/10)
no subject
Once again, I cannot put into words how much I adore this story. And I loved the interaction between Gabriel and Cas in this one. I love when fics explore their relationship as siblings and I loved how it was portrayed here. Because the way Cas acted, it was like he was taking over the role of the older brother. I like how it works. He's trying to take care of and protect Gabriel now just like Gabriel did for him when they were younger.
Again, absolutely brilliant job!
no subject
I really wanted to show them as much closer than they are in SPN, because after going through the Hell they went through (next couple of chapters will show that, by the way.) Cas wants nothing more than to repay Gabriel.
no subject
You did an awesome job!
no subject
no subject
no subject
no subject
YAY! I'VE BEEN WAITING FOR THIS SUPER AWESOME UPDATE FOR LIKE...EVER...OR SOME AMOUNT OF TIME EQUALLY LONG. *grins*
Seriously, reading this has just made me the happiest person today. No lie or exaggeration.
<3
Love it so much. *cheers*
no subject
no subject
Anyways, rambly comment is rambly, but I really really like this fic! Awaiting the next chapter with anticipation! :)
no subject
I actually had a little bit of the idea, and then I was scrolling through my Gabriel mood theme and it grew into this fic very quickly after that. I love writing the Sam-Gabriel and Sam-Trickster conversations, and there are definitely going to be more.
The next chapter should be up in about a week, maybe a little bit longer.
no subject
no subject
It was interesting researching this, especially seeing how difficult it is for people to live their day to day lives, and how difficult it would be for them to open up to people, even people they're friends with, and often even their families. I'm glad you saw the little echo of Sam and Dean's relationship, because that's what I was aiming for. :-)
no subject
no subject
Not quite magically, though. :)