Work Text:
It was easier to get pills than he thought it would be.
After Lucifer first appeared in his dreams, Sam decided he didn’t want to take anymore chances. Couldn’t bear to see Jess again, not like that. Didn’t want to risk saying yes. He needed a way to stop sleeping. And caffeine pills would only work for so long.
The barback in a trucker bar seemed to have what he needed. A little pink pill with the transformers logo on. Sam didn’t exactly know what it was but, he was pushing three days without sleep and he was so damn tired and Dean was still too careful around him. Dean said after a quick stop at the bar, they’d find a motel and sleep. And Sam just couldn’t risk that.
So, little pink pill it was.
The barback sold him so oxy for in the morning, said that once pill wore off there would be a comedown. Oxy as soon as you start feeling down, it’ll balance out.
And it worked. Dean laid still in the motel bed next him, and Sam sat up all night. No dreams of Lucifer, no memories, no time to think about starting the apocalypse. He actually felt… good. As good as he felt on demon blood. Maybe even better. He laid back on his bed, earphones in, listening to his anthem playlist.
And just before Dean woke up, when he was just starting to come down, Sam took the oxycodone pill. Felt himself relax in a way he hadn’t in a long time.
Every new town they stopped in, Sam found a guy.
Usually they hung out in bars, but sometimes he found them in parks or strip mall parking lots. Found out what he had taken was molly. And of course he knew the risks but. He wasn’t sleeping anymore, not well enough for Lucifer to find him. The oxy helped him catch up on rest. It was working. And that’s all Sam really cared about.
It wasn’t even affecting his life much. It wasn’t like Dean even noticed or cared. The first few days Sam had fought tiredness to try and talk to him, long car journeys were never fun in silence, but Dean had barely grunted out replies. Sam gave up trying after that. Dean never asked, so Sam never spoke about it.
And that worked for him.
Until then a hunt in Missouri, with some cocky demons. It was early in the morning; Dean woke him up early, told him it was some kind of emergency, Sam barely had time to swallow down his oxy before heading out of their motel room. And Christ it was an emergency, half the damn town had been possessed. Ruby’s knife wasn’t going to cut it.
They had the plan, round them all up and mass exorcise them. And it should have worked, except the oxy kicked in at the wrong time, Sam could barely lift his legs from the floo. Couldn’t move to get the demons in place, wonky devil’s traps on the floor. Speech slurred as soon as he opened his mouth.
And once they were rounded up in the towns square, he blanked on the words he needed.
A hundred or so black eyes staring at him. Expecting him to be their executioner. And he could feel Dean’s eyes on the side of his face. Dean’s frowning face. Sam could feel acid rising in the back of his throat, had to turn around to spit out the taste.
He stumbled through the exorcism. And finally, a cloud of black smoke funnelled into the air. The townspeople were dazed, huddled together in the square, but safe. They were safe. To Sam, that’s all that mattered.
When they got back to the motel room, Dean let off on him.
“The Hell was that, Sam?”
Sam blinked, sat down on the bed. The room seemed to be getting bigger, and Dean’s voice sounded a million miles away.
“Are you listening?” Dean yelled. Sam didn’t really hear what he said, but hummed anyway. It just seemed easier to agree with him. “Sam, Christ, are you high?”
“Am I what?”
“High, Sam! Are you high?”
Sam started giggling, because Dean really had no clue. A whole month and he hadn’t once noticed any of the pills he'd slipped.
“Oh my God, Sam!” Dean snapped. “You really screwed the world and you’re just, what? Getting high when you’re supposed to be fixing this.”
“It’s percocet,” Sam said. The words tasted like cotton wool in his mouth. “Percocet, painkillers.”
And Dean frowned. Sat next to Sam on the bed.
“Painkillers? You hurt?”
Sam paused for a second. “Yeah, banged up, needed it to stop.” He didn’t mention that it was his brain that hurt, his brain that needed to stop. But it seemed a good enough explanation for Dean.
“Okay, just tell me next time, okay?” Dean said. “We need you freaking sober, you gotta do your best to fix this. If you’re vulnerable, Lucifer can get to you. And that’s not a risk I can’t take, man.”
And Sam nodded. There was no way he could tell Dean he was doing this to keep Lucifer away.
It was fine again after that for a long while. He was more careful, tried not to take anything when he knew they were hunting.
It made the nights he was sober worse. The devil was, well, the devil. Those nights, he saw Jess dying over and over. He had dreams about Jo being ripped apart by hellhounds. Cas kept repeating the word abomination. Bobby told him he wasn’t his son anymore. Dean, oh Dean, told him that he was a monster. And he had to watch them be tortured in ways he didn’t think were possible.
Those nights made it hard to wake up the next day.
He had to up dosage. Made it harder for Luci to find his dreams. Needed more oxy to balance him out in the morning. And the dreaded happened, one morning in Colorado, when Sam ran out of oxy.
He wasn’t prepared for the comedown. Dean was asleep in the bed next to him. Conked out. He’d had to reset his shoulder the night before after a rough vampire hunt, and had passed out after a cocktail of tylenol and beer. So it was just Sam and the feelings creeping in.
He expected to be tired, his body heavy in a different way than when he was on oxy. Couldn’t slip out of the bed sheets. He knew that was coming, but the thoughts.
All he could think was how he’d doomed the world.
It was his fault. He’d ruined Dean’s life, given his only brother so much trauma. He’d made Cas fall, paralysed Bobby. And, he couldn’t stress this enough, he’d started the apocalypse. He’d killed everyone. How many people were dead because of him? How many?
Everyone hated him. And he couldn’t blame them.
And Dean, so blissfully unaware, asleep in the other bed couldn’t help him. He picked up his phone, shaking hands, and dialled three on speed dial.
“Sam, hello,” Cas answered. “Are you okay, do you need help?”
The sound of Cas’ gravelled voice made Sam feel a little more human.
“Cas,” Sam said, and he was sobbing a little bit. His body quaked, and he tried so hard just to stablise himself. “Cas, I…”
“Sam, are you okay?”
“I, Cas I ruined everything. I killed everyone, I’ve killed us all. Michael and Lucifer are going to kill everyone and it’s all my fault. I’ve ruined everything. I’m such a horrible person, no wonder I’m Lucifer’s vessel. I can’t, Cas, I can’t do this anymore. I’m the worst.”
“Sam, where are you?”
Sam reeled off the address of the motel they were staying in. The angel was there in a millisecond. Before Sam could say anything, Cas slapped a hand on his forehead.
“You’re unwell?”
“No, no, Cas, I’m just bad,” Sam said. Tears rolled down his cheeks, but he couldn’t lift his arms to wipe them. “I’m just a bad person, Cas, I’m not sick it’s just me.”
“Sam, you look ill,” Cas said. “Should I wake your brother, I don’t know much about human illness.”
“No, please don’t!” Sam sat up with a jerking movement. “I don’t, Dean doesn’t need to know.”
“Sam, you are running a fever,” Cas said. “And you are acting as if you are going to kill yourself, which is worrying.”
“I know, I know,” Sam sobbed. “I can’t check out when I still need to fix the apocalypse.”
“No, Sam, it’s worrying because I don’t want you to kill yourself.”
Sam frowned, because that just sounded stupid. Everyone hated him, so why would Cas want him to stay alive? It had to be about the apocalypse. Had to be.
“I never felt,” Cas started, “comradery with my siblings in Heaven. You and Dean, you are the closest thing I have to family. If you died, there would be a… Sam shaped hole.”
“Oh.”
“Yes, Sam,” Cas sighed. “So please, tell me if there is a reason you are suddenly feeling this way.”
And for a split second, Sam considered telling Cas about the drugs. Considered telling him the whole tale about Lucifer in his dreams. But Cas would tell Dean, which would just end in arguments and Sam was too tired for that.
“You can tell me.”
Sam sighed. “I… It’s a comedown, Cas. It’s just a drop in mood, I’ll be… I’ll be fine. I’m not checking out any time soon.”
“If you are sure,” Cas said. “But I will stay the night just in case.”
And he did. Watched from the kitchen table as Sam started to drift off. And he still hated himself, but knowing Cas cared helped.
Jo and Ellen were dead. Died in the exact way that Sam had dreamed about. If it wasn’t for Lucifer, Sam feared his visions were coming back.
Dean buried himself in alcohol. Bobby did nothing but research. And Sam, he had his molly.
They doubled down base in Bobby’s house. There were other hunters to clean up other messes, but there were only Sam and Dean to stop the angels. So they made base in South Dakota, and did all they could to find something to kill the devil.
At first, it was easy to hide the pills, Dean blacked out early enough. Sam slipped out for a bathroom break each night before coming back to help Bobby research. He was always the last one awake, and when Bobby and Dean woke up in the morning he was still at it. It wasn’t hard to pass off as shouldering the guilt. He was doing that as well anyway.
It was a Thursday when he came down from a bathroom pill break, and found Dean and Bobby sat sober in the kitchen.
“We need to talk,” Bobby said. There was a chair pulled away from the table, ready for him to sit in.
“Wha- What about?” Sam blinked, laughed nervously.
“I know you’re high right now, Sam,” Dean said point blank. “We know that you sneak off to the bathroom to do drugs.”
“Dean, that’s not-”
“Don’t lie to us, boy,” Bobby said. “I’ve known more than enough hunters to see the signs.”
“I don’t-” Sam started. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Dean dropped his bag of oxy on the table. Enough pills to get him through the next few mornings. How Dean had found them, he’d never know. Sam took a seat.
“Cut the crap, Sam, we know what you’re doing. And before you ask, we know about whatever upper you’re on too.”
“You gotta know that it ain’t healthy for you,” Bobby said. “We go to bed and you stay up, and we wake up and you’re still researching. I don’t know if it’s cocaine or ecstasy or what but you’re killing yourself trying to stay awake.”
“You don’t understand,” Sam said.
“No, I get it, Sam,” Dean snapped. “You screwed up and you feel bad and you gotta numb that somehow-”
“It’s not,” Sam sighed. “It’s not about that.”
“Then what is it about?” Bobby asked, voice so much gentler than Dean’s.
“If I stay awake, Lucifer can’t get to me.”
Dean and Bobby exchanged a slow look, turned back to Sam with a frown. “What do you mean?” Dean asked.
“Lucifer comes to me every time I dream,” Sam said. “If I… If I’m on molly, I don’t sleep, and then I take oxy in the morning and it keeps off the comedown and gives me enough rest that I can do it again. I’m not taking it to forget about what I’ve done - believe me, I’ll never be able to forget it - I have to take it so he can’t get to me.”
“Why didn’t you tell us?” Bobby asked. He held out a hand for Sam to take, but Sam shrunk in on himself.
“It seemed small, me having to deal with the devil, compared to everything else that’s going on,” Sam shrugged. “I mean, it’s kinda my fault anyways.”
“Sam, no,” Dean growled. “It’s that bitch Ruby’s fault, and the angels, Hell I broke the first seal. Not you, you don’t… seeing the devil is serious.”
“We can help you,” Bobby added.
And Sam shrugged again. “I don’t… I don’t know how to stop it. The sigils Cas gave us don’t exactly work to keep him away.”
“Well, you’re not using freaking molly or whatever anymore,” Dean said.
“I...Dean, I don’t think I can stop,” Sam said. He rested his elbows on the table and buried his head in his hands. “This… this works! I don’t think I can do it another way.”
“Sam, you know you have problems with…. Addiction,” Bobby said.
“How is this any different from you two downing a bottle of jack every night?”
“Sammy, you need to sober up-”
“Please don’t,” Sam didn’t look up, his eyes were filled with tears and his face flushed, couldn’t let them see him like this “You can’t put me back in the panic room.”
“We were…” and Dean trailed off, because Sam knew. He knew that Dean would do that to him again. Still had nightmares of staring up at that ceiling fan. The nights he was sober were the nights Lucifer reminded him of exactly what Dean said to him when he was detoxing from the demon blood.
And honestly, Dean never said it but, his actions constantly reminded Sam that’s what Dean still thought.
“Okay, no panic room, Sammy,” Dean said. “But you gotta work with us, okay? Please?”
And Sam nodded, because Dean held his forearm so gently that maybe he still loved Sam. Wasn’t disappointed in him. He was still crying but he looked up. Bobby and Dean were both there with kind smiles.
He didn’t know how he would get through the nights but. Maybe Lucifer was wrong in his visions.
Maybe his family didn’t think he was a monster.