[ No, it probably never will. Or at least, Sam hopes it will never not be weird - one of the reasons he'd worked so hard to be able to keep people out is because of that, even if there's a handful of people that it... no longer feels all that strange for. ]
(Nah, come on by. Never too busy for the determined.)
[ Sam's no stranger to stubborn-ass determination, those who set their mind to something and will accomplish it no matter what. It's easy for him to roll with it, long as he doesn't disagree with it. And helping someone build their shielding up is always worth doing.
He waits until Damon's actually there to talk more about it, though, pushing himself up off the weight bench with a nod and a brief, hey, man. ]
There's two ways we can do this - one is quick and dirty, it'll get your shields up fast and get 'em up strong, but it involves us being in each other's heads a little bit more. The other's surface level, but it'll take you a while of practicing to build them up.
( genuinely pleasant people are not a demographic damon deals with often. sarcastic, antagonistic types, even the playful ones, are more his speed. those who have bite to them, who will say no even as they're actively helping him, or who have hidden agendas, those are the kinds of people he deals with. they are his bread an butter, in the figurative sense — the pleasant ones are his bread and butter in the literal sense. he's never had much use for them except as meals. that he has to deal with sam, now, easygoing, totally chill, laidback sam, without eating him... it is not a source of overabundant comfort. but he needs the lessons, sam is giving them, and damon is unwilling to back down now that he's put out the call.
he's just going to have to work a bit to find a way to get at sam's dark side.
in the training area, damon stops just inside the door, leaning against the jamb with his arms crossed. he considers as sam lays out his options, and for a long moment he is torn. he needs mental shields as soon as possible, as strong as possible, but he chafes at the idea of anyone getting deep in his head — there are things in there even he doesn't touch. he has to keep elena out, keep her from the things that would hurt her, but is expedience worth the position it puts damon in?
in the end, there's no real choice — elena is his priority, now and always. protecting her is more important than protecting himself, even from something as revolting as this. )
Option A will have to do, I'm kind of pressed for time here. ( the words are spoken with a smirk, but damon abruptly sobers and stands up straighter, looking sam in the eye with unsettling intensity. ) Anything you learn about me mucking around in there, you keep locked up. Don't even talk to me about it. I won't care about your moral panic, and anything else — it's not yours. Got it?
[ Don't worry, Damon, Sam's got plenty of snarky up his sleeve. He just doesn't bother to bring it out when all someone's doing is following up on an offer he made in the first place.
He waits for Damon to make the decision on his own - it's a rough one, and he doesn't blame Damon for having to think about it. Still, he meets Damon's gaze steadily when he finally does decide and throws out that warning. Not challenging, not even really not backing down, just... acknowledgement, no protests there. ]
Why do you think I was shielding so hard when I first met you, huh? I know I don't got a right to anything you got in there, and I don't wanna talk about it unless you bring it up first. Same as no one's got a right to what's in my head unless I'm willing to share.
[ There's a pause, then he raises one eyebrow. ] But if you got some kind otherwordly abyss that's gonna try to suck me in or anything else lurking in your head, you better tell me now so I can shield properly, because I'm not dealing with that just because your dumb ass didn't feel like sharing.
( but that is the opportune moment to bring out snark! he will never understand well-adjusted people.
this level of earnest really is deeply uncomfortable, though. damon's barely capable of taking anything this seriously without threatening murder over it. that sam can look straight at him and talk about the sanctity of their thoughts without a trace of irony is just... gross. have some decency, sam, be an asshole, even when you're agreeing with people. )
I promise nothing. That's the risk you run looking at my thoughts. How do we do this?
[ Clearly that just means he should spend more time around Sam. Without eating him, hopefully. Maybe he'll get used to it.
He shoots Damon an unimpressed look at that response, though. ]
Oh yeah, that's real reassuring when I'm getting ready to go in there and build up your shields, thank you.
[ Despite his sarcasm, Sam focuses his attention on the connection between him and Damon, widening it a little to invite Damon to come in and have a look at Sam's own mind. It's obscured by an endless, rolling layer of clouds, thick and impenetrable - fluffy and lit up with pinks and golds of a sunrise here, dark and streaked with flashes of lightning there. ]
(That's what we're going for. It works best if you pick something that makes sense for you - I've seen stars and smoke and water, anything works.)
[ Then he lets his shields dissolve, just a little. Just enough that patches start to appear in the clouds, and Sam's mental presence grows stronger, the flavors of his mental link more prominent - the brush of feathers over a warm breeze, muted bursts of gunfire and the steady beat of a heart. He holds there for a moment before focusing on pulling them back up, letting Damon get a feel for how he shapes his mind to keep what he wants in and block everything out, the strength of his presence fading as the patches fill back in. ]
( eating is more likely to happen if he spends a lot of time around people that saccharine, really. better for sam to just not be so... so. )
You're so welcome, ( he replies, a killer smile spreading across his face, but it drops as soon as he feels the connection between him and sam open further. he dives in greedily, because no matter what he says about not wanting anyone in his head he has no reservations about being the one in anyone else's — what's his is his and what's yours is also his, that kind of thing.
so enmeshed in sam's mind, damon's rudimentary control of his own thoughts won't mean much. the taste of blood permeates everything, but beneath that sam will see long brown hair, straight then curly then straight again, green eyes, longing —
a crow flies at him from the depths of damon's thoughts. the link gets more muddied as it clicks its beak and calls loudly, the images and sensations harder to pick out, and it gets steadily less and less easy to parse as more crows fly in.
in the end, there's no room to see through all the birds. )
[ Wow Damon, those are fighting words. He wants to see saccharine, wait until Sam starts calling him nicknames.
There's a hum of acknowledgment when Damon dives in, but nothing else. Sam was the one who invited Damon in, he sure as hell isn't gonna be bitchy about it - mostly because he's confident in enough in his own control, or else he wouldn't have offered.
He doesn't comment on anything he picks up while Damon's in his head. His focus is on showing the guy how to do this, and he doesn't have time to spend picking apart the things that swim at the top of Damon's mind. He might remember it, might file it away for later, but he definitely isn't gonna draw attention to him.
Then Damon starts to visualize his own shield, and it gets a little harder not to comment. It's birds, more menacing and eerie than anything immediately associated with Sam's own mind, but that doesn't make Sam feel any less at ease among them. Still, he doesn't try to press in - he just brushes against the feathers of Damon's shields, testing their strength without trying to get through, circling the edges as though waiting for an invitation. ]
(Step two is where I gotta be in your head a little, to make those stronger.)
( damon doesn't know how this stuff works, but when sam brushes up against the birds in his head, he has them lash out, talons and beaks reaching for sam. it's hard to tell if they're a flock, now — a murder, one might say — or one giant bird, growing talons and beaks wherever sam pokes his fingers. when sam says he has to get in damon's head to make the wall stronger, the immediate reaction of the wall is an almost deafening shriek, more akin to a falcon than a crow. the claws reach for sam's presence, ready to tear —
and then begin to melt. a hole opens as crows drip and melt into a pool of blood, and the first thing that hits sam will be an almost sick sense of delight.
[ The pecking is good, it's a damn good visualization and it's probably gonna serve Damon well, once he's here long enough to practice. Once Sam's gone in there to add in support. When Damon reacts to his comment, wings flare around Sam's mind - falcon's wings, should Damon know enough about birds to recognize them - and there's a faint hint of well-loved, wind swept adrenaline as he waits it out.
Oh, yeah, Damon's going to be a fun one. ]
(You're showing me plenty there, Poe, now I know I can get all your Christmas shopping done at Hot Topic.)
[ He can't help but tease, almost absently, as he pours himself into Damon's mind. He stays surface level at first, wings wrapped around Damon's mind - adjusting to resemble the crows, now that Sam knows what visualization he's using. Seeking out the weak points in the shield and showing him how to build them up, weaving in strength and support thathe would've taken who knows how long to practice without assistance.
Then he starts to delve a little deeper, to help them take root. ]
( damon is faintly offended at the hot topic mention, but... yeah, okay, he's being a dramatic little shit right now and he knows it. the wall of feathers slowly dissipates into an opaque, inscrutable fog, still obscuring his thoughts, still unsettling, but not as creepy as a wall of feathers and talons.
I'm going to require an apology for that when we're done here. Hot Topic my ass.
There'a difference between a crow and a raven, you know.
there are patches in the fog that fill in as sam shows him how, and damon takes to all this easily — vampires have mental defenses naturally, to keep out compulsion, it's just a matter of strengthening them and using them on purpose — but when sam delves deeper, it's harder to keep the things he wants to cover up hidden. elena's presence is everywhere, flitting through the fog whenever sam turns around. sometimes stefan is with her, sometimes jeremy, sometimes jenna — stefan who disappears quickly, swallowed up by fog, jeremy whose neck snaps at an unnatural angle before he drops to the ground, jenna who smiles as she desiccates. elena is with all of them, but sometimes she's alone, staring up from the ground, words ringing in the space around her — it's always going to be stefan and i like you now, just the way you are repeating and overlapping, almost unintelligible.
damon's not as amused anymore. he reaches for sam's mind, trying to pull him out — this isn't for him, these things belong to damon alone — but he doesn't fill the fog back in. he's nearly forgotten what they're actually doing here, and more than filling in the fog is actually thinning out, his discomfort with the transparency of his thoughts paradoxically making them harder to keep to himself. )
[ There's a soft huff of laughter, a swirl of amusement through Damon's mind even as Sam gives a little smirk. ] (Not gonna apologize for calling it like I see it.)
[ Of course he knows there's a difference between a crow and a raven - it's possible he's a little bit of a bird nerd, all right - but it'd been too good to resist, and he's still amused even as he turns his focus to helping Damon strengthen his shields.
When images start rising up, snippets of conversation and flashes of memory, Sam does his best to ignore them. It's not his, and Sam lets them all go as soon as they come, breathing slow and even and keeping himself calm and composed. This is where his practice - both with what he learned at the VA on how to center himself and keep himself grounded and in translating it to working with the symbiote - really comes in handy.
At least up until Damon actually starts trying to push him out of his head. He hesitates, unwilling to remain in someone's mind when they want him out but knowing that if he pulls back now, he won't have actually helped much. What the hell good are mental shields if they thin out when they're put under pressure? ]
(This is why I'm here, man, to keep this from happening every time someone's mind links up with yours - you really want to stop now?)
( thankfully, sam's pause gives damon time to fill the fog back in. jeremy and jenna disappear first, followed by stefan. elena lingers longer than the rest, but even she is swallowed up eventually, and finally damon can relax. marginally, anyway — he doesn't want that to happen again, but if sam keeps roaming further in his head, there's no guarantee it won't. if it weren't for all he has to keep from elena, that wouldn't matter.
Keep going, he says after a second, all traces of his joking manner lost. he doesn't want to be here, he doesn't want to be doing this. he's willingly making himself the most vulnerable and open he's ever been, all for a girl who, at this point, barely tolerates him.
the things he finds himself doing for love never stop disgusting him. )
[ He hums a wordless acknowledgement, and he’s not necessarily more careful as he moves forward, but he definitely reflects the more serious manner. He’d kept it light to try to keep this as relaxed and easy as possible, but there’s no denying that Damon is making himself pretty damn vulnerable. Sam knows a little something about how that is, about reluctance to open up and things he wants to hide from everyone, about always choosing who he allows himself to be vulnerable with and what he lets them see.
You get more comfortable with vulnerability when you talk about some of your darkest moments in front of a room full of relative strangers, but it’d still always been a choice.
Sam won’t take advantage of it, but he doesn’t say that. That isn’t something you can just tell someone and expect it to believed, that’s something that you prove.
He lets himself flow deeper into Damon’s mind, exploring along the edges of his shielding and following it down, focusing hard on their connection. When he finds gaps he presses, showing him how to solidify them and make sure they’ll withstand under pressure - doing his best not to acknowledge any memories or emotions that come up in the process. ]
( that sam doesn't try to say anything else is immensely relieving for damon — he doesn't have the ability yet to carry on a conversation and shield at the same time, especially with sam already so deep in his head. it's one or the other, and they're here for shielding lessons, so the choice is obvious.
now that damon's more calm, knows better what he's doing, sam only gets flickers. split-second images before damon can reinforce the fog and cover them back up, pictures of caroline and ric and bonnie that disappear almost before sam can make out what they are. it's becoming easier for damon to shore up his defenses, even when sam presses — at first they would flicker, the fog thinning dangerously, but the longer sam stays and the more he pushes, the better damon gets at covering up that which he doesn't want to share.
even as he's getting better, though, some things leak through, even without his noticing. the longer sam stays, the hungrier he starts to feel. it's easy enough to ignore, at first, but it gets more insistent the longer he stays entwined in damon's thoughts. it's a strange feeling, when he finally begins to pay attention to it — a mix between hunger and thirst, his stomach empty and cramping and his throat burning for lack of liquid. he'd do anything to sate the hunger, but he has to remain in control. he knows he does, but sometimes it's harder to remember — he's so hungry. he's starving.
[ It's business, now, just helping Damon shore up his shields. He knows he's not gonna ask Damon about anything he sees, and it's easy to all but completely disregard them. It's easy to see that it's working, that Damon's shields are growing stronger.
It's less easy to ignore the gnawing hunger that starts to grow. He's swallowing before he quite realizes what's going on, throat working ineffectively as he tries to breathe past it - stay in control, he has to stay in control, and his breathing becomes measured, counted, as he realizes he's feeling a hell of a lot of bleed over from Damon. ]
( the distraction jars damon enough that his shields lower. not so much that sam can see anything again, at least, but enough that he can hear a quiet but persistent thump, thump, thump in the background — it may take him a minute, but eventually the sound is unmistakable: a heartbeat. his, in fact — damon can hear it as easily as he can hear sam speak, though he's done his best up til now to tune it out.
What the fuck what? I can't concentrate if you're going to be talking to me, his mental tone is irritable, snippy — damon really is very hungry. he hasn't fed since the morning before he showed up here, and just because he can go days without feeding doesn't mean it's pleasant. half his focus is on not eating people, and he could use that other half to do literally anything else. he'd been coping well until sam dredged it up from the depths of his subconscious, and now it's annoyingly visceral. )
[ Even as he says it, he knows that isn't the kind of hunger that he's feeling. Sam's been hungry, he's been stuck in mountain and desert with minimal rations - or no rations, back in training - but it'd never been like this. It'd never been damn near all consuming.
There's usually the faintest hint of the steady beat of a heart that flavors Sam's mental link, but now he can hear it echoing in the back of his head loud and clear. Sam pulls in a breath, in and out, and focuses instead on the rush of wind. ]
(How do you keep it down?)
[ Out loud, it would've been a simple question, but with the two of them so closely connected at the moment there's a swirl of layers to it - a vague curiosity, a mixed up jumble of wanting to know so Sam can help though whether it's because he dredged it up or just because he's the one having to feel it now isn't clear, and still dude let's get you something to eat somewhere in there. ]
( it takes a moment for damon to realize what sam is referring to — the bloodlust is something he's dealt with so long he can almost tune it out, when he has to. at the very least, he can focus on other things. it's a coping mechanism not all vampires develop, his brother included, but which all of them could benefit from. being able to be so starving you can feel your cells begin to shrivel up and still be able to focus on other things is important.
granted, it's a skill that damon had more time and drive to cultivate than most, and he's not anywhere near that point yet. right now he's uncomfortable, but nowhere near desiccation.
when he does realize what sam is talking about — his hunger must be leaking through, damon didn't even think to hold that back too, wouldn't even know where to begin — he frowns. they both know this isn't about needing a sandwich, but damon isn't particularly eager to talk about what he actually needs, either. sam has surely guessed by now, as anyone in the nest must, once they've gotten close enough to him, but it's one thing to have it be an open secret and entirely another to talk about it out loud. keeping secrets is the only way damon has survived this long, and he's not too keen on talking just because now everyone knows his every secret. the instruction is easy to brush off, but the question...
as deep in damon's head as sam is, and as distracted as he's become by his hunger, damon's first thought is clear.
Her.
brown eyes set in a disapproving frown flash through the link, but damon tugs them back before the whole person can materialize to go with them.
Practice. Necessity. Not wanting to deal with the fallout if I let go. You can live through pretty much anything if you stop thinking about it.
Thanks so much for bringing my attention back to it, by the way, I feel really great right now.)
Sam doesn't have to get the full picture to get an idea of who Damon means - the girl that Sam's seen permeating throughout Damon's head, the one who fills his world. It pulls at something in Sam, because he knows something of how that feels when so much of you is wrapped up in someone else, in the sound of their laughter and the feeling that you can do anything with them by your side.
When you stop being able to find a reason, after they're gone. But somehow he doesn't think he has to tell Damon the danger of letting one person be your reason for something, and he understands what Damon actually says just as much.
You can live through pretty much anything if you stop thinking about it.
There's a hum of agreement tinged with a faint note of apology, and Sam files it away for later to ask if Damon actually does need to eat something. For the moment, he pulls his mind away, counts his breathing and curls his fingers around the challenge coin in his pocket, using his own distraction techniques as he reroutes his attention elsewhere.
He sinks down deeper, feeling along the roots of Damon's shields, and this time when he finds a bare spot buried somewhere deep in the back of Damon's mind - he doesn't so much press as seep in. ]
( if damon weren't so distracted trying to his hunger behind the bounds of his shield, he might not have let sam through. if sam weren't helping to distract him with his challenge coin. if damon knew what stone sam was unturning. a lot of missed opportunities lead them to this moment.
this moment where sam finds a memory like a river rock, smooth and quiet and unassuming. it doesn't appear to be much of anything, at first. just a rock, with the initials D.S. and the number 1953 carved into it. but the rock turns into a wall turns into a room turns into a cell, and then there are footsteps.
Who's next? a voice says, and damon goes utterly still. it's a voice he hasn't even thought about in over a decade, but one which produces the same response no matter how many years have passed: he physically steps away from sam, unthinking, trying to make himself smaller and less noticeable. in the link, he goes still, utterly quiet, imagines a wall between himself and sam and the memory. it's instinctual, bred from five years of captivity and experiments, and at first damon can't even remember that he's half a century out of it. whitmore's voice is all that matters.)
[ Sam's quiet curiosity at the rock turns quickly into a feeling of unease at the cell and the footsteps - it's different enough from the cells in the Raft that it doesn't pull at his own memory, but man nothing good ever comes from a cell and the sound of footsteps approaching.
The voice is all it takes for Sam to realize that this is not something he should be seeing, and he tries immediately to yank himself out of Damon's head and back into his own. But what'd happened with Shepard when she flashed back to dying, he's caught, swept up in the memories as Damon gets caught up in the instinctive response.
Quiet, small, unnoticeable, fear and pain and captivity, and it's - no, Sam doesn't want this. This isn't his, this is Damon's. It's not like with Bucky, when Sam'd seen flashes of similar things - things he still has echoes of in his own mind - when sharing the experience is something to remind Bucky that he isn't alone. Sam digs his heels in, trying not to let himself get caught up in what's buried deep in Damon's mind, but it's -
It's pain in his eye and he hadn't even seen the scalpel, it's fear, so much fear, lying on his back with someone else's hands in his guts, and Sam doesn't even have to be caught up in Damon's memories to know the way that smells, the sound of the slide of fingers over internal organs that should never have been out in open air. It's starving and delirium, the sound of screams - Damon's? Someone else's? - fury building and building and building and lingering even after it bubbles over in a crescendo of violence. And still fear, regret, detachment and dissociation, your mind has to be somewhere else because it can't be here, because you can't feel.
And that - that helps Sam try to get himself unstuck. That he knows, from even before the Nest. He runs his thumb over the coin in his pocket, feeling the ridges along the edges and tracing the shape of every etched letter in the word wings. Focuses on the feel of the ground underneath the balls of his feet, of the way the fabric of his pants shifts as he does, counts to seven as he breathes in and to eleven as he breathes out. ]
( sam is swept up in the memories, and damon isn't doing much better. they're not sequential or coherent, more impressions than true memories, but it's not the sequence or the veracity that matter. it's the feelings they elicit, the helplessness that damon hasn't felt in fifty years, the hopelessness. it's hard to remember that he isn't there anymore — and even when he does, it's harder still to pull himself out of it.
it's hands in his guts, tearing out parts of his stomach and bleeding stomach acid everywhere. it's blurry vision, and the inability to tell if it's because of the missing slices or tears. it's enzo's screams ringing in his ears even at night.
it's the slowly dwindling certainty that stefan would come, and the numbing realization that no, he won't.
if these were memories he'd bothered to consider now that he's capable of caring about them, with his humanity on in full force, they might not hit as hard. he'd have a framework for how to deal with them, even if that framework was anger or violence or any number of the other terrible coping strategies damon's picked up over the years. he'd have something to do that would help pull himself and sam out of this tangle of misery. he hasn't, though, hasn't thought about any of it for a decade, and longer before that. it's all just as fresh as it was when it was actually happening, and he doesn't know how to drag himself out, only knows how to not be here.
damon's shields are forgotten entirely in the onslaught of these memories. he doesn't know what to do, or how to get away from them — it feels like drowning, like he needs to swim up but doesn't know which way up is. for long moments all he can do is experience it all again, stuck in a repeating loop, and then, it... changes. he breathes. in to a count of seven, out to a count of eleven. sam's breathing bleeds through, and damon latches onto it, his only point of normalcy in the chaos that is his head. he doesn't know how long they stay like that, breathing in tandem, but eventually damon opens his eyes and he's back in the station, augustine decades behind him and sam wilson breathing in front of him. )
What the fuck was that, ( he says, voice low and dangerous. thankfully, it doesn't quiver at all on the words, shaky as damon himself feels. )
[ The more that Sam picks up, the more he wishes he hadn't. It's not that he doesn't want to know any of this, necessarily, or even that he doesn't want to experience it - although hell no he doesn't, no one would want to - it's more that he doesn't want to know it like this. He likes Damon, and it's so fucking unfair for something like this to get spilled out without Damon's control, on someone he barely knows.
Nobody should have ever had to feel that kind of helpless, to watch the hope that someone would come fade into nothing. To reach a point surpassing anger and devastation where the only way to cope is to feel nothing at all. Sam knows what that feels like, both on his own - albeit something far less literal than shutting off emotions - and because of how closely connected he is with Bucky.
There's something almost like relief when he feels Damon latch onto the breathing technique, when the rise and fall of their chests sync up. His eyes stay shut as he lets it all go, breathes in and out and lets it fade. He can't forget it anymore than Damon can, can't ever unlearn what it feels like to experience it, but he can bury it down somewhere no one else can touch it. ]
I don't know. It's not the usual kind of bleed over that happens sometimes, it's... [ It's happened a couple of times before, but not very many, and usually only with someone Sam already had a connection with. Except the one time it'd helped forge a connection, and if Sam hadn't already started that by letting Damon in his head, he can definitely feel it now. But ultimately, there's only one important thing about what it was. ] Not something I should have seen.
( that it isn't something sam should have seen should go without saying. it's one of those useless things people say when they can't figure out what else to say, when they don't know what to do with the thing they've just been confronted with so they say the first, obvious thing that comes into their head. of course sam shouldn't have seen it, no one should have. damon's kept all that locked up for fifty years for a reason, and sam just stole it out of his head within seconds with no effort at all. it'd be very easy to be angry at him for it. to threaten him and hurt him and extract promises that he'll never talk about it again.
but being in sam's head has given him a little insight into the man, and damon knows already — threats aren't necessary. sam wouldn't talk about it with anyone even without damon insisting on it. he wouldn't even bring it up to damon if damon didn't do it first. he's one of those annoying conscientious, righteous people who care about things like the sanctity of one's mind and choice. usually it would bother damon, but when it's working in his favour, he can't exactly be mad about it. )
It was a long time ago. It doesn't matter now.
( maybe if damon says it enough, he'll believe it himself. sam's breathing technique has calmed him, by now, his pulse steady but slow, just like always, but he can still feel the terror that rocketed through him when he remembered whitmore's voice. )
Do we have to keep going or are we done?
( if necessary, he can hold it back, now. he knows where those memories sit, he can keep them to himself. if sam wants to keep going, damon will. this is important enough, he's invested enough in looking like he's fine, that he'll grit his teeth and jump back in.
[ It'll always matter. No matter how long ago it might have been, no matter how much it's shoved down and all but forgotten, it'll always matter.
He doesn't say that, but he's still connected enough with Damon that he doesn't have to for it to make it across. Or for the understanding that Sam's not going to push anyway, because just because it still matters and it'll have to be dealt with sometime doesn't mean that some time is now. There's a snippet of memory that bleeds through, the rush of a punch and the crunch of a broken nose under Sam's fist, the feeling that someone asked something they shouldn't have, pushed for something Sam wasn't ready to talk about. ]
We don't gotta keep going.
[ He won't say we're done, because they're not. Maybe they're not breathing in sync any more, but his connection with Damon is undeniably stronger than it'd been before they were in each other's heads. Sam knew that going in, though maybe not to this extent, and he could still pull away now if he wanted to, probably, but he doesn't. ]
I know what it feels like, dissociating like that. There's a reason I knew those tricks to try to bring me back, you know? You don't gotta talk to me about anything, but if you wanna practice them, I'll be here. Turns out they're pretty good at helping with all this shit.
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sizeofyourbaggage) wrote2016-05-22 03:26 pm
no subject
( Nah, come on by. Never too busy for the determined. )
[ Sam's no stranger to stubborn-ass determination, those who set their mind to something and will accomplish it no matter what. It's easy for him to roll with it, long as he doesn't disagree with it. And helping someone build their shielding up is always worth doing.
He waits until Damon's actually there to talk more about it, though, pushing himself up off the weight bench with a nod and a brief, hey, man. ]
There's two ways we can do this - one is quick and dirty, it'll get your shields up fast and get 'em up strong, but it involves us being in each other's heads a little bit more. The other's surface level, but it'll take you a while of practicing to build them up.
no subject
he's just going to have to work a bit to find a way to get at sam's dark side.
in the training area, damon stops just inside the door, leaning against the jamb with his arms crossed. he considers as sam lays out his options, and for a long moment he is torn. he needs mental shields as soon as possible, as strong as possible, but he chafes at the idea of anyone getting deep in his head — there are things in there even he doesn't touch. he has to keep elena out, keep her from the things that would hurt her, but is expedience worth the position it puts damon in?
in the end, there's no real choice — elena is his priority, now and always. protecting her is more important than protecting himself, even from something as revolting as this. )
Option A will have to do, I'm kind of pressed for time here. ( the words are spoken with a smirk, but damon abruptly sobers and stands up straighter, looking sam in the eye with unsettling intensity. ) Anything you learn about me mucking around in there, you keep locked up. Don't even talk to me about it. I won't care about your moral panic, and anything else — it's not yours. Got it?
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He waits for Damon to make the decision on his own - it's a rough one, and he doesn't blame Damon for having to think about it. Still, he meets Damon's gaze steadily when he finally does decide and throws out that warning. Not challenging, not even really not backing down, just... acknowledgement, no protests there. ]
Why do you think I was shielding so hard when I first met you, huh? I know I don't got a right to anything you got in there, and I don't wanna talk about it unless you bring it up first. Same as no one's got a right to what's in my head unless I'm willing to share.
[ There's a pause, then he raises one eyebrow. ] But if you got some kind otherwordly abyss that's gonna try to suck me in or anything else lurking in your head, you better tell me now so I can shield properly, because I'm not dealing with that just because your dumb ass didn't feel like sharing.
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this level of earnest really is deeply uncomfortable, though. damon's barely capable of taking anything this seriously without threatening murder over it. that sam can look straight at him and talk about the sanctity of their thoughts without a trace of irony is just... gross. have some decency, sam, be an asshole, even when you're agreeing with people. )
I promise nothing. That's the risk you run looking at my thoughts. How do we do this?
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He shoots Damon an unimpressed look at that response, though. ]
Oh yeah, that's real reassuring when I'm getting ready to go in there and build up your shields, thank you.
[ Despite his sarcasm, Sam focuses his attention on the connection between him and Damon, widening it a little to invite Damon to come in and have a look at Sam's own mind. It's obscured by an endless, rolling layer of clouds, thick and impenetrable - fluffy and lit up with pinks and golds of a sunrise here, dark and streaked with flashes of lightning there. ]
( That's what we're going for. It works best if you pick something that makes sense for you - I've seen stars and smoke and water, anything works. )
[ Then he lets his shields dissolve, just a little. Just enough that patches start to appear in the clouds, and Sam's mental presence grows stronger, the flavors of his mental link more prominent - the brush of feathers over a warm breeze, muted bursts of gunfire and the steady beat of a heart. He holds there for a moment before focusing on pulling them back up, letting Damon get a feel for how he shapes his mind to keep what he wants in and block everything out, the strength of his presence fading as the patches fill back in. ]
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You're so welcome, ( he replies, a killer smile spreading across his face, but it drops as soon as he feels the connection between him and sam open further. he dives in greedily, because no matter what he says about not wanting anyone in his head he has no reservations about being the one in anyone else's — what's his is his and what's yours is also his, that kind of thing.
so enmeshed in sam's mind, damon's rudimentary control of his own thoughts won't mean much. the taste of blood permeates everything, but beneath that sam will see long brown hair, straight then curly then straight again, green eyes, longing —
a crow flies at him from the depths of damon's thoughts. the link gets more muddied as it clicks its beak and calls loudly, the images and sensations harder to pick out, and it gets steadily less and less easy to parse as more crows fly in.
in the end, there's no room to see through all the birds. )
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There's a hum of acknowledgment when Damon dives in, but nothing else. Sam was the one who invited Damon in, he sure as hell isn't gonna be bitchy about it - mostly because he's confident in enough in his own control, or else he wouldn't have offered.
He doesn't comment on anything he picks up while Damon's in his head. His focus is on showing the guy how to do this, and he doesn't have time to spend picking apart the things that swim at the top of Damon's mind. He might remember it, might file it away for later, but he definitely isn't gonna draw attention to him.
Then Damon starts to visualize his own shield, and it gets a little harder not to comment. It's birds, more menacing and eerie than anything immediately associated with Sam's own mind, but that doesn't make Sam feel any less at ease among them. Still, he doesn't try to press in - he just brushes against the feathers of Damon's shields, testing their strength without trying to get through, circling the edges as though waiting for an invitation. ]
( Step two is where I gotta be in your head a little, to make those stronger. )
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and then begin to melt. a hole opens as crows drip and melt into a pool of blood, and the first thing that hits sam will be an almost sick sense of delight.
damon's having a lot of fun with this.
What do you need to see? )
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Oh, yeah, Damon's going to be a fun one. ]
( You're showing me plenty there, Poe, now I know I can get all your Christmas shopping done at Hot Topic. )
[ He can't help but tease, almost absently, as he pours himself into Damon's mind. He stays surface level at first, wings wrapped around Damon's mind - adjusting to resemble the crows, now that Sam knows what visualization he's using. Seeking out the weak points in the shield and showing him how to build them up, weaving in strength and support thathe would've taken who knows how long to practice without assistance.
Then he starts to delve a little deeper, to help them take root. ]
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I'm going to require an apology for that when we're done here. Hot Topic my ass.
There'a difference between a crow and a raven, you know.
there are patches in the fog that fill in as sam shows him how, and damon takes to all this easily — vampires have mental defenses naturally, to keep out compulsion, it's just a matter of strengthening them and using them on purpose — but when sam delves deeper, it's harder to keep the things he wants to cover up hidden. elena's presence is everywhere, flitting through the fog whenever sam turns around. sometimes stefan is with her, sometimes jeremy, sometimes jenna — stefan who disappears quickly, swallowed up by fog, jeremy whose neck snaps at an unnatural angle before he drops to the ground, jenna who smiles as she desiccates. elena is with all of them, but sometimes she's alone, staring up from the ground, words ringing in the space around her — it's always going to be stefan and i like you now, just the way you are repeating and overlapping, almost unintelligible.
damon's not as amused anymore. he reaches for sam's mind, trying to pull him out — this isn't for him, these things belong to damon alone — but he doesn't fill the fog back in. he's nearly forgotten what they're actually doing here, and more than filling in the fog is actually thinning out, his discomfort with the transparency of his thoughts paradoxically making them harder to keep to himself. )
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[ Of course he knows there's a difference between a crow and a raven - it's possible he's a little bit of a bird nerd, all right - but it'd been too good to resist, and he's still amused even as he turns his focus to helping Damon strengthen his shields.
When images start rising up, snippets of conversation and flashes of memory, Sam does his best to ignore them. It's not his, and Sam lets them all go as soon as they come, breathing slow and even and keeping himself calm and composed. This is where his practice - both with what he learned at the VA on how to center himself and keep himself grounded and in translating it to working with the symbiote - really comes in handy.
At least up until Damon actually starts trying to push him out of his head. He hesitates, unwilling to remain in someone's mind when they want him out but knowing that if he pulls back now, he won't have actually helped much. What the hell good are mental shields if they thin out when they're put under pressure? ]
( This is why I'm here, man, to keep this from happening every time someone's mind links up with yours - you really want to stop now? )
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Keep going, he says after a second, all traces of his joking manner lost. he doesn't want to be here, he doesn't want to be doing this. he's willingly making himself the most vulnerable and open he's ever been, all for a girl who, at this point, barely tolerates him.
the things he finds himself doing for love never stop disgusting him. )
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You get more comfortable with vulnerability when you talk about some of your darkest moments in front of a room full of relative strangers, but it’d still always been a choice.
Sam won’t take advantage of it, but he doesn’t say that. That isn’t something you can just tell someone and expect it to believed, that’s something that you prove.
He lets himself flow deeper into Damon’s mind, exploring along the edges of his shielding and following it down, focusing hard on their connection. When he finds gaps he presses, showing him how to solidify them and make sure they’ll withstand under pressure - doing his best not to acknowledge any memories or emotions that come up in the process. ]
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now that damon's more calm, knows better what he's doing, sam only gets flickers. split-second images before damon can reinforce the fog and cover them back up, pictures of caroline and ric and bonnie that disappear almost before sam can make out what they are. it's becoming easier for damon to shore up his defenses, even when sam presses — at first they would flicker, the fog thinning dangerously, but the longer sam stays and the more he pushes, the better damon gets at covering up that which he doesn't want to share.
even as he's getting better, though, some things leak through, even without his noticing. the longer sam stays, the hungrier he starts to feel. it's easy enough to ignore, at first, but it gets more insistent the longer he stays entwined in damon's thoughts. it's a strange feeling, when he finally begins to pay attention to it — a mix between hunger and thirst, his stomach empty and cramping and his throat burning for lack of liquid. he'd do anything to sate the hunger, but he has to remain in control. he knows he does, but sometimes it's harder to remember — he's so hungry. he's starving.
was he hungry before they started this lesson? )
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It's less easy to ignore the gnawing hunger that starts to grow. He's swallowing before he quite realizes what's going on, throat working ineffectively as he tries to breathe past it - stay in control, he has to stay in control, and his breathing becomes measured, counted, as he realizes he's feeling a hell of a lot of bleed over from Damon. ]
( What the fuck? )
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What the fuck what? I can't concentrate if you're going to be talking to me, his mental tone is irritable, snippy — damon really is very hungry. he hasn't fed since the morning before he showed up here, and just because he can go days without feeding doesn't mean it's pleasant. half his focus is on not eating people, and he could use that other half to do literally anything else. he'd been coping well until sam dredged it up from the depths of his subconscious, and now it's annoyingly visceral. )
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[ Even as he says it, he knows that isn't the kind of hunger that he's feeling. Sam's been hungry, he's been stuck in mountain and desert with minimal rations - or no rations, back in training - but it'd never been like this. It'd never been damn near all consuming.
There's usually the faintest hint of the steady beat of a heart that flavors Sam's mental link, but now he can hear it echoing in the back of his head loud and clear. Sam pulls in a breath, in and out, and focuses instead on the rush of wind. ]
( How do you keep it down? )
[ Out loud, it would've been a simple question, but with the two of them so closely connected at the moment there's a swirl of layers to it - a vague curiosity, a mixed up jumble of wanting to know so Sam can help though whether it's because he dredged it up or just because he's the one having to feel it now isn't clear, and still dude let's get you something to eat somewhere in there. ]
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granted, it's a skill that damon had more time and drive to cultivate than most, and he's not anywhere near that point yet. right now he's uncomfortable, but nowhere near desiccation.
when he does realize what sam is talking about — his hunger must be leaking through, damon didn't even think to hold that back too, wouldn't even know where to begin — he frowns. they both know this isn't about needing a sandwich, but damon isn't particularly eager to talk about what he actually needs, either. sam has surely guessed by now, as anyone in the nest must, once they've gotten close enough to him, but it's one thing to have it be an open secret and entirely another to talk about it out loud. keeping secrets is the only way damon has survived this long, and he's not too keen on talking just because now everyone knows his every secret. the instruction is easy to brush off, but the question...
as deep in damon's head as sam is, and as distracted as he's become by his hunger, damon's first thought is clear.
Her.
brown eyes set in a disapproving frown flash through the link, but damon tugs them back before the whole person can materialize to go with them.
Practice. Necessity. Not wanting to deal with the fallout if I let go. You can live through pretty much anything if you stop thinking about it.
Thanks so much for bringing my attention back to it, by the way, I feel really great right now. )
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Sam doesn't have to get the full picture to get an idea of who Damon means - the girl that Sam's seen permeating throughout Damon's head, the one who fills his world. It pulls at something in Sam, because he knows something of how that feels when so much of you is wrapped up in someone else, in the sound of their laughter and the feeling that you can do anything with them by your side.
When you stop being able to find a reason, after they're gone. But somehow he doesn't think he has to tell Damon the danger of letting one person be your reason for something, and he understands what Damon actually says just as much.
You can live through pretty much anything if you stop thinking about it.
There's a hum of agreement tinged with a faint note of apology, and Sam files it away for later to ask if Damon actually does need to eat something. For the moment, he pulls his mind away, counts his breathing and curls his fingers around the challenge coin in his pocket, using his own distraction techniques as he reroutes his attention elsewhere.
He sinks down deeper, feeling along the roots of Damon's shields, and this time when he finds a bare spot buried somewhere deep in the back of Damon's mind - he doesn't so much press as seep in. ]
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this moment where sam finds a memory like a river rock, smooth and quiet and unassuming. it doesn't appear to be much of anything, at first. just a rock, with the initials D.S. and the number 1953 carved into it. but the rock turns into a wall turns into a room turns into a cell, and then there are footsteps.
Who's next? a voice says, and damon goes utterly still. it's a voice he hasn't even thought about in over a decade, but one which produces the same response no matter how many years have passed: he physically steps away from sam, unthinking, trying to make himself smaller and less noticeable. in the link, he goes still, utterly quiet, imagines a wall between himself and sam and the memory. it's instinctual, bred from five years of captivity and experiments, and at first damon can't even remember that he's half a century out of it. whitmore's voice is all that matters.)
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The voice is all it takes for Sam to realize that this is not something he should be seeing, and he tries immediately to yank himself out of Damon's head and back into his own. But what'd happened with Shepard when she flashed back to dying, he's caught, swept up in the memories as Damon gets caught up in the instinctive response.
Quiet, small, unnoticeable, fear and pain and captivity, and it's - no, Sam doesn't want this. This isn't his, this is Damon's. It's not like with Bucky, when Sam'd seen flashes of similar things - things he still has echoes of in his own mind - when sharing the experience is something to remind Bucky that he isn't alone. Sam digs his heels in, trying not to let himself get caught up in what's buried deep in Damon's mind, but it's -
It's pain in his eye and he hadn't even seen the scalpel, it's fear, so much fear, lying on his back with someone else's hands in his guts, and Sam doesn't even have to be caught up in Damon's memories to know the way that smells, the sound of the slide of fingers over internal organs that should never have been out in open air. It's starving and delirium, the sound of screams - Damon's? Someone else's? - fury building and building and building and lingering even after it bubbles over in a crescendo of violence. And still fear, regret, detachment and dissociation, your mind has to be somewhere else because it can't be here, because you can't feel.
And that - that helps Sam try to get himself unstuck. That he knows, from even before the Nest. He runs his thumb over the coin in his pocket, feeling the ridges along the edges and tracing the shape of every etched letter in the word wings. Focuses on the feel of the ground underneath the balls of his feet, of the way the fabric of his pants shifts as he does, counts to seven as he breathes in and to eleven as he breathes out. ]
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it's hands in his guts, tearing out parts of his stomach and bleeding stomach acid everywhere. it's blurry vision, and the inability to tell if it's because of the missing slices or tears. it's enzo's screams ringing in his ears even at night.
it's the slowly dwindling certainty that stefan would come, and the numbing realization that no, he won't.
if these were memories he'd bothered to consider now that he's capable of caring about them, with his humanity on in full force, they might not hit as hard. he'd have a framework for how to deal with them, even if that framework was anger or violence or any number of the other terrible coping strategies damon's picked up over the years. he'd have something to do that would help pull himself and sam out of this tangle of misery. he hasn't, though, hasn't thought about any of it for a decade, and longer before that. it's all just as fresh as it was when it was actually happening, and he doesn't know how to drag himself out, only knows how to not be here.
damon's shields are forgotten entirely in the onslaught of these memories. he doesn't know what to do, or how to get away from them — it feels like drowning, like he needs to swim up but doesn't know which way up is. for long moments all he can do is experience it all again, stuck in a repeating loop, and then, it... changes. he breathes. in to a count of seven, out to a count of eleven. sam's breathing bleeds through, and damon latches onto it, his only point of normalcy in the chaos that is his head. he doesn't know how long they stay like that, breathing in tandem, but eventually damon opens his eyes and he's back in the station, augustine decades behind him and sam wilson breathing in front of him. )
What the fuck was that, ( he says, voice low and dangerous. thankfully, it doesn't quiver at all on the words, shaky as damon himself feels. )
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Nobody should have ever had to feel that kind of helpless, to watch the hope that someone would come fade into nothing. To reach a point surpassing anger and devastation where the only way to cope is to feel nothing at all. Sam knows what that feels like, both on his own - albeit something far less literal than shutting off emotions - and because of how closely connected he is with Bucky.
There's something almost like relief when he feels Damon latch onto the breathing technique, when the rise and fall of their chests sync up. His eyes stay shut as he lets it all go, breathes in and out and lets it fade. He can't forget it anymore than Damon can, can't ever unlearn what it feels like to experience it, but he can bury it down somewhere no one else can touch it. ]
I don't know. It's not the usual kind of bleed over that happens sometimes, it's... [ It's happened a couple of times before, but not very many, and usually only with someone Sam already had a connection with. Except the one time it'd helped forge a connection, and if Sam hadn't already started that by letting Damon in his head, he can definitely feel it now. But ultimately, there's only one important thing about what it was. ] Not something I should have seen.
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but being in sam's head has given him a little insight into the man, and damon knows already — threats aren't necessary. sam wouldn't talk about it with anyone even without damon insisting on it. he wouldn't even bring it up to damon if damon didn't do it first. he's one of those annoying conscientious, righteous people who care about things like the sanctity of one's mind and choice. usually it would bother damon, but when it's working in his favour, he can't exactly be mad about it. )
It was a long time ago. It doesn't matter now.
( maybe if damon says it enough, he'll believe it himself. sam's breathing technique has calmed him, by now, his pulse steady but slow, just like always, but he can still feel the terror that rocketed through him when he remembered whitmore's voice. )
Do we have to keep going or are we done?
( if necessary, he can hold it back, now. he knows where those memories sit, he can keep them to himself. if sam wants to keep going, damon will. this is important enough, he's invested enough in looking like he's fine, that he'll grit his teeth and jump back in.
he kind of hopes sam doesn't make him, though. )
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He doesn't say that, but he's still connected enough with Damon that he doesn't have to for it to make it across. Or for the understanding that Sam's not going to push anyway, because just because it still matters and it'll have to be dealt with sometime doesn't mean that some time is now. There's a snippet of memory that bleeds through, the rush of a punch and the crunch of a broken nose under Sam's fist, the feeling that someone asked something they shouldn't have, pushed for something Sam wasn't ready to talk about. ]
We don't gotta keep going.
[ He won't say we're done, because they're not. Maybe they're not breathing in sync any more, but his connection with Damon is undeniably stronger than it'd been before they were in each other's heads. Sam knew that going in, though maybe not to this extent, and he could still pull away now if he wanted to, probably, but he doesn't. ]
I know what it feels like, dissociating like that. There's a reason I knew those tricks to try to bring me back, you know? You don't gotta talk to me about anything, but if you wanna practice them, I'll be here. Turns out they're pretty good at helping with all this shit.