Chapter Text
The world around him is dark for a moment. Still and hollow. It’s as if it’s been completely swallowed, leaving only him and this fiery pit of blood, shame and an overwhelming craving for more.
The blood stains his face, his hands, his shirt, even the small piece of ground that he can make out beneath him, not yet touched by the obscure darkness that surrounds him. It seeps through his clothes and skin, making a home in his soul. It burns, leaving behind a grotesque ache and parasitic corruption. The blood an endless craving he wishes he didn’t recognize as his own.
All is silent apart from his heavy breathing and the odd drip of blood hitting the cold, hard concrete below him. The sounds amplified by the enclosed walls of whatever alleyway he finds himself in, how he got there he doesn’t know.
That is until, "Sam?" A voice calls out to him through the darkness like a lighthouse, beaming in the stretch of a bloody ocean. It approaches, gliding past his infinite depth of sin and the overwhelming stench of blood without issue. Slowly creeping towards him until it shifts from the bright, glowing, perfectly beautiful and absurdly holy lighthouse he imagines it as into—
"Cas?"
His voice is frail, hoarse, and destroyed, as if he’d been screaming for hours and maybe he has. He feels like he has anyway.
He blinks hard as he tries to will the world back into existence, or maybe as an attempt to force himself awake so he didn’t have to come to terms that the angel had ever caught him in his biggest sin, let alone covered in it. Another wave of guilt and shame washes over him as he turns his head away, averting his gaze as if the angels stare burned him more than the bile and blood threatening to spill from within him.
He tries not to acknowledge the serenity he feels around the angel as if the unruly sea he found himself in had finally settled. It only serving to make him feel even more guilty and gross than if the angel had just chosen to ignore him like he normally did. A part of him cautioning himself, preparing for Castiel’s judgemental words, another part trying to push himself towards the angel and towards the safety of his holy light.
Just as he goes to turn away fully and hide himself deep within the well of his sins and shame, he feels a hand on his shoulder. Gentle and light as a feather, a hesitant touch. It sends a wave of warmth through him. A sense of clarity he hadn’t felt in what felt like decades.
He doesn’t yet meet the cool blue of Castiel’s eyes. He doesn’t feel worthy of the attention he’s receiving from the angel. Doesn’t feel worthy of any divine goodness.
He isn’t. He knows he isn’t.
“Sam…” Castiel’s voice comes again. Softer now. Coaxing. It feels like an anchor slicing through the depth of the ocean allowing Sam to drag himself out by the chain that connects the anchor to its vessel. The angel to his vessel.
Against his better judgment, against everything screaming at him not to, Sam turns his eyes just enough to glance at the angel from his peripheral. Through Cas’ eyes he looks pathetic: eyes glassy, face drawn tight with guilt and shame… or maybe it’s the demon blood buzzing through his veins. He can’t tell anymore.
“I’m sorry.” Sam blurts before he can stop himself as he turns to face the angel fully, shoulders sagging, looking like he might collapse to his knees at any second maybe to beg Cas for forgiveness, maybe even just to cry until there’s nothing left of him at all.
Castiel only tilts his head at the hunter with that typical pitying expression, the same one that made Sam want to shrivel up and die.
“Don’t look at me like that.” He finally snaps, voice cracking as he does. Letting his head drop, bangs falling over his face, jaw clenched as he narrows his eyes, gazing up at Castiel in attempts to look more steady than he feels in the hazy storm of his mind. Castiel sees through his facade, tilting his head more as if he were trying to purposefully irritate the hunter now, the angels own eyes narrowing.
“Like what? I’m only looking at you.” Castiel responds, his voice steady and more matter of fact compared to the shakiness and scratchiness of Sam’s voice. Like waves crashing against a seawall.
The angels grip seems to tighten on his shoulder. The touch is grounding and divine in this moment. Everything the angel does feels holy to Sam. He sputters for a moment as his eyes search Castiel’s face for a sign that he was lying. Like he couldn’t believe the angel would ever want to just look at him.
He had always been so sure that Castiel only ever looked at him in judgement or pity, maybe even disgust. Could you blame him? He was called an abomination by the angel the moment they met, had been pushed to the side by him. He’d spent so long thinking everyone looked at him like they could see it on him and yet here was Cas, telling Sam he was ‘simply looking’. He didn’t believe him. He couldn’t.
A quick, sharp breath leaves him, the sound stuck between a laugh and a cry. His shoulders hitch, his hands tremble at his sides, still sticky with blood that no amount of praying will wash away. “You don’t—” Sam hesitates, jaw tightening as the words refuse to come out right. He swallows hard as he looks up, eyes watery and utterly pathetic. “You don’t get to look at me like that.” The words come out weak and almost pleading. God, he’d never felt so damn vulnerable.
Castiel just furrows his brow, his face portraying his desperation to understand now. Sam mistakes this for judgement. “Why?” The angel questions bluntly, the question making Sam’s stomach twist in its simplicity and contradicting complexity.
It takes him a moment to process Castiel’s question. It hitting harder than any cruel accusation could have ever dreamed to. Sam lets out a shaky exhale, eyes dropping to the floor between them again for a moment, to the blood splattered at his feet like a constellation of sin. Jaw tensing again as he tries to come up with a response that won’t send him crying. He forces himself to look Castiel in the eyes.
“Because I know what you see when you look at me, when you all look at me.” Sam says voice cracking despite how much he tries to steady it. To keep from letting the ocean of guilt and shame and disgusting, grotesque, brutish blood from flooding the smooth surface of his soul and engulfing it. “I know what I am.”
He can feel Castiel’s eyes on him but this time Sam can see they aren’t judgemental but calculative like the angel was trying to find the right words to say, trying to figure him out. Like he knew just as well as Sam how close he was to breaking down. The angels hand moving from Sam’s shoulder to gently cup the hunters face as if to bring Sam to his level. The touch is cold compared to the heat of his face and yet it doesn’t burn any less than if the angel had pressed a branding iron to his face. Doesn’t feel any less marking either.
“You don’t have to be.” Castiel says. His voice more tender than before, calmness melting into something close to understanding. Sam can’t bear it. The softness might just be worse than the calmness. “You don’t have to be, Sam.” He repeats almost like the repetition will force Sam into believing his words. They wash over him like grace: soft, holy and healing. He almost lets himself believe them.
Almost.
He doesn’t know when the tears began to slide down his face, only that now the angels thumb was brushing them away like the hunter was something to be gentle with. The action full of a reverence Sam feels he doesn’t deserve. Knows he doesn’t deserve. He couldn’t.
But how could he tell the angel to stop when he looked like he was moments away from worshipping the hunter where they stood almost pressed together, intertwined more than they could ever imagine?
“Don’t say that. You don’t mean that. You—You can’t mean that, Cas.” He says, voice coming out in a broken, trembling and rushed whisper as he looks down at Castiel, squeezing his eyes shut as if he could escape this whole situation as his soul practically aches to get closer to the angel. His hands twitching at his sides as he tries not to grab hold of Castiel in attempts to rid himself of this unruly filth. The ever-nagging voice in his head telling him that he’d be tainting the angel and poisoning him if he ever dared touch him.
“I mean it. You’re not a monster, Sam. I was mistaken to ever think you were.” he replies, his grip tightening ever so slightly on Sam’s face, the angel taking an impossible step closer as if he were trying to burrow inside the hunter’s soul and remove the filth inside him himself. Standing close enough now that Sam can feel the absence of breath, a reminder of Castiel’s divinity. Of his holiness. Sam scoffs and tries worm his way out of the angels space.
Cas—the one who had called him an abomination on first meeting, addressed him as ‘The Boy with The Demon Blood’ then promptly made it clear he favoured his brother and had barely ever spared a glance in Sam’s general direction—telling him he wasn’t a monster? Right.
…So why did he feel inclined to believe him?
“I…I never meant to make you think that way. Sam, I’m sorry if I made things worse for you” Castiel mutters, the angels voice unusually shaky.
Fuck. Had he said that out loud?
“Cas, no. I—” he sputters in return, heart pounding louder than before, eyes flickering over Castiel’s eyes, taking in the angels hurt expression “Damnit, Cas—” he cuts himself off with a sigh. “It’s okay.”
The two stare at each other for a while, tension growing, the storm in Sam’s head growing, and then Castiel’s voice cuts through, “I’ll bring you back to the motel.” And then Sam feels that all too familiar sick feeling as the world around them warps.