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You’re nine years old when you have a nightmare about going to the moon.
You learn about the Challenger that day, your fifth grade science teacher standing in front of the class and talking about trips to the moon and working to get people living outside of Earth, and your brain had screeches to a halt, stuck to your desk even when the bell rings and your body leaves. The image of the explosion is seared into your mind, haunting every step, lurking just below the surface to strike whenever you close your eyes.
And that night, you toss and turn in the creaking motel bed into the early hours of the morning, until keeping your eyes open is a Herculean task and exhaustion sweeps you under —
You’re sitting in a nice restaurant — a real restaurant, not a busy diner, for once, but an honest to God restaurant with wood paneling and chandeliers and cushioned seats, like the ones you see in movies.
Your brother is sitting across from you, a smile splitting his face in two as he shoves his face full of the cloud-white bread. “Eat up, Sammy,” he tells you. “Tomorrow’s a big day.”
The ceiling and floor swells and ripples like an ocean surrounds you, dizzying and overwhelming, the loud chatter of the other diners slamming against your ears, but your brother is still grinning, teeth glimmering, and digging into his food with vigor, so you struggle through your plate of pasta, just to see that joy stay —
You blink and you’re standing in open garage door of a steel-walled warehouse that stretches farther than seems possible, complete with a ceiling that curves high into the air. There are rows upon rows of fold-up tables, the kind that belong in yard sales that you catch passing glimpses of when your dad takes you up north, white and rickety, dirty against the stale metal walls..
No-one seems to care, though, as the tables are piled high with supplies — blue jumpsuits with orange logos, and silver food packets and gleaming oxygen tanks. Workers in white lab coats mill up and down the aisles, carrying clipboards with pencils close to their chests, like the ones on the posters in the science room, occasionally marking something on the papers off.
Your throat tightens as you stare at the preparations, thin tendrils of fear threading through your veins, twisting and churning within you. Dread settles like lead in your bones and twists across your skin, crackling against the nervous excitement of the others.
You know why you’re here, even if you can’t remember ever being told, innate knowledge surging up, bubbling into vague understanding that you can only hold delicately in case it pops. Your stomach churns and your palms sweat, and you want nothing more than to find your big brother, who will take your shoulders in his hands and gift you with a smile and say, you don’t have to, Sammy, don’t worry.
It takes longer than it should — the aisles keep swirling and shifting, disappearing and appearing behind your back — and you’re close to tears by the time you reach him, frustration and fear battling in your chest, cannon smoke constricting your lungs. You ignore the girl he’s talking to, and latch onto his flannel sleeve, tugging slightly to steal his attention.
“Dean,” you say, desperate, and your brother glances down, eyes alight with anticipation.
“Sammy!” He says, and you can’t fathom how he’s managed to sound delighted, “This is Julia, she’s gonna be livin’ up there, too.”
You twist your lips, giving her the barest bones of acknowledgement, and tug on your brother’s sleeve again. It’s childish, you know, and your father would tell you stop and straighten your shoulders, but you can’t bring yourself to care.
“Dean,” you repeat. “I need to talk to you.”
Your brother rolls his eyes, more for show than anything else, you can tell, and the girl titters, buying into the act. “‘Scuse me,” he says, and you drag him to the side of the warehouse, even though each step feels like wading through knee-deep water, until you’re safe against the metal paneling, far enough away where no-one will hear you.
“I don’t wanna do this anymore.” You aim for pleading, but it grates like a whine and you wince.
Your brother groans. “C’mon, Sammy.” He pries your fingers off his sleeve, one by one, a strangely meticulous action. “You’re workin’ yourself up over nothin’.”
“But we talked about it in school and they showed us —”
“Who are you gonna trust more,” he interrupts, and his eyes are soft, but his voice is firm, and you know he means every word he’s saying, “your favorite big brother or some stuffy science teacher?”
“‘Course you, Dean,” you say and you mean it, too, even if you don’t understand why they’re being framed like this, when all you want to do is make sure the two of you see tomorrow from the safe and solid ground.
Your brother sighs. “Look, Sammy, you just need to not worry so much.”
And you nod, because he is right — your brother is always right about things like this, things that matter, four years older and tall and strong in a way that you can’t even imagine yourself ever matching.
“Okay, Dean,” you mumble. “’S not a big deal.”
Your brother’s smile returns full force, gleaming like a lighthouse, and he clasps you on the shoulder. You lean into the touch, frantically soaking up the only warmth you’re certain you’ll be getting.
“Attaboy,” he says, letting go, and you long for the contact back instantly, craving the physical reassurance, but you just clench your hands into fists to keep from reaching out again. Your brother takes a smooth step back towards the girl and adds, “I’ll catch you later, Sammy.”
“It’s Sam,” you say, too quiet for your brother to hear, glaring at his retreating feet, and you can’t stop the tears from falling, head pounding, throat tight, fear like you’ve never felt it before —
You’re strapped into a seat, the seatbelt more restraining than protecting, and your heartbeat in echoing in your ears is even louder than the engine that’s getting ready. You gasp for breath, tears still spilling, panic clutching and grabbing at you, claws digging into your lungs.
Your brother sits to your right, and you plead with him silently, the words get lost somewhere between your brain and your mouth, but he just smiles reassuringly.
It’s okay, he mouths, anything else drowned out by the now deafening engine, and you somehow believe him.
But he’s wrong — alarms start blaring and the ship is cracking apart at the seams and the engine is screaming and your brother isn’t smiling, anymore —
Your eyes snap open and you inhale sharply, flinging the suffocating covers off of yourself, residual terror still staining your skin.
It was just a nightmare, you tell yourself, and you’d know that, but — but it had felt so real and so had the innate danger and desperation and overwhelming terror —
You swing your legs off the bed and frantically shove at your brother’s shoulder, until he cracks an eye open and scowls at you.
“What’s it, Sam?”
“Nightmare,” you choke out. “Can I sleep with you?”
“Fine,” your brother grumbles, but shifts over easily, leaving just enough room for you on the edge. You slip in next to him, hands still shaking as you bury yourself under the covers, again.
Your brother is warm next to you, and you can feel your muscles slowly relax in his presence, calmed by natural safety he exudes. Your thoughts drift back to the way Dean’s easy dismissal in your nightmare, but you shake your head, easily ridding yourself of the doubts.
“It was just a nightmare,” you whisper to yourself — Dean brushes you off at times, but you trust him with your whole being, and it was really just a nightmare, designed to scare and hit where it hurts the most.
Curled up next to your brother, you don’t have any more nightmares that night, and even the teasing in the morning can’t take away the pure relief.
…
You’re thirty years old when your brother puts an angel in you.
You violently come to in the passenger seat of the Impala, flung out of unconsciousness gasping for breath, as your hands flail out, searching for Dean, Dean, Dean.
“What do you remember?” He asks you, among other things, eyes intense and brows creased with concern.
It’s all blurred together, the memory of confessing your sins, poisonous words sinking into the worn wood as you talked and talked, laying your cursed soul bare for God, getting lost amidst the remembrance of pulling blood from yourself, pain pulsing along with your failing heart, consuming you whole.
(It hurts like this, you thought, because there’s so much to cleanse.)
(You knew you were going to die. It was morphine in a kaleidoscope of pain.)
You remember Dean convincing you to live, pleading with you to stay for him, even though he’d been willing to evoke Mary’s memory the day before, and the confusion, but also the willingness to give it up for him, for Dean, because if this was what Dean really wanted, then who were you to deny it? You remember the angels falling as the Trial’s energy tore through you, carving you up in a way nothing had since Lucifer, as Dean clung to you and screamed for Cas.
You don’t say any of that, just brush off the question and say, “The church, feeling like shit, the angels falling… and that’s it.”
He asks you how you’re feeling, again, and makes a joke about tourists, and then adds, fire still simmering in his eyes, “I meant what I said at the church. You’re capable of anything, Sam, and hell if you didn’t prove me right.”
And he’s so fucking genuine when he says it and something in your chest balloons, warmth twining through your core — it’s all you’ve ever wanted from Dean and it fits so perfectly in your palms, resting like a little gift.
And when you pull into the bunker, you let Dean help you to your room, exhaustion leadening your bones, and you have to blink away salty tears when he straightens the covers around you and gently brushes your hair back.
“I’m happy with my life,” you say to him one night, and it feels sacred, “for the first time in,” years, decades, centuries, millennia, “forever.” Dean’s face has curled into itself, edges smoothing out, and you breathe in and out, just because you can. “I-I am, I really am. It’s just — things are — things are good.”
And there’s a finality to it, not the finality of your blood dripping onto a dirty church floor, but the finality of throwing a match into a salted grave and watching the ghost burn away.
Dean looks at you softly, practically coated with affection, his lips tilted and his eyes crinkled, and it’s everything you were willing to die for and it’s everything you’re willing to live for.
(Sometimes, shame creeps into the memory of the church, embarrassment over your breakdown reddening your cheeks, guilt over leaving Hell open making it hard to sleep, but then Dean looks at you like — like that. Like he’s just so goddamn thankful that he’s even close to you, like he used to when Hell flashbacks finally let you return topside, before you abandoned him for a year. And as he cups your head, collapsed with you on the kitchen floor after a vicious dizzy spell, you can’t bring yourself to dwell on your inadequacy as you soak up the love.)
You have good days and you have —
The Devil is there, he’s peeling your skin from your bones, whispering promises in your ear — it’s nine, then it’s one, and ‘dean, c’mere i think i found some —’ but now you’re in the car and a tape is on and you swear you weren’t — you’re in the bunker and a beer’s in your hand and dean looks concerned and you don’t — you don’t — is it happening again?
— bad days.
Bad days are easy to catch by now, two years of holding onto sanity with a white-knuckle grip, and so much easier to hide in the Bunker, with its endless hallways and storage rooms scattered throughout. You tuck yourself away before Dean can notice the stumbling words and the four layers of shirts, and cling onto a stopwatch until Lucifer stops laughing and your hands stop itching for a knife.
(You don’t tell Dean. He doesn’t need to know, you whisper to yourself, even as you leave scratches in your own skin, deep enough to bleed, he’s already worried.)
(In truth, it’s for you just as much as it is for Dean — you don’t know if you could watch the lingering relief at your recovery sink into disgust if he knew how the Devil’s hands linger.)
Today is a good day.
Sleep hadn’t erased your now-constant fatigue, an unfortunate side-effect of the Trials, but Dean is in a contagiously good mood as he shoves a computer in your face and tells you that he found a case.
There’s something off about it — the ghoul isn’t following any discernible pattern, besides dead cheerleader — but it’s the first strange case you’ve had in weeks, and, admittedly, you’ve missed unraveling the threads of a monster and the resulting satisfaction when you finally hold the untied string in your hand.
Then the King of Hell appears.
There’s silence in the library after the angel disappears.
You’re crushed by the weight of the violation, static ringing in your ears as you stare at the spot Gadreel was, at your foot resting on the floor that isn’t even really the floor, just some mindscape the angel shoved you into while he used your body. It’s the Cage, but it isn’t the Cage, but it is, and —
And Dean knew — Dean let —
You want to scream until your vocal chords shatter, want to cry and rage at the sheer horror of it all, but you can’t move, can’t get yourself to react, and all you can see is Kevin’s body crumpling and all you can do is wish it was your own, instead.
Crowley clears his throat, shattering the silence, and you squeeze your eyes shut as you realize that this means he’s in you too, that he can see any memory he fucking pleases if he really wants to, can take your body and make it do all kinds of horrible things, can shove you so deep into your mind that you’ll be Lucifer’s again —
“Moose…” Crowley starts, but he doesn’t seem to know how to continue, and he sounds so fucking sorry, and you want crawl out of your own skin.
“Get out, Crowley.” Your voice is flat. Blank. Is it really yours? “Just — get out. Please.”
Crowley disappears in a cloud of twisting red smoke and it hurts to realize this is the first time this body has been solely yours in months.
Cas drives you both back to the Bunker after gently guiding you to the passenger’s seat as you tried not to collapse, swaying on shaking legs, exhausted from being used, exhausted of being used.
“You don’t have to stay,” you say at some point. “When we get there, I mean.”
Cas glances over at you, eyebrows raised. He seems almost — almost offended at the implications. “I know,” he says, a stubborn edge to the words. “I will anyways.”
“Making sure nothing else happens to the vessel?” You ask, bitterness sharpening your own words, and you know — you know that’s not fair, Cas is one of the only people who didn’t know what was going on, and as much as you want to pretend you’re even capable of being alone right now, you’re blindingly grateful he didn’t leave with Dean. Remorse settles in your stomach instantly and you swallow convulsively. “Fuck, I—I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have — that was shitty. I’m not — I’m not mad at you.”
The angel gives you a tight-lipped smile, eyes soft. “It’s alright, Sam, I understand. And to clarify — I’m not staying because Dean asked me to or because you were possessed by one of my brothers, I am staying because I care about you. About my friend — Sam.”
“Sam,” you repeat quietly. It barely means anything, now.
Cas pretends not to hear, and you’re grateful.
He doesn’t ask if you’re okay, either. You’re grateful for that, too.
You stare at your bed, and your joints ache with a ferocity and your eyelids feel weighted down, but unconsciousness feels terrifying, just another time of unawareness for you to fear. Cas is in the kitchen, supposedly making tea and a sandwich (angels don’t eat for their vessels and your stomach feels like its disintegrating), and in the solitude, you still find yourself desperately wishing Dean were here.
It’s selfish and irrational, given how hard Cas is clearly trying, but Dean is innately comforting, soothing to your subconscious in a way that’s only achieved through a lifetime of living in small motel rooms and an even smaller car.
Except you’re so also goddamn glad he’s not here, because he tricked you and let an angel in and is the reason why you’re scared to sleep and struggling to remember if you ever really got out. And Dean knew — he heard the nightmares after Meg and got the tattoo with you when you were too terrified to leave the motel room without him and watched you fight against Lucifer and knew how scared you are of losing control and you wish —
You wish someone would listen to you.
Cas finds you standing there, in the middle of your bedroom, and you barely keep from jerking away when he gently grasps your shoulder, touch foreign after regaining the memories of being shoved down and away when Gadreel wanted control.
You can’t meet Cas’ eyes as he intently scans your face, concern etched into every line. “You are worrying me, Sam,” Cas admits, and you hate the way your throat tightens and eyes water. “I don’t — I am not familiar with how to comfort… sick humans. What do you need from me?”
“I —” The Enochian is too easy to slip into, even after all the time you’ve spent ignoring the knowledge, refusing to fall back on the language that was burned into you, but the world is crumbling around you, and you have no more energy to keep it away anymore. “This is real?”
Cas doesn’t look surprised, just sad, as he says, “This is real.” You nod, and flex your fingers, feeling the knuckles bend and flex, the muscles stretch and pull, desperately trying to believe him. “I promise.”
You clutch onto his sleeve, his hand still resting on your shoulder, and wish this was a nightmare you could wake up from.