Nightmares
Title: Nightmares
Summary: Written for the Sneezy Sammy comment fic meme. Sam's memories of hell are bringing out some of Dean's issues.
Warnings/Spoilers: R for language, Spoilers through S5
Author's Note: Aftermath-verse
Update: ottermusprime blew me away with this amazing rendering of the scene in which Sam's asthma acts up. You need to see it.
There are things Dean hasn’t thought about in years, because he hasn’t had to, because he’s forced them down so deep they’re almost imaginary, because he doesn’t want to remember.
It’s gotten easier with time, which is one of the greatest blessings of his life (second only to Sam, who smiles and Dean doesn’t even believe in hell anymore, Sam’s kind of magic like that). The problem is that when Sam’s breaking - he’s breaking all the damn time, lately - it’s as if Dean never left the pit. Sam wakes him up in the night screaming and screaming and Dean shoots upright and sits there shaking and trying not to listen. Trying to tune Sammy out.
So yeah, he’s officially the worst brother ever.
Dean’s first days back aboveground were probably the worst of his life. His body was new and he got an infection and ran a childishly-high fever and wasn’t sure, in the delirium, that he was really back at all. And Sam sat with him the entire time, didn’t move from his side, held him and whispered that he was safe and whole and all the terrible things were behind him, that he was strong and brave and I love you, Dean, thank you for coming back.
Sam is a month back, and the nightmares are just starting, and all Dean can do is sit here worthlessly and try not to panic.
***
Sometimes, when things got repetitive, or when they got angry at each other, or for no reason at all, Michael and Lucifer would leave Sam alone for awhile.
“Alone” is something different down there. So is “awhile.”
It got so he couldn’t remember being known by anyone and longed for the return of the angels just so someone would say his name, longed for the pain of Michael’s petty tortures just to feel hands touching him. Loneliness invaded him like a cancer and spread until he lay shaking, miles from life and existence and someone who used to pull him out of nightmares with both hands and rest him against strong, broad shoulders until he recovered his breath.
He would curl up and wrap his arms around himself for comfort, but the void was inside him, sucking him in.
These stretches were interminable and suffocating and Sam could feel his mind splintering and couldn’t do anything to stop it or hold himself together (DeanDeanDean), and then he woke up in a motel room one day and only a single year had gone by.
***
He doesn’t come to breakfast.
Dean finds him upstairs in bed, awake but unmoving, huddled around a pillow. “Did you get anysleep?”
Sam shrugs a little.
“Bad last night?”
Sam nods. He’s so fucking honest about everything that’s happening to him. Dean drilled into him early that you don’t keep health shit to yourself, not when you’re a little kid with asthma, you tell people what’s going on with you or it gets bad.
Dean’s job is to make sure it doesn’t get bad.
But fuck, he doesn’t want to start comparing war stories, all right? He wants to hug Sam better and make him breakfast, work on the car, watch the game, maybe try to figure out how to live without hunting. He doesn’t want to sit here and listen to the horrors that kept Sam up all night, because even though he suspects Sam’s hell was different from his, hell is hell and Dean does not want to go there.
Sam crawls up into his arms like a little kid and presses his face into Dean’s neck, so okay, Dean can still do something. He hold’s Sam’s shoulders and rubs his back and says, “god, kid, you grew up into a fucking superhero, you know that?”
“No.”
“Giant fucking superhero.”
Sam shakes his head and mumbles, “I’m kryptonite.”
***
He wakes to that familiar sound that isn’t a scream but might be worse, that sickening moan that means something horrible is happening in his brother’s head, and there’s not even a question, he’s out of bed and running.
Dean’s sitting up in bed, wide-eyed staring at his hands, and doesn’t look up when Sam comes in and sits beside him, doesn’t react to Sam’s arm around his back. “You with me?” Sam asks quietly.
Dean moans again, a low sound that rises in pitch and trails off inconclusively, that’s hollow and desperate and pleading.
“Come on back, Dean.” Sam rubs his upper arms a little. “We’re safe, okay? We’re right here. We’re home.”
Dean’s next moan turns into a gasp halfway through and his body tenses up so fast Sam thinks he’ll start cramping, so he rubs Dean’s arms and murmurs “herehereherehereDean,” and Dean breathes deeply, extricates himself from Sam’s arms, and gets up and walks over to the bathroom so calmly and Sam hears him throwing up.
***
“I’m sorry I’m not fucking better at this.”
Sam looks up from his newspaper. “At what, the Times Crossword? They’re hard, dude.”
“Not the fucking crossword, Sam, put that down for a minute, would you?”
Sam does, and by the set of his jaw he already knows where this conversation is headed, he’s already thought about it, and he’s angry. Dean deflates a little.
“All right,” Sam says, guardedly. “So you’re sorry.”
“I know you’re having nightmares.”
“So are you,” Sam says.
“But you…I mean, you do things, Sammy, you always have, you try with me. I’m fucking up.”
Sam doesn’t answer.
“Sammy, what they did to you…”
“You don’t have any fucking idea what they did to me, all right?”
Dean feels like he’s been punched in the gut. “You told me…”
Sam slams the newspaper down on the table so hard dishes rattle. “I told you one rape storyone night. Stop fucking flinching. I fucking promise you experiencing it was worse than hearing about it. And I was down there a year, Dean. You don’t really think that’s all that happened.”
Dean’s throat is too dry to talk. He reaches out for Sam reflexively, as if his hand is acting independently of any conscious effort on his part, and Sam pulls away.
“You don’t ask me,” Sam says.
“Sammy, I…”
“No, I get it. Don’t. You want it to be over. But it just happened, Dean, it just fucking happened, okay? And I didn’t have your choices.”
Dean’s blood freezes. There’s only one choice Sam could be talking about, and it’s the thing they never, never fucking talk about.
Sam’s face changes almost as soon as the words are out of his mouth. The anger melts away and is replaced by guilt and horror, his hand goes to his mouth and he’s shaking and saying “Dean, oh fuck, Dean, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it, I’m sorry,” but he did mean it, he must have meant it, he’s always meant this, and Dean’s out the door.
***
Sam falls heavily into a chair, braces his elbows on the rough wood of the kitchen table and fists his hands in his hair at his temples. Fuck.
Dean has told him exactly once what happened to him in hell and what he was forced to do. And Sam gets it, shit, finding terrible things in yourself, yeah, he knows a little about that. But Dean needs to talk about it, and he won't talk about it, and bringing it up in an argument over breakfast is about the worst thing Sam could have fucking done.
He doesn't notice at first how ragged his breathing is getting. And then, very suddenly, he does.
It's hard to calm himself down from sudden emotion under normal circumstances, knowing it could become a matter of life or death at any moment. Right now, though, all he can think about is Dean and is he panicking, is he angry, how much did I hurt him, how fucking bad is is this and jesusgoddamnit come home PLEASE.
By the time it occurs to him to go look for his inhaler, he’s already getting dizzy.
***
Dean doesn’t go far. He never goes far. This thing that keeps him close to his brother is so fucking tangible and strong that leaving Sam is just not a consideration.
The truth is, he could just about handle the fact that he went dark in hell. It plagues him, of course it does, because what matters isn’t that (as Sam reminds him) anyone would have done it, what matters is blood on Dean’s hands, bones snapping, screams and wide eyes and pliant resilience of organs when they’re squeezed. These are the things that stay with you.
What he can’t handle, what he can’t even fucking think about, is that his little brother, little Sam to whom Dean has always been a hero, has been FUCK tortured like that for a fucking year, or a lifetime.
Dean will always wonder if someone like Sam, someone good and kind and brave, passed under his hands during that time, and if he carved into that person and ground them down like everyone else.
And then he goes home and Sam’s curled up against the kitchen table, wheezy as hell, and if isn’t one motherfucking thing it’s another, right?
***
“Dean, Dean,”
“Shhh.” Dean gives him another hit of the inhaler. “Take it easy, Sam, we’re good.”
“No…sorry…”
“I know.”
They’re going to be all right, Sam gets it, because Dean is rubbing his back and pressing his forehead into Sam’s so hard it might bruise, so Sam’s not trying to end the fight here. He’s just really fucking sorry.
“You’re breathing better,” Dean says. “Keep going, okay?”
Sam nods and forces air in and out, working for every damn molecule of it. He leans against Dean and tries to move with his brother, tries to synchronize their breathing, lets Dean set a healthy pace.
Dean holds him up and says, “I’ll do better,” and Sam nods because it doesn’t matter, he’s forgiven, it’s going to be okay.
***
Getting Sam into bed is a joint effort. Dean brings him a cup of tea and sits beside him. Sam sips from his mug in a companionable silence broken only by his decreasingly wheezy lungs for a while, and then he says, “you need to talk about it.”
“No I don’t, Sam, just take it easy. Breathe.”
“Yes you do. Sam’s agitated, his fingers clenching, eyes wide.
Dean folds his arms. “What am I supposed to say, Sammy? You know what happened. I don’t have anything to talk about.”
“Dean…you know I don’t blame you…”
“Yeah, and you know that’s not the point.”
“Anyone would have…
“I’m the one who did, Sam.”
Sam falls silent, presumably out of arguments, and then says, “you really don’t need to talk about it, Dean?”
No, Dean thinks, he does. But no to his wheezy mess of a brother who’s suffering flashbacks and god knows what else, who’s still putting himself back together.
He ruffles Sam’s hair. “I’m fine.”
***
Sam sleeps and dreams of a room that’s bare and cold, a room with high walls and no doors, where he lies curled up in a corner and forgets who he is, and he wakes up shaking and crying and whisperingSam Sam Sam to himself. He doesn’t call for Dean. Dean can’t help with this.
Going back to sleep isn’t really on the menu, though, so he gets up and goes outside and walks around the house a little, and eventually ends up not too deep in the woods, but deep enough that he’s going to have to keep it from Dean. Asthmatic kid alone in the woods at night is not going to do anything for Dean’s state of mind.
He sits on a log and leans forward, bracing himself against his knees.
“You’re out late.”
“Jesus, Cas.” The angel has a bad habit (of which Dean’s been trying to break him, without success) of showing up silently and out of their line of sight. “What are you doing?”
“Checking on you. Dean asked me to.”
“Dean knows I left?”
Cas shakes his head. “I mean, he asked me to check occasionally. See if you were doing okay.” He cocks his head to the side. “Are you?”
Sam laughs a little. “I don’t know what that means.”
Cas nods like this makes sense.
“You don’t come around much anymore,” Sam says.
“I’m around more than you think.” Sam glances at him, but Cas doesn’t elaborate.
“Dean’s not doing great.”
“No, he isn’t,” Cas agrees.
“But me you’re not sure about?”
“You’re harder to read.”
Well, that’s news to Sam. “How can I help him, Cas?”
“You’re asking me?”
“You’re his angel.”
If the possessive bothers Cas, he gives no sign. “You’re his brother, Sam. He hasn’t called for me since you’ve been back.”
Sam runs a hand through his hair. “He’s got so much guilt. I don’t know how to get through that. I don’t…I don’t understand why he can’t see how much nothing he did down there is his fault.”
“Sam,” Cas looks him in the eyes. “You know what it’s like to be used against your will.”
There are a number of things Cas could be referring to, and Sam does not fucking want to discuss any of them, okay?
“You’re shutting down.”
Tension creeps up Sam’s back like cold fingers.
“This,” Cas says gently, with compassion. “This is what Dean’s feeling.”
***
Dean’s alerted not by screams or sobs or even the sound of his brother’s surprisingly light footsteps on the floorboards, but by the subtle shift in Sam’s breathing as he comes awake. And seriously, how can he even hear Sam’s breathing from the next room? Maybe the absence of screams is what does it, but for whatever reason, tonight is the night he finds the will to be the brother he knows Sammy needs.
Sam’s sitting up in bed and looks up at him when he comes in. He’s pale and kind of defeated-looking, shaking a little even though it’s August, and he’s lost weight. He’s been back all of a month and he’s noticeably skinnier. All of which adds up to somebody dropped the ball on taking care of Sammy, and three guesses who that is.
“C’mon, Sam,” Dean says. “Let’s go for a ride.”
***
There’s something about being in the car that makes it easier. Dean’s distracted just a little bit (just enough) by the task of driving, so he’s not scrutinizing Sam in that way that makes it impossible to talk. Sam’s lulled by the steady rhythm of tires over asphalt, and things feel normal, like they used to, like something’s getting accomplished instead of just this painful holding pattern they’ve been in. It feels like it used to before he fell.
Dean drives way too fast and fiddles with the radio knobs and then snaps it off and says, “what did you dream about?”
“You know what.” He’s being difficult, and fuck, he doesn’t want to be, because Dean is really trying. He wants to tell Dean everything and hug and cry and start being okay. But faced with actually talking about it, the words are getting stuck on the way from his mind to his lips and he’s suddenly afraid.
“Was it…” Dean trails off, glances at him.
“What?”
“You know, the um…”
Sam knows. The thing Dean can’t name. The thing he has to think of as what they did. The thing Sam has to name, over and over, has to say out loud until the word isn’t a fucking knife in his gut anymore. “The rape.”
Dean’s foot is heavy on the gas. He doesn’t respond.
“No,” Sam says. “Not tonight.”
Dean breathes deeply like this is a relief, like as long as it wasn’t that, we’re okay, and Sam wants to cry or scream at him, don’t you understand they didn’t let me BREATHE?
He wonders to what degree Dean can even understand what not breathing feels like.
And then Dean’s pulling the car over and going “Hey, hey, hey” all urgently, and Sam realizes way too late that they’re about to get a crash course in that very subject.
***
Two hits with the inhaler calm Sam’s lungs down, because sometimes this is manageable. Sometimes a minor emergency stays minor.
Sam’s this giant floppy wreck, leaning on Dean’s shoulder and crying in a quiet, safe way that’s not going to trigger his asthma any further. Fuck asthma for not letting Sammy cry about hell. Shit.
“I got you,” Dean whispers.
Sam nods against him. “I was sick down there, Dean.”
“Fuck, Sammy, I know you were.” The fact that Sam’s body wasn’t torn apart and revived in hell the way his own was should be a good thing. Instead, it just means Sam had the same goddamn chest infection the whole time.
“I missed you,” Sam sniffles, fucking honest kid. “I wanted you. And then…”
“Then what, Sammy?”
“I couldn’t even think about you. Lucifer. He got in my head and turned it bad, every time. I couldn’t even remember you and…I couldn’t think about you.” He twists farther into Dean’s shoulder and sobs, hard, too hard, and Dean whispers “Hey, deep breaths” a little too panicky.
“My dreams twist all the time now,” Sam says, hiccuping. “Doesn’t matter that he’s not doing it anymore. He broke my brain.”
“Oh fuck, Sam, he didn’t.”
“Yes. I’m all messed up and my brain does this shit to me.” Sam shakes his head, palms tears away from his cheeks. “Every time I dream, my mind turns it upside down and fucks it up. I’m not remembering hell in my dreams, Dean, it just…”
“Sam.” don’t.
“…it never stopped.”
Dean hauls Sam into his arms and tries to wrap him up, shield him, protect him, but the monsters are inside his little brother’s mind now and nothing Dean can do will ever be enough.
***
He feels wrung out as they drive home, vulnerable in that quiet, safe way that only Dean has ever given him. Dean keeps a hand steady on his arms and Sam just feels it.
Michael and Lucifer, when they were getting along (which was worse than when they were fighting, because their focus was on Sam and they wouldn’t let him breathe) would banter, cruelly and pointedly, with clear knowledge of each other’s weak spots, and the rhythm of it was familiar to him. He didn’t realize why until he was a week topside and Dean was ribbing him about something at breakfast and he panicked and woke up on the floor with his brother kneeling beside him.
But they had never been like this, reassured and grounded by each other. Sam had fucking forgotten about this.
Dean looks over at him. “Thinking about me?”
“Yeah.”
“How’s that going?”
“You keep interrupting me.”
Dean smirks. “You prefer the company of mental-me?”
“He’s easier to get along with. I’m imagining you cleaning the spleen juice stain out of my bag.”
“Fuck off, Sam.”
That night he dreams of empty places and vengeful angels and wakes up shaking in his brother’s arms.
***
Sam’s a fucking hero with the asthma shit sometimes. He talks to Dean about these terrible, unpredictable things that his brain is doing to him every night and he wakes up scared and confused and verging on panic, but even in his sleep he resists the urge to cry. Even when he’s terrified, he controls his breath.
“You’re a goddamn champ,” Dean says to him. It’s their second time up in the middle of a particularly bad night, and Dean’s given up on his own room, he’s just staying with Sam until the sun’s up.
Sam hucks out a laugh. He’s drawing measured breaths, and he’s okay - Dean counts along with him - he’s not struggling, he’s just being cautious. He’s trying not to cry.
Dean would give anything to just tell him, go the fuck ahead, Sammy, you’re hurt, you can cry. But he can’t. “You’ve got this,” Dean says. “Jesus, you’re fucking brave. I’d be sobbing like a girl if it was me.”
Sam shakes his head. “No.”
“No?”
“You didn’t. Never.”
“I didn’t what?”
“Cry. Oh, shit.” Sam’s breath quickens, and Dean grabs the back of his neck and says “whoa, take it easy,” and after a minute feels Sam relax into his hand.
Sam’s right. He didn’t cry after hell. But actually, Dean can’t remember the last time he did cry. It’s hard to justify crying when your baby brother can’t do it or he might die.
But Sam’s always been a crier. He cried after fights with their dad, he cried when kids at school picked on him. On the night Dean told him monsters were real, he had one of the worst asthma attacks of his childhood, not in severity but in longevity. Dean was a panicky mess by the time John returned from wherever-the-fuck, and Sammy was curled up in bed for the fifth day straight, wheezing into a nebulizer Dean wasn’t completely sure he was setting up properly, tears still streaming down his face.
Sam’s impressing the fuck out of him right now, facing down the devil night after night while the monster that lives in his lungs stalks him and waits for the inevitable slip.
***
Sam breathes his way through another week of nightmares. They seem like they’re getting more frequent, and he’s exhausted and Dean’s pale and watching his breathing like a hawk (like a big brother).
They handle it. They watch TV and play cards. Sometimes Dean picks up books when he runs out for groceries and Sam reads. He starts looking up titles online and making lists so Dean can get the ones he wants. He thinks about going to the store himself. Maybe in a few days.
One night there’s a particularly bad nightmare (it is the rape this time, no he doesn’t want to talk about it) and Dean wraps his arms all the way around Sam’s body from behind and crosses his palms on Sam’s chest and breathes with him, expanding Sam’s lungs with the force of his own, compressing air out with his hands, and Sam leans on his shoulder and buries his face in Dean’s neck and lets his brother carry him through this one.
He falls asleep sitting up like that, still cradled against Dean like a little kid.
He doesn’t know how much time has gone by when he’s jolted awake again. This time he’s not the one screaming.
***
It’s just a dream, just a motherfucking nightmare, and Dean knows that, but he can’t wake up.
He fights to scream, but his body can’t remember how, his lungs aren’t expelling enough air, and this must be how Sammy feels all the goddamn time, panicky scared and helpless. Desperate.
Alistair’s face is looming in front of him, and Dean’s hands are doing things he doesn’t want to think about (the muscle memory is always there) and fuck, don’t make him look down, don’t make him see, but of course he’s going to look, because he has no control in this dream.
SAM!
His skin is stained plum-red from his arms up beyond his elbows.
He heaves and retches and knows he’s lying fucking perfectly still. He can practically feel Sammy beside him.
He looks down at the shape under his hands, and Sam’s eyes look back at him. This did not fucking happen.
But it’s too much, it overcomes his mind, he moans and is swept away.
***
Dean is wide-eyed, staring straight ahead. Sam pulls out of his embrace and turns, grabs his shoulders, shouts his name, and he doesn’t respond.
So Sam steels himself and slaps his brother across the face hard.
Dean comes back to himself with a gasp, and his eyes meet Sam’s, full of shock and horror, and there isn’t anything to say, there just fucking isn’t. He’s not okay, it wasn’t just a dream, Sam has no words of reassurance to offer.
“I fucking love you,” he whispers, pulling Dean close. Dean doesn’t even make a show of resisting, just melts into him. “I don’t care what happened. I love every goddamn thing about you, okay?”
Dean shivers and shakes his head a little.
“Jesus, Dean, do you even know how much you’re my hero?”
“Don’t.” Dean’s voice is raspy.
“I’ve wanted to be you my whole life. Ever since I could…could articulate the thought. I wanted to grow up to be just like my big brother.”
“Sammy, don’t.”
“You’re so brave,” Sam keeps his voice quiet, soothing. “I always knew the world was safe because everything I did, you went first and showed me the way.”
Dean breathes deeply, unevenly.
“Do you think,” Sam whispers, “do you think there’s fucking anything you could do that would change the way I feel about you? I love you.”
“Sam, they…hell…it’s to make you a demon. That’s what Alistair…that’s why…”
“Dean.” Fuck, Sam sees it now. “Dean, you’re not a demon.”
“I broke, Sammy.” He’s breaking now. Sam tightens his hold, determined to keep his brother together. “There’s demon in me.”
Sam curves around his brother so he can press his forehead against Dean’s and whispers, “I know, Dean.” And he sees the change in Dean’s face, the softening in his eyes, as Dean realizes that yes, Sam really does know, he’s not alone in this.
***
The realization that Sam’s been fighting this feeling all along leaves Dean weak and shaky.
After years of fighting and thinly concealed judgment, to realize that Sam has been making the exact same mistakes Dean himself made - giving into demons because it seems like the only way out. He could fucking cry. Except that his body is schooled to resist that temptation, so he presses his face into Sam’s shoulder and wishes he could disappear.
A moment later, he registers the beginning of a wheeze in Sam’s chest and realizes his brother is crying.
***
Castiel shows up about an hour later.
Sam’s plugged into a nebulizer, his stupid chest still heaving, exhausted from sobs that literally steal his breath. Why doesn't his body ever learn not to do this shit?
Because Dean can't cry. Sam has to do it for him.
Because they hurt his big brother so fucking badly.
Because they made him afraid.
Because fuck you, asthma, Sam's been to hell and he'll cry if he wants to. Suck on it.
“Are you all right?” Cas asks. Like he's curious. Not like he's alarmed.
Sam nods candidly. Cas has seen him worse than this. “Dean tell you to ask?”
“No.” Cas touches the nebulizer. “You’re not breathing well.”
“Be all right,” Sam says. He’s lightheaded from oxygen deprivation and raw from the night’s emotion, and it’s combining into this strangely cozy feeling. He has the odd urge to hug Castiel. “Dean…in the shower.”
As if summoned, Dean emerges from the bathroom, a towel wrapped around his waist. “Cas. You missed the excitement. Sammy here was getting all worked up about how much he loves me.”
Sam rolls his eyes and breathes carefully from his nebulizer. Dean loves it.
***
They have breakfast together. Castiel, Angel of Thursday turns out to be a huge fan of pigs in a blanket. He mows through them like Leiningen’s ants. Sam laughs wheezily at him ("deep breaths, kid") and eats three, and Dean notices (of fucking course he notices) but doesn’t mention aloud that it’s the first meat Sam’s eaten since he’s been back, and Dean took a year to start eating meat again, Sam is ridiculous.
Dean picks at his food and thinks about Sam strung out on demon blood insisting that he was doing the right thing, thinks about the moment he said yes to Alistair and dug his first knife into flesh and understood what he was becoming. He thinks about dealing for Death’s ring and bargaining for Sam’s life at the crossroads. He thinks about Cas seeing enough beauty in humanity to declare war on heaven.
He thinks about shades of grey.
***
Castiel stands in the corner of Dean’s room, silent and unseen, as he has every night for the past month.
Tonight Sam and Dean fall asleep three feet apart, facing each other, as they have all their lives.
They sleep peacefully through the night.
Summary: Written for the Sneezy Sammy comment fic meme. Sam's memories of hell are bringing out some of Dean's issues.
Warnings/Spoilers: R for language, Spoilers through S5
Author's Note: Aftermath-verse
Update: ottermusprime blew me away with this amazing rendering of the scene in which Sam's asthma acts up. You need to see it.
There are things Dean hasn’t thought about in years, because he hasn’t had to, because he’s forced them down so deep they’re almost imaginary, because he doesn’t want to remember.
It’s gotten easier with time, which is one of the greatest blessings of his life (second only to Sam, who smiles and Dean doesn’t even believe in hell anymore, Sam’s kind of magic like that). The problem is that when Sam’s breaking - he’s breaking all the damn time, lately - it’s as if Dean never left the pit. Sam wakes him up in the night screaming and screaming and Dean shoots upright and sits there shaking and trying not to listen. Trying to tune Sammy out.
So yeah, he’s officially the worst brother ever.
Dean’s first days back aboveground were probably the worst of his life. His body was new and he got an infection and ran a childishly-high fever and wasn’t sure, in the delirium, that he was really back at all. And Sam sat with him the entire time, didn’t move from his side, held him and whispered that he was safe and whole and all the terrible things were behind him, that he was strong and brave and I love you, Dean, thank you for coming back.
Sam is a month back, and the nightmares are just starting, and all Dean can do is sit here worthlessly and try not to panic.
***
Sometimes, when things got repetitive, or when they got angry at each other, or for no reason at all, Michael and Lucifer would leave Sam alone for awhile.
“Alone” is something different down there. So is “awhile.”
It got so he couldn’t remember being known by anyone and longed for the return of the angels just so someone would say his name, longed for the pain of Michael’s petty tortures just to feel hands touching him. Loneliness invaded him like a cancer and spread until he lay shaking, miles from life and existence and someone who used to pull him out of nightmares with both hands and rest him against strong, broad shoulders until he recovered his breath.
He would curl up and wrap his arms around himself for comfort, but the void was inside him, sucking him in.
These stretches were interminable and suffocating and Sam could feel his mind splintering and couldn’t do anything to stop it or hold himself together (DeanDeanDean), and then he woke up in a motel room one day and only a single year had gone by.
***
He doesn’t come to breakfast.
Dean finds him upstairs in bed, awake but unmoving, huddled around a pillow. “Did you get anysleep?”
Sam shrugs a little.
“Bad last night?”
Sam nods. He’s so fucking honest about everything that’s happening to him. Dean drilled into him early that you don’t keep health shit to yourself, not when you’re a little kid with asthma, you tell people what’s going on with you or it gets bad.
Dean’s job is to make sure it doesn’t get bad.
But fuck, he doesn’t want to start comparing war stories, all right? He wants to hug Sam better and make him breakfast, work on the car, watch the game, maybe try to figure out how to live without hunting. He doesn’t want to sit here and listen to the horrors that kept Sam up all night, because even though he suspects Sam’s hell was different from his, hell is hell and Dean does not want to go there.
Sam crawls up into his arms like a little kid and presses his face into Dean’s neck, so okay, Dean can still do something. He hold’s Sam’s shoulders and rubs his back and says, “god, kid, you grew up into a fucking superhero, you know that?”
“No.”
“Giant fucking superhero.”
Sam shakes his head and mumbles, “I’m kryptonite.”
***
He wakes to that familiar sound that isn’t a scream but might be worse, that sickening moan that means something horrible is happening in his brother’s head, and there’s not even a question, he’s out of bed and running.
Dean’s sitting up in bed, wide-eyed staring at his hands, and doesn’t look up when Sam comes in and sits beside him, doesn’t react to Sam’s arm around his back. “You with me?” Sam asks quietly.
Dean moans again, a low sound that rises in pitch and trails off inconclusively, that’s hollow and desperate and pleading.
“Come on back, Dean.” Sam rubs his upper arms a little. “We’re safe, okay? We’re right here. We’re home.”
Dean’s next moan turns into a gasp halfway through and his body tenses up so fast Sam thinks he’ll start cramping, so he rubs Dean’s arms and murmurs “herehereherehereDean,” and Dean breathes deeply, extricates himself from Sam’s arms, and gets up and walks over to the bathroom so calmly and Sam hears him throwing up.
***
“I’m sorry I’m not fucking better at this.”
Sam looks up from his newspaper. “At what, the Times Crossword? They’re hard, dude.”
“Not the fucking crossword, Sam, put that down for a minute, would you?”
Sam does, and by the set of his jaw he already knows where this conversation is headed, he’s already thought about it, and he’s angry. Dean deflates a little.
“All right,” Sam says, guardedly. “So you’re sorry.”
“I know you’re having nightmares.”
“So are you,” Sam says.
“But you…I mean, you do things, Sammy, you always have, you try with me. I’m fucking up.”
Sam doesn’t answer.
“Sammy, what they did to you…”
“You don’t have any fucking idea what they did to me, all right?”
Dean feels like he’s been punched in the gut. “You told me…”
Sam slams the newspaper down on the table so hard dishes rattle. “I told you one rape storyone night. Stop fucking flinching. I fucking promise you experiencing it was worse than hearing about it. And I was down there a year, Dean. You don’t really think that’s all that happened.”
Dean’s throat is too dry to talk. He reaches out for Sam reflexively, as if his hand is acting independently of any conscious effort on his part, and Sam pulls away.
“You don’t ask me,” Sam says.
“Sammy, I…”
“No, I get it. Don’t. You want it to be over. But it just happened, Dean, it just fucking happened, okay? And I didn’t have your choices.”
Dean’s blood freezes. There’s only one choice Sam could be talking about, and it’s the thing they never, never fucking talk about.
Sam’s face changes almost as soon as the words are out of his mouth. The anger melts away and is replaced by guilt and horror, his hand goes to his mouth and he’s shaking and saying “Dean, oh fuck, Dean, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it, I’m sorry,” but he did mean it, he must have meant it, he’s always meant this, and Dean’s out the door.
***
Sam falls heavily into a chair, braces his elbows on the rough wood of the kitchen table and fists his hands in his hair at his temples. Fuck.
Dean has told him exactly once what happened to him in hell and what he was forced to do. And Sam gets it, shit, finding terrible things in yourself, yeah, he knows a little about that. But Dean needs to talk about it, and he won't talk about it, and bringing it up in an argument over breakfast is about the worst thing Sam could have fucking done.
He doesn't notice at first how ragged his breathing is getting. And then, very suddenly, he does.
It's hard to calm himself down from sudden emotion under normal circumstances, knowing it could become a matter of life or death at any moment. Right now, though, all he can think about is Dean and is he panicking, is he angry, how much did I hurt him, how fucking bad is is this and jesusgoddamnit come home PLEASE.
By the time it occurs to him to go look for his inhaler, he’s already getting dizzy.
***
Dean doesn’t go far. He never goes far. This thing that keeps him close to his brother is so fucking tangible and strong that leaving Sam is just not a consideration.
The truth is, he could just about handle the fact that he went dark in hell. It plagues him, of course it does, because what matters isn’t that (as Sam reminds him) anyone would have done it, what matters is blood on Dean’s hands, bones snapping, screams and wide eyes and pliant resilience of organs when they’re squeezed. These are the things that stay with you.
What he can’t handle, what he can’t even fucking think about, is that his little brother, little Sam to whom Dean has always been a hero, has been FUCK tortured like that for a fucking year, or a lifetime.
Dean will always wonder if someone like Sam, someone good and kind and brave, passed under his hands during that time, and if he carved into that person and ground them down like everyone else.
And then he goes home and Sam’s curled up against the kitchen table, wheezy as hell, and if isn’t one motherfucking thing it’s another, right?
***
“Dean, Dean,”
“Shhh.” Dean gives him another hit of the inhaler. “Take it easy, Sam, we’re good.”
“No…sorry…”
“I know.”
They’re going to be all right, Sam gets it, because Dean is rubbing his back and pressing his forehead into Sam’s so hard it might bruise, so Sam’s not trying to end the fight here. He’s just really fucking sorry.
“You’re breathing better,” Dean says. “Keep going, okay?”
Sam nods and forces air in and out, working for every damn molecule of it. He leans against Dean and tries to move with his brother, tries to synchronize their breathing, lets Dean set a healthy pace.
Dean holds him up and says, “I’ll do better,” and Sam nods because it doesn’t matter, he’s forgiven, it’s going to be okay.
***
Getting Sam into bed is a joint effort. Dean brings him a cup of tea and sits beside him. Sam sips from his mug in a companionable silence broken only by his decreasingly wheezy lungs for a while, and then he says, “you need to talk about it.”
“No I don’t, Sam, just take it easy. Breathe.”
“Yes you do. Sam’s agitated, his fingers clenching, eyes wide.
Dean folds his arms. “What am I supposed to say, Sammy? You know what happened. I don’t have anything to talk about.”
“Dean…you know I don’t blame you…”
“Yeah, and you know that’s not the point.”
“Anyone would have…
“I’m the one who did, Sam.”
Sam falls silent, presumably out of arguments, and then says, “you really don’t need to talk about it, Dean?”
No, Dean thinks, he does. But no to his wheezy mess of a brother who’s suffering flashbacks and god knows what else, who’s still putting himself back together.
He ruffles Sam’s hair. “I’m fine.”
***
Sam sleeps and dreams of a room that’s bare and cold, a room with high walls and no doors, where he lies curled up in a corner and forgets who he is, and he wakes up shaking and crying and whisperingSam Sam Sam to himself. He doesn’t call for Dean. Dean can’t help with this.
Going back to sleep isn’t really on the menu, though, so he gets up and goes outside and walks around the house a little, and eventually ends up not too deep in the woods, but deep enough that he’s going to have to keep it from Dean. Asthmatic kid alone in the woods at night is not going to do anything for Dean’s state of mind.
He sits on a log and leans forward, bracing himself against his knees.
“You’re out late.”
“Jesus, Cas.” The angel has a bad habit (of which Dean’s been trying to break him, without success) of showing up silently and out of their line of sight. “What are you doing?”
“Checking on you. Dean asked me to.”
“Dean knows I left?”
Cas shakes his head. “I mean, he asked me to check occasionally. See if you were doing okay.” He cocks his head to the side. “Are you?”
Sam laughs a little. “I don’t know what that means.”
Cas nods like this makes sense.
“You don’t come around much anymore,” Sam says.
“I’m around more than you think.” Sam glances at him, but Cas doesn’t elaborate.
“Dean’s not doing great.”
“No, he isn’t,” Cas agrees.
“But me you’re not sure about?”
“You’re harder to read.”
Well, that’s news to Sam. “How can I help him, Cas?”
“You’re asking me?”
“You’re his angel.”
If the possessive bothers Cas, he gives no sign. “You’re his brother, Sam. He hasn’t called for me since you’ve been back.”
Sam runs a hand through his hair. “He’s got so much guilt. I don’t know how to get through that. I don’t…I don’t understand why he can’t see how much nothing he did down there is his fault.”
“Sam,” Cas looks him in the eyes. “You know what it’s like to be used against your will.”
There are a number of things Cas could be referring to, and Sam does not fucking want to discuss any of them, okay?
“You’re shutting down.”
Tension creeps up Sam’s back like cold fingers.
“This,” Cas says gently, with compassion. “This is what Dean’s feeling.”
***
Dean’s alerted not by screams or sobs or even the sound of his brother’s surprisingly light footsteps on the floorboards, but by the subtle shift in Sam’s breathing as he comes awake. And seriously, how can he even hear Sam’s breathing from the next room? Maybe the absence of screams is what does it, but for whatever reason, tonight is the night he finds the will to be the brother he knows Sammy needs.
Sam’s sitting up in bed and looks up at him when he comes in. He’s pale and kind of defeated-looking, shaking a little even though it’s August, and he’s lost weight. He’s been back all of a month and he’s noticeably skinnier. All of which adds up to somebody dropped the ball on taking care of Sammy, and three guesses who that is.
“C’mon, Sam,” Dean says. “Let’s go for a ride.”
***
There’s something about being in the car that makes it easier. Dean’s distracted just a little bit (just enough) by the task of driving, so he’s not scrutinizing Sam in that way that makes it impossible to talk. Sam’s lulled by the steady rhythm of tires over asphalt, and things feel normal, like they used to, like something’s getting accomplished instead of just this painful holding pattern they’ve been in. It feels like it used to before he fell.
Dean drives way too fast and fiddles with the radio knobs and then snaps it off and says, “what did you dream about?”
“You know what.” He’s being difficult, and fuck, he doesn’t want to be, because Dean is really trying. He wants to tell Dean everything and hug and cry and start being okay. But faced with actually talking about it, the words are getting stuck on the way from his mind to his lips and he’s suddenly afraid.
“Was it…” Dean trails off, glances at him.
“What?”
“You know, the um…”
Sam knows. The thing Dean can’t name. The thing he has to think of as what they did. The thing Sam has to name, over and over, has to say out loud until the word isn’t a fucking knife in his gut anymore. “The rape.”
Dean’s foot is heavy on the gas. He doesn’t respond.
“No,” Sam says. “Not tonight.”
Dean breathes deeply like this is a relief, like as long as it wasn’t that, we’re okay, and Sam wants to cry or scream at him, don’t you understand they didn’t let me BREATHE?
He wonders to what degree Dean can even understand what not breathing feels like.
And then Dean’s pulling the car over and going “Hey, hey, hey” all urgently, and Sam realizes way too late that they’re about to get a crash course in that very subject.
***
Two hits with the inhaler calm Sam’s lungs down, because sometimes this is manageable. Sometimes a minor emergency stays minor.
Sam’s this giant floppy wreck, leaning on Dean’s shoulder and crying in a quiet, safe way that’s not going to trigger his asthma any further. Fuck asthma for not letting Sammy cry about hell. Shit.
“I got you,” Dean whispers.
Sam nods against him. “I was sick down there, Dean.”
“Fuck, Sammy, I know you were.” The fact that Sam’s body wasn’t torn apart and revived in hell the way his own was should be a good thing. Instead, it just means Sam had the same goddamn chest infection the whole time.
“I missed you,” Sam sniffles, fucking honest kid. “I wanted you. And then…”
“Then what, Sammy?”
“I couldn’t even think about you. Lucifer. He got in my head and turned it bad, every time. I couldn’t even remember you and…I couldn’t think about you.” He twists farther into Dean’s shoulder and sobs, hard, too hard, and Dean whispers “Hey, deep breaths” a little too panicky.
“My dreams twist all the time now,” Sam says, hiccuping. “Doesn’t matter that he’s not doing it anymore. He broke my brain.”
“Oh fuck, Sam, he didn’t.”
“Yes. I’m all messed up and my brain does this shit to me.” Sam shakes his head, palms tears away from his cheeks. “Every time I dream, my mind turns it upside down and fucks it up. I’m not remembering hell in my dreams, Dean, it just…”
“Sam.” don’t.
“…it never stopped.”
Dean hauls Sam into his arms and tries to wrap him up, shield him, protect him, but the monsters are inside his little brother’s mind now and nothing Dean can do will ever be enough.
***
He feels wrung out as they drive home, vulnerable in that quiet, safe way that only Dean has ever given him. Dean keeps a hand steady on his arms and Sam just feels it.
Michael and Lucifer, when they were getting along (which was worse than when they were fighting, because their focus was on Sam and they wouldn’t let him breathe) would banter, cruelly and pointedly, with clear knowledge of each other’s weak spots, and the rhythm of it was familiar to him. He didn’t realize why until he was a week topside and Dean was ribbing him about something at breakfast and he panicked and woke up on the floor with his brother kneeling beside him.
But they had never been like this, reassured and grounded by each other. Sam had fucking forgotten about this.
Dean looks over at him. “Thinking about me?”
“Yeah.”
“How’s that going?”
“You keep interrupting me.”
Dean smirks. “You prefer the company of mental-me?”
“He’s easier to get along with. I’m imagining you cleaning the spleen juice stain out of my bag.”
“Fuck off, Sam.”
That night he dreams of empty places and vengeful angels and wakes up shaking in his brother’s arms.
***
Sam’s a fucking hero with the asthma shit sometimes. He talks to Dean about these terrible, unpredictable things that his brain is doing to him every night and he wakes up scared and confused and verging on panic, but even in his sleep he resists the urge to cry. Even when he’s terrified, he controls his breath.
“You’re a goddamn champ,” Dean says to him. It’s their second time up in the middle of a particularly bad night, and Dean’s given up on his own room, he’s just staying with Sam until the sun’s up.
Sam hucks out a laugh. He’s drawing measured breaths, and he’s okay - Dean counts along with him - he’s not struggling, he’s just being cautious. He’s trying not to cry.
Dean would give anything to just tell him, go the fuck ahead, Sammy, you’re hurt, you can cry. But he can’t. “You’ve got this,” Dean says. “Jesus, you’re fucking brave. I’d be sobbing like a girl if it was me.”
Sam shakes his head. “No.”
“No?”
“You didn’t. Never.”
“I didn’t what?”
“Cry. Oh, shit.” Sam’s breath quickens, and Dean grabs the back of his neck and says “whoa, take it easy,” and after a minute feels Sam relax into his hand.
Sam’s right. He didn’t cry after hell. But actually, Dean can’t remember the last time he did cry. It’s hard to justify crying when your baby brother can’t do it or he might die.
But Sam’s always been a crier. He cried after fights with their dad, he cried when kids at school picked on him. On the night Dean told him monsters were real, he had one of the worst asthma attacks of his childhood, not in severity but in longevity. Dean was a panicky mess by the time John returned from wherever-the-fuck, and Sammy was curled up in bed for the fifth day straight, wheezing into a nebulizer Dean wasn’t completely sure he was setting up properly, tears still streaming down his face.
Sam’s impressing the fuck out of him right now, facing down the devil night after night while the monster that lives in his lungs stalks him and waits for the inevitable slip.
***
Sam breathes his way through another week of nightmares. They seem like they’re getting more frequent, and he’s exhausted and Dean’s pale and watching his breathing like a hawk (like a big brother).
They handle it. They watch TV and play cards. Sometimes Dean picks up books when he runs out for groceries and Sam reads. He starts looking up titles online and making lists so Dean can get the ones he wants. He thinks about going to the store himself. Maybe in a few days.
One night there’s a particularly bad nightmare (it is the rape this time, no he doesn’t want to talk about it) and Dean wraps his arms all the way around Sam’s body from behind and crosses his palms on Sam’s chest and breathes with him, expanding Sam’s lungs with the force of his own, compressing air out with his hands, and Sam leans on his shoulder and buries his face in Dean’s neck and lets his brother carry him through this one.
He falls asleep sitting up like that, still cradled against Dean like a little kid.
He doesn’t know how much time has gone by when he’s jolted awake again. This time he’s not the one screaming.
***
It’s just a dream, just a motherfucking nightmare, and Dean knows that, but he can’t wake up.
He fights to scream, but his body can’t remember how, his lungs aren’t expelling enough air, and this must be how Sammy feels all the goddamn time, panicky scared and helpless. Desperate.
Alistair’s face is looming in front of him, and Dean’s hands are doing things he doesn’t want to think about (the muscle memory is always there) and fuck, don’t make him look down, don’t make him see, but of course he’s going to look, because he has no control in this dream.
SAM!
His skin is stained plum-red from his arms up beyond his elbows.
He heaves and retches and knows he’s lying fucking perfectly still. He can practically feel Sammy beside him.
He looks down at the shape under his hands, and Sam’s eyes look back at him. This did not fucking happen.
But it’s too much, it overcomes his mind, he moans and is swept away.
***
Dean is wide-eyed, staring straight ahead. Sam pulls out of his embrace and turns, grabs his shoulders, shouts his name, and he doesn’t respond.
So Sam steels himself and slaps his brother across the face hard.
Dean comes back to himself with a gasp, and his eyes meet Sam’s, full of shock and horror, and there isn’t anything to say, there just fucking isn’t. He’s not okay, it wasn’t just a dream, Sam has no words of reassurance to offer.
“I fucking love you,” he whispers, pulling Dean close. Dean doesn’t even make a show of resisting, just melts into him. “I don’t care what happened. I love every goddamn thing about you, okay?”
Dean shivers and shakes his head a little.
“Jesus, Dean, do you even know how much you’re my hero?”
“Don’t.” Dean’s voice is raspy.
“I’ve wanted to be you my whole life. Ever since I could…could articulate the thought. I wanted to grow up to be just like my big brother.”
“Sammy, don’t.”
“You’re so brave,” Sam keeps his voice quiet, soothing. “I always knew the world was safe because everything I did, you went first and showed me the way.”
Dean breathes deeply, unevenly.
“Do you think,” Sam whispers, “do you think there’s fucking anything you could do that would change the way I feel about you? I love you.”
“Sam, they…hell…it’s to make you a demon. That’s what Alistair…that’s why…”
“Dean.” Fuck, Sam sees it now. “Dean, you’re not a demon.”
“I broke, Sammy.” He’s breaking now. Sam tightens his hold, determined to keep his brother together. “There’s demon in me.”
Sam curves around his brother so he can press his forehead against Dean’s and whispers, “I know, Dean.” And he sees the change in Dean’s face, the softening in his eyes, as Dean realizes that yes, Sam really does know, he’s not alone in this.
***
The realization that Sam’s been fighting this feeling all along leaves Dean weak and shaky.
After years of fighting and thinly concealed judgment, to realize that Sam has been making the exact same mistakes Dean himself made - giving into demons because it seems like the only way out. He could fucking cry. Except that his body is schooled to resist that temptation, so he presses his face into Sam’s shoulder and wishes he could disappear.
A moment later, he registers the beginning of a wheeze in Sam’s chest and realizes his brother is crying.
***
Castiel shows up about an hour later.
Sam’s plugged into a nebulizer, his stupid chest still heaving, exhausted from sobs that literally steal his breath. Why doesn't his body ever learn not to do this shit?
Because Dean can't cry. Sam has to do it for him.
Because they hurt his big brother so fucking badly.
Because they made him afraid.
Because fuck you, asthma, Sam's been to hell and he'll cry if he wants to. Suck on it.
“Are you all right?” Cas asks. Like he's curious. Not like he's alarmed.
Sam nods candidly. Cas has seen him worse than this. “Dean tell you to ask?”
“No.” Cas touches the nebulizer. “You’re not breathing well.”
“Be all right,” Sam says. He’s lightheaded from oxygen deprivation and raw from the night’s emotion, and it’s combining into this strangely cozy feeling. He has the odd urge to hug Castiel. “Dean…in the shower.”
As if summoned, Dean emerges from the bathroom, a towel wrapped around his waist. “Cas. You missed the excitement. Sammy here was getting all worked up about how much he loves me.”
Sam rolls his eyes and breathes carefully from his nebulizer. Dean loves it.
***
They have breakfast together. Castiel, Angel of Thursday turns out to be a huge fan of pigs in a blanket. He mows through them like Leiningen’s ants. Sam laughs wheezily at him ("deep breaths, kid") and eats three, and Dean notices (of fucking course he notices) but doesn’t mention aloud that it’s the first meat Sam’s eaten since he’s been back, and Dean took a year to start eating meat again, Sam is ridiculous.
Dean picks at his food and thinks about Sam strung out on demon blood insisting that he was doing the right thing, thinks about the moment he said yes to Alistair and dug his first knife into flesh and understood what he was becoming. He thinks about dealing for Death’s ring and bargaining for Sam’s life at the crossroads. He thinks about Cas seeing enough beauty in humanity to declare war on heaven.
He thinks about shades of grey.
***
Castiel stands in the corner of Dean’s room, silent and unseen, as he has every night for the past month.
Tonight Sam and Dean fall asleep three feet apart, facing each other, as they have all their lives.
They sleep peacefully through the night.