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Above everything, above anything, Sam’s always relied on his mind. It never mattered if he was studying for finals or digging through a pile of ancient books or cobbling together spells from scraps of lore in dead languages—his brain has always been the one tool that could never be lost, confiscated, or destroyed. Maybe, once in a while, magic or possession got him twisted around, but that wasn’t permanent, wasn’t him. Underneath it all, his mind was still intact.
That’s why now, feeling it disintegrate, feeling himself disintegrate, is—
“Fun?” Lucifer suggests. He’s sitting on the table in the middle of their motel room, legs swinging back and forth like he’s a kid in a playground. “Stylish? Sexy?”
—fucking terrifying.
“Aw, don’t be like that, sugarplum,” Lucifer says. “You know what this is? It’s our relationship moving to the next level. First comes love, then comes marriage, then comes Sammy going stark raving gaga…in a baby carriage.”
“Shut up,” Sam mumbles. He doesn’t mean to speak out loud, but lately, what he means seems to matter less and less.
It was a long drive from day to night, from snow to slush to rain, before they stepped into the slaughterhouse of a trailer and learned they’d gotten yet another friend killed. Now they’ve checked into a motel, one Sam couldn’t name with a gun to his head, but every time he blinks, he sees a new set of blood-splattered walls.
It’s just that his eyes aren’t working right. His mouth. His—his mind isn’t working right. Mind over matter, but mind is matter. Sam’s brain in his skull just flesh like all the rest.
“That’s right!” Lucifer says. “You know, that’s the sign of a really special relationship—that every day, you think about the things you’ve taught each other.”
Suddenly another Sam kneels on the grubby carpet, eyes wet and skull opened up like a halved watermelon. No. Lucifer is standing over him, feeding him handfuls of his own brain as he retches and chokes and swallows what he’s given.
“That was a blast, wasn’t it?” Lucifer turns from the Sam on the carpet to raise his brows at the other Sam, the solid one, locked up too tight to tremble. “We had such fun, you and me—”
“Shut up!”
There’s a thud from the bathroom, and Dean pokes his head around the door. “You say something?”
“No,” Sam mutters. He sits down heavily on a bed.
“Liar, liar.” A playground lilt. “Don’t you remember what happens to liars, Sammy? I know your head’s all full of holes, but surely you remember that.”
Sam swallows. His mouth is dry as ash.
(The thing about pain is that you never remember how it feels, how bad it is, until it starts. Your mind can’t retain the sensation. If you’re optimistic, you might think this is meant to protect you from the suffering of the past.
If you’re less optimistic, you might wonder if you were created that way so you can never really prepare yourself. Never quite get used to it.)
He’s in a motel room, alone with his brother. Just the two of them and the faint smell of cigarettes. They’ve been here for five minutes, or maybe thirty—he can’t be sure. Time keeps slipping out of joint; Sam blinks and the world has shifted.
Dean is crouching in front of him.
How did he get there so quickly? Why is he saying Sam’s name like it’s not the first time?
How can Sam know it’s really him?
He turns his head and sees Lucifer is still there—he’s sitting on the table again, watching attentively—so he hasn’t taken on Dean’s face. But that doesn’t mean this isn’t one of his games. He can conjure up whatever he wants, make his creations dance for him to any tune he chooses.
“Very true. Gold star for Sammy.”
Wait, no. Lucifer isn’t conjuring anything. Sam is. Only Sam.
Probably.
“You look wrecked, man,” Dean is saying when Sam manages to tune in. “Let’s just get you to bed. You know what happens with all work and no play, right? Or sleep. Whatever.” He chuckles, but the sound is too casual. His hand, warm on Sam’s knee, squeezes too hard. It almost hurts, but that’s okay. It takes all Sam’s concentration to keep from swaying into his brother so he can feel that warmth against his whole body.
He lets Dean cajole him into washing up and getting under the covers, all careful touches and strained wisecracks. But when the lights are out and Dean’s breathing has gone deep and even from the other bed, Sam can’t do anything but lie there, staring at the stained ceiling by the fragment of yellow light leaking through the curtains.
Dean’s not okay, just like Sam isn’t. He’s been drinking more and more the past few days. Weeks. Months? God knows he can put whiskey away like water, but lately Sam’s been wondering if Dean should be driving. Of course, it’s not like Sam would be any safer behind the wheel these days, not even stone-cold sober. Why can’t Sam ever be the one to help Dean, instead of the thing that drags him down?
His thoughts feel wrung out and limp, yet somehow electrified. The exhaustion hurts, but sleep has never been so out of reach. If he just had an off switch for his brain…
“Oh, but you do, Sammy.”
Sam doesn’t need to look to know the gesture Lucifer’s making. He turns over and shoves the pillow over his head.
“Come on, sweet cheeks, you know better than that. Has hiding ever gone your way?” Lucifer clicks his tongue. “But maybe you like losing. Maybe you pretend you can hide just because you really, really like what happens when I find you.”
No. Sam shapes the word with his lips but doesn’t put voice into it. He can’t. His breath puffs damply into the tiny cave of fabric, and his lungs tighten.
Gritting his teeth, Sam tries to concentrate on the sound of Dean’s breath from the other bed: half-muffled, a soft whistle on the exhale. He thinks of the angled arch of a sarcastic brow. Bowlegs like parentheses. That’s what’s real. That’s what’s real. That’s…
What is he saying? What do those words even mean? What was he thinking about again?
“Me.”
The room is getting colder, and Sam shivers, curls up tighter. It’s always cold in the cage.
No. He’s in a motel room with his brother. Dean, who hums off key or rattles off drumbeats on any available surface when the mood and the song are just right. Dean, who looks at the stars and invents his own constellations. Sam draws another breath, and it feels ragged, sharp, like his throat has torn from screaming. But it hasn’t. Not recently. Not since…
Time means nothing in the cage.
“That’s what makes it special.” The mattress dips as Lucifer spoons up behind him, hooking his chin over Sam’s shoulder, twining chilly fingers with his. His touch tingles on Sam’s skin. Sam feels his body go limp and passive, moldable, the closest he used to get to safe. “You and me, when we’re together, time stands still. I remember every moment we had together, because it’s not in the past, not really. There is no past, only another kind of space, and with us it can stop pretending. You understand that, don’t you?”
Swallowing back bile, Sam forces himself to tug his fingers out of Lucifer’s grasp and jams his thumb against his palm. He squeezes, but there’s only a dull ache under the healed scar and Lucifer’s soft laughter in his ears.
“You know what I love most about you?”
He presses harder. Digs his nail in, jagged where he didn’t trim quite right. Listens to Dean’s familiar breathing, but suddenly, in the dark, certainty fades. It could be anyone’s.
“It’s the way you keep trying, even when any idiot could tell it won’t do you any good. Like an orphaned kitten trying to nurse from a blanket. It warms the cockles of my heart.”
“Shut up,” Sam whispers for the hundredth pointless time. The taste of rot climbs up from the back of his throat.
Lucifer smiles. Sam can feel it against his neck. Suddenly the sheets are heavy and wet, holding him down, and the coppery smell of blood is thick in his nose. The pillow against his face squishes like a slab of meat. Something’s lying across him, heavy and slimy, and then it starts to move, and someone starts to scream—
He’s forcing his nausea down, squeezing his palm hard enough that he thinks his thumb might burst through to the other side, but it doesn’t make a difference. Maybe he’ll never sleep again.
Something snaps in his head, and he throws himself to the side, away from the constricting weight, fumbles blindly in the shadows of the floor until he finds his duffel. He feels around until his hand closes around the familiar hilt of a knife.
The first slice across his skin makes his mind white out, blissful and blank.
A moment later, his vision goes white too, and he only realizes it’s the lamp when Dean says, “Sam? Is everything—Sammy! What the hell are you doing?”
As Dean seems to teleport from his bed to Sam’s, Sam blinks at him. “It’s okay, Dean. Don’t be upset.”
“Upset?” Dean’s voice is harsh. He yanks the knife out of Sam’s hand. “How can you say that? This isn’t in the same fucking galaxy as okay. You’re bleeding all over your own goddamn sheets.”
Sam flinches at his volume, his rage. Can’t help it. Fear starts to leak back into the sweet, clean void in his mind. “Sorry,” his mouth says. Behind him, Lucifer scoffs at his weakness. Sam wonders if he was ever even gone.
“Sammy.” Dean’s managed to drag his volume down to a whisper, and he scrubs his hand over his face. “I’m not mad, but you’re freaking me out, okay? What’s going on?”
“Need to make it stop.” He’s lost track of the knife. Did Dean put it in his pocket or toss it somewhere on the eyesore of a carpet?
Is the carpet moving?
Dean shifts his body to block Sam’s view. “It will stop, okay? We’re going to figure this out.”
“Liar,” hisses Lucifer. “You’re in good company, Sammy-boy.”
“Come on, Sasquatch. Help me out here. Fuck, you’re like a block of ice.” Sam realizes Dean is trying to lever him out of bed, and he struggles up, dizzy. He loses time again, and when he comes back, he’s sitting on a chair, less bloodied, and Dean is bandaging his arm wrist to elbow. How many times did Sam cut himself? He only remembers the first. Dean’s eyes are downcast, a muscle twitching in his jaw.
“It’s okay, Dean,” Sam repeats. He tries to pat his shoulder and misses a bit. Blinks hard to realign his vision. “It’s just like when we need blood for a ritual, right? Or to make sure someone is human. It’s not a big deal. I just need to make it stop, and my palm’s not enough anymore.”
“Yeah?” Dean asks. “And what about when this ain’t enough anymore either? What’ll you do then? Hack off a limb?”
Sam shakes his head. He doesn’t say that he’d be happy to do that, if only he thought it would work. His mind itches, and he can’t keep himself from glancing around for the knife. But it’s nowhere in sight.
“Psst. He put it in his duffel while you were being a space case.”
Dean sighs and pulls Sam to his feet. “I don’t want to argue, Sammy. Not tonight. You’re a goddamn mess. Just come lie down, okay? Tomorrow we’ll figure out how to fight this thing, but tonight, just lie the fuck down so we can get you to tomorrow in one piece.”
“Okay.” This time he can’t keep himself from leaning into Dean, like he can absorb his brother’s warm solidity right through his skin. Dean’s herding him toward the bed, and it’s not until he nudges Sam down onto it that Sam realizes it’s on the wrong side of the room. Or he thinks it is. “Wait,” he says, looking around. Maybe the room’s gone backward, inside out. Or maybe Sam has.
His face hits the pillow, and he inhales the concentrated scent of Dean. Just like that, a little tension leaves his body, and he feels a tear trickle across his nose and disappear.
“Wait,” he says again, because he still doesn’t understand.
“Precautionary measures, Sammy,” Dean tells him, elbowing him aside and climbing in after him. “If you try and pull another stunt like that, I want to know about it. Not to mention your bed’s a fucking biohazard. And you’re freezing.”
“I’m okay,” Sam mumbles.
“Sure you are. Scoot over already, use the damn blankets, and if you touch me with your ice cube feet, I’ll end you. Got it? Now sleep.”
“Soon as he gets the chance, he’s gonna hide all the sharps,” Lucifer remarks. “Or he’s gonna try, anyway. You’re on suicide watch, baby. Isn’t that cute? The way you live, he should just kill you himself and get it over with.”
Sam curls up on his side, under the blankets as ordered. His brother takes forever to settle down, sighing, squirming, turning over and back again, the heat of his body reaching out like fire. Sam clenches his fists to keep from either grabbing him and pulling him close or jumping out of bed and running for the door.
In hell, there were times he would have doomed the world for a chance to touch Dean. Or maybe to touch anyone at all.
It takes a few minutes for them both to be still and silent. Even then, though, Sam can tell Dean isn’t asleep any more than he is.
“You’re keeping him up. How long do you think it’ll take him to realize there’s no point trying to keep you alive? You’d think it’s obvious, but your brother’s never been too bright. If you love him, you should spare him the trouble and off yourself. You’ll come right back to me, you know. I’ll give you a welcome-home party like you can’t even imagine.”
Without thought, Sam’s fingers dig into the fresh wounds on his arm. He traps the hiss of pain behind his teeth. It helps, a purifying wash of light, but it’s not enough. Dean shifts beside him, too close and too far away.
Lucifer strokes Sam’s hair. He’s humming again. It’s one of Dean’s favorite tunes. When they were both small, on nights Sam couldn’t or wouldn’t sleep, sometimes Dean would crawl into bed with him and hum, just like this.
Nothing like this.
“You miss the cage.” Voice only inches from his ear, making an electric shock run down his spine. “I know you do. It’s too big out here, isn’t it? Big and empty, without all that me running through it. You breathe and it doesn’t do you any good, because you spent all those decades with me in every lungful of air, and without me it’s nothing. It’s dead. Nothing to hold you together. Your cells slipping further and further apart.”
Just rambling, Sam tells himself. Lucifer’s going as crazy as Sam is from the lack of sleep. Sooner or later Sam will get tired enough that the part that makes Lucifer will shut off. He will. He has to.
Shadows are stretching, moving in ways that shadows shouldn’t. In the dimness, the ghosts of colors bleed into each other, smearing across the walls. Someone is whispering behind the hum of the heater.
In the cage, there was a game Sam used to play. It wasn’t much like Lucifer’s games, and he had an endless supply. Sam’s was one he played by himself, inside his head. It was called if Dean were here.
If Dean were here, everything would be different. Sam would stand up to Lucifer. He wouldn’t be alone. Wouldn’t be passive and obedient, folding his body into the smallest possible space in hopes of avoiding notice but always, always coming when called. No, if his brother were beside him, he’d fight back. He wouldn’t let Lucifer hurt Dean, and he wouldn’t let Dean see him this way. Wouldn’t become what he’d become.
If Dean were here, everything would be different. Lucifer would snap his fingers and Sam would crawl to him, beg for a chance to please him, because otherwise, Dean would be the one to face the consequences. Lucifer’s games would be twice as complicated, ten times as effective. And Sam’s sacrifice would be for nothing, because what would it matter that the world was saved if Dean wasn’t?
If Dean were here, everything would be the same. Lucifer would hurt Sam, or he would hurt Dean, which would come out to the same thing in the end, and every day would be the same, except that they’d all be different, except that there were no days, just an endless stretch of hell. His world would be Lucifer, so he’d have no way of knowing, really, if Dean was actually there or not. He’d have no way of knowing anything but what Lucifer wanted him to know, and what Lucifer wanted him to know was that Sam was nothing but a collection of parts that could always, always be broken down smaller.
Dean wasn’t here. He was up there, in the world, walking across the solid earth with sky stretched above his head. Lucifer sank his hand into Sam’s guts, and Sam thought of Dean leaning over the Impala’s engine, black staining his strong fingers and sunlight dappling his face. Lucifer took his time teasing cracks from Sam’s voice until it shattered, and Sam thought of Dean singing along to Metallica, happy and off key.
And if time in the cage wasn’t real, didn’t that mean part of Sam was still up there with his brother, driving down a long, straight midwestern highway, windows down, the breeze blowing through their hair, as Dean flashed him a sideways grin and made a joke that Sam would never admit was funny?
Lucifer’s still talking. Always talking, mouth always flapping, tongue always weaving new patterns of cruelty. He thinks about when Lucifer cut out Sam’s tongue and made it dance its way through a puppet show. He stops thinking about it. He tries to. He’s so, so damn cold.
Dean’s body is a warm, heavy shape beside him. Sam wants to press close but won’t. Can’t. That would be too much, and Sam’s already so much.
He swears he can feel his mind weakening, like a spiderweb blasted by gale-force winds. He’s coming apart. Fingernails press into the wound on his arm. Not enough. A barrier keeps him from relief. Sam scrabbles at the gauze, breath short and desperate. The first scratch of pain makes his eyes roll back, but it’s still not enough.
Eventually, he realizes the voice saying his name isn’t Lucifer’s.
Dean’s hand is cupping his face. Sam can tell it’s his because of the calluses, rough and familiar, and he stills, or tries to. He can’t stop shivering, overloaded and desperate. He wants more of his brother’s touch. So badly he thinks he might snap right in half. It’s solid like nothing in the cage ever is. Was. Like nothing in Sam’s head ever—pinkie finger a comma around the angle of his jaw, thumb making tiny arcs along his damp cheekbone, palm rasping against stubble. He draws a breath. They both draw a breath.
Sam’s head hurts so fucking much. He presses into Dean’s touch, eyes slipping closed. For once, it’s blank and quiet in the darkness behind his lids.
“Aww. Isn’t that darling.”
Sam counts his heartbeat by the pounding of his head. Tries to know nothing but Dean’s touch. Dean is speaking too, he thinks, but Sam can’t hear him, only Lucifer and the whispers in the walls.
Lucifer interjects, “Do you remember that time we tried out hot yoga? The trouble you had holding the positions?”
He does. The floor burned the soles of his feet, and the air, usually frigid, scorched his lungs. He was dizzy and sick with it, could hardly stand, let alone hold the stress position Lucifer wanted. So Lucifer bound him that way.
“When we were done, I put my hand on your face and you nuzzled into it just like that, like it was all you needed in the world. It was the cutest thing I’d ever seen. You were all sweet and shivery and desperate, and you would’ve done anything, anything at all, for my affection.” It’s vivid: The relief of that freezing-cold hand on his overheated skin. The shaking of his muscles as Lucifer let him down and massaged away the cramps. The devil sighs happily. “You begged me so sweetly, and then we made tender love till morning.”
“There wasn’t any morning,” Sam mumbles.
“I’m the morning star, aren’t I? Close enough.”
A hand carding through Sam’s hair. It hits a snag and tugs at his roots, a little lightning jolt of pain, and then Sam can hear Dean again: “Did you say something? Sam, what’s going on in there?”
His gruff voice isn’t landing right, shakes on the last syllable. Sam forces his eyes open and searches out Dean’s in the dimness. He needs to end this. He needs to fix himself, for Dean’s sake if not his own. “Nothing,” he says, or thinks he says. “It doesn’t matter. Can you do it?”
“Can I do what?” Dean’s short hair is rumpled. In just a black T-shirt, arms bare to the cold (is it cold?) air of the motel room, he looks exposed and armorless. His face, too, is missing its shields. Maybe he doesn’t know Sam can see him, or maybe Sam has stolen his barriers away.
“The knife,” Sam says. “Or something else. I don’t care. You can use whatever you want.”
“Use whatever I want to do what?” But horror is dawning on Dean’s face.
“To…to help…” There’s a pit in Sam’s stomach.
“Jesus fucking Christ, Sam, I’m not going to fucking torture you!” It’s like Sam has stabbed him. It’s worse.
“It wouldn’t be—” But it doesn’t matter. He’s fucked up again. “I’m sorry,” he whispers. Hell. God, Dean was in hell too, and now Sam’s dragging him right back.
“Damn it, Sam, you know I’ll do anything for you,” Dean says. “Just—not that. Not when it won’t fix shit.”
Sam lets his eyes fall shut. He shouldn’t have led with the knife. Dean’s fingers are still splayed across his face like he’s forgotten they’re there, but Sam hasn’t forgotten. They’re the realest, most solid thing he’s ever felt. Dean was right, all those months ago; things feel different up here than in the cage. Real and not real…except that isn’t it, not quite. It’s more that reality comes in different shades, and Sam is learning to tell them apart.
And Dean’s touch—that reality is different from anything Sam ever felt in the cage, even in the moments when Lucifer wore Dean’s face. He might be sure of nothing else, but he can be sure of that.
He needs more. More touch, more certainty, more Dean. He needs it rooted so deeply inside him no force in the universe could steal it away.
That’s what nudges him to shift forward, echo Dean’s touch with a hand on his brother’s jaw, fingers wrapping around to the back of his neck, and kiss him.
It only lasts a couple seconds. Two warm, real seconds, moments contained in the exchange of breath between their mouths. In the soft, slow clinging of their lips. For those moments, nothing else exists.
In the background, Lucifer wolf whistles. It doesn’t matter.
Then Dean pulls away, pulls back. He doesn’t go far—Sam can still feel the warm puffs of breath against his face before Dean says, in barely more than a whisper, “Sammy?”
“Dean,” Sam says. He doesn’t have anything else to say.
“Yeah, I’m…I’m Dean.” Still touching him, at least. “You know that, right?”
“I know.” And for once, he does.
Lucifer slaps him on the back, making him flinch. “Nice one, Sammy-boy. Freakier by the day, aren’t you? Wish I could take credit.”
Sam flees into another kiss. The air is so much warmer sipped from Dean’s mouth. “Please,” he whispers. Maybe Dean understands, because his fingers wind into Sam’s hair and give an experimental tug. Sam’s mouth drops open, and Dean fits his teeth around Sam’s bottom lip and bites. Sam moans in relief, his mind clearing like blood draining down a sink.
Cold fingers trace patterns, Enochian sigils, on his lower back. Sam knows exactly what they mean. His chest tightens, suffocates him, acid in his veins, and he kisses Dean harder, as if he can burrow his way into Dean’s lungs. His hand joins Dean’s in his own hair and yanks, a strand coming free in his grip.
“Whoa!” Dean forces space between them, nerves in his voice. “Breathe, Sammy, okay?”
“I—” This was a bad idea. Sam’s ruined everything. He’s too much again, and he’s going to—he’s going to—Sam fights for air. Closes his eyes and sees Lucifer laughing at him. Snaps them open and tries to do what he’s told.
Neither of them speak as Sam gets his panic under control. Even in the dark, Sam can feel Dean staring at him, and he can’t guess what Dean is thinking. He doesn’t want to. He needs—he just wants—he just hopes—
Careful fingers running down his cheek. Dean’s gun calluses. “You picked a hell of a moment, you know.”
Closing his eyes, Sam rolls forward, feels Dean’s solid warmth against his shoulder, their foreheads pressed together. His hand plucks at the hem of Dean’s T-shirt, not with any purpose in mind, just to anchor him. “I’m sorry,” he whispers. Thinks he whispers.
“I don’t want you to be sorry,” Dean says harshly. His arms wrap around Sam and squeeze. Too tight, not tight enough. “I want you to tell me what you need. Tell me how to fix this, Sammy. Tell me what to do.”
Sam shakes his head. Feels his mind sloshing with the movement. He’s still so cold, but the parts of him touching Dean are almost warm. “I don’t know. I wish I did.”
“You ever want suggestions, honeybuns,” says the smirking voice beside them, “you know I’m here to help.”