Lar ||| Buffy & Angel, Crossover, Supernatural

Turning Untested Belief
by Lar

EMAIL: HERE
RATING: R
COUPLE: Sam/Connor
SPOILERS: None
DISCLAIMER: Kripke and Joss, they're the guys.
SUMMARY: Before there was Jess, there was Connor.
AUTHOR'S NOTE:Written for ravurian, who requested Sam/Connor and this icon:


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Before there was Jess, there was Connor. Long limbed, soft haired, sharp-eyed Connor, who shocks Sam with his upfront approach and his confessions about his fucked up family. Or rather, the fucked up family Connor says he had and lost, which Sam's not entirely sure he understands.

What he does get, what he does completely understand, is the way that Connor seems to love them anyway. This, and the way Connor's tongue slips snake-like into Sam's mouth, stop him questioning why it is he's found himself with a lover at all. Especially one that he didn't see coming.

Sam doesn't think many people notice, not even his roommate. It's not as it either he or Connor make much attempt to try and hide anything, but then neither of them are inclined to let the world in on what they think or feel. There's no desire to walk round the quad holding hands when they can just go back to someone's room, close the door, strip down to skin. Then there's plenty of desire, long fingers over smooth muscle or the scratch of scruff on a jaw dragged across a shoulder blade. Slick muscle of tongues licking or tasting, greedy mouths pressed together in kisses that leave bruises.

After Connor, during Connor really, Sam dreams of angels.

Of course Sam's angels are not the beautiful, white winged messengers of peace and love that most people would think about. Tossing and sweating on his ruined sheets, causing his roommate to grunt and shove the pillow over his own head, Sam sees visions of weeping men whose backs burst with the elegant protrusions of hollow bones and black feathers that make their wings. He doesn't know what brings the tears, though he suspects that part of it comes from the raw and ragged wounds that mark the place where wings meet once-human flesh. Some of their feathers are still sticky with blood.

They stand in familiar places, these fallen and broken angels. Crying silently or into cupped palms, they sometimes look up when he approaches. They stare at him with silvery eyes and reach out for him with hands that tremble, silent pleas for help that he does not know how to give. In the dreams, he is afraid of them and drawn to them at the same time. His heart aches for their suffering, while his instincts tell him to run, and in the end he stands there helpless. Shaking his head. Apologizing for not knowing what to do. He wakes from these dreams with tightness in his chest and more than once he's picked up the phone to call Dean.

He never does make the call but the idea that one voice could make some of that lingering confusion fall away is tempting beyond words. Instead the dreams stay with him, those faces burned into the back of his eyes whenever he blinks and drifts.

Eventually he finds that he's begun to see those faces as familiar. He still feels the same lost confusion when they reach out to him but he recognizes them, each of them, and in the mornings now it's less and less likely he'll want to think about that call. He's grown used to them, made them part of himself, settled down to believing that this is something he'll just have to learn to get used to.

He doesn't tell Connor about the dreams, even though he's told him almost everything else. Everything he *can* tell about his family, leaving out the details that he thinks would take him from fellow fucked-up family guy to super freak, anyway. Something about these dreams makes Sam secretive and protective, as if he's afraid he'll break a trust by even breathing a word of it. He starts to a few times, especially after when they're lying together and Connor's skin is stuck to his own with sweat and Connor's face is pressed to Sam's neck, drowsy from sex and heat and comfort. Every time, Sam holds back.

When Connor leaves near the end of the spring semester, all he tells Sam is that he has a family thing. It's supposed to be a short break but the leave of absence turns into a withdrawal. Sam gets one note, one text on his phone, from a number that reads out as 'private.' The message is one word: goodbye. Connor's phone number goes from out of service to disconnected. His email bounces. He disappears from Sam's life just like that, and from that night forward, so do the angels in Sam's dreams.

-end

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