Lost
Title: Lost
Author familybizness
Summary: Sam has bad allergies and they're triggering his hell issues. Castiel is having feelings for the first time and they're giving him heaven issues. They're learning to live. It's very early Sam/Cas. Dean's here too. He has problems of his own.
Word Count: 5247
Rating: R
Warnings/Spoilers: non-explicit sex scene, Hell is scary, Dean drinks too much.
They don’t like him to have humans. He gets too attached. This has always been true, and it’s always been known.
“Going native,” Lucifer used to say, and he’d laugh, and Castiel would laugh because he wanted his brother to be happy with him, and also because of course he wasn’t going native, he wasn’t so weak, and please just assign him someone. Humans are Castiel’s favorite assignment.
In all of his existence, he’s had only a handful. A man in Lebanon. A child in Africa. A girl in Rome.
Three people, three humans, and they took him off the roster.
And then Jimmy Novak.
And now, Dean Winchester.
Dean, immutable Dean.
Castiel loved him before he even liked him, when he was frustrating and furious and kicking things over to watch them fall; he loved Dean’s knotty soul and broken heart. He crawled into Castiel and dug his fingers in. He is the biggest, brightest thing in a beautiful, beautiful world.
At least, he always used to be.
Castiel was never supposed to look twice at Sam.
Sometimes, lying with his arms around him, Castiel thinks he really only looked once and then never looked away.
He liked Sam immediately. Sam is likable. He laughs at jokes and smiles at his brother and pours the liquor down the sink after Dean falls asleep. He’s so fragile now, a thousand pieces of Sam arranged in a Sam-like shape, but he lets Castiel hold him sometimes and Castiel feels like his chest is collapsing.
It’s awful.
He’s fighting off illness now - pneumonia, Dean says through a yawn as he drinks his third straight cup of coffee and gets ready for work. Pneumonia is this bright hot thing that burns Sam from inside. Castiel waits for Sam to shatter with it, but he never does. He fights for air and loses, and Castiel hovers a hand over his chest and doesn’t touch him there because Dean said not to and because one time he did it anyway and Sam screamed and screamed but was too sick to make any noise.
Lucifer would find it funny that Castiel can’t do anything, that he’s reduced to this.
When it comes to Sam Winchester, he might as well be human.
Sam gives a wheezy, shuddery breath in his arms, hot on his neck, and Castiel feels everything in him knot together and pull so tight.
***
“Fucking pneumonia,” Dean growls.
Castiel puts more coffee in front of him. Dean loves coffee and drinks it with two hands wrapped around the mug. It’s good to have something you love this much, Castiel reasons, something other than whiskey. Whiskey makes Sam cry. Castiel doesn’t understand why, but he understands Sam crying. It makes him radiate inside himself until he tucks his hands into his sleeves for fear of accidentally smiting.
This isn’t a rational fear. Smiting isn’t an accident. But Castiel isn’t as rational as he once was.
Dean drinks his coffee like an act of aggression and shows Castiel the medicine again. He’s showed him every morning since Sam got sick, but Castiel pretends it’s new anyway. The light blue capsule, once when he wakes up and once with dinner. Water each time. Sam is not required to eat with the pill, but he is required to try to eat lunch in the middle of the day. Lunch must come from the boxes labeled “S” in the refrigerator. Castiel has not asked about the consequences of getting this wrong. He can guess. Neither of them wants to talk about it anyway.
Dean leaves for work. Castiel understands why he does this. When the fever is high Sam gets anxious and verbal and asks about money, whether he too should get a job. No, Castiel tells him, toying with his hair because he’s allowed to touch that. No, no, no. Dean will work. Dean will get the money. Sam is burning with fever and should rest.
The trouble is that so far it’s not working. Not the rest and not the medicine. Dean has complained about “Bronchitis” and “it’s in his throat and ears, shit” and “fucking hell, is this the fucking flu now?” and Sam has coughed and shivered and cried his way through all of them.
Now it’s pneumonia. Bronchopneumonia, Dean said once and then never again, and Castiel ached to touch him, but Dean doesn’t want hugs. Dean wants whiskey.
Sometimes it is still very hard to like Dean.
But Castiel loves him.
“You need different medicine,” Castiel suggested, once, weeks ago before he understood how agonizing this illness would get for all of them.
“Fuck off, Cas.” Dean broke the capsule into a cup of tea.
“It’s not working, Dean.”
“Yeah, well, he’s allergic to everything else.”
Allergic is still a poorly defined term. Sam is allergic to dust and consequently should avoid getting underneath the bed, but this seems to be a struggle for him to judge by the number of times Castiel has followed the sound of his asthmatic whistle to find him there. When he reports these incidents to Dean, Dean shrugs and looks sad and doesn’t say anything.
Sam is also allergic to nuts, and no nuts may come inside the house. Dean reads the nutritional information on every package of food to make sure it doesn’t somehow contain nuts. Castiel made the mistake once of bringing home a chocolate bar - it had a picture of a kitten on the wrapper, and he thought that might make Sam smile - and Dean grabbed it away and threw it into the yard. “Jesus, Cas.”
“There aren’t any nuts in it.”
“You don’t know what else they make in the same factory. It probably took a fucking bath in nuts.”
Castiel pictures the bathtub full of nuts and frowns.
“Just fuck off.” Dean gets tired of the constant struggle sometimes and sends Castiel away. He can do that. Castiel serves him.
But on that day, listening to Sam cough and wheeze, feeling the spike of his fever from a room away, Castiel didn’t want to go. “Dean…”
“I said fuck off.”
Castiel fucked off to the garden outside where Sam grows strawberries and tomatoes and onions. The ground was cold and the garden was untended. Things were starting to die.
Carefully, Castiel dug up each plant, replanted it in a pot or a tray, and put everything in the shed with Dean’s tools
Now he sits in his usual chair and waits for Sam to wake up. He’s allowed to wake Sam for medicine, but he doesn’t like to. The sight of Sam asleep is tremulous and soft and makes his wings flutter under the skin of his back.
He feels himself breathing too fast. Strange.
His heart is too high in his chest and his wings won’t be still, and he moves his shoulders around to try to help them relax. He closes his eyes and lays a hand across Sam’s forehead. This is allowed. This is nearly required. It’s not sensible that it should make him so nervous.
But Castiel isn’t as sensible as he once was.
The fever’s low, but Castiel keeps his hand on Sam anyway and listens to the broken, noisy sound of his breathing.
***
“Why are you shaking?” he asks Dean that night. “Are you sick?”
Dean clutches his evening coffee and snorts. “I don’t get sick.”
Conventional wisdom suggests this probably isn’t true, but then, Castiel can’t think of any evidence to present. Sam, meanwhile, doesn’t so much get sick as he exists in a perpetual state of sick. Saying that Sam is sick is like saying that Sam is alive. Of course he is. Why bring that up?
Dean does it anyway, sitting in the living room with one hand on his coffee and the other on his brother. “Pretty sick, Sammy.”
Sam nods in agreement and says, “uhhh.”
Castiel steps back, deferring to Dean. “His fever’s 102.6,” he offers.
“Thanks, Cas.”
“He likes it when you rub his cheek with three fingers.”
“I know, Cas.”
“The pink blanket is his favorite.” Sam’s hand tightens around it a little
“I know, Cas.” Dean rubs the palm of his hand over his face. “You can go home, you know? We’ll be okay.”
“Oh. All right.”
He can’t quite explain, even to himself, why he hasn’t been back to heaven lately. Being away this long makes him feel detached and confused, untethered. Maybe he’s growing too attached to that feeling.
Maybe he’s growing too attached to the Winchesters.
For whatever reason, when he senses Dean’s losing patience with him and wants him out of the house, he finds other places to go. The beach is a human place. He walks by the water’s edge and wades in a bit, watches their dramas play out and wonders if they have secrets he can’t begin to guess at.
Often, he wonders what people think when they see Dean. Are they able to interpret the constant scowl as a sign of how tired and worried he is? What do they make of his disheveled hair, the constant shake of his hands, the way his eyes dart around?
No one could guess Sam. Sam is not guessable.
He closes his eyes.
Lucifer would be so cold right now, watching Castiel let all these humans in.
He feels things he can’t put names to. A churning need to fidget. A bubbling, progressive sort of energy that expands in his throat. A pleasant warmth that reminds him of Sam. He reaches out for Sam and feels breathless and shivering - is Dean keeping the pink blanket on him? - and weak and oh holy God PAIN -
His eyes fly open.
There is a thing clinging to Castiel’s leg.
His nerves try to explode out of his body and he kicks at the thing. It lets him go, but the pain spreads. Heal, he thinks. Heal.
It’s too unfamiliar. He doesn’t know where to begin. It’s pushing upwards through his skin and radiating into his blood, sharp and biting, too much…
He stumbles out of the water and falls to his knees on the sand. The pain is worse here. His head spins. What’s happening? Dean!
“Hey, bro, you okay? Shit, you need help?”
Castiel gasps.
“Do you live near here? Shit, he’s been stung. Can you make it home? Hey.”
“Home?”
“Can you get there?”
Castiel makes fists the way Dean taught him and breathes like Sam.
“Yes,” he says. “I can make it home.”
***
Sam is in the kitchen making tea, the salient point of which is that Sam is standing up and doing things, and for a minute that drives everything else out of Castiel’s mind.
Only for a minute, though.
“Oh, fuck.” Sam grabs him by the arms and propels him into a chair. “Cas, what happened? You gonna pass out?”
Castiel shakes his head over and over. “No. No. No.”
Sam hands him a glass of water. “It’s okay. Baby. Look at me. It’s fine. Let me see. Oh - shit.”
“Sam?”
“No, it’s okay.” Sam’s breathing hard, which has not historically been something that’s okay. “Jellyfish sting. I’m - I’m allergic. Hey, sit down!”
Castiel’s halfway to the door, each step shooting agony through his feet and legs, but he can’t be here. “You’re allergic. I should go.”
“No, Cas, God. Where are you going to go? Sit. I’ll just…I’ll call Dean.”
“Where is he?”
Sam is tight-lipped. “Out.”
“He left when…” Castiel hisses. “- when you were sick?”
“Fever broke twenty minutes ago. Guess he was bored of me.
“No, of course he wasn’t.” How could anyone be?
Sam fills a bucket with hot water. “Put your feet in here. I’ll call him.”
He’s back after only a minute, hands sheathed in rubber gloves and arms full of supplies. “He’s not answering, Cas, but I’ll take care of it.”
“No…”
“Yeah.”
There’s a wheeze he doesn’t like in Sam’s voice. “Is that asthma?”
“Allergies.”
Castiel tugs his foot out of Sam’s hand.
“No, hey.” Sam takes it back, gently. “Not you. Pollen. I’m all right, Cas. It won’t kill me.”
“Your eyes are red.”
Sam rubs shaving cream over the reddened stings on Castiel’s legs and feet. “That’s pollen.”
“Are you sure it’s not the jellyfish?” Everything in him is trembling.
“I’m sure. You’d know if it was.”
“How?”
“I’d be having trouble breathing.” Methodically, he scrapes away the shaving cream with his pancake spatula.
“You are having trouble, though.”
“More than this. I’d be…this is everyday. Nothing to be scared of. Drink Benadryl.” He takes a hearty swig from a medicine bottle and pours some into a cup for Castiel. “You’ll love it.”
Castiel drinks and does love it, but mostly for the dopey way Sam smiles when he’s being tucked into bed an hour later. Castiel, feet wrapped carefully in bandages, kisses him on the forehead the way he’s seen Dean do because Dean isn’t here to do it, but he lingers for several seconds for reasons that have nothing to do with Dean at all.
"Night, Angel," Sam murmurs as he falls asleep.
Castiel sits awake and feels the warmth that is Sam spread from his stomach all the way to his eyes.
***
“You’re getting tired,” Sam says the following afternoon. He’s sitting up in bed and rubbing at his eyes over and over, drinking compulsively from a glass of water Dean brought before leaving for the day. Castiel’s been thinking about replacing it with fresh water for a few hours now, but Sam doesn’t seem to want to let go of it. “You need to sleep,” he says.
“No.” It’s an absurd suggestion. He's an angel. In a hundred thousand years, Castiel has never slept.
“I can tell, Cas.”
“You’re wrong,” Castiel protests, feeling cornered. There’s no denying something’s wrong with his body, but not this. Sleep is too human, too vulnerable. This dizzy, sick feeling is coming from somewhere else.
“You should try lying down,” Sam says.
“I don’t have a bed.”
“Use mine.”
“No. You need that. You’re sick.”
“I’m not. This is allergies.”
“Maybe I have allergies.”
Sam laughs a little, hoarsely, unhappily. “You don’t have allergies.”
Castiel closes his eyes and feels what Sam’s feeling. It’s itchy and invasive and reminds him of the jellyfish, but it’s everywhere and he wants to peel his skin off and scrub his bones. He wants to pour water all over his insides, except there are probably allergens in the water, they’re everywhere, they’re crawling…
He opens his eyes. Sam’s rubbing both hands up and down his face.
“No,” he says quietly. “I suppose I don’t have allergies.”
“It’s just pollen trying to kill me. No need for histrionics.” Sam smiles a little.
“You said it couldn’t kill you, I thought.”
“No, it can’t. Just…trying. What are you doing?”
Castiel screws the mouthpiece onto Sam’s nebulizer. “You need this.”
Sam folds his arms across his chest. “You need sleep.”
“I don’t.”
“Lie down with me and I’ll do the neb.”
Lie down with him?
Sam slides in toward the wall. Castiel hesitates, then sits beside him. “Lie down,” Sam laughs, and tugs at the collar of his shirt until he’s horizontal.
The machine makes a low grinding sort of noise - it’s unpleasant, but it’s nothing new. Castiel reaches across their bodies to hand the mouthpiece to Sam, careful not to let his arm brush Sam’s chest. “Here. Sam? Here…”
Sam’s frozen, eyes squeezed shut, jaw clenched around the tip of his thumb. A bead of blood gathers and runs down the side of his hand.
“Hey. Sam. Hey!” Castiel turns off the nebulizer and frees Sam’s thumb from between his teeth, raises it to his own lips and carefully licks the blood away before Sam can see it and become agitated.
Sam blinks and blinks and breaks into low, awful sobs that steal Castiel’s breath.
This is normal, though, Sam panicking and crying about things that probably shouldn’t be scary. This is everyday.
Castiel wraps both arms around him - he’s allowed to do this - and tucks him under his chin. Dean shushes him when he cries, but Sam doesn’t like being told to be quiet, so Castiel kisses the top of his head and whispers his name instead. “Sam. Sam. Sam.”
Sam falls asleep in his arms.
Castiel lies awake and thinks about crawling things and Sam biting away at his skin and worries.
***
Dean pours cup after cup of coffee. He drinks them quickly and sucks on ice cubes to cool his tongue. Castiel watches, waiting for him to slow down, waiting for a sign that it’s time to speak.
It’s Dean who breaks the silence. “He’s all right now?”
“He’s asleep.” Which isn’t the same as all right. Castiel is not allowed to look in on Sam’s dreams when he hasn’t been invited - he made the mistake of trying this once and it twisted the dream into a nightmare faster than he could wake Sam up - but right now Sam’s head is too loud and hearing his dreams isn’t optional.
He feels tied down trapped crawled over cold invaded broken and usually Sam likes to be touched, usually it centers him, but today he wants nothing but that soft pink blanket on his skin. He doesn’t even realize that’s what he wants. His mind is kicking at all these things, get them off, he’s just screaming with it.
Castiel says, “being sick is scaring him.”
“He isn’t sick.” Dean takes a huge pull of his coffee.
Castiel frowns. “That’s a really stupid thing to say.”
Dean looks up at him, unfocused eyes. “It’s allergies, Cas.”
“All right, it’s allergies. What point are you making? I’m telling you he’s scared.” This is new, this vibrating, muscle-twanging thing, and he feels like he’s floating up somewhere outside his body. He tucks his hands inside his sleeves. Hurting Dean would be a terrible mistake.
“Allergies can’t hurt him.” Dean looks down at the table.
“So then why did he need to wear gloves to take care of my jellyfish sting?”
“You let him near a jellyfish sting?” A pulse of energy comes off of Dean.
“I didn’t let him. I’m not in charge of him.”
“Just because you never take any responsibility doesn’t mean you don’t have it.”
Hurting Dean would be a terrible mistake.
Dean drinks his coffee. “It’s different, Cas. It’s just hay fever. It’s just fucking with him.”
“Sam doesn’t enjoy being fucked with.”
“No shit.”
“This isn’t funny, Dean.”
“I’m not joking, Cas. There are fucked up things in Sam’s life. He has to hang out with an angel all day. Maybe that’s what’s scaring him.”
No.
Unacceptable.
His wings are straining at his back. He grips his hands into fists inside his sleeves and says, “is there whiskey in that, Dean?”
Terrible mistake.
Dean doesn’t answer, doesn’t look at him.
“You’re drunk again. God. You’ve been putting whiskey in your coffee.”
“Cas, back off.” Dean rubs at his eyes and looks like Sam. “You don’t know anything about it.”
“How can you keep doing this, Dean?”
“Fuck off, Cas.”
“How can you say I’m the one scaring him?”
“Just…go away.” He’s shaking, gripping the table so hard. It’s not permitted. Dean is to be protected from this. It breaks Castiel just to look at it.
But they shouldn’t be making him choose.
They should never have made him choose.
“You go away,” he says, and returns to wait beside Sam.
***
Sometimes when he’s sick (or rather, when he’s allergic, apparently it’s very important to use the correct terminology here) Sam sleeps on his stomach even though he’s not supposed to do that, even though it’s bad for his breathing, and Castiel puts a hand over the knotty scar tissue in the center of his back and thinks he might drown in the things he’s done to this boy.
When Sam’s awake, he’ll sometimes put a hand on Castiel’s cheek (his hand is warm and big and impossibly gentle) and say you saved me, you got me out, you don’t have anything to feel ashamed of, but they both know it’s far from being that simple.
The cage was two years and three months ago, but sometimes it feels like a heartbeat.
Getting there was impossible, fire and pain, and when he finally reached them and realized he could save only one - he knows this, logically - it took less than a second for his hand to close on Dean’s arm, for him to pull Dean close and lift him away, and he knows that second will haunt him for the rest of eternity. And this is why Castiel should never make choices.
Dean leaves, slamming the kitchen door behind him. Inconsiderate. Castiel frowns. That was an easy choice. Don’t slam the door. Don’t wake up your sick (allergic) brother when he’s finally getting some rest. He loves Dean. Dean should be nicer. These things should bring him into conflict with himself, but somehow they never do.
He looks at Sam, sleeping uneasily, face buried in his pillow and breathing so, so harshly.
How could he have failed to save him so many different times, so many different ways? How can he be sitting here failing both of them right now?
How could they ever have expected him to choose?
***
Sam sleeps through the evening and through the night, through Dean coming home and making no effort to be quiet as he pours the whiskey down the sink again. Castiel has seen Dean do this too many times to feel encouraged. He’ll buy more tomorrow. It doesn’t mean anything. He hears Dean’s footsteps in the hall, pausing outside the door to Sam’s room. He pretends he doesn’t.
He’s not choosing Sam over Dean. That’s not what this is.
In the morning, so early that the sky’s still washed-out pink and nothing feels real, Dean looks in on them. “How is he?”
“He’s resting.”
“Okay. But how is he?”
Castiel isn’t sure anymore where he’s allowed to touch Sam. Every inch of him is swollen, itchy, fucked up, dirty - these aren’t words Castiel would ever have applied to Sam. They’re coming from Sam himself. It’s becoming harder not to hear him.
To Dean, he says, “he’s vibrating.”
Dean looks at Sam for a minute like he’s expecting to actually see the vibration.
He reaches over, across Castiel, and cups the back of Sam’s neck. Sam sighs a little in his sleep. It’s allowed. Maybe that’s a safe place to touch, or maybe it’s just the familiarity of Dean’s hand - whatever it is, Sam relaxes into it.
Castiel leans his head against the wall. Dean just knew that. He will do this for the rest of eternity, and he will never be able to duplicate the instinct Dean has for it. He will never measure up. At the end of every day, he will choose Sam or Dean, but they will always choose each other.
“Get some sleep, okay?” Dean hands him a blanket. “You look dead.”
“I’m not dead.”
“I know you’re not, I’m saying you - just sleep, Cas. We need you on top of your game.”
You don’t need me. “I’ll try.”
Dean nods. “That’s fine. Just try.”
“Don’t drink,” Castiel answers. It’s not a directive, it’s a plea. Dean looks helplessly at his feet and nods understanding. It’s not capitulation, but it’s something.
Dean reaches out for a minute and grips Castiel’s shoulder and gives him something, some part of himself, and for a minute it’s very easy to see why this is the hand Sam wants when he feels lost and hopeless.
“I didn’t mean it,” he says. “Last night. Of course it’s not your fault he’s…he loves you, Cas.”
Castiel closes his eyes and holds his wings in tight.
***
“Sam.”
“Hmm.”
“Sam, wake up.”
Sam squirms a little under Castiel’s hand. “Nnn.”
“Wake up, Sam. I made you a bath.”
Sam’s tired and pliant in Castiel’s hands, leaning on his shoulder, allowing himself to be undressed. Castiel folds his shirt and pants carefully and places them on the sink before helping Sam lower himself into the tub. “Is the temperature all right?”
“Good.” Sam closes his eyes.
Castiel sits on the side of the tub and runs his fingers through Sam’s hair, gently untangling knots and smoothing it into place. Sam hums a little, almost contentedly - it’s not quite the same as when it’s real - and rests his head on Castiel’s knee. “I like you,” he says. “I like you, Angel.”
“I like you too.” Castiel swallows. “Human.”
Sam chuckles. “That’s pretty cute.”
“Sam, what’s wrong?”
“Hmm? Nothing. Fine.”
“You’re not. You…radiate.”
Sam opens his eyes. “I what?”
“You’re shaking.”
Sam holds up a hand. “No. Steady as a rock, see?”
“I don’t know how to - something isn’t right, Sam, don’t - I feel it. You’re sick.”
“It’s only allergies, Cas.” Sam sniffles a little. “Come on, I’ve been sick for weeks. You see the difference, don’t you?”
“Of course I see it. It’s suffocating you.”
“It’s…Cas?”
He’s breathing too hard, too fast. “It’s crawling in you and it hurts and you hate it and you hate yourself and it won’t let go and you can’t get it off, and nothing helps, nothing makes it stop, you just have to wait for it to get tired of you and go away…”
“Cas - “
He can’t control his breathing and he might be choking, he feels sick and out of control. “Don’t tell me it’s not happening, Sam, please don’t tell me that, I see it, I see you.”
Sam’s hands are wet on his waist, on his arms. “You see me. You see me, Castiel.” He buries his face in Castiel’s lap, shoulders shaking. “They never let me go.”
“Oh -“
“They take me and hold me and - and I can’t get away, Cas.”
“Do I have allergies?” He’s choking.
“You’re crying.” Sam’s long arms reach up to his face. “Cas.”
“I feel everything.”
“It’s too much. I know.”
“You’re shaking, Sam.”
“I am.” Sam wipes his eyes over and over. “Can you make them stop, Cas? Please? I just want to feel like myself again.”
Castiel holds him and presses his lips to his hair and whispers, “Sam. Sam. Sam.”
***
Cage.
Sam dreams in shrieks and scratches and spiders that place each tiny, skittering leg deliberately as they work their way under his skin and along the surface of his bones. They prick his muscles, making him twitch involuntarily. They bite him and he itches all over and under his skin. He tries to shake them off and they rattle around inside him and cling to bone until it splinters, and he screams and doesn’t know if it’s pain or horror, only that it has to stop.
It never stops.
In quiet moments, when there are no hands or mouths or frozen laughs, when nothing is sharp and things recede, when the things he sees swirl and change and it’s a warm house and a warm brother and a gentle face with liquid blue eyes (not real) and soft words no one says to him anymore in a tone no one uses - in those moments, he closes his eyes and tries to revel in it even though he knows it’s an illusion. Soothing fingers on his pulse. Strong arm around his shoulders, pulling him close. He knows they’ll rip it away. He knows it’s not going to last.
He knows because he can still feel the spiders.
“Sam.”
Sam won’t look at him.
“Please. I know. I see you.” He touches Sam’s shoulder, hesitant.
Sam flinches away. His eyes dart up, just a little, don’t quite meet Castiel’s, dart away. He sucks in breath after breath, fisting his hands in the blankets, and his heart gallops impossibly fast, ahead of his body, pulling him along.
Castiel holds his hands away from Sam’s body, loose at the wrist. “Please don’t be afraid. I’ll never hurt you.”
“You put your fingers in my ears and hooked…” Sam squeezes his eyes closed and whines like an animal.
Castiel closes his eyes and sees it. Cold angel hands. High angel laugh. He’s a monster. He wants to hold Sam to him, and that is monstrous. His wings are lumps of lead on his back.
“I’m not that,” he whispers, to Sam, to himself. “That’s not me.”
Sam doesn’t answer, won’t look at him, and Castiel has the unfamiliar and unpleasant sensation of wishing he could fly away from himself.
But Sam grips the cuffs of his sleeves and holds him - at arm’s length, but holds him - and Castiel will never go anywhere as long as Sam Winchester wants him here.
***
“He wants me here.”
“Yeah.” Dean fiddles with the cap of the whiskey bottle, spins it on the table and watches it fall. “I know he does.”
“He wants me…” What’s the end of this sentence?
“You have to talk to him about that.”
“Dean, I don’t…”
“Cas.” Dean grabs his wrist. “He loves you, okay? You love him. Maybe it’s enough. You don’t have to define your terms. Just…love him. It’s okay to do that.”
Castiel swallows. “Is it?”
“He wants you to.”
“I don’t know how.”
Dean holds his gaze. “You’re doing fine.
***
They get some new medicine and Sam holds it carefully between his hands like he’s praying, and then hugs himself. “How long?”
Castiel reads the label. “Half an hour. Then we’ll know.
He gathers every box of Kleenex in the house and takes Sam in his arms, gently dabs at his eyes and nose and kisses his temple.
“Is this real?” Sam asks him, quietly.
Castiel nods. “Do you believe me?”
“Faith,” Sam says quietly, sniffling, and cups Castiel’s hand in his own to draw the Kleenex back to his face.
Forty-five minutes later he’s asleep, head tucked under Castiel’s chin and breathing quietly, and Castiel closes his eyes and feels sunlight on Sam’s face.
***
A few hours later, when Sam’s sleeping deeply and his head is quiet, Castiel goes into the kitchen and finds Dean pressed against the refrigerator, shivering.
“I have to be better than this,” he says.
“There’s nothing wrong with how you are, Dean.”
“I make my brother cry.”
Castiel reaches out hesitantly and touches Dean’s back. “I do that too.”
Dean looks up at him, hopeful, reaching.
“You love him,” Castiel says. “It’s enough.”
Together they pour all the whiskey down the sink.
***
And so it’s night, long after Dean has gone to bed, and Sam and Castiel are wrapped in blankets and each other and laughing into each other’s mouths because it is so difficult to be quiet and it is so, so much fun to try.
Sam is better at it. Castiel can’t keep quiet for long. He presses his lips to Sam’s neck and whispers his name over and over, and Sam’s fingers dig in behind his shoulder blades. He’s doing something right.
“Angel,” Sam murmurs, reverently. Like it’s something holy. He presses a hand to Castiel’s wing. “Let them go.”
“No…” Castiel breathes. “You’re allergic…”
“I want them. Please.”
He sighs and lets himself relax, feels the sudden weight and pulling on his back, and Sam burrows into his chest and his hands are everywhere, and he cries out -
Castiel closes his eyes and feels everything Sam’s feeling and is lost.
Author familybizness
Summary: Sam has bad allergies and they're triggering his hell issues. Castiel is having feelings for the first time and they're giving him heaven issues. They're learning to live. It's very early Sam/Cas. Dean's here too. He has problems of his own.
Word Count: 5247
Rating: R
Warnings/Spoilers: non-explicit sex scene, Hell is scary, Dean drinks too much.
They don’t like him to have humans. He gets too attached. This has always been true, and it’s always been known.
“Going native,” Lucifer used to say, and he’d laugh, and Castiel would laugh because he wanted his brother to be happy with him, and also because of course he wasn’t going native, he wasn’t so weak, and please just assign him someone. Humans are Castiel’s favorite assignment.
In all of his existence, he’s had only a handful. A man in Lebanon. A child in Africa. A girl in Rome.
Three people, three humans, and they took him off the roster.
And then Jimmy Novak.
And now, Dean Winchester.
Dean, immutable Dean.
Castiel loved him before he even liked him, when he was frustrating and furious and kicking things over to watch them fall; he loved Dean’s knotty soul and broken heart. He crawled into Castiel and dug his fingers in. He is the biggest, brightest thing in a beautiful, beautiful world.
At least, he always used to be.
Castiel was never supposed to look twice at Sam.
Sometimes, lying with his arms around him, Castiel thinks he really only looked once and then never looked away.
He liked Sam immediately. Sam is likable. He laughs at jokes and smiles at his brother and pours the liquor down the sink after Dean falls asleep. He’s so fragile now, a thousand pieces of Sam arranged in a Sam-like shape, but he lets Castiel hold him sometimes and Castiel feels like his chest is collapsing.
It’s awful.
He’s fighting off illness now - pneumonia, Dean says through a yawn as he drinks his third straight cup of coffee and gets ready for work. Pneumonia is this bright hot thing that burns Sam from inside. Castiel waits for Sam to shatter with it, but he never does. He fights for air and loses, and Castiel hovers a hand over his chest and doesn’t touch him there because Dean said not to and because one time he did it anyway and Sam screamed and screamed but was too sick to make any noise.
Lucifer would find it funny that Castiel can’t do anything, that he’s reduced to this.
When it comes to Sam Winchester, he might as well be human.
Sam gives a wheezy, shuddery breath in his arms, hot on his neck, and Castiel feels everything in him knot together and pull so tight.
***
“Fucking pneumonia,” Dean growls.
Castiel puts more coffee in front of him. Dean loves coffee and drinks it with two hands wrapped around the mug. It’s good to have something you love this much, Castiel reasons, something other than whiskey. Whiskey makes Sam cry. Castiel doesn’t understand why, but he understands Sam crying. It makes him radiate inside himself until he tucks his hands into his sleeves for fear of accidentally smiting.
This isn’t a rational fear. Smiting isn’t an accident. But Castiel isn’t as rational as he once was.
Dean drinks his coffee like an act of aggression and shows Castiel the medicine again. He’s showed him every morning since Sam got sick, but Castiel pretends it’s new anyway. The light blue capsule, once when he wakes up and once with dinner. Water each time. Sam is not required to eat with the pill, but he is required to try to eat lunch in the middle of the day. Lunch must come from the boxes labeled “S” in the refrigerator. Castiel has not asked about the consequences of getting this wrong. He can guess. Neither of them wants to talk about it anyway.
Dean leaves for work. Castiel understands why he does this. When the fever is high Sam gets anxious and verbal and asks about money, whether he too should get a job. No, Castiel tells him, toying with his hair because he’s allowed to touch that. No, no, no. Dean will work. Dean will get the money. Sam is burning with fever and should rest.
The trouble is that so far it’s not working. Not the rest and not the medicine. Dean has complained about “Bronchitis” and “it’s in his throat and ears, shit” and “fucking hell, is this the fucking flu now?” and Sam has coughed and shivered and cried his way through all of them.
Now it’s pneumonia. Bronchopneumonia, Dean said once and then never again, and Castiel ached to touch him, but Dean doesn’t want hugs. Dean wants whiskey.
Sometimes it is still very hard to like Dean.
But Castiel loves him.
“You need different medicine,” Castiel suggested, once, weeks ago before he understood how agonizing this illness would get for all of them.
“Fuck off, Cas.” Dean broke the capsule into a cup of tea.
“It’s not working, Dean.”
“Yeah, well, he’s allergic to everything else.”
Allergic is still a poorly defined term. Sam is allergic to dust and consequently should avoid getting underneath the bed, but this seems to be a struggle for him to judge by the number of times Castiel has followed the sound of his asthmatic whistle to find him there. When he reports these incidents to Dean, Dean shrugs and looks sad and doesn’t say anything.
Sam is also allergic to nuts, and no nuts may come inside the house. Dean reads the nutritional information on every package of food to make sure it doesn’t somehow contain nuts. Castiel made the mistake once of bringing home a chocolate bar - it had a picture of a kitten on the wrapper, and he thought that might make Sam smile - and Dean grabbed it away and threw it into the yard. “Jesus, Cas.”
“There aren’t any nuts in it.”
“You don’t know what else they make in the same factory. It probably took a fucking bath in nuts.”
Castiel pictures the bathtub full of nuts and frowns.
“Just fuck off.” Dean gets tired of the constant struggle sometimes and sends Castiel away. He can do that. Castiel serves him.
But on that day, listening to Sam cough and wheeze, feeling the spike of his fever from a room away, Castiel didn’t want to go. “Dean…”
“I said fuck off.”
Castiel fucked off to the garden outside where Sam grows strawberries and tomatoes and onions. The ground was cold and the garden was untended. Things were starting to die.
Carefully, Castiel dug up each plant, replanted it in a pot or a tray, and put everything in the shed with Dean’s tools
Now he sits in his usual chair and waits for Sam to wake up. He’s allowed to wake Sam for medicine, but he doesn’t like to. The sight of Sam asleep is tremulous and soft and makes his wings flutter under the skin of his back.
He feels himself breathing too fast. Strange.
His heart is too high in his chest and his wings won’t be still, and he moves his shoulders around to try to help them relax. He closes his eyes and lays a hand across Sam’s forehead. This is allowed. This is nearly required. It’s not sensible that it should make him so nervous.
But Castiel isn’t as sensible as he once was.
The fever’s low, but Castiel keeps his hand on Sam anyway and listens to the broken, noisy sound of his breathing.
***
“Why are you shaking?” he asks Dean that night. “Are you sick?”
Dean clutches his evening coffee and snorts. “I don’t get sick.”
Conventional wisdom suggests this probably isn’t true, but then, Castiel can’t think of any evidence to present. Sam, meanwhile, doesn’t so much get sick as he exists in a perpetual state of sick. Saying that Sam is sick is like saying that Sam is alive. Of course he is. Why bring that up?
Dean does it anyway, sitting in the living room with one hand on his coffee and the other on his brother. “Pretty sick, Sammy.”
Sam nods in agreement and says, “uhhh.”
Castiel steps back, deferring to Dean. “His fever’s 102.6,” he offers.
“Thanks, Cas.”
“He likes it when you rub his cheek with three fingers.”
“I know, Cas.”
“The pink blanket is his favorite.” Sam’s hand tightens around it a little
“I know, Cas.” Dean rubs the palm of his hand over his face. “You can go home, you know? We’ll be okay.”
“Oh. All right.”
He can’t quite explain, even to himself, why he hasn’t been back to heaven lately. Being away this long makes him feel detached and confused, untethered. Maybe he’s growing too attached to that feeling.
Maybe he’s growing too attached to the Winchesters.
For whatever reason, when he senses Dean’s losing patience with him and wants him out of the house, he finds other places to go. The beach is a human place. He walks by the water’s edge and wades in a bit, watches their dramas play out and wonders if they have secrets he can’t begin to guess at.
Often, he wonders what people think when they see Dean. Are they able to interpret the constant scowl as a sign of how tired and worried he is? What do they make of his disheveled hair, the constant shake of his hands, the way his eyes dart around?
No one could guess Sam. Sam is not guessable.
He closes his eyes.
Lucifer would be so cold right now, watching Castiel let all these humans in.
He feels things he can’t put names to. A churning need to fidget. A bubbling, progressive sort of energy that expands in his throat. A pleasant warmth that reminds him of Sam. He reaches out for Sam and feels breathless and shivering - is Dean keeping the pink blanket on him? - and weak and oh holy God PAIN -
His eyes fly open.
There is a thing clinging to Castiel’s leg.
His nerves try to explode out of his body and he kicks at the thing. It lets him go, but the pain spreads. Heal, he thinks. Heal.
It’s too unfamiliar. He doesn’t know where to begin. It’s pushing upwards through his skin and radiating into his blood, sharp and biting, too much…
He stumbles out of the water and falls to his knees on the sand. The pain is worse here. His head spins. What’s happening? Dean!
“Hey, bro, you okay? Shit, you need help?”
Castiel gasps.
“Do you live near here? Shit, he’s been stung. Can you make it home? Hey.”
“Home?”
“Can you get there?”
Castiel makes fists the way Dean taught him and breathes like Sam.
“Yes,” he says. “I can make it home.”
***
Sam is in the kitchen making tea, the salient point of which is that Sam is standing up and doing things, and for a minute that drives everything else out of Castiel’s mind.
Only for a minute, though.
“Oh, fuck.” Sam grabs him by the arms and propels him into a chair. “Cas, what happened? You gonna pass out?”
Castiel shakes his head over and over. “No. No. No.”
Sam hands him a glass of water. “It’s okay. Baby. Look at me. It’s fine. Let me see. Oh - shit.”
“Sam?”
“No, it’s okay.” Sam’s breathing hard, which has not historically been something that’s okay. “Jellyfish sting. I’m - I’m allergic. Hey, sit down!”
Castiel’s halfway to the door, each step shooting agony through his feet and legs, but he can’t be here. “You’re allergic. I should go.”
“No, Cas, God. Where are you going to go? Sit. I’ll just…I’ll call Dean.”
“Where is he?”
Sam is tight-lipped. “Out.”
“He left when…” Castiel hisses. “- when you were sick?”
“Fever broke twenty minutes ago. Guess he was bored of me.
“No, of course he wasn’t.” How could anyone be?
Sam fills a bucket with hot water. “Put your feet in here. I’ll call him.”
He’s back after only a minute, hands sheathed in rubber gloves and arms full of supplies. “He’s not answering, Cas, but I’ll take care of it.”
“No…”
“Yeah.”
There’s a wheeze he doesn’t like in Sam’s voice. “Is that asthma?”
“Allergies.”
Castiel tugs his foot out of Sam’s hand.
“No, hey.” Sam takes it back, gently. “Not you. Pollen. I’m all right, Cas. It won’t kill me.”
“Your eyes are red.”
Sam rubs shaving cream over the reddened stings on Castiel’s legs and feet. “That’s pollen.”
“Are you sure it’s not the jellyfish?” Everything in him is trembling.
“I’m sure. You’d know if it was.”
“How?”
“I’d be having trouble breathing.” Methodically, he scrapes away the shaving cream with his pancake spatula.
“You are having trouble, though.”
“More than this. I’d be…this is everyday. Nothing to be scared of. Drink Benadryl.” He takes a hearty swig from a medicine bottle and pours some into a cup for Castiel. “You’ll love it.”
Castiel drinks and does love it, but mostly for the dopey way Sam smiles when he’s being tucked into bed an hour later. Castiel, feet wrapped carefully in bandages, kisses him on the forehead the way he’s seen Dean do because Dean isn’t here to do it, but he lingers for several seconds for reasons that have nothing to do with Dean at all.
"Night, Angel," Sam murmurs as he falls asleep.
Castiel sits awake and feels the warmth that is Sam spread from his stomach all the way to his eyes.
***
“You’re getting tired,” Sam says the following afternoon. He’s sitting up in bed and rubbing at his eyes over and over, drinking compulsively from a glass of water Dean brought before leaving for the day. Castiel’s been thinking about replacing it with fresh water for a few hours now, but Sam doesn’t seem to want to let go of it. “You need to sleep,” he says.
“No.” It’s an absurd suggestion. He's an angel. In a hundred thousand years, Castiel has never slept.
“I can tell, Cas.”
“You’re wrong,” Castiel protests, feeling cornered. There’s no denying something’s wrong with his body, but not this. Sleep is too human, too vulnerable. This dizzy, sick feeling is coming from somewhere else.
“You should try lying down,” Sam says.
“I don’t have a bed.”
“Use mine.”
“No. You need that. You’re sick.”
“I’m not. This is allergies.”
“Maybe I have allergies.”
Sam laughs a little, hoarsely, unhappily. “You don’t have allergies.”
Castiel closes his eyes and feels what Sam’s feeling. It’s itchy and invasive and reminds him of the jellyfish, but it’s everywhere and he wants to peel his skin off and scrub his bones. He wants to pour water all over his insides, except there are probably allergens in the water, they’re everywhere, they’re crawling…
He opens his eyes. Sam’s rubbing both hands up and down his face.
“No,” he says quietly. “I suppose I don’t have allergies.”
“It’s just pollen trying to kill me. No need for histrionics.” Sam smiles a little.
“You said it couldn’t kill you, I thought.”
“No, it can’t. Just…trying. What are you doing?”
Castiel screws the mouthpiece onto Sam’s nebulizer. “You need this.”
Sam folds his arms across his chest. “You need sleep.”
“I don’t.”
“Lie down with me and I’ll do the neb.”
Lie down with him?
Sam slides in toward the wall. Castiel hesitates, then sits beside him. “Lie down,” Sam laughs, and tugs at the collar of his shirt until he’s horizontal.
The machine makes a low grinding sort of noise - it’s unpleasant, but it’s nothing new. Castiel reaches across their bodies to hand the mouthpiece to Sam, careful not to let his arm brush Sam’s chest. “Here. Sam? Here…”
Sam’s frozen, eyes squeezed shut, jaw clenched around the tip of his thumb. A bead of blood gathers and runs down the side of his hand.
“Hey. Sam. Hey!” Castiel turns off the nebulizer and frees Sam’s thumb from between his teeth, raises it to his own lips and carefully licks the blood away before Sam can see it and become agitated.
Sam blinks and blinks and breaks into low, awful sobs that steal Castiel’s breath.
This is normal, though, Sam panicking and crying about things that probably shouldn’t be scary. This is everyday.
Castiel wraps both arms around him - he’s allowed to do this - and tucks him under his chin. Dean shushes him when he cries, but Sam doesn’t like being told to be quiet, so Castiel kisses the top of his head and whispers his name instead. “Sam. Sam. Sam.”
Sam falls asleep in his arms.
Castiel lies awake and thinks about crawling things and Sam biting away at his skin and worries.
***
Dean pours cup after cup of coffee. He drinks them quickly and sucks on ice cubes to cool his tongue. Castiel watches, waiting for him to slow down, waiting for a sign that it’s time to speak.
It’s Dean who breaks the silence. “He’s all right now?”
“He’s asleep.” Which isn’t the same as all right. Castiel is not allowed to look in on Sam’s dreams when he hasn’t been invited - he made the mistake of trying this once and it twisted the dream into a nightmare faster than he could wake Sam up - but right now Sam’s head is too loud and hearing his dreams isn’t optional.
He feels tied down trapped crawled over cold invaded broken and usually Sam likes to be touched, usually it centers him, but today he wants nothing but that soft pink blanket on his skin. He doesn’t even realize that’s what he wants. His mind is kicking at all these things, get them off, he’s just screaming with it.
Castiel says, “being sick is scaring him.”
“He isn’t sick.” Dean takes a huge pull of his coffee.
Castiel frowns. “That’s a really stupid thing to say.”
Dean looks up at him, unfocused eyes. “It’s allergies, Cas.”
“All right, it’s allergies. What point are you making? I’m telling you he’s scared.” This is new, this vibrating, muscle-twanging thing, and he feels like he’s floating up somewhere outside his body. He tucks his hands inside his sleeves. Hurting Dean would be a terrible mistake.
“Allergies can’t hurt him.” Dean looks down at the table.
“So then why did he need to wear gloves to take care of my jellyfish sting?”
“You let him near a jellyfish sting?” A pulse of energy comes off of Dean.
“I didn’t let him. I’m not in charge of him.”
“Just because you never take any responsibility doesn’t mean you don’t have it.”
Hurting Dean would be a terrible mistake.
Dean drinks his coffee. “It’s different, Cas. It’s just hay fever. It’s just fucking with him.”
“Sam doesn’t enjoy being fucked with.”
“No shit.”
“This isn’t funny, Dean.”
“I’m not joking, Cas. There are fucked up things in Sam’s life. He has to hang out with an angel all day. Maybe that’s what’s scaring him.”
No.
Unacceptable.
His wings are straining at his back. He grips his hands into fists inside his sleeves and says, “is there whiskey in that, Dean?”
Terrible mistake.
Dean doesn’t answer, doesn’t look at him.
“You’re drunk again. God. You’ve been putting whiskey in your coffee.”
“Cas, back off.” Dean rubs at his eyes and looks like Sam. “You don’t know anything about it.”
“How can you keep doing this, Dean?”
“Fuck off, Cas.”
“How can you say I’m the one scaring him?”
“Just…go away.” He’s shaking, gripping the table so hard. It’s not permitted. Dean is to be protected from this. It breaks Castiel just to look at it.
But they shouldn’t be making him choose.
They should never have made him choose.
“You go away,” he says, and returns to wait beside Sam.
***
Sometimes when he’s sick (or rather, when he’s allergic, apparently it’s very important to use the correct terminology here) Sam sleeps on his stomach even though he’s not supposed to do that, even though it’s bad for his breathing, and Castiel puts a hand over the knotty scar tissue in the center of his back and thinks he might drown in the things he’s done to this boy.
When Sam’s awake, he’ll sometimes put a hand on Castiel’s cheek (his hand is warm and big and impossibly gentle) and say you saved me, you got me out, you don’t have anything to feel ashamed of, but they both know it’s far from being that simple.
The cage was two years and three months ago, but sometimes it feels like a heartbeat.
Getting there was impossible, fire and pain, and when he finally reached them and realized he could save only one - he knows this, logically - it took less than a second for his hand to close on Dean’s arm, for him to pull Dean close and lift him away, and he knows that second will haunt him for the rest of eternity. And this is why Castiel should never make choices.
Dean leaves, slamming the kitchen door behind him. Inconsiderate. Castiel frowns. That was an easy choice. Don’t slam the door. Don’t wake up your sick (allergic) brother when he’s finally getting some rest. He loves Dean. Dean should be nicer. These things should bring him into conflict with himself, but somehow they never do.
He looks at Sam, sleeping uneasily, face buried in his pillow and breathing so, so harshly.
How could he have failed to save him so many different times, so many different ways? How can he be sitting here failing both of them right now?
How could they ever have expected him to choose?
***
Sam sleeps through the evening and through the night, through Dean coming home and making no effort to be quiet as he pours the whiskey down the sink again. Castiel has seen Dean do this too many times to feel encouraged. He’ll buy more tomorrow. It doesn’t mean anything. He hears Dean’s footsteps in the hall, pausing outside the door to Sam’s room. He pretends he doesn’t.
He’s not choosing Sam over Dean. That’s not what this is.
In the morning, so early that the sky’s still washed-out pink and nothing feels real, Dean looks in on them. “How is he?”
“He’s resting.”
“Okay. But how is he?”
Castiel isn’t sure anymore where he’s allowed to touch Sam. Every inch of him is swollen, itchy, fucked up, dirty - these aren’t words Castiel would ever have applied to Sam. They’re coming from Sam himself. It’s becoming harder not to hear him.
To Dean, he says, “he’s vibrating.”
Dean looks at Sam for a minute like he’s expecting to actually see the vibration.
He reaches over, across Castiel, and cups the back of Sam’s neck. Sam sighs a little in his sleep. It’s allowed. Maybe that’s a safe place to touch, or maybe it’s just the familiarity of Dean’s hand - whatever it is, Sam relaxes into it.
Castiel leans his head against the wall. Dean just knew that. He will do this for the rest of eternity, and he will never be able to duplicate the instinct Dean has for it. He will never measure up. At the end of every day, he will choose Sam or Dean, but they will always choose each other.
“Get some sleep, okay?” Dean hands him a blanket. “You look dead.”
“I’m not dead.”
“I know you’re not, I’m saying you - just sleep, Cas. We need you on top of your game.”
You don’t need me. “I’ll try.”
Dean nods. “That’s fine. Just try.”
“Don’t drink,” Castiel answers. It’s not a directive, it’s a plea. Dean looks helplessly at his feet and nods understanding. It’s not capitulation, but it’s something.
Dean reaches out for a minute and grips Castiel’s shoulder and gives him something, some part of himself, and for a minute it’s very easy to see why this is the hand Sam wants when he feels lost and hopeless.
“I didn’t mean it,” he says. “Last night. Of course it’s not your fault he’s…he loves you, Cas.”
Castiel closes his eyes and holds his wings in tight.
***
“Sam.”
“Hmm.”
“Sam, wake up.”
Sam squirms a little under Castiel’s hand. “Nnn.”
“Wake up, Sam. I made you a bath.”
Sam’s tired and pliant in Castiel’s hands, leaning on his shoulder, allowing himself to be undressed. Castiel folds his shirt and pants carefully and places them on the sink before helping Sam lower himself into the tub. “Is the temperature all right?”
“Good.” Sam closes his eyes.
Castiel sits on the side of the tub and runs his fingers through Sam’s hair, gently untangling knots and smoothing it into place. Sam hums a little, almost contentedly - it’s not quite the same as when it’s real - and rests his head on Castiel’s knee. “I like you,” he says. “I like you, Angel.”
“I like you too.” Castiel swallows. “Human.”
Sam chuckles. “That’s pretty cute.”
“Sam, what’s wrong?”
“Hmm? Nothing. Fine.”
“You’re not. You…radiate.”
Sam opens his eyes. “I what?”
“You’re shaking.”
Sam holds up a hand. “No. Steady as a rock, see?”
“I don’t know how to - something isn’t right, Sam, don’t - I feel it. You’re sick.”
“It’s only allergies, Cas.” Sam sniffles a little. “Come on, I’ve been sick for weeks. You see the difference, don’t you?”
“Of course I see it. It’s suffocating you.”
“It’s…Cas?”
He’s breathing too hard, too fast. “It’s crawling in you and it hurts and you hate it and you hate yourself and it won’t let go and you can’t get it off, and nothing helps, nothing makes it stop, you just have to wait for it to get tired of you and go away…”
“Cas - “
He can’t control his breathing and he might be choking, he feels sick and out of control. “Don’t tell me it’s not happening, Sam, please don’t tell me that, I see it, I see you.”
Sam’s hands are wet on his waist, on his arms. “You see me. You see me, Castiel.” He buries his face in Castiel’s lap, shoulders shaking. “They never let me go.”
“Oh -“
“They take me and hold me and - and I can’t get away, Cas.”
“Do I have allergies?” He’s choking.
“You’re crying.” Sam’s long arms reach up to his face. “Cas.”
“I feel everything.”
“It’s too much. I know.”
“You’re shaking, Sam.”
“I am.” Sam wipes his eyes over and over. “Can you make them stop, Cas? Please? I just want to feel like myself again.”
Castiel holds him and presses his lips to his hair and whispers, “Sam. Sam. Sam.”
***
Cage.
Sam dreams in shrieks and scratches and spiders that place each tiny, skittering leg deliberately as they work their way under his skin and along the surface of his bones. They prick his muscles, making him twitch involuntarily. They bite him and he itches all over and under his skin. He tries to shake them off and they rattle around inside him and cling to bone until it splinters, and he screams and doesn’t know if it’s pain or horror, only that it has to stop.
It never stops.
In quiet moments, when there are no hands or mouths or frozen laughs, when nothing is sharp and things recede, when the things he sees swirl and change and it’s a warm house and a warm brother and a gentle face with liquid blue eyes (not real) and soft words no one says to him anymore in a tone no one uses - in those moments, he closes his eyes and tries to revel in it even though he knows it’s an illusion. Soothing fingers on his pulse. Strong arm around his shoulders, pulling him close. He knows they’ll rip it away. He knows it’s not going to last.
He knows because he can still feel the spiders.
“Sam.”
Sam won’t look at him.
“Please. I know. I see you.” He touches Sam’s shoulder, hesitant.
Sam flinches away. His eyes dart up, just a little, don’t quite meet Castiel’s, dart away. He sucks in breath after breath, fisting his hands in the blankets, and his heart gallops impossibly fast, ahead of his body, pulling him along.
Castiel holds his hands away from Sam’s body, loose at the wrist. “Please don’t be afraid. I’ll never hurt you.”
“You put your fingers in my ears and hooked…” Sam squeezes his eyes closed and whines like an animal.
Castiel closes his eyes and sees it. Cold angel hands. High angel laugh. He’s a monster. He wants to hold Sam to him, and that is monstrous. His wings are lumps of lead on his back.
“I’m not that,” he whispers, to Sam, to himself. “That’s not me.”
Sam doesn’t answer, won’t look at him, and Castiel has the unfamiliar and unpleasant sensation of wishing he could fly away from himself.
But Sam grips the cuffs of his sleeves and holds him - at arm’s length, but holds him - and Castiel will never go anywhere as long as Sam Winchester wants him here.
***
“He wants me here.”
“Yeah.” Dean fiddles with the cap of the whiskey bottle, spins it on the table and watches it fall. “I know he does.”
“He wants me…” What’s the end of this sentence?
“You have to talk to him about that.”
“Dean, I don’t…”
“Cas.” Dean grabs his wrist. “He loves you, okay? You love him. Maybe it’s enough. You don’t have to define your terms. Just…love him. It’s okay to do that.”
Castiel swallows. “Is it?”
“He wants you to.”
“I don’t know how.”
Dean holds his gaze. “You’re doing fine.
***
They get some new medicine and Sam holds it carefully between his hands like he’s praying, and then hugs himself. “How long?”
Castiel reads the label. “Half an hour. Then we’ll know.
He gathers every box of Kleenex in the house and takes Sam in his arms, gently dabs at his eyes and nose and kisses his temple.
“Is this real?” Sam asks him, quietly.
Castiel nods. “Do you believe me?”
“Faith,” Sam says quietly, sniffling, and cups Castiel’s hand in his own to draw the Kleenex back to his face.
Forty-five minutes later he’s asleep, head tucked under Castiel’s chin and breathing quietly, and Castiel closes his eyes and feels sunlight on Sam’s face.
***
A few hours later, when Sam’s sleeping deeply and his head is quiet, Castiel goes into the kitchen and finds Dean pressed against the refrigerator, shivering.
“I have to be better than this,” he says.
“There’s nothing wrong with how you are, Dean.”
“I make my brother cry.”
Castiel reaches out hesitantly and touches Dean’s back. “I do that too.”
Dean looks up at him, hopeful, reaching.
“You love him,” Castiel says. “It’s enough.”
Together they pour all the whiskey down the sink.
***
And so it’s night, long after Dean has gone to bed, and Sam and Castiel are wrapped in blankets and each other and laughing into each other’s mouths because it is so difficult to be quiet and it is so, so much fun to try.
Sam is better at it. Castiel can’t keep quiet for long. He presses his lips to Sam’s neck and whispers his name over and over, and Sam’s fingers dig in behind his shoulder blades. He’s doing something right.
“Angel,” Sam murmurs, reverently. Like it’s something holy. He presses a hand to Castiel’s wing. “Let them go.”
“No…” Castiel breathes. “You’re allergic…”
“I want them. Please.”
He sighs and lets himself relax, feels the sudden weight and pulling on his back, and Sam burrows into his chest and his hands are everywhere, and he cries out -
Castiel closes his eyes and feels everything Sam’s feeling and is lost.