ohsam | OhSam Triple Play 2016!

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OhSam Triple Play 2016!

It's November 2, an auspicious (if ominous) day for our darling Sam, so to herald his introduction to The Red Stuff, let's revisit an annual tradition. Welcome to the OhSam Triple Play 2016! This year, we're offering a focus on a reoccurring theme in Sam's life: blood.

"Blood" could be interpreted in many ways. Family don't end with blood. The demon blood addiction. Injury. Familial woes. Blood magicks. Simply the color red. If it can be related to blood, even vaguely? IT'S ON POINT.

BOOST THE SIGNAL

And here's how we play!

Step One (mandatory): Write a three-part prompt.
1.) Pick a setting
2.) Pick an additional character or characters (Sam is assumed, naturally.)
3.) Pick an H/C scenario, with Sam as the focus. Other characters can share the misery, but Sam should get the brunt of it. That's how we roll. :D

You can make as many prompts as your little heart desires, one set per comment, but it would probably work best if kept simple. For instance: 1.) West Virginia 2.) Dean 3.) knives, or 1.) Bobby's Panic Room 2.) Mary 3.) demon blood withdrawal.

Step Two (optional): Fill a prompt!
Participants can choose to make visual art: create a drawing, painting, photomanip, or video based around an offered prompt set. All three points must be addressed. The art can be doodled or extravagantly detailed, artist’s choice. And, of course, Sam should be the primary focus of the h/c. Please reply with your art under the prompt you choose, and either put the art beneath a cut or supply a link to it, with appropriate header and warnings! (See "Posting Guidelines" in the left sidebar.) As subject lines are no more, please begin your fills with the word FILLED and a TITLE in BOLD.

Step Three (optional): Fill a prompt!
Participants could also choose to write a ficlet, again with Sam as the primary victim of our dastardly h/c scenarios. (No minimum or maximum word count is required; just go where the muse takes you, as long or short as you'd like.) Again, please reply with your fic under the chosen prompt set, using the appropriate header and warnings. (See "Posting Guidelines" in the left sidebar.) As subject lines are no more, please begin your fills with the word FILLED and a TITLE in BOLD.

If more than one author or artist wants to work with the same prompt, have at it! The ideal goal is to make a Triple Play, where a prompt set gets both art and fic – the art potentially inspiring the fic or the fic inspiring the art. But no matter how it's sliced, we get lots of delicious Sammy h/c! Have all the fun … at Sam’s expense. ;)

The usual courtesies apply:
→ If you notice that your fic is not on the master list after a decent amount of time (say, three days), please poke us in a PM. We might have missed it.
→ Anon posting enabled.
→ NO SPOILERS FOR UNAIRED EPISODES.
→ Play nice - no flaming and no character bashing, period. Any comments that break this rule will be deleted without warning.
→ Feedback is catnip for writers. Leave some author-love!
→ No spam comments.
→ Contact one of the mods if you have a question.
→ Spread the Sam love - pimp this meme!

Masterlist

My love will laugh with me before the morning comes by

caranfindel
1. A deserted road
2. Jess
3. Bleeding out

Maybe Together We Can Get Somewhere by

center_galaxy
1. The Impala
2. Ghost!John
3. Car accident

Whauksis by

crowroad3
1. New England in the fall
2. Dean
3. The hunter hunted

Binding by

fairyniamh
1. In a mirror
2. Lucifer
3. Banishing sigils gone wrong

Appointment in the White City by

crowroad3
1. A fancier than Winchester motel room
2. Balthazar
3. Sam's covered with blood. He can't remember how it happened or whose it is

Follow You Down by

tuesdaytoo
1. A cave or mineshaft
2. Any character - except they're actually a hallucination
3. Sam's bleeding and he's got to get to the surface before he passes out. But someone's trying to prevent that.

And From The Bunker Shall Come The Anointed One by

wetsammy
1.Bunker
2.Dean
3.Curse/Curse box

Time to say goodbye by

amberdreams
1. A field of wildflowers
2. Dean
3. It's time to say goodbye

The Descent by

lennelle
1. The Cage.
2. Lucifer and Michael.
3. Withdrawal. (Exactly how much blood did Sam drink before saying yes and falling in??)

Mercy by

lennelle
1. A church
2. Godstiel
3. Purifying the boy with demon blood as a "mercy"

To-do List by

lennelle
1. Bobby's house
2. Bobby and/or Dean
3. Unclean

Next of Kin by

lennelle
1. mental hospital
2. jody
3. next of kin

Collateral Damage by

lennelle
1. Bobby's house
2. John
3. A hunt goes wrong and John only has himself to blame as he cleans Sam's blood off the kitchen table they used for emergency surgery.

In the Precious Blood of the Lamb by

laughablelament
1) A kind of Kansas purgatory
2) Dean
3) rib-cracking spiritual seizure

Fix You by

center_galaxy
1. the impala
2. wee!dean
3. skinned knees

An Ocean Away by

center_galaxy
1. A dock
2. Bobby
3. Missing something important

The Collector by

lennelle
1. Impala backseat
2. John
3. Coughing up blood

Falling Leaves by

center_galaxy
1. A field of wildflowers
2. Dean
3. It's time to say goodbye

The Tide Rolls In by

broken_cinders
1. A lighthouse
2. Dean
3. Permanent injury

Battlefield Dressing by

wetsammy
1. College dorm room
2. Brady
3. Blood spill

Home for Christmas by

broken_cinders
1. Sioux Falls
2. Bobby
3. Sexual assault

Pressure Bandage by

themegalosaurus
1. A lecture hall at Stanford
2. A professor/classmates
3. Passing out

Here I go, turn the page by

caranfindel
1. snowy woods
2. Kevin
3. Where did Sam get to? Better follow the footprints. The bare and bloody part is disturbing, though.

The Recorded History of Sam Winchester by

indiachick
1. a natural history museum
2. Castiel
3. Castiel can perceive the blood on this dinosaur tooth/chunk of meteorite/bit of fossilized wood, even though it's older than human life on earth. He can also tell whose it is. Sam's. How?

The Holy Man and The Creature by

lennelle
1. A secret meeting place.
2. Dean, Castiel, Bobby
3. The devil walks the earth. The abomination who freed him must be destroyed by the righteous.

Soulsearching by

holyhelly
1. Abandoned church
2. Castiel
3. Soulfisting

Until We Close Our Eyes For Good by

tuesdaytoo
1) Throughout the years (pre-series to now if you wish or whatever span of time you like)
2) Dean (as his main constant; add other characters as you see fit)
3) Depression

Unclean by

zara_zee
1. A mental hospital, post re-souling
2. Dean and Bobby
3. 'Self purification'

Once Upon a Time by

center_galaxy
1) abandoned ruins of castle/other such structure
2) dean
3) sam pricks his finger on a statue - blood loss is disproportionate to magnitude of cut (perhaps because of some sort of spell/curse)

Phosphorus by

crowroad3
1. Rooftops
2. Ghost
3. Sometimes Sam thinks there's stardust in his veins.

Protection by Ксения Огородникова
1. The bunker
2. Dean
3. After Sam finds out Lucifer is on the loose again, he finds every protection and purification sigil in the MoL library and starts carving them onto his body.

Soda-Can Walls And Gravel Roads by

wetsammy
1) Seedy trailer park
2) Dean
3) Insomnia

बिन्द by

crowroad3
1. Wrapped in blankets on a couch/bed
2. Dean and/or character of choice
3. Having demon blood in him makes Sam susceptible to a supernatural illness

Grief is a fungus of the heart by

holyhelly
1. A dock
2. Bobby
3. Missing something important

Asclepias curassavica by

crowroad3
1- The Bunker
2- Mary & Dean
3- Blood related illness

Spells for the Watchers by

indiachick
1) A narrow spit of land
2) Rowena
3) Blood spell

Ponderosa by

crowroad3
1) locked in a small room
2) John and Dean
3) the smell of something dead

Tree Falls by

crowroad3
1.) the woods
2.) Dean
3.) nonverbal

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Your prompts are wonderful.

[forgive me I think I was high yesterday night or something]

Castiel doesn’t need to touch the blood to know whose it is. It says something strange that he would know Sam anywhere by his blood, although, to be fair, it has never really been Sam’s blood that runs in Sam’s veins, not 100%. So maybe it is the alloy that Castiel knows, the dilution: 90% Sam Winchester, 10% demon, machination, fallout. The conclave of labels is crowded when it comes to Sam. You are, after all, what you bleed.

It’s not supposed to be here. This museum owns fifty-three specimens of fossilized wood, four of which had not fully survived the taxonomic scandal under the last curator. One of the four bears the fossils of sarcopterygian fish. Cas had watched those fishes flounder in a shallow atmosphere. He’d watched them gaze out at land, propped up on their fins. They had struggled, as is wont with all living things. Now he stands at the curator’s desk, holding a piece of the rock with one of those fins buried in layers of sediment. And Sam Winchester’s blood is on this rock.

In the next moment, several things happen: Castiel tries to find Sam, finds he cannot, tries to find Dean instead, and finds he cannot. Angel Radio chitters with voices set to the soundtrack of the gears of the apocalypse. It is a cold, impersonal sound full of pitches and staccato rhythm. Michael is the worst of all. His strangely chitinous voice is nothing but a continuous roar today, a channel full of frustration, and in between trying to tune into someone he knows, he hears, like a whisper riding every wave, Anna-Anna-Anna¬.

Castiel looks at the rock again. Time is geography for those like him—there are millennia of it in either direction, and traversal is nothing harder than skipping rocks. History-slag, washed-up alternate futures, and years of the planet being interchangeably a cold rock or a flaming rock: that’s plenty of space to hide a human. Spread that human across time and space, scattered into an array of elements too miniscule to chase down, and you could probably achieve irreversibility.

But there are very, very few processes in this world that are truly irreversible. Even if you think it is, there is a good chance that with persistence, it needn’t be.

Castiel puts the rock in his pocket.

*

He finds Dean sitting in a motel room, watching Breakfast at Tiffany’s on television. Cas knows this movie. The last time this was on TV, he sat in a corner of a room while the Winchesters fought over something. Or, well, Dean fought. Sam just looked halfway exasperated and halfway exhausted.

Now in this motel room, there’s a strange heaviness in the air. Dean’s polishing his gun methodically. Repeating the same notions. It takes him a few minutes to even notice Cas.

“I don’t know,” he says, when he sees him. “I don’t know what happened. Just bring him back.”

You have to give me something more than that, says Castiel. Where did she find him, wheedles Castiel. How did she find him, Dean?

Dean’s fingers scrabble helplessly against his rough cheeks. He looks vacuumed, like something brought him to a sudden hard stop and suspended him there in that sense of quiet inactivity.

“He found her,” Dean says, finally. He jerks his head towards the bathroom. Cas notices—strangely enough for the first time—that things in the room are catching on fire. The bathroom door is a pillar of flame. The edge of Dean’s duvet is burning, and so are his shoelaces. Dean’s looking at them, but he seems decentered, like his reality has snapped.

“Get out,” Cas tells Dean.

“What?”

“You’re on fire, Dean. Get out.”

Dean gets a bit of swagger back, but it looks more like possession. “I can’t just go, Cas,” he rolls his eyes. “We need—well, evidence. What’s our next move here—what’s our game plan, what’s—”

Castiel states the obvious, again. “You’re on fire, Dean.”

Dean shakes with a sudden chill. Nothing seems to be getting through to him.

“I’ll get Sam,” says Cas. “Get out.”

Dean nods. Something like relief, or worship, flickers across his face.

“Okay—” he says, with an aborted shrug. “Okay. Yes. You—you’ll get Sam, right? Cas?”

Castiel feels a weird new emotion. It is sort of like having his stomach drop out.

*

There was an instruction manual, long back in Heaven, typed up on several things: skin, sky, bits of song, whatever the frazzled scribe could reach in the throes of Creation. Too long to really make for riveting reading material, but Metatron had also provided an executive summary. The gist of it being—hey, humans are pretty fragile! Handle with care! Can explode! Can be taken apart! But as an addendum, a little line also about their souls being indestructible.

Anna could cut Sam Winchester down to the very quarks of his body and scatter him, blood and all, across the centuries of time. She can pixilate his soul, along with his body, but not destroy it.

She’s imaginative—Cas will give her that—but she’s still bound by His laws.

Cas stands in the bathroom. Sam’s phone and shaving razor are still on the sink. There’s a bit of blood, smeared into one-half of a sigil: whether it is to banish or to summon, Cas can’t tell.

He breathes in smoke.

And then he scrapes a bit of the blood from the rock onto his nails, and is somewhere else.

*

He doesn’t find Sam in Heaven, nor in Hell. He tries other places, before he remembers that quiet realm of Death’s, that other place for which angels have no name. Souls go there when they do not fit anywhere else. Reapers call it by many words, most of which mean vacuum, nothing, empty. An angel guards it: the angel of undoing, staring out at the world unraveling from a bloody rock that serves as her outpost. It is a bit dramatic. Like those cowboy movies Sam and Dean like.

Castiel sifts through souls. He calls out in his True voice, whale-like, using the blood on the rock and his memories of Sam. Most are memories that are not kind to either of them, and he wonders if this is why Sam reached out to Anna.

He shouts across the soup of souls, starting to feel desperate.

Hi, something replies to him, shyly.

Castiel latches onto that sonic thread. He follows it to thick sunlight, bright room, finds Sam Winchester’s soul quietly lying on the bed, hands clasped against his chest, bent inward like little claws.

“Is it because of Lucifer?” Castiel asks. “Did some other angel help her find you?”

Sam opens his eyes and looks at him but doesn’t answer. He looks brand-new: no scars, unready bones, limbs as soft and useless as plant stems. Hi, says Sam, but his mouth doesn’t move. It’s like he had to work hard to dredge up that word. Probably the only word he knows. His eyes are bright and curious and it is obvious that he does not know Castiel.

This soul knows nothing, because this soul has been stripped down to its very existence.

All it can do, in this moment, is exist.

Sam, Cas tells himself. All Sam can do, at the moment, is exist.

Castiel sighs. He brings the fossil-rock out of his pocket, and says, “I found this.”

Sam looks at it, and a bit of a startled expression crosses his face. The thick, solid sunlight dapples his hair dark and gold.

“Blood,” he says, a long time later, finally imitating the movement of speech. First word. Castiel nods, oddly proud.

You are what you bleed, after all.

*

What are you doing, Dean texts him.

Castiel is curating for the museum themed Sam Winchester. The items are varied: a leaf, a sign, a parking ticket. When his phone pings with this particular text, he’s chasing down bits of Sam in Colorado. It’s not very hard work, but he has to be meticulous.

Sam says hi, he texts Dean back. He doesn’t say that that’s one of the only two things Sam can say. You have to wait.

Dean calls, immediately. “Wait for what? What’s going on?”

The basis of reversing any process is that you reverse the conditions that caused it to happen in the first place. If he is going to get Sam back, he needs to rebuild the soul, the body, the blood.

“Everything,” says Cas.

“Is it…difficult?”

Cas inhales, slowly. “Very.”

“But you’ll—you’ll get him back, right?”

Dean doesn’t sound very convinced. Maybe he wonders why Cas would do this for Sam, after the things he’s said.

“Yes, of course,” Cas says. Sam Winchester is my
friend, he thinks, solemnly, like making a promise. He is my friend.

*

After blood comes brother, death, goodbye, Lawrence. Also book, coffee, Dean, and with more difficulty, Ruby, devil, angels, Jess. Castiel finds a room adjacent to the white sunlit room, a kitchen. He transforms his curations into confections there, because it is easier than presenting them one by one to Sam. He digs silver spoons out of cupboards and ladles cream laced with house-fires, cherries stuffed with monster lore, figs drenched in honey full of rock song lyrics. The trick is that this kind of soul-body-explosion cannot be treated all at once. You could only hope to fix it bit by bit.

Sometimes Sam doesn’t eat all of it. He has to refuse Cold Oak at first; although he soldiers through demon blood with his whole new body quaking and tears running silently down his face. Castiel thinks of headstrong, stubborn Sam and wishes that he had not opened the door to Bobby’s panic room, so many weesks ago. That conclave of labels that follows Sam barely features any that Sam had brought upon himself: in the cosmic lay of things, here is somebody who was only expected to follow preset movements on a chessboard he couldn’t even see.

Free will is something—Castiel decides—that when he finds for his museum, he will bake into a cake. It will be a towering, wonderful sponge, the kind that he sees in the most expensive human bakeries, the kind with berries and chocolate and layers of fluffed pastry, and he will make sure that Sam eats all of it.

*

He has to go back to that fire-eaten motel room for a few things.

Cas has been putting it off, but in the white room, in some concept of yesterday, Sam had stood up, wobbly and afraid. Cas watched him, quietly, at his hands opening and closing with a sort of strange helplessness that he still seemed to cringe from, as expected from a Winchester. He took a step, then another. And then he came to look at Castiel’s kitchen, though he wouldn’t touch anything. He’d started talking in sentences recently, but always disconnected things. Stars, the road, the Impala. Half-remembered jokes that Dean’s told him. A list of restaurants that Dean loves, remembered in rhyme. Laws and equations.

Sam and Castiel looked together at the mountain of raw material that went into the cooking, the curation—the leaf, the sign, the parking ticket, and so many, many other things—and Castiel thought sullenly about how difficult it would be, once he built the soul, to build the body, and Sam looked at him and seemed to wonder something similar.

“You’re my friend,” Cas told Sam, or at least this version of Sam, this strange
just-add-water person. He’d pressed his fingers into Sam’s soft, clean fingers, and said it again, slowly. “You’re my friend. I’m going to fix this.”

Dean comes with him to the motel. His questions are incessant. Where is Sam? Why can’t I see him? Is he okay? Did he say why he did it?

“He didn’t do it,” says Cas. “Anna’s resourceful. She must have found some other way.”

“But you heard him, when he came to know of Anna’s plan. He was willing to do it, if that stopped this—mess. He was giving up.”

There are two ways to know all about a thing: by being there, or by being the one who creates a recorded history of it. Castiel is putting together the recorded history of Sam Winchester, piece by piece.

This much, at least, he knows for sure.

“He didn’t do it.” Cas says, firmly.

Desperation. Anger. The Devil. Defeat. Sin. Pain.

Castiel divides all the white plates from the red plates. He hums quietly, an old song that was harmonized from one corner of Heaven to the other, and figures out that there are chords and tempos his vessel cannot comprehend. He settles for a sailing ditty instead, picked up from Ur long ago. He doesn’t look at Sam, swaddled in a quilt and staring darkly at his half-eaten plate, memories and being draining in and out of himself. It looks like this is physically hurting him. He curls against the side of the couch, one fist clenched, biting down on the pain.

Castiel had almost put these things aside. They congealed in the process of their transformation, thick and black in his hands, and he felt in his heart like a poisoner. He held the worst fragments of Sam’s soul, and looked at Sam, and considered throwing it all away.

It could be better, for Sam, not to have these things. He could be a happier person. No one in this world, or in any world, would ever go looking for these fragments. Not even Lucifer.

But just as quickly, he throws it all in.

These are things that make Sam who he is. Taking them away is murder.

Castiel picks up a mug. He is suddenly afraid that this, what he’s done, could also be murder. How was Cas to know? But Sam is strong, he tells himself. He’s fast and dangerous and messy and strong, just like his brother. That’s why Cas had chosen them—the both of them. Their histories bolstered them. They followed only their own rules.

He cannot reduce Sam to being content on someone else’s chessboard.

His humming grows louder, turns loud and bright. He feels stupid, but also afraid of looking. He divides the plates again: white and round, white and square. He wonders if Dean would have asked him to set aside the bad stuff. He tells himself no, he wouldn’t.

“Cas?” says Sam, suddenly. It’s the first time since this place that Sam has said his name.

Castiel drops his mug. It shatters on the ground, loud as the Big Bang, many fragments skittering across the black like the start of a baby universe.

“Are you alright, Sam?”

Sam is very, very quiet. Cas steels himself, and goes to sit next to him.

“I can’t do it,” Sam says, pushing the plate towards Cas. He’s curled into himself as much as he can, hurt like all of his life is crashing into him at once. It probably is. There are fingernail marks on his skin, and the space beneath his eyes look bruised. He doesn’t meet Castiel’s gaze.

“Sam.”

“I can’t do it myself,” Sam says, in a great, shuddering breath, “so you have to help me.”

“If you’re not ready—” says Cas, but he’s already spooning the fruit from the plate.

“I’m fine,” says Sam. His eyes are haunted, but his gaze is clearer and sharper than they’ve ever been in this place.

“It’s good to have you back,” says Cas. “Dean missed you. We missed you.”

Sam flinches, visibly. “You have to know something. And you have to tell Dean—”

“What?”

Sam shudders, and grabs hold of Cas’s elbow. “I wasn’t giving up,” he says. He looks down at the plate in Cas’s hand, and cringes again.

“Sam—”

“I didn’t—I didn’t make her do this. I didn’t make Anna do this.”

“Sam, I—”

“You have to tell Dean.”

Cas looks at him and notices scars for the first time. A pale ladder on the side of his neck, many nicks on the side of his wrist, a scar like a withered star on the back of his palm. All the little things that make a body a person with a history.

Sam breathes in, convulsively, and takes the spoon from Cas. There are tears trembling on his lashes, and he wipes them away, furiously.

Castiel is quiet for a moment as he takes in this Sam, labels and bad blood and all.

“He already knows,” says Cas. “We already know.”

Ok, this was super trippy, but very nice

Oh god, this is perfection.

wowowowow!!
Your writing is always so uniquely descriptive. You took this prompt in a completely different direction than I ever could have imagined, so clever and heartfelt. I really enjoyed Cas and how deeply he cared for Sam in this, it made him very human.
Lovely!

Ah, man. Nursing Sam back from de-constitution, from quarks, making a museum of Sam from the blood out. Fantastic. Everything I love about your work and more. Taking this one with me. <3 <3

Where to start? Castiel, tender and patient. Dean? Not. ;) Said above, bears repeating: love the direction you went with the prompt! Super creative and cool. Sam, coming back to himself, hurting but fighting, Winchester all the way. Also, amazing, somehow both ethereal and visceral. Sorcery! ^_^

Wow, this was such a cool and unique story. I really liked the mystery in the process of Cas sorting out what happened and then Cas being so caring in helping piece Sam back together. Amazing work!

OMG, this is gorgeous, and I missed it when it went up! I guess it was too far down the comment tree for me to get the notification. I love your imagery and your cosmology, the way you took the museum and ran with it to have Cas curating the museum of Sam, and Cas grieving for the things that have happened to Sam but also being aware that the darkness is part of who Sam is, that erasing that would be murder. And I like the way it works with Cas and Sam's canon relationship in s5, when Cas was very much putting things together to get his picture of Sam.

Thank you so much for writing this!

This was just mesmerising. I enjoyed this a lot. Sam, Reconstructed. Wow. Such a beautiful piece of writing.

Oh this is so creative and full of fascinating imagery - I love it! The idea of Cas piecing Sam back together, and feeding him parts of himself is just so masterful and I loved that hint of Sam's pain, that he maybe asked for this to happen for the greater good. Oh the feels!!!

Excellent work, as always! Thank you so much for sharing :)

I love this, Cas's careful caretaking and Sam so fragile, Cas putting all the bad bits back in. Love it.

So freaking gorgeous...

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

OhSam Triple Play 2016!

no subject

The Recorded History of Sam Winchester (1/4)

RE: The Recorded History of Sam Winchester (2/4)

RE: Filled The Recorded History of Sam Winchester (3/4)

RE: Filled The Recorded History of Sam Winchester (4/4)

RE: Filled The Recorded History of Sam Winchester (4/4)

RE: Filled The Recorded History of Sam Winchester (4/4)

RE: Filled The Recorded History of Sam Winchester (4/4)

RE: Filled The Recorded History of Sam Winchester (4/4)

RE: Filled The Recorded History of Sam Winchester (4/4)

RE: Filled The Recorded History of Sam Winchester (4/4)

RE: Filled The Recorded History of Sam Winchester (4/4)

RE: Filled The Recorded History of Sam Winchester (4/4)

RE: Filled The Recorded History of Sam Winchester (4/4)

RE: Filled The Recorded History of Sam Winchester (4/4)

RE: Filled The Recorded History of Sam Winchester (4/4)