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Dean flips rashers of bacon in the pan, the fat sizzling as the meat turns crisp and brown. His mouth is watering, but he plates them up instead, adds them to the growing buffet he has laid out on the table. Pancakes, sausage, toast, fruit, coffee, cereal. Breakfast of champions, if he does say so himself. The clock ticks past noon and still, the bunker is silent save for the chronic dripping of the kitchen sink. He really ought to fix that.
Five minutes pass and Dean thinks maybe Sam isn’t coming to breakfast, like he didn’t come for breakfast yesterday. Or lunch, or dinner.
.
They were supposed to meet at the bar at 3. Dean had gone to the farm, decked out in his fake FBI best, Sam to the coroner’s office to take a look at the body. Dean sat, downing one beer then another, then just hugging the third between his hands until it turned lukewarm. Still, Sam didn’t come striding through the door, tossing his overly long hair out of his face like he was modelling for L’oreal. At that point, Dean began to worry, and later he would kick himself for not starting to worry halfway through his second beer. Countless calls to Sam’s phone which dialled through to his voicemail, and eventually didn’t dial at all.
Yeah, Dean should have started to worry about half an hour sooner.
.
A week since it happened and Sam is like another ghost haunting the halls of the bunker. He only drifts out of his bedroom occasionally to use the bathroom. Sometimes the trays of food Dean leaves on his bedside table are nibbled at by the time he returns to collect them. But Sam himself just grows paler in the darkness of his room, the sweats he hasn’t changed out of hang looser, his face remains as stony as ever.
Dean’s worried. He’s been worried since before he got his brother back. Worried about Sam since he was born, really, if he thinks about it. But this is different. When he does venture into Sam’s stuffy, dim bedroom with a sandwich and tall glass of water, Sam is where he always is, in bed. Dean swears he’s sinking ever so slightly deeper into the mattress each time, the memory foam not getting a chance to reshape itself. Sam is one with the bedsheets, just another pillow by the headboard. Dean’s extravagant buffet is turning cold in the bunker kitchen and Dean stands at the foot of Sam’s bed thinking and thinking about what he can do to make Sam look at him.
“I, uh, made breakfast,” is all he can come up with. Sam just nods against his pillow, face obscured by an oily matt of hair. “You don’t even have to eat anything, if you’re not hungry,” Dean tries. “Just come sit with me so I don’t feel like a loser.”
Sam shifts ever so slightly and for half a second Dean thinks maybe he’s going to get up, but he just turns further into the sheets, melts deeper into the mattress. If Dean’s not careful, one of these days Sam will sink so deep in there he’ll be gone forever.
“Okay,” Dean breathes. “I’ll, uh, make you a plate and leave it in here for you.”
He leaves his ghost of a bother to be slowly digested by his bed and wonders if Sam needs a second exorcism.
.
Jody hadn’t seen Sam, or heard from him. Neither had Garth. Or the Banes twins. Or Donna. Or anyone on the planet. Dean leaned against the Impala, cell phone dangling from his fingertips, and he briefly wondered if he’d ever see his little brother again. No. Nope, not happening. He shut that thought down as fast it had come to him. He’d lost Sam who knows how many times before, and each time he got him back. They always found each other, heaven and hell be damned.
Dean started to get serious DeJa’Vu. It was as if he was re-enacting almost a decade ago when he was worried out of his mind because he hadn’t seen Sam in a week because Meg was joyriding him around backcountry America with a bottle of whiskey, a pack of cigarettes and a very sharp knife…
Oh.
Sam didn’t have his tattoo anymore. Cas burned it off when Gadreel had made himself comfy in Sam’s skin and refused to budge.
Oh.
Dean turned his phone back on and began searching for recent demonic activity.
.
He should just yank Sam out of bed, grab him by his bony ankles and drag him into a hot shower. Maybe then Sam will snap out of it, he’ll wake up from whatever daze he’s stuck in and say, thanks, Dean, I needed that. Or, Sam will just lie there, limp and drenched, as the shower spits hot water all over him. Maybe he’ll not snap out of it, maybe he’s just a meatsuit now, maybe that’s what happens when you get possessed so many times. Sam’s sure to have a world record now because has anyone else in history ever sat backseat in their own body so often? Demons, angels, devils, Sam’s had a taste of them all.
“Well, fuck,” Dean mutters. The breath he lets out shudders through him and he feels suddenly cold like there’s a ghost nearby, he’d half expects to look up and see Sam standing there, haunting him.
When he goes back into Sam’s room, everything is unchanged, as if 2 hours haven’t passed since he was last in here, dropping off another glass of water which will only be sipped at.
“Sammy,” Dean says, and he gets a minute twitch of a response. Good, he’s still alive, then. The mattress hasn’t devoured him yet. “Sammy, you need to get up.”
Nothing.
“Sam. If you don’t, I’ll make you.”
And Sam laughs. It’s a hoarse croak of a thing, like he’s dusting off his lungs. “You’ll make me?” Sam whispers, as if that’s as loud as his voice will go, barely louder than the drip drip drip of the fucked-up kitchen sink.
“Sam, I have to do something,” is all Dean can say. “I don’t know… You can’t just lie there forever.”
Sam rolls over then and for the first time in 2 weeks Sam looks Dean in the eye. “Dean, I’m tired.”
Dean swallows. He’s heard that before, and it’s DeJa’Vu again but this time they’re in a sterile hospital room and Sam’s dressed all in white and he hasn’t slept in 11 days.
“Just take a shower,” Dean suggests. “You don’t have to do anything. Just stand under the water for like ten minutes, then you can get back in bed.” A beat of silence. “Please, Sam.”
Another moment passes, and Dean is frightened that maybe Sam’s gone again, drifted back into the nothingness he’s been calling home ever since he came back. Finally, Sam says, “Okay.”
.
Dean caught a whiff of a demon about four days after Sam disappeared. A small town newspaper reports a liquor store robbery, the cashier held at gun point by a very tall man in a navy blue suit, long dark hair and a manic laugh. He took everything in the cash register - and a bottle of Jack, seemingly as an afterthought - then shot the guy at the till in the shoulder just because it amused him. Kid was okay, thank god, but the robber disappeared and no one in town heard from him again.
“You’d think someone would have seen him,” the local sheriff said. “Big guy like that. Must have been well over six feet, maybe six five? I saw the security footage. We got his picture sent out to offices in nearby towns but no sign. Maybe he skipped town and headed to Cali, who knows, but better for us that he never comes back here.”
The sheriff tapped the pistol on his belt at his final word and Dean swallowed.
“Yeah,” he said. “Seems like a real asshole.”
He left the station with no further clues, not even a lingering smell of sulphur. Whatever it is that was wearing Sam, it was long gone. Sam was long gone.
.
Sam stands in the shower for about five minutes before he gives up. Dean looks anywhere but at his brother’s naked ass while he hands him a clean towel. He gives him clean sweats too, tosses the old ones into the laundry, trashes the unwanted food on his bedside table, strips his sheets and makes the bed. Sam returns, towel-dried and smelling less offensive. Dean watches him sit down onto the edge of the bed like he’s magnetised to it, and he tries to push down the dread that’s rising up in him.
Instead of lying back down, burying himself under the covers once again, Sam buries his face in his hands.
“I can’t keep doing this,” he says.
“Doing what?” Dean asks, although he’s not sure he wants to hear the answer.
“I can’t have someone – something else riding around in my body. I can’t do it again. I let Lucifer trick me but I said no. And still he’s out of the cage. And then this…”
Dean isn’t sure what to say. I won’t let it happen again, he wants to say, but he can’t promise that when he let it happen just a few weeks ago. It’s his fault it happened in the first place. Sam wouldn’t have been possessed if he’d still been inked up, and his tattoo was gone because Crowley had to slither inside him to kick Gadreel out. The angel Dean put there in the first place.
“I’m sorry, Sam,” Dean says finally.
Sam looks up at him then, and maybe it’s the lamp light catching his eyes or maybe they’re wet, but he blinks and turns his head, nodding.
“Yeah,” he sighs. “Um. I could eat. That breakfast extravaganza you made – “
“That was two days ago, Sammy.”
“Oh.”
Yeah. Oh. The kid is really spiralling, huh. Dean clears his throat, clears away the tension of the moment.
“I could make you something,” he offers. “Burgers? We’ve got –“
“No,” Sam snaps, and Dean freezes, as if breathing at the wrong moment will send Sam tipping over the edge. Sam forces himself to smile at Dean but it’s so unnatural that it looks like he’s pinned his cheeks up. “Not burgers,” he says. “Anything else.”
.
“You have no fucking idea how long it’s been since I ate a cheeseburger,” his mouth said. His grinning mouth, the words squeezed around too much half-chewed meat and bread. There was ketchup sliding down to his chin and his tongue flicked out to lap it up, salty and tangy, and deep down inside Sam thought of blood.
His body sighed deeply; his finger swirled a line through the grease on his plate. “And this cheeseburger is goddamn fucking supreme,” his mouth continued. “Hey, waitress, tell the chef this burger is goddamn fucking supreme!”
The waitress in question giggled, turning red. She had been eyeing them all afternoon, leaning a bit too close when she refilled his coffee cup.
“Oh, and can I get a slice of that… what is it, cherry pie?” his voice boomed across the diner. “Fuck yeah, I’ll have some cherry pie!”
The waitress giggled again and went about plating it up. Another bite of burger, it mashed up into a meaty wet mess and slid down his throat. Sam would have thrown up if he could, if he’d had any choice. The thing inside his body tugged his face into a grin and whispered, “Don’t be such a killjoy, Sammy. Just sit back and enjoy the ride.”
The ride had already been going on for almost a week, he thought, and it had been non-stop death drops and twists and turns at a speed so unholy he’d been nauseous the entire time. The blood under his finger nails was a stark reminder of just how dangerous the ride was, just how many people were hurt because they stood a little too close to the tracks.
.
Dean watches every bite of toast, eyes each crumb left on the plate. At least, he thinks, Sam isn’t going to drop dead of hunger just yet.
“Quit watching me,” Sam says into his coffee cup. His hair is still damp and scraped away from his face, giving centre stage to the sleep deprived bruises under his eyes, the sharp bones of his cheeks.
“I’m not,” Dean lies, and takes a sip of beer.
“I’m fine,” Sam says, but they both know that’s the lie of the century, so Dean doesn’t even bother giving it a response.
“You want any more?” he asks instead, and tries not to be too disappointed when Sam shakes his head no. Two slices of buttered toast is a win for today.
“Um,” Dean begins. He pauses, reverses, rethinks. “If you want to talk about… anything…”
“I’m good,” Sam says. “It’s nothing I haven’t dealt with before.”
“But – “
“No chickflick moments, right?” Sam reminds him. The rule Dean is now kicking himself for inventing.
“Right,” is all he says. Sam stares at him, at his cheek, and Dean’s fingers come up to feel the stitches nestled into his skin, the wound stretching from his chin to his right ear. Sam’s eyes dart away, his face so pale that Dean worries for a moment if Sam might pass out.
“It wasn’t you,” Dean says. But Sam’s already on his feet, out the kitchen, and the click of his bedroom door follows a moment later.
.
Dean found Sam on the seventh day. Nowhere, Nebraska, a little strip club hidden along a backroad, a couple miles from the nearest town. Dean followed a trail of robberies, assaults, eventually a cop found dead on the side of the road, his throat sliced from ear to ear. He ran into a hunter the day before who’d caught the same scent and Dean had turned the guy’s attention to a vamp nest one state over because he had this one, really, don’t worry about it.
He heard Sam before he saw him, a booming laugh that wasn’t really his brother’s laugh, and there he was lounged in front of the stage, the poor girl paused mid-dance and clinging to the pole, eyes darting around for security, because the six-foot-four dude in a roughed-up suit staring up at her had a gun in his hand.
The demon was having too much fun tormenting the stripper to notice Dean creep up behind him and press the point of Cas’ angel blade to his neck. God, he missed Cas, but that was something to deal with another day. Lucifer wasn’t exactly the first thing on Dean’s mind, then.
“I figured you’d show up sooner or later,” the demon said. Dean gave a sharp nod of his head at the girl on stage and she hurried away as fast as her six-inch heels would allow. “Wherever one Winchester is, the other isn’t far behind.”
“Yeah,” Dean agreed. “I guess we’re annoying like that. Now shut the hell up and get out of my brother.”
“Why would I do that? Y’know, I can see why the devil likes this guy so much, it’s roomy in here. And this body is strong, I can do anything. Hey, you think Lucifer is pissed I’m riding his chosen vessel while he’s stuck with some piss poor excuse for an angel?”
“Cut the chit chat, man. Get out.”
The demon laughed and turned Sam’s head to finally look at him. All Dean could see was two shiny black beads of eyes. “Or what?”
He noticed the barrel of Sam’s gun tilting towards him and he dove to the left. A hot, searing pain ripped across his cheek and he felt a wet, warm well of blood coating his skin. Sam laughed – the demon – laughed, and rose from the chair.
“That was a close one!” it crowed. “Did you see that? Well, you sure felt it. One half a second later and that bullet would have been right between your eyes, man!”
Dean tried to stand but the pain was swiftly spreading across his face, down his neck, yanked him back to his knees, his vision turning static for a moment. His numb fingers reached up and felt blindly around the wound. He couldn’t make much sense of it beyond the wetness that was making its way down to soak his shirt collar.
“I won’t miss a second time,” the demon said, all laughter gone from its voice, the barrel of Sam’s gun trained steadily on Dean. His arms flew up in front of his face instinctively and he squeezed his eyes shut. All he could think of was Sammy. I am so, so sorry, Sam.
Click.
Dean lowered his arms. The gun stared down at him, an empty black eye, and it said, click.
It was Dean’s turn to laugh. “You didn’t check the chamber?” he asked. This was just too good. “You dumbass!”
The demon snarled, Sam’s face curling into an expression Dean had never seen before. “I don’t need a bullet to kill you. And you can’t kill me without killing your brother.”
“Killing you would be a mercy,” Dean said, and spat out a gob of bloody spit. “I’m sending you back to hell.”
Fear dawned on the demon’s face, then. Dean grinned, even demons didn’t want to go downstairs, he knew that well enough. He’d been there, he’d tortured them, he’d been one of them. However, before he could open his mouth to say Exorcizamus Te, the wind was knocked out of him by the bulk of his brother’s body. Sam’s long fingers wrapped around his neck and squeezed. Hard.
“This has been fun,” the demon bit out, “but I’m tired of this game now.”
Black, empty eyes stared down at Dean, the long line of Sam’s mouth pulled up into a smile. Dean sputtered, his hands raked against the fingers on his throat, his feet scrambled against the linoleum floors. All the while, Warrant’s Cherry Pie rang out through the strip club, pink and purple lights flashed to the beat.
“Not sure what everyone was so scared of,” the demon said, more to itself than to Dean. “It’s pretty easy to kill a Winchester.”
Dean stopped uselessly grappling with the hands on his throat, then, and fumbled in his pocket for his cell. He tapped at the screen, blind, all the while stars shot across his vision like hundreds of wishes to be made. Dean eventually found what was looking for, what he’d left open and ready for this very moment. He’d been doing this long enough to come with a back up.
“Exorcizamus Te,” Sam’s baritone called out from the speakers, “Omnis Immundus Spiritus.”
The Demon flinched, grip loosening on Dean momentarily, long enough for Dean to knock his brother’s body off him. He kicked the cellphone away, out of reach, and hauled himself over Sam, pinning the demon down.
“Omnis Satanica Potestas,” Sam’s voice continued from the phone. The chant continued, dim beneath the beating speakers of the club, but there. Loud enough to hear, loud enough to reach the demon’s ears. The demon squirmed and sputtered, liquid ink eyes wide with fear. It choked, trying to clamp Sam’s mouth closed, but with Sam’s final word of Audi Nos, smoke came streaming out.
Dean pinned his brother by the shoulders until every bit of black was gone, the smoke disappeared beneath the floorboards, and Sam lay limp beneath him.
.
Being possessed is like being buried alive. And the more you struggle, the more dirt is shovelled over the top of you. Sometimes, you can hear the muffled sound of screams above ground. Sometimes, you’re left alone in the quiet darkness. Sometimes, the creature tugging your bones here and there like a puppet on a string will come down below the ground to taunt you, whisper cruel and twisted things into your ear.
Sam remembers when Jimmy Novak likened being possessed by an angel to being chained to a comet. He wasn’t exaggerating, Sam learned after Gadreel had made his home in him. Being possessed by the devil, however, was more like being chained to the sun.
When Sam returns to his room, the door closed behind him, he realises he doesn’t know where to go next. The thought of climbing into bed again makes him shudder, he’s had enough of being buried alive. And yet he cannot go back to his brother, to the wound opened up by a bullet on his cheek, from a trigger squeezed by his own hand.
Kevin Tran, Steve Wandell, Bobby Singer, Castiel… and more names he doesn’t even know, although their faces are seared into his head. All the people burned, snapped, slit and burst by his own two hands, by sheer will. It wasn’t you, Dean would say. But it was. Sam didn’t make the choice, but it was his skin and bones, his eyes that watched them die, his dreams they haunt.
Never again. This can never happen again.
He catches himself in the mirror. A gaunt, pale man stares back, dead-eyed, and Sam watches him mimic his every move, push the hair from his eyes, scrub a palm over his jaw. Jesus, he looks like shit. His hand moves lower, to the collar of his t-shirt, and tugs downward to reveal the bare skin of his chest.
This will never happen again.
Five minutes later, fully dressed and full of a determination he hasn’t felt in weeks, Sam strides into the library to meet Dean’s surprised face.
“Come on,” Sam says. “We’re going out.”
Already on his feet, hand in his pocket where the Impala’s keys jangle in his fist, Dean asks, “Where to?”
“The tattoo parlour.”