Some Sam Around Midnight
Title: Some Sam Around Midnight
Summary: For a prompt from familybizness. Sam is having nightmares after Hell. Dean takes dream root.
Warnings/Spoilers: Post-Hell, and this one gets brutal. Graphic descriptions of rape and torture. Take care of yourself..
Wordcount: 8,879
Author's Note: Sammyverse, about six weeks after Sam comes back.
Sam's doing better. Objectively, Dean knows that.
The sensory issues are all but gone. He goes through spells where he needs all the lights all the sound all the people and Dean carefully brings him to malls and diners and, on one amazing occasion, a carnival. He's usually good at getting Sam back before he's overwhelmed, but sometimes it's too much and he has to curl up in the dark for a while afterwards, and that's okay. And there are some mornings where Sam can't take his inhaler because taste isn't an option, and those suck, but they get through them. As a whole, he's doing great with that. He smiles and talks and eats and goes outside a little. He gets on his laptop and over-researches what plants he wants in his garden. Dean isn't sure that Sammy knows this is a retirement and not a break, but it's fucking stupid to even entertain the idea of Dean's shaky kid ever hunting again, so it's nothing they need to discuss right now.
Because the fact of the matter is that Sam isn't okay, and on so many fronts he's doing worse. And they knew this was coming. They knew once they broke past those last six months of sensory deprivation, there were a hundred and odd years of Hell to deal with.
So he's doing well, considering.
But when you're standing outside your little brother's door listening to him do these tiny, panicked wheezes in his sleep, Dean isn't considering anything besides whether or not he should wake the kid up when sleep's been really, really tough for him to come by lately.
You can't really be objective about this. Not when it's your kid. Not when it's Hell.
Getting them separate rooms was stupid, really. Idiotic.
Sam's too sick for this shit. (For any of this.)
**
Nightmares shouldn't be a mild word to Dean, considering the shit that bounced (bounces) around his head post-Hell, but it's different when it's Sam and it really doesn't seem like enough to describe what the kid's going through, and maybe that's the asthma and maybe that's four times as long in the pit or maybe it's that skinny hollow-eyed kid and that shaky smile across the table from Dean in the morning who has to put his fork down because the tremor in his hands is too intense and it doesn't matter because he's not breathing well enough to eat anyway.
Dean honestly can't remember the last time he was this worried.
"Can we talk about it?" Dean says, and it's going to scare the fucking shit out of him and he's going to regret it but Sam needs to talk.
Sam shakes his head sadly.
"Why not?"
"I can't breathe," he says, and it takes him two breaths to get through the fucking sentence.
Dean puts their plates in the sink. "Okay. Come on."
**
Sam leans into Dean and cuddles his scarf through a neb treatment. They watch the cooking channel instead of talking and Dean winds Sam's hair around his finger.
"Sammy," he says, after a while. "You know you're safe now, right?"
Sam nods.
"It's just memories. It can't hurt you."
"Freddy Krueger," is all Sam says, and Dean laughs a little.
"You're funny when you can't breathe."
A slow, sleepy nod from Sammy.
"No Freddy Kruegers. No one reaching out from Hell. Just your fucked-up brain trying to deal with shit. It's not trying to hurt you, y'know? It's just working through it and it doesn't know how." He pauses. "We should try drugs again."
Sam nods a little.
"Yeah? Good. That shrink was okay, yeah? The one who just talked to you about the rape and stuff?" It's a hard word to get out, but Sam needs him to say it. The "and stuff" is a buffer for Dean, and he's fucking weak, he knows that, but rapeandstuff is so much easier to say, and Sam lets him get away with it because Sam is a saint. The shrink was a good idea, but Dean pushed too early and Sam wasn't ready and it got bad. But they should try again. They really should.
And Sam nods, brave fucking kid.
"I know it's hard to keep the lies straight,” Dean says.
"Hard to keep anything straight."
"Do you know how well you're doing?"
He doesn't answer.
"Sam, this time two months ago I could barely get a straight sentence out of you. Now half the time when you go gibberish I think you're doing it just to fuck with me."
Sam says something in Enochian which is totally just to fuck with him.
"I'm going to get Cas down here to tell you off," Dean says, and Sam grins.
They watch a pretty brunette swill melted butter in a saucepan and mix in chunks of chocolate. Sam looks interested but not hungry.
"I wish I could help you," Dean says.
Sam takes the mouthpiece out. "You're such an idiot. You do help."
"Help sleeping Sam, I mean."
"Sleeping Sam's a douchebag."
"Yeah, but my douchebag."
Sam shrugs. "Satan's little bitch."
"Aw, kiddo. Don't do that. You're breathing a little better."
"Yeah. That's how I know I'm not down there."
It hits Dean all of a sudden.
"You can't breathe at night, can you?"
A small headshake.
"All right. That we can work with."
**
Sam's job is to make popcorn and curl up on Dean's bed until Dean's finished cleaning the fuck out of Sam's room, and then it's both of them squished together on Sam's bed, counting pieces of popcorn because he likes to eat them three at a time, and he's "fucking crazy" (Sam's words, but it's not like Dean wouldn't use them--Sam's sick and Sam's crazy, let's not mince words, they don't do that) and it'll make him anxious if there are leftovers at the end. They count them out on their laps and get their sweatpants greasy.
Fifty-six, so Dean eats two before they start.
"Thanks," Sam says.
"Of course. More for me."
They watch whatever's on, because planning stuff too tightly is rough on Sam--planning means remembering, remembering means thinking and thinking and thinking about one thing, and when Sam thinks about one thing Sam thinks about getting torn apart and maimed. It's really not complicated, okay?
"What was that Dad used to call you?" Dean says, eating his popcorn in threes.
"A waste of space." Sam's only his back, head at the foot of the bed, feet on the pillows, head tucked against Dean's ankle.
"You're so full of shit."
"Right? Sam."
"Yeah, he did call you Sam. You're driving me insane."
"Sammy."
"You know that isn't the one I'm looking for. Why are you being difficult?"
"Because I have the presence of mind to be difficult. Appreciate me, Dean! Wheezy."
"No, I called you Wheezy and he'd get mad about it."
"Simba."
"Yeah, but not that one. I know that one."
Sam's quiet, now. "Babykid."
"Fuck. Yeah. That's the one."
"I miss him."
"I know."
"Lucifer said..." He looks up at Dean. "Can I do this?"
"Sam, if you can breathe, you can do whatever the hell you want."
He plays with Dean's sock. "Lucifer said he wanted to kill me."
"Lucifer couldn't kill you."
"No, no. Dad."
"Hey. You know he didn't."
"He would have."
"No."
Sam nod sadly. "That's why he told you to do it."
"Sam. Look at me."
Sam looks up.
"If he'd thought there were a chance I'd do it, he wouldn't have told me."
"Then why'd he say it?"
"I don't know, Sam, because he felt like he had to. To fuck us up one more time. I don't know. But God, Sammy, when you were possessed? When SamMeg was telling me to kill you?"
"Fuck. God." He closes his eyes.
"Shit. Okay. What I mean is that Dadwouldn'thavekilledyoueither and now we're done hey hey hey Sam you okay?"
Sam shakes his head tightly and presses fists into his eyes.
"Okay. Up. Come here." He hauls Sam up and props him up next to him and guides Sam's head into his chest. "Okay. It's just you in there."
"You."
"Okay. It's just you and me in there." He scratches lightly on Sam's back. "Is...is that good? Do you want me in there?"
Sam nods hard. "Don't get hurt."
"I won't."
"I'm too big," Sam says, and he manages to laugh a little, God, this kid.
"You're big. You can fill you up."
Sam shakes his head. "They shrunk me."
"Nah." He threads his fingers between Sam's. "Big hands, look."
"If I eat I'll grow.”
"I hope so, kid. You look sick."
"I am sick."
"But you're supposed to look all brawny and healthy and then confuse people by wheezing all over the place. You know the deal."
"What do I do to get the me part bigger?"
"'cause you've got to fill the bigger body?"
Sam nods hard.
"I think you eat your popcorn in threes and you hang out with me for a while."
Sam coughs his way into a sigh. "You're not close enough."
"You're all over me, Octopus."
"It's not enough. I don't know."
"Skin?" He pulls up his shirt enough so Sam can press his palm against his stomach. That helped a lot when he first came back.
But now Sam just gives his stomach a little pat and sighs again.
"I don't know what you want, kiddo."
"I don't either. But I don't like that I can't touch all the edges of me. What happens if I can't reach it and then I can't feel?"
"You can feel. I'll make sure."
"Touch."
"I know."
"What happens if they file me down to make me smaller?"
Dean swallows. "Did they do that?"
"Just my chest."
Dean kisses the top of his head.
"It sounds like a metaphor," Sam says.
"I know. But it's not."
"It's the opposite of a metaphor."
"I know."
"This is a metaphor," Sam says, softly. "All of this has been a metaphor."
**
Sammy does a neb treatment and then falls asleep all the fuck over Dean, which was kind of the point of the whole exercise, though Dean's wondering how a kid this skinny could still manage to make half his limbs go numb within ten minutes of curling up on top of them, but whatever.
Ever since he's been back, Sam's slept hard, like it's something he's doing deliberately. He's way more difficult to wake up, and he sleeps through some massively shitty breathing. And cleaning the room looks like it was no fucking help, because Sam's wheezing so hard that Dean can't believe the fucking noise of it isn't waking Sam up, let alone the whole fucking aspect of suffocating.
"C'mere," Dean whispers, and he scoots down a little on the bed so he can reach Sam's back. Sam curls tighter into him like a bug, and it's the same reflex he's had since he was a fucking baby. Which should make Dean feel good, but instead it just makes him think of a scared, stripped Sammy balled up in the cage and he wraps the hand not rubbing his brother's back around his forehead because he can't get inside his fucking head. This is the best he can do.
Sam's mumbling what's either Enochian or just fucking sounds, face pressed into Dean's side.
"Okay, shh shh shh." He rubs a little harder. "Stay with me, Sammy."
He coughs and coughs and coughs, how the hell does that not wake him up?
Sam takes this series of quick breaths, then he rolls over onto his stomach and fists his hair in his hands. His breaths whine in the back of his throat, and he's shaking, fuck.
"Oh, God. Sam."
**
When Dean wakes him up, he just cries.
And that would be fine if it were panicked crying or confused crying or my chest fucking hurts crying, but it's not. Sam's just sad, just fucking upset.
He's crying just has hard as he slept, and Christ, has he been doing this every night without Dean here to calm him down?
Not that Dean's doing a very good job of it, holy shit, has anyone ever cried this hard?
They're these wracking, breathless sobs Dean can feel coming from the kid's stomach. They're miserable and desperate like they're going to fucking do something, and Sam cries into his sleeves and his scarf and won't look up.
And Dean wants to say what he fucking always says after Sam has a nightmare--talk to me, buddy--and listen to Sam tell him about Jess or about Dean not breathing or about Dad or Meg or the bastards who locked him in the cage Oh God but this is Hell and Dean talks a big game but he doesn't know how to hear it, and the problem is that Sam can't talk because Sam can't breathe.
And, honestly? It feels like an extension of the torture.
It feels like Lucifer stole Sam's voice.
"You've got to breathe, babykid."
**
He's bad the next day, lying on the couch with a wheeze that makes Castiel glance at him every few minutes.
"We know," Dean says. "We're working on it."
Sam looks up and asks for water with his eyes.
Dean fills him a glass and Sam looks surprised that Dean knew he wanted it.
What the fuck, Sam, how does that surprise you (how are there any surprises left, you've lived for a hundred years).
**
The word John always used for Sammy (besides babykid) was protect.
Take care of Sam, yeah, look after Sam, obviously, teach Sam watch Sam mend Sam tend Sam love Sam, those were all implied. But protect was the one John always used, and it's pretty funny because that was the one Dean might not have done, because, seriously, look at this zillion foot tall kid, smiling studying arguing twisting up Dean's hand, you're going to tell him that this kid really needs, really wants someone standing over him with their arms out in case anything comes at him, wheeze or no wheeze?
Except Sam does want that. He always has, because Sam likes to be the opposite of logical about these fucking things. Where anyone else would be combative, Sam is accepting. Fucking requesting. When other people would hide stuff, he'll tell you about it excruciating detail. Where other people--yeah, okay, other people is Dean, all right?--would be offended, Sam just fucking loves you.
And now he's been through the proverbial (it's a metaphor, how the fuck else are you supposed to talk about Hell) ringer, two things have changed.
Sam always wanted to be protected. But now he needs it.
And Dean has no idea how to do it.
**
"We should get you in to see a doctor." He pulls back on Sam's shoulder with one hand and presses the heel off his other behind Sam's left lung, because he can tell by the way Sam's sitting that that one's feeling tighter. “Pulmonlogist, allergist, someone.”
Sam breathes on cue but shakes his head a little.
"I know. We're still recovering from the hospital thing. But this would be on our terms. We pay, we tell him what tests he's allowed to run, we tell him no fucking blood, we get some new meds for you, we get out."
Sam tucks his head into Dean's neck and doesn't say anything.
"We have steroids," Dean says, softly. "I think some left over. But they make you so fucking angry." Sam's shaking his head really hard. "Yeah, you don't want that." He traces up and down Sam's spine. Fucking skinny kid. Eating was hard enough when he wasn't having this much trouble getting air in.
"Your fucking chest," Dean says. "We've got to calm you down."
**
Neb treatments all day leave Sam jittery and upset, but he's breathing better so Dean's going to call this one a win. He crashes on Sam's bed next to him and lets Sam play with the hem of Dean's shirt and bury his face in the collar.
"I've only been here for a few minutes," Sam says, because yeah, did Dean mention that Sam's fucking wired? He stopped making sense hours ago.
Still, Dean says, "Oh yeah?" like Sam's commenting on the weather or some shit. God, he's exhausted.
"How many hands were there? Do you remember?"
"A lot, I think."
"Yeah." Sam pauses. "There's an unsolved case. Feet in shoes keep washing up on the beach. I thought it was a skinwalker."
"What? Why?" God, Dean really needs to stop trying to latch onto any truth in Sam's rambling. Skinwalker was just a fucking word that occurred to the kid. It doesn't mean anything. Probably none of this does. When Sam's musing on a particular topic, when he drifts off and starts saying weird shit when they're talking about dinner or whether Sam's feeling up to a grocery run, it can be easy to suss out what the fuck's going on behind the words, but they're just lying here and Sam's just fucking talking and the fact of the matter is that it probably means fucking nothing and even if it doesn't, Dean's not going to figure it out.
Jesus, Dean, cry more, poor baby. Sam needs you.
Sam's still talking. "They wash up on the shore, no bodies, feet and shoes. It's not because anyone cuts the feet off. It's because the ankles are weak and the feet detach and float away."
Dean's suddenly hot and cold like he has a fever.
(the ankles are weak, Dean, pull from the feet, there's a good boy, see how they snap right off, like kid's clothes, snap snap snap like when you used to dress your Sammy, did you undress him, Dean? Here comes another one, sweet potato, I'll teach you something new for this one. But remember, one quick tug on each foot--)
"Did they do that to you?" Dean says, softly.
"There's a bridge where dogs kill themselves," Sam says, and he pushes his face into Dean's side and whispers that there isn't any skin left on the insides of his thighs.
"Come back," Dean says, his voice shaking all over the place, Jesus Christ. "Sam come back we've got to talk about this for real Sam please."
"Hellhounds died all the time," Sam says, and Dean was too fucking late because his goddamn lungs are already locking down. "They crawled onto my lap and made me wheeze and licked me and died on my lap died all over me they always died in my arms he said it was my fault so I had to be a dog now" and then he's coughing down to his feet (down to his poor fucking goddamn feet).
Dean holds them in his hands and kisses Sam's forehead and whispers, "Sleep, Sammy, go to sleep, get better," because he has no other ideas.
How can he protect Sam? It's over. It happened.
Sam starts to fall asleep, but a few minutes later he's whimpering, hands clasped over his ears and eyes squeezed shut, so, okay, this is a bad night.
Dean draws the curtains and pours a glass of water and sits on the bed next to him, doesn't touch. They tried a white noise machine for a little while but it made Sam cry, so now Dean just has to close his eyes and pray for silence.
Tonight the world protects Sam and he sleeps soundly until morning.
**
Still doing shitty the next morning. He coughs so hard while making tea that Dean eventually forces him into a chair, two hands on two shoulders. He folds up with his face in the sleeves of his sweatshirt and mumbles that breathing should not be this hard, thanks.
Dean scratches the back of his head as he walks by. "Want me to call someone?"
Sam looks up, eyebrow up.
"I don't know. There've got to be doctors who do house calls. Or a home nurse or something? Not for some long-term thing, don't look at me like that. I'm not talking fucking hospice care, moron."
Sam gives him a smile.
"We tell them you're too allergic to penicillin to go to a hospital, that you'll fucking die if you touch something. Whatever. I don't know. We'll make something up, get someone here."
Sam talks, finally, so fucking hoarse. "They can't do anything you can't."
"Hey, maybe they've come with radical new asthma treatments in the past year and a half. It's not like I was really keeping track. I couldn't even hear a kid cough without turning on the waterworks."
Sam pulls out the chair next to him.
Dean sits and palms the kid's back. "I don't know, Simba. But we can't keep this up. The whole point of jumping in was that Lucifer would stop fucking chokeholding your lungs, and here you are so stressed out from Hell that you can't breathe. This is such shit."
Sam, affectionate little bastard that he is, leans his head against Dean's arm. "Wasn't the whole point."
"Yeah, saving the world, whatever. You're really lucid today."
Sam nods a little.
"Superhero." He goes to rescue the tea kettle. "You think you could eat something?"
Another nod. Fucking superhero.
He opens the cabinet. "Oatmeal?"
"Yeah."
But Dean makes it and Sam can only get a few spoonfuls in between coughs, and fuck, this is such a problem. This is such a fucking problem.
Sam tries to say something and collapses into another fit of coughing, and yeah, this is definitely a problem.
**
They play Hangman on the couch. Honestly, Dean's just checking to see if letters are easier for Sam yet (he can read okay, but he's been having trouble getting his hand to fucking write the damn words and it's stressful for him) and it hasn't. The person Sam draws on the noose looks misshapen and tortured, and Sam cocks his head at it and frowns a little.
"You'll get there," Dean says, while Sam crosses out "L" and Dean crosses off 'writing' as a way Sam can talk about Hell.
**
It's that afternoon, when Sam's trembling his way through a nap and Dean's holding the kid's head on his lap and thinking I want in I want in that he remembers dream root.
**
Sam's hanging out outside (today he needs all the sunlight) when flaps in with a bag of it and his judgey face on, but that's sort of just how angels look.
But then he goes and says, "I don't know that this is a good idea, Dean," so, all right then.
"He needs help," Dean says. "He needs to show me what's in his head and he can't."
"Have him draw a picture," Cas says, playing with the refrigerator magnets. It's always weird shit that interests Cas. (Aaaand pause for a minute to talk about the fact that they have fucking refrigerator magnets? They're just free ones from realtors and shit that they get in the mail addressed to Resident that are there to hold up recipes and medication schedules and the long list of things that Sam can't and won't eat right now, but still, settling down happened so fucking fast, God, Dean needs a job.)
"His hands are shaky and shapes aren't coming out well."
"You know what I mean."
"Honestly I fucking don't. He can't communicate with me right now, and you know Sam. He has to talk. This is..." He sits down at the table. "This is the kind of shit that happened, you know? When he was a kid and he wanted to sit down and fucking discuss stuff and Dad and I told him to shut up. He'd get these fucking asthma attacks and we honestly thought he was doing it just to be a brat, and then some witch took our hearing or we pulled out his tonsils or whatever the fuck and he'd just get anxious and nervous and upset. This kid has to talk."
Cas pauses. "And you think dream Sam will talk."
"I think dream Sam will show."
**
A little brother asleep on his chest, a piece of his girly damn hair, some ginger, some honey, a nice pinch of dream root.
Aaaand drink.
**
Dean opens his eyes to pitch black.
Pitch fucking black.
It's the darkest place he's ever been. It's darker than the insides of his fucking eyelids. He gives his eyes time to adjust but there's nothing to fucking adjust to. It's just black.
He calls out for Sam and he hears nothing.
He doesn't hear his own voice.
So he wraps one arm around himself and doesn't feel his own body. Doesn't feel his own hand. Is he even touching himself? Did he miss? Does he have a fucking body? He can't see. Jesus fuck. This smells like nothing. The air tastes like nothing.
He tries to walk but he can't, there's something in his way, maybe he's hitting walls he can't see feel Jesus what the fuck. He can't stand up all the way. He just stops. He can't spread his arms.
He can't breathe.
No, he can. He can breathe. He's just panicking.
But it's so still.
It's so fucking still.
There's nothing.
There's no light and no touch and no sound.
There's no pain.
There's no little brother breathing.
**
Sensory deprivation is torture after fifteen minutes. Dean read that a little while ago.
So he estimates it's been fifteen minutes (but how does he fucking know when he starts seeing things, at first moving flashes of light, nothing real, but then ghostly faces, too big, stretched, distorted, his brother, his father, Cas. He hears sounds that aren't Sam and that aren't his name, so they're not important they're not real this isn't real/
He doesn't hallucinate touch.
He doesn't hallucinate that he can move.
He can't move.
**
It's a dream, okay? He fucking knows it, and he knows that eventually he'll wake up and it'll be over and he'll be back in real life okay okay okay this isn't the real thing this is just a dream it's fine he can handle this. This is fine.
But then there's a raw, breathless scream from far, far away.
And this is not fine.
He yells Sam's name but he's still not making any noise, it's just this scream, and he thrashes and he gets blocked but it doesn't hurt, nothing hurts, hurt is a feeling, sound is a feeling, Sam is not a fucking feeling he has to get to Sam has to reach him they're hurting him.
And it goes on and on. Sam screams, gasps, cries, coughs, and Dean balls up and puts his arms around his head and begs for the flashing colors to go away because he doesn't know what's real (he doesn't know if the scream is real. He doesn't know if his brother is real. Sam is a feeling. Sam is a metaphor.)
**
He wakes up to so much fucking light, Jesus Christ, bird calls like sirens, a little brother tucked under his chin with hair that's soft and scratchy and sticky breathing that claws at Dean's skull and big arms that are going to fucking crush him that he needs to cling to that he wants forever that need to get the hell of him. Sam. God. Sam. It was just a dream.
Sam had the same dream. Okay. He needs to take care of Sam. Protect Sam.
"G'morning big brother." Sam rests on Dean's collarbone and rolls over and goes back to sleep, shoulders rising and falling. Calmly.
Fuck.
That wasn't a nightmare.
**
Sam wakes up for real a few hours later and plods out of his room looking shaken and miserable, so yeah, Dean, way to dive into the wrong dream.
"Nightmare?" Dean says.
Sam nods heavily. "Just at the end there." He coughs into his elbow and frowns at the coffee can at Dean's feet. "What are you doing?"
"Making ice cream. You never did this in school?"
Sam shrugs, then saves up enough breath to say, "They did it with nuts so I had to sit outside."
"Wow, assholes. This is just vanilla."
Sam's still all puzzled. "Why are you making ice cream?"
"Because...you never get ice cream, and maybe you deserve some, okay?"
Sam sits down across from him and helps him kick the can around, and then they have ice cream for breakfast and Dean listens to Sam's swampy breathing.
**
Dean's only been up for three hours but he's so fucking exhausted, like everything's taken five times more out of him than he should. The smoke alarm upstairs decides it's time to get its battery changed, what the fuck ever, but Dean's up on a chair trying to make it stop fucking beeping because the noise is like nails in his head and Sammy's just sitting on the couch as far away from it as he can get, palms clasped over his ears.
So much fucking noises, it's too fucking much. Dean's shaking as he comes back downstairs, and Sam's all embarrassed, wiping his face off as fast as he can, and Jesus, Sam, don't.
"I'm sorry," Sam says. "So stupid."
"It's not stupid. C'mere." He tugs Sam into a hug and rubs his back because he's doing the stuffy wheezing that always starts up when he cries, fucking fantastic.
"I wish we could go for a run," Sam says, all fucking breathless.
A run sounds fucking terrifying. All that spacenoiselightpeople.
He looks at Sam and his heaving chest and his poor broken head.
"Me too," he says, quietly.
**
Sam's on the couch with the cooking channel and a neb treatment and Dean makes coffee in the kitchen while Cas sits on the counter and watches them all mildly.
"That's probably where Lucifer kept him once his body was gone," Cas says, after Dean's finished relaying the dream, and wow, Cas, you're a fucking genius.
"That's not the real problem," Dean says. "He's getting past that. Look." He nods towards the kitchen. "The machine's loud, the medicine tastes strong, it's bright, he's dealing. And then he fucking loses it and cries in Enochian or in English that makes no fucking sense. We're talking broken fucking kid. We're talking a hundred and twenty years snuggled up to Lucifer versus six months on his own." Dean pours the coffee. "So I heard him screaming. In the dream. And I don't know if I was hallucinating from the dark or whatever, but...that's how he screamed when we were in the cage together. When they took him away."
"When they tortured him."
"Yeah."
"When they raped him."
"Yeah."
"When they made you watch."
Dean rubs his hand over his mouth. "Yeah. I should bring him coffee."
"It might have been you projecting," Cas says. "Hallucinating. What you were hearing was the thing that scared you the most. Hearing that happen to Sam."
"I think what I was hearing was what the nightmares are."
"Dean..."
"I have to get in there. I have to protect him."
"You're shaken from a regular dream. What will one of the nightmares do to you?"
"That's not important."
"Yes it is, Dean. Sam is counting on you to be sane. Sam needs that from you."
"Then Sam shouldn't have fucking died and had me have to go to Hell and..." Shit. These are not the words Dean means. Fuck. "I didn't..."
Cas crosses his arms.
"Would you want him in your nightmares, Dean?"
"Fuck off."
"Don't do this."
**
So Dean doesn't do it, and he sleeps in his own room and dreams about stripping his Sam of all safety and sanity and skin in a pitch black room.
He wakes up and the not-dream, the non-metaphorical, the complete reality of his little brother's breathless screaming makes his head ring like a bell.
He has to get in there.
**
"Everything comes up blue and brown," Sam says, sadly, while he's picking at his breakfast and trying to breathe.
Dean frowns and reaches across the table to rub his back.
"Twenty miles to go and still no cars."
"Okay, Sammy. It's okay. You want to go back to bed?"
"I don't even know where the wheels are." He drops his fork and pushes his hands into his eyes. "I think I hid them somewhere but I don't remember."
"Breathe, kiddo. Everything's fine."
"They scraped me with dull fingernails until they broke through." Sam's looking at him now, these eyes that say help me, God, God.
"Locked in a room to play with my food," Sam says quietly, rhythmically, though he's wheezing so hard it's difficult to tell. "All the king's horses and all the big men couldn't put Simba together again."
Dean brushes Sam's hair off his forehead and worries.
**
Sam's in his dark room with a washcloth folded over his eyes and the mouthpiece of the nebulizer shoved between his teeth, and Dean doesn't realize he's asleep until his hands twist in his blanket and he lets out this breathless muted cry.
Fuck you, Cas. Dean's going in.
**
He gets now why Sam talks about the colors. They're not just hallucinations in the black room, no, now they're everywhere, bouncing of the bars of the cage (the cage, the cage, fuck, Dean had forgotten that the bars weren't even Sam loves straight lines and God, it's colder and redder than he remembered, and the colors are rattling around, screaming in the back of his head, moving whenever he turns his head, where the fuck is Lucifer, where the fuck is Sam?
And then something invisible rips him in half.
He screams and grabs his body and tries to put it the fuck back together but there are hands in him, hands in side him, hands digging more holes in them and a mouth he feels but can't see sucking them dry. There's a sweaty hand over his mouth and something sharp at the base of his throat and his legs are pulled so hard the skin splits at the hip.
He stops screaming.
He can't scream anymore.
Screaming takes thought and screaming takes time and screaming takes air and there's none of that, there's something thrusting into him and breaking his ribs like twigs and there are dull fingernails raking the skin on the insides of his thighs and this was never supposed to happen to him again he made the deal he made the deal he got off the racks and Sammy got on and couldn't get off couldn't say no because he couldn't breathe.
**
He's awake.
Next to him, Sam is sitting up and crying, softly and steadily, pressing his hands into his face like he's drying to draw the tears back in and save them for later.
Dean can't imagine sitting up.
He can't imagine saving anything.
Oh, God.
He has to get out of bed. He has to take care of Sam. He has to do something.
Sam gets up shakily and goes to the bathroom, drinks a glass of water.
How the hell.
**
Dean stays where he is and grips at his arms and legs. Sam comes back to the room, pauses in the doorway, starts to say something, stops.
"You want me to give you a minute?" he says, eventually.
Dean pushes his face into Sam's pillow and nods.
"Okay. Be right back."
A minute later, the shower's running.
Dean sits up and drags both hands over his face. Fuck. His hands. His face. Okay. Everything's fine. He's in their little fucking house, in Sam's bed, safe. Safe.
Sam's in the shower, probably crying some of it out, not freaking out. This is fine. Safe.
And then theydiddthattomybabyforahundredandtwentyyears hits him in a wave and he's puking into Sam's pretty little trash can that they bought at that garage sale when Sam had a good day and tilted his head back in the sun and smiled.
**
Sam's back a few minutes later, mumbling, "Oh, Dean"s while he gets dressed and takes the trashcan to the bathroom and cups Dean's forehead in his hand. "Okay. You're all right. Are you sick?"
"Stop, Sam." He pushes his face into his knees.
There's a pause, then Sam's voice, sounding strange: "No. You need help, I--"
"Sam, knock it off!" Dean yells, and oh, God. He hasn't yelled at Sam since he's been back.
Oh, God.
It's forty-two (he counts them) seconds before he can convince himself to look up.
Sam is, of course, gone.
**
Want to hear something hilarious?
They've had this conversation before.
They've done this.
Dean throwing up after a nightmare, Sam trying to soothe him, Dean yelling at him to go away.
Ready for the punch line?
It was after Dean got back from Hell.
Hahahahahahaha.
**
It's half an hour before Dean can get out of bed and limp to the bathroom. He rinses out the trash can and throws up again and pounds back glasses of water.
He lanes against the door frame and leans into the hallway and calls, "Sam?"
Nothing.
"Sam, buddy. I'm sorry. Okay?"
"Sam?"
"Sammy?"
He pushes the heel of his hand into his forehead and breathes out. Shit.
"Sam, please, if you're just mad at me, make some noise or something, and I'll leave you alone. I need to know that you're not fucking freaked out or collapsed somewhere not breathing or...just make some noise or something, please?"
He squeezes his eyes shut and waits and waits and waits and fuuuuuuck.
**
Dean sweeps the house and checks the corners and behind the furniture and every time imagines seeing his little brother balled up with his arms around his head freaking out because his one tether just fucking snapped or wheezing his head off in the gross space behind the TV, but no, there's nothing, and that's so much fucking worse.
The car's still in the driveway, so Dean's trying very very hard not to freak out.
He searches every-fucking-where in the goddamn house and he goes outside and he's about to just fucking scream Sam's name when he sees him.
He's not balled up. He's not suffocating.
He's in the car, leaning over the dashboard with his head in his hands, crying his eyes out in the passenger seat.
He jumps when Dean opens the driver's side door.
God, he's gotten thin. And his breathing is, unsurprisingly, for shit.
For a second Dean just watches him, fucking takes the kid in, tries to find the right goddamn words.
"You want to go for a drive?"
Sam nods.
"All right. Let's do this."
The car's barely out of the driveway when the words are out of Dean's mouth, his gaze steady and straight ahead--"You know I love you so much, right?"
He turns enough to see Sammy looking up, eyes full of trust and tears and Hell and boy and everything, and nodding.
"Well. Good." He pauses. "Do you want to talk to me about Hell?"
Another nod, and Sam's small, broken voice. "I can't breathe, though."
"One word at a time. As long as it takes."
**
Sometimes when they were kids and Sam had an asthma attack in the car, Dean would let him sit in the front seat.
They'd pull over for real it got really bad, of course--open the door and let Sam hang his legs out of the car, rub rough hands up and down his back and encourage air into his lungs. But if it was just holding on, or if it had tapered out enough that he was just uncomfortable, not panicked, John would stop the car just long enough for Dean to nudge Sam into the passenger seat and retreat to the back.
Sam would rest, head against the window, hand on the gearshift, shoulder in John's palm.
It's louder up there. That was what he liked.
He couldn't hear himself breathe.
Dean, chin propped up on the front seat, could.
**
He keeps his grip on the kid's shoulder and runs his thumb over his collarbone while he tries to get the words out. It's not just the asthma that's making it hard, Dean gets that, but he also gets that it's easier for both of them to blame it all on that.
"They liked to divide me up," he says. "You get top of Sam today, I get bottom. Compare notes. For a while they liked bottom best because of my teeth. Then they pulled them out so it was fine."
Dean shuts up and swallows and listens.
But Sam is taking a break to get some air in. That's fine.
"They liked to talk," he says eventually. "Tell me I was pretty. Tell me they loved me. Kiss me. Hold their breath to tease me--look, we can breathe shitty too. They, um, they'd choke me and ask if it felt any different. Breathe smoke in my mouth. That all got kind of normal."
"You got used to that?" Dean says, gently.
"Yeah. I couldn't get used to the pain. I tried. I mean...you know that part. You think, okay, I know what's coming, so it won't be as bad."
"I know, yeah."
Sam pauses to breathe carefully, then says, "You know what's ridiculous?"
"Tell me."
"I used to worry about people touching my chest," he says, and then he's not crying and not laughing, just wheezing, just trying to breathe against the window.
**
"I lost track of time," Sam says. "You were...every day, put back together, ripped apart again? Like Prometheus?"
"Yeah."
"They didn't do that."
"How'd you get put back together?"
"They took care of me."
"What?"
"They'd kiss the tears, lick them clean, bandage me up, send me to go lie down and sleep. Obviously the shit they did to me wasn't going to clear up with a fucking band-aid, I mean, they'd do the same angel healing crap Cas does. But there was this fucking pretense of hospital care. It's small in there, but the had a little bed for me, and they'd tuck the covers under my chin and tell me to feel better, and then they'd leave me alone for a while."
"How long is a while?"
"I don't know." He hitches his feet up on the dashboard. "I guess it varied. I don't know. I was so fucking oxygen deprived, I should have been unconscious, I should have been fucking dead, but I slept when they said sleep and stayed awake when they were pushing their teeth into my skin and that was just the rhythm of it. Uneven and unpredictable and...uncountable."
"What was sleeping like?"
"It was fantastic." He closes his eyes. "It was great. I'd dream that I was all alone in the dark and I couldn't feel any pain and no one could hurt me and the screaming finally stopped. No sick voices and no mean eyes and no blood and no breathing. Just me and the dark and nothing to disturb me."
Dean swallows. And swallows. And swallows.
"I used to tell them about that," Sam says.
"What?"
Sam frowns and clarifies. "I used to tell Michael and Lucifer that."
"Why the fuck would you tell them anything?"
"God, Dean."
"What the fuck are you--"
"Dean, you had souls coming and going and yeah, Alistair breathing down your neck, but you had traffic. You had demons laughing and people getting tortured next to you and people...God, man, I had Michael and Lucifer and just Michael and Lucifer for a hundred and twenty fucking years. If you were hoping to get out of this talk without hearing that yeah, sometimes they held me and I cried into their necks and told them how much it hurt and they rubbed my back and sang me lullabies and promised no one would ever hurt me again, if you were hoping not to hear that I would believe them because I had nothing left, if you were hoping that I didn't s-sometimes love--"
"Stop."
"No. You don't get to tell me to stop."
It's so quick and harsh that it shocks Dean's mouth shut.
"They were all I had," Sam says. "And I didn't get for it to be simple. I got rape and torture and peeled skin and broken promises and hands on my back when I couldn't sleep and hands on my chest to help my lungs expand or to crush them back down, and I never fucking knew which one, and what was I supposed to do, give up? I couldn't give up. There was fucking nothing to give up. I wasn't clinging to anything. There was nothing. I didn't get simplicity or options or...I got two angry dads who punished me when their favorite little body got tugged away by locking me down in the dream I used to tell them about when they cradled me and soothed me and stroked my hair. It...God, it must have been fucking months that they'd do that. They'd put down the knives for fucking months and just care for me, or one of them would shield me from the other. And...and sometimes I'd try to fight back and sometimes they'd take the weapons away gently and say No, Sammy, no, c'mere and make me talk about why I was upset and sometimes they'd hold me down and make me pay and..."
"Sammy."
"And they'd spend these...Idon'tknowhowlong, these long, long, long stretches of time breaking me down, telling me they never loved me and neither did you or Dad or Jess. They'd bring back conversations we had and act them out, the two of them, and show me how everything you said was really twisted up, really you saying you wished I would just die already."
"No."
"I know, Dean, Jesus, do I look stupid? He...They'd break my fingers and burn through my skin with their palms. They'd fuck with me and give me hives and close my throat up and promise me I would die this time. They'd rip new holes in me just to fuck me in new and exciting ways, I don't even fucking...Jesus." He stops and pinches the bridge of his nose. "Jesus fuck."
"Simba."
He keeps driving. He keeps driving.
Sam nods a little. "I know. I'm here."
"Baby."
Sam swallows. "They made me presents out of wire and stone and showed me how to play with then and then tell me I'd been bad and burn them against my skin until they were destroyed and welded against me. They got me hellhounds to play with and I named them and held them and was so fucking allergic and they killed them every time but next time we won't, Sammy, next time, we promise."
"Why did you believe them?" and yeah, Dean's begging, Dean's not being the calm little shrink anymore, okay?
"Because there was always a next time," Sam says. "There was always going to be a next time."
**
Sam's really not breathing well after all of that, surprise surprise, so it's time to go home. They sit on the porch and count breaths together.
Sam is underweight and breathless and still looks like Sam.
How the hell, Sam.
How the hell.
"Did it help?" Dean says. "Talking about it?"
Sam nods, head down, then says, "I was hoping it would help me breathe."
"No luck?"
"No luck."
"You want to cry some?"
Sam shrugs. "I cry a lot."
"Um...you want more ice cream?"
Sam laughs. "No, I'm okay. Maybe I'll just sit a while."
"You want me to..." Dean starts, and Sam shrugs a little, in that way that means yeah, he wants to be alone. "Okay."
Sam looks up at him as he stands up. "Love you."
He drums his fingers on Sam's shoulder. "Caribou."
"They never used that."
"I figured."
"I still like I love you."
"Yeah?"
"I like hearing it." He pauses. "I like believing it."
"Believe me, Sammy."
"I do. You know I do."
"Come in if you get cold. I might be out back."
"Smoking all the cigarettes?"
"Every last one in the fucking world."
"Can hardly blame you."
"You keep breathing like that, I might as well let you have one."
Sam laughs. "I'm hanging on."
"I know you are. Love you, kiddo."
"You're my favorite," Sam says.
It's just a routine. Say it. "I know."
Sam smiles and says, "Fuck off."
**
Dean crushes his pack of cigarettes into the ground without opening it and cries with his forehead against the siding.
He can still hear Sam, coughing and wheezing like he has lungs full of smoke.
He can still hear Sam screaming in his nightmare.
(He can still hear the happy five year old with Dean's shirt in his fist cheering when he wrote SAM all on his own.)
**
By the time he gets his shit together and goes back inside, Sam's started dinner. The stove is on and he hums quietly while he chops up a carrot.
"You don't smell like smoke," Sam says, mildly, without looking up.
"Yeah, shut it."
Sam grins.
"What are we having?"
"Fuck if I know. Something with carrots, apparently. I had something in mind but I forgot."
"Poor crazy thing."
"Seriously."
So they fake some kind of stir-fry thing and eat together and for a little while everything is okay. They're quiet, but it's a comfortable quiet, broken intermittently by questions about the food or some kind of dirty joke. Sam finds excuses to reach across the table and touch him a little, which is fine.
Everything is fine, for a little while.
"I'm incredibly proud of you," Dean says, while he washes dishes and Sam dries. "You know that, right?"
"You better be. I saved the whole damn world."
"I was there, if I recall..."
Sam smiles.
"Sam, do you ever..."
"I'm sure I do. I ever everything."
"Get mad that Cas pulled me out and not you?"
Sam doesn't say anything for a minute, and when he does, it's just a soft, "Do you?"
"Are you kidding? Have you met me? I tried to beat the shit out of him. I tried on multiple occasions to beat the shit out of him."
Sam shrugs a little. "He loves you most. It's about time someone does."
"You do."
"Nah."
"It's not okay with me that he picked me."
"You'd done your time in Hell." Sam tosses a napkin into the trash can. "It's okay."
"Don't say it's okay."
"All right, it's incredibly not okay, but it makes sense."
"You feel safe around Cas, though, right?"
Sam doesn't say anything.
"Sammy."
"I will," Sam says. "I'll get there."
**
So Dean thinks they're okay, Dean thinks that's their biggest problem, except he wakes up to Sam screaming in the next room and God, Sam, no and he takes the rest of the tea like a shot.
**
It's the cage again. It's hideous, worse than before, full of all the details that were fresh in Sam's mind, Sam Sam Sam I'm so sorry.
Dean arches his back and struggles and rough thumbs brush away his tears and no, he has to find Sam.
He's here to pull Sam out.
He gets it.
He tugs away from the hands and crawls along the hot bars of the cage. He knows he's being allowed to do it. He knows he hasn't escaped anything.
That's not how this works.
This is so much bigger than Dean, and Sam did this, this just happened, and Dean didn't-Dean can not--protect him.
It's inside Sam.
It just is.
But he just wants to find Sam, okay?
**
And Jesus, there he is. He's alone, bleeding from so many places, huddled in the corner of the cage with his knees up and his arms tucked into his chest to protect his wrists. He's shaking and looking away from Dean, and he starts when Dean puts his hand on his knee.
"D-Dean?"
"Hey, you."
"Wh-what are you..."
"You're dreaming. This is just a dream." He shouldn't have said just.
Sam looks around and seems to be considering it. "You're a dream?"
"This is all a dream." He nudges Sam over and he obeys and makes room, and Dean sits close and presses his shoulder against Sam's. "You're going to wake up to a warm house. Safe. Just ours. We'll make pancakes. I'm going to give you asthma meds and help you breathe--breathe, Sammy, you got this--and then later we'll go to the library if you're feeling up to it and we can pick some new stuff out for me to read to you when the words shake around too much. We can sit outside and count stars when it gets dark. We can count them in threes, Sammy."
Sam huddles down and tucks his head underneath Dean's arm.
"But we can stay here for now," Dean says. "I can help you. Come here, Sam." He wraps his arms around him as tightly as he can. "We'll sit here together."
And he holds him until the monsters come and drag his baby away.
He listens to his baby brother scream and thinks about things that you know for sure.
He knows that Sam is hurting.
He knows that Sam is never going to be okay.
He knows that Sam is safe in his room right now.
He knows Sam survived.
**
He wakes up to Sam sitting cross-legged at the foot of his bed.
Smiling at him through red-rimmed eyes.
Breathing.
Summary: For a prompt from familybizness. Sam is having nightmares after Hell. Dean takes dream root.
Warnings/Spoilers: Post-Hell, and this one gets brutal. Graphic descriptions of rape and torture. Take care of yourself..
Wordcount: 8,879
Author's Note: Sammyverse, about six weeks after Sam comes back.
Sam's doing better. Objectively, Dean knows that.
The sensory issues are all but gone. He goes through spells where he needs all the lights all the sound all the people and Dean carefully brings him to malls and diners and, on one amazing occasion, a carnival. He's usually good at getting Sam back before he's overwhelmed, but sometimes it's too much and he has to curl up in the dark for a while afterwards, and that's okay. And there are some mornings where Sam can't take his inhaler because taste isn't an option, and those suck, but they get through them. As a whole, he's doing great with that. He smiles and talks and eats and goes outside a little. He gets on his laptop and over-researches what plants he wants in his garden. Dean isn't sure that Sammy knows this is a retirement and not a break, but it's fucking stupid to even entertain the idea of Dean's shaky kid ever hunting again, so it's nothing they need to discuss right now.
Because the fact of the matter is that Sam isn't okay, and on so many fronts he's doing worse. And they knew this was coming. They knew once they broke past those last six months of sensory deprivation, there were a hundred and odd years of Hell to deal with.
So he's doing well, considering.
But when you're standing outside your little brother's door listening to him do these tiny, panicked wheezes in his sleep, Dean isn't considering anything besides whether or not he should wake the kid up when sleep's been really, really tough for him to come by lately.
You can't really be objective about this. Not when it's your kid. Not when it's Hell.
Getting them separate rooms was stupid, really. Idiotic.
Sam's too sick for this shit. (For any of this.)
**
Nightmares shouldn't be a mild word to Dean, considering the shit that bounced (bounces) around his head post-Hell, but it's different when it's Sam and it really doesn't seem like enough to describe what the kid's going through, and maybe that's the asthma and maybe that's four times as long in the pit or maybe it's that skinny hollow-eyed kid and that shaky smile across the table from Dean in the morning who has to put his fork down because the tremor in his hands is too intense and it doesn't matter because he's not breathing well enough to eat anyway.
Dean honestly can't remember the last time he was this worried.
"Can we talk about it?" Dean says, and it's going to scare the fucking shit out of him and he's going to regret it but Sam needs to talk.
Sam shakes his head sadly.
"Why not?"
"I can't breathe," he says, and it takes him two breaths to get through the fucking sentence.
Dean puts their plates in the sink. "Okay. Come on."
**
Sam leans into Dean and cuddles his scarf through a neb treatment. They watch the cooking channel instead of talking and Dean winds Sam's hair around his finger.
"Sammy," he says, after a while. "You know you're safe now, right?"
Sam nods.
"It's just memories. It can't hurt you."
"Freddy Krueger," is all Sam says, and Dean laughs a little.
"You're funny when you can't breathe."
A slow, sleepy nod from Sammy.
"No Freddy Kruegers. No one reaching out from Hell. Just your fucked-up brain trying to deal with shit. It's not trying to hurt you, y'know? It's just working through it and it doesn't know how." He pauses. "We should try drugs again."
Sam nods a little.
"Yeah? Good. That shrink was okay, yeah? The one who just talked to you about the rape and stuff?" It's a hard word to get out, but Sam needs him to say it. The "and stuff" is a buffer for Dean, and he's fucking weak, he knows that, but rapeandstuff is so much easier to say, and Sam lets him get away with it because Sam is a saint. The shrink was a good idea, but Dean pushed too early and Sam wasn't ready and it got bad. But they should try again. They really should.
And Sam nods, brave fucking kid.
"I know it's hard to keep the lies straight,” Dean says.
"Hard to keep anything straight."
"Do you know how well you're doing?"
He doesn't answer.
"Sam, this time two months ago I could barely get a straight sentence out of you. Now half the time when you go gibberish I think you're doing it just to fuck with me."
Sam says something in Enochian which is totally just to fuck with him.
"I'm going to get Cas down here to tell you off," Dean says, and Sam grins.
They watch a pretty brunette swill melted butter in a saucepan and mix in chunks of chocolate. Sam looks interested but not hungry.
"I wish I could help you," Dean says.
Sam takes the mouthpiece out. "You're such an idiot. You do help."
"Help sleeping Sam, I mean."
"Sleeping Sam's a douchebag."
"Yeah, but my douchebag."
Sam shrugs. "Satan's little bitch."
"Aw, kiddo. Don't do that. You're breathing a little better."
"Yeah. That's how I know I'm not down there."
It hits Dean all of a sudden.
"You can't breathe at night, can you?"
A small headshake.
"All right. That we can work with."
**
Sam's job is to make popcorn and curl up on Dean's bed until Dean's finished cleaning the fuck out of Sam's room, and then it's both of them squished together on Sam's bed, counting pieces of popcorn because he likes to eat them three at a time, and he's "fucking crazy" (Sam's words, but it's not like Dean wouldn't use them--Sam's sick and Sam's crazy, let's not mince words, they don't do that) and it'll make him anxious if there are leftovers at the end. They count them out on their laps and get their sweatpants greasy.
Fifty-six, so Dean eats two before they start.
"Thanks," Sam says.
"Of course. More for me."
They watch whatever's on, because planning stuff too tightly is rough on Sam--planning means remembering, remembering means thinking and thinking and thinking about one thing, and when Sam thinks about one thing Sam thinks about getting torn apart and maimed. It's really not complicated, okay?
"What was that Dad used to call you?" Dean says, eating his popcorn in threes.
"A waste of space." Sam's only his back, head at the foot of the bed, feet on the pillows, head tucked against Dean's ankle.
"You're so full of shit."
"Right? Sam."
"Yeah, he did call you Sam. You're driving me insane."
"Sammy."
"You know that isn't the one I'm looking for. Why are you being difficult?"
"Because I have the presence of mind to be difficult. Appreciate me, Dean! Wheezy."
"No, I called you Wheezy and he'd get mad about it."
"Simba."
"Yeah, but not that one. I know that one."
Sam's quiet, now. "Babykid."
"Fuck. Yeah. That's the one."
"I miss him."
"I know."
"Lucifer said..." He looks up at Dean. "Can I do this?"
"Sam, if you can breathe, you can do whatever the hell you want."
He plays with Dean's sock. "Lucifer said he wanted to kill me."
"Lucifer couldn't kill you."
"No, no. Dad."
"Hey. You know he didn't."
"He would have."
"No."
Sam nod sadly. "That's why he told you to do it."
"Sam. Look at me."
Sam looks up.
"If he'd thought there were a chance I'd do it, he wouldn't have told me."
"Then why'd he say it?"
"I don't know, Sam, because he felt like he had to. To fuck us up one more time. I don't know. But God, Sammy, when you were possessed? When SamMeg was telling me to kill you?"
"Fuck. God." He closes his eyes.
"Shit. Okay. What I mean is that Dadwouldn'thavekilledyoueither and now we're done hey hey hey Sam you okay?"
Sam shakes his head tightly and presses fists into his eyes.
"Okay. Up. Come here." He hauls Sam up and props him up next to him and guides Sam's head into his chest. "Okay. It's just you in there."
"You."
"Okay. It's just you and me in there." He scratches lightly on Sam's back. "Is...is that good? Do you want me in there?"
Sam nods hard. "Don't get hurt."
"I won't."
"I'm too big," Sam says, and he manages to laugh a little, God, this kid.
"You're big. You can fill you up."
Sam shakes his head. "They shrunk me."
"Nah." He threads his fingers between Sam's. "Big hands, look."
"If I eat I'll grow.”
"I hope so, kid. You look sick."
"I am sick."
"But you're supposed to look all brawny and healthy and then confuse people by wheezing all over the place. You know the deal."
"What do I do to get the me part bigger?"
"'cause you've got to fill the bigger body?"
Sam nods hard.
"I think you eat your popcorn in threes and you hang out with me for a while."
Sam coughs his way into a sigh. "You're not close enough."
"You're all over me, Octopus."
"It's not enough. I don't know."
"Skin?" He pulls up his shirt enough so Sam can press his palm against his stomach. That helped a lot when he first came back.
But now Sam just gives his stomach a little pat and sighs again.
"I don't know what you want, kiddo."
"I don't either. But I don't like that I can't touch all the edges of me. What happens if I can't reach it and then I can't feel?"
"You can feel. I'll make sure."
"Touch."
"I know."
"What happens if they file me down to make me smaller?"
Dean swallows. "Did they do that?"
"Just my chest."
Dean kisses the top of his head.
"It sounds like a metaphor," Sam says.
"I know. But it's not."
"It's the opposite of a metaphor."
"I know."
"This is a metaphor," Sam says, softly. "All of this has been a metaphor."
**
Sammy does a neb treatment and then falls asleep all the fuck over Dean, which was kind of the point of the whole exercise, though Dean's wondering how a kid this skinny could still manage to make half his limbs go numb within ten minutes of curling up on top of them, but whatever.
Ever since he's been back, Sam's slept hard, like it's something he's doing deliberately. He's way more difficult to wake up, and he sleeps through some massively shitty breathing. And cleaning the room looks like it was no fucking help, because Sam's wheezing so hard that Dean can't believe the fucking noise of it isn't waking Sam up, let alone the whole fucking aspect of suffocating.
"C'mere," Dean whispers, and he scoots down a little on the bed so he can reach Sam's back. Sam curls tighter into him like a bug, and it's the same reflex he's had since he was a fucking baby. Which should make Dean feel good, but instead it just makes him think of a scared, stripped Sammy balled up in the cage and he wraps the hand not rubbing his brother's back around his forehead because he can't get inside his fucking head. This is the best he can do.
Sam's mumbling what's either Enochian or just fucking sounds, face pressed into Dean's side.
"Okay, shh shh shh." He rubs a little harder. "Stay with me, Sammy."
He coughs and coughs and coughs, how the hell does that not wake him up?
Sam takes this series of quick breaths, then he rolls over onto his stomach and fists his hair in his hands. His breaths whine in the back of his throat, and he's shaking, fuck.
"Oh, God. Sam."
**
When Dean wakes him up, he just cries.
And that would be fine if it were panicked crying or confused crying or my chest fucking hurts crying, but it's not. Sam's just sad, just fucking upset.
He's crying just has hard as he slept, and Christ, has he been doing this every night without Dean here to calm him down?
Not that Dean's doing a very good job of it, holy shit, has anyone ever cried this hard?
They're these wracking, breathless sobs Dean can feel coming from the kid's stomach. They're miserable and desperate like they're going to fucking do something, and Sam cries into his sleeves and his scarf and won't look up.
And Dean wants to say what he fucking always says after Sam has a nightmare--talk to me, buddy--and listen to Sam tell him about Jess or about Dean not breathing or about Dad or Meg or the bastards who locked him in the cage Oh God but this is Hell and Dean talks a big game but he doesn't know how to hear it, and the problem is that Sam can't talk because Sam can't breathe.
And, honestly? It feels like an extension of the torture.
It feels like Lucifer stole Sam's voice.
"You've got to breathe, babykid."
**
He's bad the next day, lying on the couch with a wheeze that makes Castiel glance at him every few minutes.
"We know," Dean says. "We're working on it."
Sam looks up and asks for water with his eyes.
Dean fills him a glass and Sam looks surprised that Dean knew he wanted it.
What the fuck, Sam, how does that surprise you (how are there any surprises left, you've lived for a hundred years).
**
The word John always used for Sammy (besides babykid) was protect.
Take care of Sam, yeah, look after Sam, obviously, teach Sam watch Sam mend Sam tend Sam love Sam, those were all implied. But protect was the one John always used, and it's pretty funny because that was the one Dean might not have done, because, seriously, look at this zillion foot tall kid, smiling studying arguing twisting up Dean's hand, you're going to tell him that this kid really needs, really wants someone standing over him with their arms out in case anything comes at him, wheeze or no wheeze?
Except Sam does want that. He always has, because Sam likes to be the opposite of logical about these fucking things. Where anyone else would be combative, Sam is accepting. Fucking requesting. When other people would hide stuff, he'll tell you about it excruciating detail. Where other people--yeah, okay, other people is Dean, all right?--would be offended, Sam just fucking loves you.
And now he's been through the proverbial (it's a metaphor, how the fuck else are you supposed to talk about Hell) ringer, two things have changed.
Sam always wanted to be protected. But now he needs it.
And Dean has no idea how to do it.
**
"We should get you in to see a doctor." He pulls back on Sam's shoulder with one hand and presses the heel off his other behind Sam's left lung, because he can tell by the way Sam's sitting that that one's feeling tighter. “Pulmonlogist, allergist, someone.”
Sam breathes on cue but shakes his head a little.
"I know. We're still recovering from the hospital thing. But this would be on our terms. We pay, we tell him what tests he's allowed to run, we tell him no fucking blood, we get some new meds for you, we get out."
Sam tucks his head into Dean's neck and doesn't say anything.
"We have steroids," Dean says, softly. "I think some left over. But they make you so fucking angry." Sam's shaking his head really hard. "Yeah, you don't want that." He traces up and down Sam's spine. Fucking skinny kid. Eating was hard enough when he wasn't having this much trouble getting air in.
"Your fucking chest," Dean says. "We've got to calm you down."
**
Neb treatments all day leave Sam jittery and upset, but he's breathing better so Dean's going to call this one a win. He crashes on Sam's bed next to him and lets Sam play with the hem of Dean's shirt and bury his face in the collar.
"I've only been here for a few minutes," Sam says, because yeah, did Dean mention that Sam's fucking wired? He stopped making sense hours ago.
Still, Dean says, "Oh yeah?" like Sam's commenting on the weather or some shit. God, he's exhausted.
"How many hands were there? Do you remember?"
"A lot, I think."
"Yeah." Sam pauses. "There's an unsolved case. Feet in shoes keep washing up on the beach. I thought it was a skinwalker."
"What? Why?" God, Dean really needs to stop trying to latch onto any truth in Sam's rambling. Skinwalker was just a fucking word that occurred to the kid. It doesn't mean anything. Probably none of this does. When Sam's musing on a particular topic, when he drifts off and starts saying weird shit when they're talking about dinner or whether Sam's feeling up to a grocery run, it can be easy to suss out what the fuck's going on behind the words, but they're just lying here and Sam's just fucking talking and the fact of the matter is that it probably means fucking nothing and even if it doesn't, Dean's not going to figure it out.
Jesus, Dean, cry more, poor baby. Sam needs you.
Sam's still talking. "They wash up on the shore, no bodies, feet and shoes. It's not because anyone cuts the feet off. It's because the ankles are weak and the feet detach and float away."
Dean's suddenly hot and cold like he has a fever.
(the ankles are weak, Dean, pull from the feet, there's a good boy, see how they snap right off, like kid's clothes, snap snap snap like when you used to dress your Sammy, did you undress him, Dean? Here comes another one, sweet potato, I'll teach you something new for this one. But remember, one quick tug on each foot--)
"Did they do that to you?" Dean says, softly.
"There's a bridge where dogs kill themselves," Sam says, and he pushes his face into Dean's side and whispers that there isn't any skin left on the insides of his thighs.
"Come back," Dean says, his voice shaking all over the place, Jesus Christ. "Sam come back we've got to talk about this for real Sam please."
"Hellhounds died all the time," Sam says, and Dean was too fucking late because his goddamn lungs are already locking down. "They crawled onto my lap and made me wheeze and licked me and died on my lap died all over me they always died in my arms he said it was my fault so I had to be a dog now" and then he's coughing down to his feet (down to his poor fucking goddamn feet).
Dean holds them in his hands and kisses Sam's forehead and whispers, "Sleep, Sammy, go to sleep, get better," because he has no other ideas.
How can he protect Sam? It's over. It happened.
Sam starts to fall asleep, but a few minutes later he's whimpering, hands clasped over his ears and eyes squeezed shut, so, okay, this is a bad night.
Dean draws the curtains and pours a glass of water and sits on the bed next to him, doesn't touch. They tried a white noise machine for a little while but it made Sam cry, so now Dean just has to close his eyes and pray for silence.
Tonight the world protects Sam and he sleeps soundly until morning.
**
Still doing shitty the next morning. He coughs so hard while making tea that Dean eventually forces him into a chair, two hands on two shoulders. He folds up with his face in the sleeves of his sweatshirt and mumbles that breathing should not be this hard, thanks.
Dean scratches the back of his head as he walks by. "Want me to call someone?"
Sam looks up, eyebrow up.
"I don't know. There've got to be doctors who do house calls. Or a home nurse or something? Not for some long-term thing, don't look at me like that. I'm not talking fucking hospice care, moron."
Sam gives him a smile.
"We tell them you're too allergic to penicillin to go to a hospital, that you'll fucking die if you touch something. Whatever. I don't know. We'll make something up, get someone here."
Sam talks, finally, so fucking hoarse. "They can't do anything you can't."
"Hey, maybe they've come with radical new asthma treatments in the past year and a half. It's not like I was really keeping track. I couldn't even hear a kid cough without turning on the waterworks."
Sam pulls out the chair next to him.
Dean sits and palms the kid's back. "I don't know, Simba. But we can't keep this up. The whole point of jumping in was that Lucifer would stop fucking chokeholding your lungs, and here you are so stressed out from Hell that you can't breathe. This is such shit."
Sam, affectionate little bastard that he is, leans his head against Dean's arm. "Wasn't the whole point."
"Yeah, saving the world, whatever. You're really lucid today."
Sam nods a little.
"Superhero." He goes to rescue the tea kettle. "You think you could eat something?"
Another nod. Fucking superhero.
He opens the cabinet. "Oatmeal?"
"Yeah."
But Dean makes it and Sam can only get a few spoonfuls in between coughs, and fuck, this is such a problem. This is such a fucking problem.
Sam tries to say something and collapses into another fit of coughing, and yeah, this is definitely a problem.
**
They play Hangman on the couch. Honestly, Dean's just checking to see if letters are easier for Sam yet (he can read okay, but he's been having trouble getting his hand to fucking write the damn words and it's stressful for him) and it hasn't. The person Sam draws on the noose looks misshapen and tortured, and Sam cocks his head at it and frowns a little.
"You'll get there," Dean says, while Sam crosses out "L" and Dean crosses off 'writing' as a way Sam can talk about Hell.
**
It's that afternoon, when Sam's trembling his way through a nap and Dean's holding the kid's head on his lap and thinking I want in I want in that he remembers dream root.
**
Sam's hanging out outside (today he needs all the sunlight) when flaps in with a bag of it and his judgey face on, but that's sort of just how angels look.
But then he goes and says, "I don't know that this is a good idea, Dean," so, all right then.
"He needs help," Dean says. "He needs to show me what's in his head and he can't."
"Have him draw a picture," Cas says, playing with the refrigerator magnets. It's always weird shit that interests Cas. (Aaaand pause for a minute to talk about the fact that they have fucking refrigerator magnets? They're just free ones from realtors and shit that they get in the mail addressed to Resident that are there to hold up recipes and medication schedules and the long list of things that Sam can't and won't eat right now, but still, settling down happened so fucking fast, God, Dean needs a job.)
"His hands are shaky and shapes aren't coming out well."
"You know what I mean."
"Honestly I fucking don't. He can't communicate with me right now, and you know Sam. He has to talk. This is..." He sits down at the table. "This is the kind of shit that happened, you know? When he was a kid and he wanted to sit down and fucking discuss stuff and Dad and I told him to shut up. He'd get these fucking asthma attacks and we honestly thought he was doing it just to be a brat, and then some witch took our hearing or we pulled out his tonsils or whatever the fuck and he'd just get anxious and nervous and upset. This kid has to talk."
Cas pauses. "And you think dream Sam will talk."
"I think dream Sam will show."
**
A little brother asleep on his chest, a piece of his girly damn hair, some ginger, some honey, a nice pinch of dream root.
Aaaand drink.
**
Dean opens his eyes to pitch black.
Pitch fucking black.
It's the darkest place he's ever been. It's darker than the insides of his fucking eyelids. He gives his eyes time to adjust but there's nothing to fucking adjust to. It's just black.
He calls out for Sam and he hears nothing.
He doesn't hear his own voice.
So he wraps one arm around himself and doesn't feel his own body. Doesn't feel his own hand. Is he even touching himself? Did he miss? Does he have a fucking body? He can't see. Jesus fuck. This smells like nothing. The air tastes like nothing.
He tries to walk but he can't, there's something in his way, maybe he's hitting walls he can't see feel Jesus what the fuck. He can't stand up all the way. He just stops. He can't spread his arms.
He can't breathe.
No, he can. He can breathe. He's just panicking.
But it's so still.
It's so fucking still.
There's nothing.
There's no light and no touch and no sound.
There's no pain.
There's no little brother breathing.
**
Sensory deprivation is torture after fifteen minutes. Dean read that a little while ago.
So he estimates it's been fifteen minutes (but how does he fucking know when he starts seeing things, at first moving flashes of light, nothing real, but then ghostly faces, too big, stretched, distorted, his brother, his father, Cas. He hears sounds that aren't Sam and that aren't his name, so they're not important they're not real this isn't real/
He doesn't hallucinate touch.
He doesn't hallucinate that he can move.
He can't move.
**
It's a dream, okay? He fucking knows it, and he knows that eventually he'll wake up and it'll be over and he'll be back in real life okay okay okay this isn't the real thing this is just a dream it's fine he can handle this. This is fine.
But then there's a raw, breathless scream from far, far away.
And this is not fine.
He yells Sam's name but he's still not making any noise, it's just this scream, and he thrashes and he gets blocked but it doesn't hurt, nothing hurts, hurt is a feeling, sound is a feeling, Sam is not a fucking feeling he has to get to Sam has to reach him they're hurting him.
And it goes on and on. Sam screams, gasps, cries, coughs, and Dean balls up and puts his arms around his head and begs for the flashing colors to go away because he doesn't know what's real (he doesn't know if the scream is real. He doesn't know if his brother is real. Sam is a feeling. Sam is a metaphor.)
**
He wakes up to so much fucking light, Jesus Christ, bird calls like sirens, a little brother tucked under his chin with hair that's soft and scratchy and sticky breathing that claws at Dean's skull and big arms that are going to fucking crush him that he needs to cling to that he wants forever that need to get the hell of him. Sam. God. Sam. It was just a dream.
Sam had the same dream. Okay. He needs to take care of Sam. Protect Sam.
"G'morning big brother." Sam rests on Dean's collarbone and rolls over and goes back to sleep, shoulders rising and falling. Calmly.
Fuck.
That wasn't a nightmare.
**
Sam wakes up for real a few hours later and plods out of his room looking shaken and miserable, so yeah, Dean, way to dive into the wrong dream.
"Nightmare?" Dean says.
Sam nods heavily. "Just at the end there." He coughs into his elbow and frowns at the coffee can at Dean's feet. "What are you doing?"
"Making ice cream. You never did this in school?"
Sam shrugs, then saves up enough breath to say, "They did it with nuts so I had to sit outside."
"Wow, assholes. This is just vanilla."
Sam's still all puzzled. "Why are you making ice cream?"
"Because...you never get ice cream, and maybe you deserve some, okay?"
Sam sits down across from him and helps him kick the can around, and then they have ice cream for breakfast and Dean listens to Sam's swampy breathing.
**
Dean's only been up for three hours but he's so fucking exhausted, like everything's taken five times more out of him than he should. The smoke alarm upstairs decides it's time to get its battery changed, what the fuck ever, but Dean's up on a chair trying to make it stop fucking beeping because the noise is like nails in his head and Sammy's just sitting on the couch as far away from it as he can get, palms clasped over his ears.
So much fucking noises, it's too fucking much. Dean's shaking as he comes back downstairs, and Sam's all embarrassed, wiping his face off as fast as he can, and Jesus, Sam, don't.
"I'm sorry," Sam says. "So stupid."
"It's not stupid. C'mere." He tugs Sam into a hug and rubs his back because he's doing the stuffy wheezing that always starts up when he cries, fucking fantastic.
"I wish we could go for a run," Sam says, all fucking breathless.
A run sounds fucking terrifying. All that spacenoiselightpeople.
He looks at Sam and his heaving chest and his poor broken head.
"Me too," he says, quietly.
**
Sam's on the couch with the cooking channel and a neb treatment and Dean makes coffee in the kitchen while Cas sits on the counter and watches them all mildly.
"That's probably where Lucifer kept him once his body was gone," Cas says, after Dean's finished relaying the dream, and wow, Cas, you're a fucking genius.
"That's not the real problem," Dean says. "He's getting past that. Look." He nods towards the kitchen. "The machine's loud, the medicine tastes strong, it's bright, he's dealing. And then he fucking loses it and cries in Enochian or in English that makes no fucking sense. We're talking broken fucking kid. We're talking a hundred and twenty years snuggled up to Lucifer versus six months on his own." Dean pours the coffee. "So I heard him screaming. In the dream. And I don't know if I was hallucinating from the dark or whatever, but...that's how he screamed when we were in the cage together. When they took him away."
"When they tortured him."
"Yeah."
"When they raped him."
"Yeah."
"When they made you watch."
Dean rubs his hand over his mouth. "Yeah. I should bring him coffee."
"It might have been you projecting," Cas says. "Hallucinating. What you were hearing was the thing that scared you the most. Hearing that happen to Sam."
"I think what I was hearing was what the nightmares are."
"Dean..."
"I have to get in there. I have to protect him."
"You're shaken from a regular dream. What will one of the nightmares do to you?"
"That's not important."
"Yes it is, Dean. Sam is counting on you to be sane. Sam needs that from you."
"Then Sam shouldn't have fucking died and had me have to go to Hell and..." Shit. These are not the words Dean means. Fuck. "I didn't..."
Cas crosses his arms.
"Would you want him in your nightmares, Dean?"
"Fuck off."
"Don't do this."
**
So Dean doesn't do it, and he sleeps in his own room and dreams about stripping his Sam of all safety and sanity and skin in a pitch black room.
He wakes up and the not-dream, the non-metaphorical, the complete reality of his little brother's breathless screaming makes his head ring like a bell.
He has to get in there.
**
"Everything comes up blue and brown," Sam says, sadly, while he's picking at his breakfast and trying to breathe.
Dean frowns and reaches across the table to rub his back.
"Twenty miles to go and still no cars."
"Okay, Sammy. It's okay. You want to go back to bed?"
"I don't even know where the wheels are." He drops his fork and pushes his hands into his eyes. "I think I hid them somewhere but I don't remember."
"Breathe, kiddo. Everything's fine."
"They scraped me with dull fingernails until they broke through." Sam's looking at him now, these eyes that say help me, God, God.
"Locked in a room to play with my food," Sam says quietly, rhythmically, though he's wheezing so hard it's difficult to tell. "All the king's horses and all the big men couldn't put Simba together again."
Dean brushes Sam's hair off his forehead and worries.
**
Sam's in his dark room with a washcloth folded over his eyes and the mouthpiece of the nebulizer shoved between his teeth, and Dean doesn't realize he's asleep until his hands twist in his blanket and he lets out this breathless muted cry.
Fuck you, Cas. Dean's going in.
**
He gets now why Sam talks about the colors. They're not just hallucinations in the black room, no, now they're everywhere, bouncing of the bars of the cage (the cage, the cage, fuck, Dean had forgotten that the bars weren't even Sam loves straight lines and God, it's colder and redder than he remembered, and the colors are rattling around, screaming in the back of his head, moving whenever he turns his head, where the fuck is Lucifer, where the fuck is Sam?
And then something invisible rips him in half.
He screams and grabs his body and tries to put it the fuck back together but there are hands in him, hands in side him, hands digging more holes in them and a mouth he feels but can't see sucking them dry. There's a sweaty hand over his mouth and something sharp at the base of his throat and his legs are pulled so hard the skin splits at the hip.
He stops screaming.
He can't scream anymore.
Screaming takes thought and screaming takes time and screaming takes air and there's none of that, there's something thrusting into him and breaking his ribs like twigs and there are dull fingernails raking the skin on the insides of his thighs and this was never supposed to happen to him again he made the deal he made the deal he got off the racks and Sammy got on and couldn't get off couldn't say no because he couldn't breathe.
**
He's awake.
Next to him, Sam is sitting up and crying, softly and steadily, pressing his hands into his face like he's drying to draw the tears back in and save them for later.
Dean can't imagine sitting up.
He can't imagine saving anything.
Oh, God.
He has to get out of bed. He has to take care of Sam. He has to do something.
Sam gets up shakily and goes to the bathroom, drinks a glass of water.
How the hell.
**
Dean stays where he is and grips at his arms and legs. Sam comes back to the room, pauses in the doorway, starts to say something, stops.
"You want me to give you a minute?" he says, eventually.
Dean pushes his face into Sam's pillow and nods.
"Okay. Be right back."
A minute later, the shower's running.
Dean sits up and drags both hands over his face. Fuck. His hands. His face. Okay. Everything's fine. He's in their little fucking house, in Sam's bed, safe. Safe.
Sam's in the shower, probably crying some of it out, not freaking out. This is fine. Safe.
And then theydiddthattomybabyforahundredandtwentyyears hits him in a wave and he's puking into Sam's pretty little trash can that they bought at that garage sale when Sam had a good day and tilted his head back in the sun and smiled.
**
Sam's back a few minutes later, mumbling, "Oh, Dean"s while he gets dressed and takes the trashcan to the bathroom and cups Dean's forehead in his hand. "Okay. You're all right. Are you sick?"
"Stop, Sam." He pushes his face into his knees.
There's a pause, then Sam's voice, sounding strange: "No. You need help, I--"
"Sam, knock it off!" Dean yells, and oh, God. He hasn't yelled at Sam since he's been back.
Oh, God.
It's forty-two (he counts them) seconds before he can convince himself to look up.
Sam is, of course, gone.
**
Want to hear something hilarious?
They've had this conversation before.
They've done this.
Dean throwing up after a nightmare, Sam trying to soothe him, Dean yelling at him to go away.
Ready for the punch line?
It was after Dean got back from Hell.
Hahahahahahaha.
**
It's half an hour before Dean can get out of bed and limp to the bathroom. He rinses out the trash can and throws up again and pounds back glasses of water.
He lanes against the door frame and leans into the hallway and calls, "Sam?"
Nothing.
"Sam, buddy. I'm sorry. Okay?"
"Sam?"
"Sammy?"
He pushes the heel of his hand into his forehead and breathes out. Shit.
"Sam, please, if you're just mad at me, make some noise or something, and I'll leave you alone. I need to know that you're not fucking freaked out or collapsed somewhere not breathing or...just make some noise or something, please?"
He squeezes his eyes shut and waits and waits and waits and fuuuuuuck.
**
Dean sweeps the house and checks the corners and behind the furniture and every time imagines seeing his little brother balled up with his arms around his head freaking out because his one tether just fucking snapped or wheezing his head off in the gross space behind the TV, but no, there's nothing, and that's so much fucking worse.
The car's still in the driveway, so Dean's trying very very hard not to freak out.
He searches every-fucking-where in the goddamn house and he goes outside and he's about to just fucking scream Sam's name when he sees him.
He's not balled up. He's not suffocating.
He's in the car, leaning over the dashboard with his head in his hands, crying his eyes out in the passenger seat.
He jumps when Dean opens the driver's side door.
God, he's gotten thin. And his breathing is, unsurprisingly, for shit.
For a second Dean just watches him, fucking takes the kid in, tries to find the right goddamn words.
"You want to go for a drive?"
Sam nods.
"All right. Let's do this."
The car's barely out of the driveway when the words are out of Dean's mouth, his gaze steady and straight ahead--"You know I love you so much, right?"
He turns enough to see Sammy looking up, eyes full of trust and tears and Hell and boy and everything, and nodding.
"Well. Good." He pauses. "Do you want to talk to me about Hell?"
Another nod, and Sam's small, broken voice. "I can't breathe, though."
"One word at a time. As long as it takes."
**
Sometimes when they were kids and Sam had an asthma attack in the car, Dean would let him sit in the front seat.
They'd pull over for real it got really bad, of course--open the door and let Sam hang his legs out of the car, rub rough hands up and down his back and encourage air into his lungs. But if it was just holding on, or if it had tapered out enough that he was just uncomfortable, not panicked, John would stop the car just long enough for Dean to nudge Sam into the passenger seat and retreat to the back.
Sam would rest, head against the window, hand on the gearshift, shoulder in John's palm.
It's louder up there. That was what he liked.
He couldn't hear himself breathe.
Dean, chin propped up on the front seat, could.
**
He keeps his grip on the kid's shoulder and runs his thumb over his collarbone while he tries to get the words out. It's not just the asthma that's making it hard, Dean gets that, but he also gets that it's easier for both of them to blame it all on that.
"They liked to divide me up," he says. "You get top of Sam today, I get bottom. Compare notes. For a while they liked bottom best because of my teeth. Then they pulled them out so it was fine."
Dean shuts up and swallows and listens.
But Sam is taking a break to get some air in. That's fine.
"They liked to talk," he says eventually. "Tell me I was pretty. Tell me they loved me. Kiss me. Hold their breath to tease me--look, we can breathe shitty too. They, um, they'd choke me and ask if it felt any different. Breathe smoke in my mouth. That all got kind of normal."
"You got used to that?" Dean says, gently.
"Yeah. I couldn't get used to the pain. I tried. I mean...you know that part. You think, okay, I know what's coming, so it won't be as bad."
"I know, yeah."
Sam pauses to breathe carefully, then says, "You know what's ridiculous?"
"Tell me."
"I used to worry about people touching my chest," he says, and then he's not crying and not laughing, just wheezing, just trying to breathe against the window.
**
"I lost track of time," Sam says. "You were...every day, put back together, ripped apart again? Like Prometheus?"
"Yeah."
"They didn't do that."
"How'd you get put back together?"
"They took care of me."
"What?"
"They'd kiss the tears, lick them clean, bandage me up, send me to go lie down and sleep. Obviously the shit they did to me wasn't going to clear up with a fucking band-aid, I mean, they'd do the same angel healing crap Cas does. But there was this fucking pretense of hospital care. It's small in there, but the had a little bed for me, and they'd tuck the covers under my chin and tell me to feel better, and then they'd leave me alone for a while."
"How long is a while?"
"I don't know." He hitches his feet up on the dashboard. "I guess it varied. I don't know. I was so fucking oxygen deprived, I should have been unconscious, I should have been fucking dead, but I slept when they said sleep and stayed awake when they were pushing their teeth into my skin and that was just the rhythm of it. Uneven and unpredictable and...uncountable."
"What was sleeping like?"
"It was fantastic." He closes his eyes. "It was great. I'd dream that I was all alone in the dark and I couldn't feel any pain and no one could hurt me and the screaming finally stopped. No sick voices and no mean eyes and no blood and no breathing. Just me and the dark and nothing to disturb me."
Dean swallows. And swallows. And swallows.
"I used to tell them about that," Sam says.
"What?"
Sam frowns and clarifies. "I used to tell Michael and Lucifer that."
"Why the fuck would you tell them anything?"
"God, Dean."
"What the fuck are you--"
"Dean, you had souls coming and going and yeah, Alistair breathing down your neck, but you had traffic. You had demons laughing and people getting tortured next to you and people...God, man, I had Michael and Lucifer and just Michael and Lucifer for a hundred and twenty fucking years. If you were hoping to get out of this talk without hearing that yeah, sometimes they held me and I cried into their necks and told them how much it hurt and they rubbed my back and sang me lullabies and promised no one would ever hurt me again, if you were hoping not to hear that I would believe them because I had nothing left, if you were hoping that I didn't s-sometimes love--"
"Stop."
"No. You don't get to tell me to stop."
It's so quick and harsh that it shocks Dean's mouth shut.
"They were all I had," Sam says. "And I didn't get for it to be simple. I got rape and torture and peeled skin and broken promises and hands on my back when I couldn't sleep and hands on my chest to help my lungs expand or to crush them back down, and I never fucking knew which one, and what was I supposed to do, give up? I couldn't give up. There was fucking nothing to give up. I wasn't clinging to anything. There was nothing. I didn't get simplicity or options or...I got two angry dads who punished me when their favorite little body got tugged away by locking me down in the dream I used to tell them about when they cradled me and soothed me and stroked my hair. It...God, it must have been fucking months that they'd do that. They'd put down the knives for fucking months and just care for me, or one of them would shield me from the other. And...and sometimes I'd try to fight back and sometimes they'd take the weapons away gently and say No, Sammy, no, c'mere and make me talk about why I was upset and sometimes they'd hold me down and make me pay and..."
"Sammy."
"And they'd spend these...Idon'tknowhowlong, these long, long, long stretches of time breaking me down, telling me they never loved me and neither did you or Dad or Jess. They'd bring back conversations we had and act them out, the two of them, and show me how everything you said was really twisted up, really you saying you wished I would just die already."
"No."
"I know, Dean, Jesus, do I look stupid? He...They'd break my fingers and burn through my skin with their palms. They'd fuck with me and give me hives and close my throat up and promise me I would die this time. They'd rip new holes in me just to fuck me in new and exciting ways, I don't even fucking...Jesus." He stops and pinches the bridge of his nose. "Jesus fuck."
"Simba."
He keeps driving. He keeps driving.
Sam nods a little. "I know. I'm here."
"Baby."
Sam swallows. "They made me presents out of wire and stone and showed me how to play with then and then tell me I'd been bad and burn them against my skin until they were destroyed and welded against me. They got me hellhounds to play with and I named them and held them and was so fucking allergic and they killed them every time but next time we won't, Sammy, next time, we promise."
"Why did you believe them?" and yeah, Dean's begging, Dean's not being the calm little shrink anymore, okay?
"Because there was always a next time," Sam says. "There was always going to be a next time."
**
Sam's really not breathing well after all of that, surprise surprise, so it's time to go home. They sit on the porch and count breaths together.
Sam is underweight and breathless and still looks like Sam.
How the hell, Sam.
How the hell.
"Did it help?" Dean says. "Talking about it?"
Sam nods, head down, then says, "I was hoping it would help me breathe."
"No luck?"
"No luck."
"You want to cry some?"
Sam shrugs. "I cry a lot."
"Um...you want more ice cream?"
Sam laughs. "No, I'm okay. Maybe I'll just sit a while."
"You want me to..." Dean starts, and Sam shrugs a little, in that way that means yeah, he wants to be alone. "Okay."
Sam looks up at him as he stands up. "Love you."
He drums his fingers on Sam's shoulder. "Caribou."
"They never used that."
"I figured."
"I still like I love you."
"Yeah?"
"I like hearing it." He pauses. "I like believing it."
"Believe me, Sammy."
"I do. You know I do."
"Come in if you get cold. I might be out back."
"Smoking all the cigarettes?"
"Every last one in the fucking world."
"Can hardly blame you."
"You keep breathing like that, I might as well let you have one."
Sam laughs. "I'm hanging on."
"I know you are. Love you, kiddo."
"You're my favorite," Sam says.
It's just a routine. Say it. "I know."
Sam smiles and says, "Fuck off."
**
Dean crushes his pack of cigarettes into the ground without opening it and cries with his forehead against the siding.
He can still hear Sam, coughing and wheezing like he has lungs full of smoke.
He can still hear Sam screaming in his nightmare.
(He can still hear the happy five year old with Dean's shirt in his fist cheering when he wrote SAM all on his own.)
**
By the time he gets his shit together and goes back inside, Sam's started dinner. The stove is on and he hums quietly while he chops up a carrot.
"You don't smell like smoke," Sam says, mildly, without looking up.
"Yeah, shut it."
Sam grins.
"What are we having?"
"Fuck if I know. Something with carrots, apparently. I had something in mind but I forgot."
"Poor crazy thing."
"Seriously."
So they fake some kind of stir-fry thing and eat together and for a little while everything is okay. They're quiet, but it's a comfortable quiet, broken intermittently by questions about the food or some kind of dirty joke. Sam finds excuses to reach across the table and touch him a little, which is fine.
Everything is fine, for a little while.
"I'm incredibly proud of you," Dean says, while he washes dishes and Sam dries. "You know that, right?"
"You better be. I saved the whole damn world."
"I was there, if I recall..."
Sam smiles.
"Sam, do you ever..."
"I'm sure I do. I ever everything."
"Get mad that Cas pulled me out and not you?"
Sam doesn't say anything for a minute, and when he does, it's just a soft, "Do you?"
"Are you kidding? Have you met me? I tried to beat the shit out of him. I tried on multiple occasions to beat the shit out of him."
Sam shrugs a little. "He loves you most. It's about time someone does."
"You do."
"Nah."
"It's not okay with me that he picked me."
"You'd done your time in Hell." Sam tosses a napkin into the trash can. "It's okay."
"Don't say it's okay."
"All right, it's incredibly not okay, but it makes sense."
"You feel safe around Cas, though, right?"
Sam doesn't say anything.
"Sammy."
"I will," Sam says. "I'll get there."
**
So Dean thinks they're okay, Dean thinks that's their biggest problem, except he wakes up to Sam screaming in the next room and God, Sam, no and he takes the rest of the tea like a shot.
**
It's the cage again. It's hideous, worse than before, full of all the details that were fresh in Sam's mind, Sam Sam Sam I'm so sorry.
Dean arches his back and struggles and rough thumbs brush away his tears and no, he has to find Sam.
He's here to pull Sam out.
He gets it.
He tugs away from the hands and crawls along the hot bars of the cage. He knows he's being allowed to do it. He knows he hasn't escaped anything.
That's not how this works.
This is so much bigger than Dean, and Sam did this, this just happened, and Dean didn't-Dean can not--protect him.
It's inside Sam.
It just is.
But he just wants to find Sam, okay?
**
And Jesus, there he is. He's alone, bleeding from so many places, huddled in the corner of the cage with his knees up and his arms tucked into his chest to protect his wrists. He's shaking and looking away from Dean, and he starts when Dean puts his hand on his knee.
"D-Dean?"
"Hey, you."
"Wh-what are you..."
"You're dreaming. This is just a dream." He shouldn't have said just.
Sam looks around and seems to be considering it. "You're a dream?"
"This is all a dream." He nudges Sam over and he obeys and makes room, and Dean sits close and presses his shoulder against Sam's. "You're going to wake up to a warm house. Safe. Just ours. We'll make pancakes. I'm going to give you asthma meds and help you breathe--breathe, Sammy, you got this--and then later we'll go to the library if you're feeling up to it and we can pick some new stuff out for me to read to you when the words shake around too much. We can sit outside and count stars when it gets dark. We can count them in threes, Sammy."
Sam huddles down and tucks his head underneath Dean's arm.
"But we can stay here for now," Dean says. "I can help you. Come here, Sam." He wraps his arms around him as tightly as he can. "We'll sit here together."
And he holds him until the monsters come and drag his baby away.
He listens to his baby brother scream and thinks about things that you know for sure.
He knows that Sam is hurting.
He knows that Sam is never going to be okay.
He knows that Sam is safe in his room right now.
He knows Sam survived.
**
He wakes up to Sam sitting cross-legged at the foot of his bed.
Smiling at him through red-rimmed eyes.
Breathing.