( 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
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? )
no subject
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. )
no subject
[ 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. ]
no subject
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. )
no subject
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. ]
no subject
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.)
no subject
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. ]
no subject
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. )
no subject
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.
no subject
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. )
no subject
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.