Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

The locked ward is all white and beige, like a puppy. 

White sheets, white trays, white clothes, white shoes. Beige walls, beige ceiling, beige floor, beige bed rails. Sam feels white and beige, white and beige. 

His hair flops forward as he heaves himself to a sitting position. It’s nighttime. The hallways outside are quiet. Footsteps patter gently back and forth, back and forth, accompanied by the soft squeak of the wheels of carts, rolling shelves of medication throughout the facility. 

Lucifer sits on the table cross-legged, pretending to meditate. “Ohmmmm…” 

Sam inhales, trying to do some meditating of his own. His ribs ache in protest when he tries to stretch both arms high. If he stands on the bed, he thinks his fingertips might just brush the stucco on the ceiling. He doesn’t try it. Standing on the bed would take effort, and all Sam feels is empty. 

The bandage on his hand needs changing. Blood faintly stains the center of his palm, showing pink through the clinically wrapped gauze. It’s too geometrical, too perfectly professional. Sam imagines that the bandage is Dean’s faded blue bandana, the one they always have to scrub in the sink with the type of thin soap you find in rundown motels. It’s lightly browned in the center from various scrapes and scratches. Dean doesn’t use that bandana for anything but wrapping gently around Sam’s injuries. 

“Sam,” says Lucifer from the corner.

Sam ignores him, closing his eyes. He tries to remember his yoga class. Find the center of his mass…

“Sammy…” Lucifer starts to sing, his voice oddly high. “Back in black, I hit the sack, I’ve been too long but I’m glad to be back…”

Sam shakes his head, trying to think of another song. The moonlight shines through the window, cold and blue in the night. 

Lucifer laughs. “You know, you look like a dog shaking off water when you do that.”

Sam stops shaking his head and focuses on a loose thread on the hem of his shirt. If he unravels his shirt, maybe he’ll have a long string. What can he do with a long string?

“You could always strangle yourself,” Lucifer says brightly. “Then everyone would actually be happy for once. You dead, and me with the rest of humanity.”

Sam’s eyes slide shut. He wants to sleep. 

“No!” Lucifer jumps off the table, landing with a thud. “None of that, not tonight.”

Sam screws his eyelids tighter and eases himself horizontal, clutching the corner of the pillow. Lucifer pulls a whistle out of the air. It’s shiny red plastic. 

Sam can smell the blood from his bed. Cracking an eye, his stomach sinks as Lucifer raises the wet, bloody whistle to his lips.

Tweeeeeeeeet!  

The whistle is a lower pitch than Sam expected, but it still makes him twitch in surprise. He turns over, facing away from the Devil and his whistle. 

Tweeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeet!

“Sam, pay attention to me!” Lucifer whines, like a moping child. “I’m right here, bunk buddy!”

“Stop,” Sam says. He ignores the way his voice cracks. 

“So he speaks!” Lucifer’s voice appears right over Sam’s shoulder, and it’s all he can do to keep himself from shuddering. 

“Shut up,” mutters Sam. “Go take a nap.”

“With you?” says Lucifer, his breath hot on Sam’s scalp. “I make a great cuddle buddy. I call big spoon though.”

Sam sits up harshly. Lucifer winks at him from the table, suddenly across the room. 

“Let me sleep,” says Sam. Distantly, he thinks he’s begging, but he can’t find it in him to put much force in his voice. “Let me sleep,” he repeats.

“But whyyyy would I do that when we can have so much fun?” whines the Devil. “Let’s do your hair! We can pull out the strands one by one. I’ll make a rope, and hang you from the ceiling fan.”

“There is no fan,” says Sam, rubbing his eyes. His palm stings. The bandage needs changing. 

“Really?” inquires Lucifer. 

Sam begrudgingly looks up. The ceiling fan spins languidly, blades of iron dripping innards onto the white sheets of Sam’s bed, staining them red, red, red. 

“Stop,” he whispers. “Stop.” 

He doesn’t know if he’s begging himself, the Devil, or the world. 

“Get up,” says Lucifer. “It’s time to dance.” 

“No,” says Sam. “I won’t.”

“Wow…look at the moon,” croons Lucifer, already on another topic. He flits over to the window, settling in the patch of silvery light. “Oh, isn’t she gorgeous?”

Sam wants to sleep. He doesn’t want to look at the moon.

“Look,” says Lucifer.

“No,” says Sam.

“Look.”

“No.”

“Look at the moon,” says a new voice.

Sam’s head snaps up. Dean leans against the windowsill, a beer in hand and his pendant nestled against his chest. 

“Isn’t it pretty? You know, I read somewhere once that the moon landing was faked.”

“Everyone’s read that somewhere,” says Sam. Lying back down, he tucks his hands over his ears and buries his face in the pillow. 

“You know what else is faked?” Dean’s voice, albeit slightly muffled, catches Sam’s attention. “I bet big brother actually hates you.”

“Stop,” whispers Sam. 

“All you do is slow him down,” Lucifer-as-Dean continues. “Always getting hurt or emotional or something. I mean, your brain is mosquito netting, roomie. All you do is hold him back.”

“No, I don’t!” Sam gives up on sleep, bolting upright in something akin to fear. 

“Sad, pathetic, weak little brother, always in his shadow…” 

“Shut up!” 

“Samuel?” The voice of a very real doctor wafts through the door. “Do you need someone to come in?”

“I’m—I’m fine,” sputters Sam. “I’m okay.”

Lucifer chuckles. “You are so far from okay, amigo.”

“Please just be quiet,” Sam hisses. 

“Samuel?” The doctor’s voice is patient, lilting, and ever so slightly robotic.

“Samuel,” mocks the Devil.

“Go away!” Sam shouts, not trusting his voice to carry. 

It must have done, because the next thing he knows, the ward’s door is thrown open. The screech of metal against concrete fills his head. The doctor hurries in, white coat billowing like a cape. Catching Sam’s wrists from where they’ve come up to cover his head, the doctor kneels down to Sam’s sitting height. It makes him feel like a child getting told off. 

“It’s sleep time,” the doctor begins.

“He won’t let me sleep.” 

“You have to try,” the doctor says firmly. “Try to ignore him. Maybe he’ll go away.”

Sam laughs helplessly. “I have tried.”

“Samuel, the other patients need to sleep right now. I cannot, in good conscience, sedate you when your med chart is finally balanced, but I cannot have you disrupting the rest of everybody’s sleep cycle.”

“Yeah, stop being such a crybaby,” Lucifer whines.

Sam twitches. “Sorry,” he says to the doctor. “I—sorry.” 

The doctor smiles, perfect teeth all in a row. “I know you are. Let’s focus on sleeping, okay?”

Sam nods, and the doctor lets go of his wrists. Sam covers his head. His hair snags on the folds of the bandage wrapping his hand. The bandage needs changing. 

Lucifer bellows his discontent from the corner, but Sam just screws his eyes shut and clutches his head. 

The walls loom above him, the bed firm below him. Everything is all white and beige, like a puppy. Trapped in the ward with the Devil, Sam shivers in his white clothes on his white sheets and ignores the clicking of bones over beige walls, beige bed rails. 

Sam feels white and beige, white and beige.

Chapter Text

Dean visits every other day, at four o’clock. 

Sometimes Cas will come with him, and they’ll spend too many minutes talking outside the room, stealing glances at Sam when they think he can’t see. Sometimes Sam will hug Dean, and press a hand to his neck or chest or wrist to make certain that he’s real. Sometimes Dean will let Sam stay curled up on the bed with his head on Dean’s shoulder, just breathing, just staying alive. 

On days like those, the doctors watch Sam and Dean sit on the bed in silence. Dean pretends to be annoyed and Sam pretends to be okay. 

One day, Dean comes by with a big smile. Sam tries to smile back. 

“I’ve got big news, buddy.” 

Sam tilts his head up to look at his brother. Dean nearly vibrates with excitement. 

“We’re going to get you out of here.”

“What?” Sam’s brain feels like mush. “How?”

“Good ol’ fashioned breakout,” Dean says, and winks. “Cas here”—he tugs the angel in from the hallway—“has got some fancy mojo thing he’s going to do and help put that wall back up a little bit.”

“I’ve told you, Dean,” the angel interjects, “There’s nothing to put back up.”

“In a metaphorical sense,” Dean says, calming down. “He’s going to try transferring some of your—stuff—to someone else.” 

“What?” Sam asks. He can’t focus. 

Lucifer howls with laughter. “He’s going to try to take me away from you! Aw, how pathetically sweet.”

Dean glances at the table. Sam looks back and tries to center on Dean’s face. 

“Cas found a rogue vamp outside,” Dean says. “It killed three children and was waiting for another one. So we, uh, kidnapped it and we’re going to take Lucifer out of your head and let that damn child-eater suffer instead of you.”

Sam refuses to look at Lucifer at the table. Out of the corner of his eye, he can see the Devil attempting a handstand against the wall. 

“Sam?” Cas’s hand comes too close to Sam’s face and he jerks back, slamming against the pillows on his bed. 

“Hey…” Dean’s voice gets softer. “We’re going to fix everything, okay?”

“You can’t fix anything, you idiot!” Lucifer shouts from the corner. “He’s doing this because he can’t stand how weak you are now, Sam.”

“I’m not,” Sam mutters half-heartedly. 

“Not…what?” Dean sits on the bed. “Hey, look at me.”

Sam turns his head away from the table, where the Devil crouches like a skinny crow, all elbows and flannel. 

“Can you be ready to leave when we come get you?” Dean asks. “We’re going to break you out, then take you to the Bunker. Cas will transfer Lucifer to that vamp in the basement. Got it?”

“Dean—” Cas interrupts. 

Dean holds up a hand. “Got it?” he repeats. 

Sam nods slowly. “Be ready to leave,” he rasps. “Got it.”

“He’ll forget,” Cas says quietly. “You can’t expect—”

“He’s got it, Cas,” Dean says, voice edged with a warning. “He’ll be ready.”

The angel holds Dean’s stare for a minute, then turns away. 

“We’ll be back tonight,” Dean says to Sam. “When the clock says twelve.” He points to the digital clock outside in the hallway. “Look, you can see it through the door window. When it says twelve, be ready to go.”

“Twelve,” Sam repeats. “I’ll be ready to go.” 

“Sure you will,” says Lucifer. “And I will too, because I’ll always be with you.”

Sam squeezes his eyes shut. His ribs hurt. His head hurts. His hand hurts. He wants to sleep. 

“Hey,” Dean’s voice pulls him out of the fog. “We’ll be back, okay? Twelve.”

Sam smiles as best he can and his brother smiles back. Cas and Dean leave, stopping briefly outside in the hall to talk to a doctor. Faintly, Sam hears Dean say, “The bandage on his hand needs changing.” The doctor nods and says something else, and the angel and Dean move out of Sam’s sight. The doctor comes in with a roll of gauze and some tape. 

“Can I change the wrap?” the doctor asks, patient and kind and too perfect, like a robot. 

Sam holds out the bandaged hand wordlessly, letting the doctor exchange the pink-tinged wrapping for a fresh, clinical white one. The doctor lets Sam tape the end of it, the same geometrical lines in professional crisp gauze swallowing his hand. 

“Dinner is on its way, alright?” Without waiting for an answer, the doctor leaves. 

“Damn,” Lucifer muses. “Not even the person who’s paid to care about you actually cares.”

Sam snorts, feeling too empty to care about who cares. 

The nurse with the rolling cart rolls it into his room and sets a tray on the table. She smiles brightly at Sam, but her eyes are too dead for him to smile back. She’s gone in a flash, the rumbling wheels moving down the hallway to the next patient in line. 

Lucifer opens the platter. “Delightful,” he says, and puts the lid down.

Sam heaves himself off the bed. His ribs twinge, but he makes it to the table where Lucifer bares his teeth. 

“Roses are red, violets are blue…” Lucifer laughs. “I’m going to throw twenty-three knives at you…” 

The plate contains one very limp salad, a dry sandwich, and a carrot cut into pieces too small to choke on. Sam can’t remember the last time he felt hungry, but he takes a slow bite of the sandwich anyway. The carrot is hard and cardboard-like. He doesn’t touch the salad. 

The evening passes in a blur. Sam manages to nap for most of it, despite Lucifer’s terrible rendition of ‘My Heart Will Go On.’ By the time he switches to ‘I Love a Lassie,’ Sam is feeling victorious with two hours’ rest under his belt. 

“I love a lassie, a bonnie bonnie lassie…” 

The clock outside the door ticks loudly to eleven fifty-four. Sam squints at it. Almost twelve. Something is supposed to happen at twelve. But what?

Sam thinks back on his day. It all blurs, like a mass of Jell-o has taken root in his skull in lieu of a functioning brain. 

“Ye're leavin here, mate, try tae run away like the coward bastard ye are,” Lucifer says, and continues to sing. “A Hielan’ lassie…”

Dean is coming. Twelve. Be ready to go. Got it.

“Got it,” says Sam out loud. 

The clock ticks, ticks, ticks, until finally it chimes with a sickeningly cheerful chirrup. Twelve o’clock, on the dot. The blueish light of the moon highlights the beige walls, turning them a mind-numbing oatmeal colour. 

A knock on the window makes Sam twitch. It only occurs to him to turn around and look when Lucifer points a finger behind him, eyes beady and shiny. 

Dean unscrews the thick iron frame of the window, letting it down with a soft clang. He leans in, holding out a hand. “C’mon, Sam, if you get up on the bed I can pull you out.”

Sam rubs his eyes. “If…what do I…?”

“Up on the bed, Sam, hurry,” Dean whispers. 

The footsteps of a doctor on the night shift echo from down the hall. 

“C’mon, it’s okay,” Dean hisses, wiggling his fingers. “Just grab my hand.”

Sam climbs onto the bed, slowly. The footsteps grow louder. Lucifer watches silently, eyes shimmering amber in the moonlight. 

Sam stands up, pushing against the wall. He can’t help but wonder if the outside world will be nothing but white and beige, white and beige. 

“What?” Dean quirks an eyebrow, still waiting for Sam.

Did he say that out loud? Perhaps the world will only be—

“Sam, please,” Dean begs. He stretches ever so slightly closer.

Sam reaches out a languid arm. He feels like he’s wrapped in cotton wool, all mush and gush and no control. The footsteps pause outside the door. 

“Samuel, what are you doing?” asks the doctor. The angle of the door window doesn’t reveal the wall window to the doctor, but Sam’s lanky legs are firmly planted on top of the bed. 

“Let’s go!” Dean grabs Sam’s hand and tugs him up, careful to cradle Sam’s head from the window frame. 

More hands grab Sam around the armpits and he realises that Cas is there, with his beige overcoat fluttering in the midnight breeze. Down below in the ward, the door slams open. Cas and Dean hurriedly tug Sam’s feet through the window and jump up, pulling him along so that he’s barely touching the ground as they jog around the back of the hospital. The Impala shines, bright and black and sleek, awaiting its three inhabitants. Dean yanks open the door, and he and Cas gently lay Sam in the backseat. 

“It’s okay,” Dean says, when Sam protests weakly. “Sleep, if you can.”

Sam watches Dean and Cas slide into the front of the car, their hair mussed from the breeze. The Impala roars to life underneath Sam. He can feel the engine purr in his ribs, the bite of the tyres on potholes jarring his head as they drive at high speed down the backroad. 

The hospital disappears from the rearview mirror. Dean drives fast, his hands steady and strong on the wheel. Cas sits beside him, stoic as ever, his posture ramrod and familiar. Sam breathes, faintly smelling beer and the mud from countless muddy boots thrown in the backseat after hunts. He can see the stars winking at him from beyond the car window. 

The sky is a deep blue, so very velvet and rivetingly swathed with streaks of purple and black. The interior of the car is so far from the cold silver moon, all warm and yellow-lit from the reflections of the headlights. The only sounds are the road, the engine, and the steady breathing of Sam and Dean. 

Lucifer is nowhere to be found, and as Sam slips into unconsciousness, the last thought he has is that although he doesn’t know how he’d forgotten, the world is so very far from white and beige. 

Chapter Text

Sam wakes up peacefully.

The blankets on top of him are soft and red. As Sam blinks awake, he looks groggily around to see that he is on the couch in the Bunker’s library, Dean sitting at the table with a cup of coffee and a book. Cas sits next to Dean, doing absolutely nothing at all. Both of them look content.

“Hey,” Sam croaks. He coughs and tries again. “Hey.”

Dean puts down his book and smiles. “Morning, bitch.”

“Jerk.” The word leaves Sam’s mouth before he even realises it. 

Cas focuses intently on Sam’s face. “How do you feel, Sam?”

“Honestly…” Sam sits up slowly, Dean moving to help him. “I’m feeling pretty okay.”

“We can work with that,” proclaims Dean. 

“He should eat,” says Cas quietly. “I can heal his body as well.”

Sam watches Dean look at Cas, who leans back in his chair. The two stare at each other for a moment. Sam almost says something, but keeps it in. 

“Should I make eggs?” Dean’s voice is quiet, too. “Sam?” Dean turns back to his little brother. 

“Sure,” says Sam. “Yeah, eggs. Need any help?”

Dean gets up. “Yes, I need a whole friggin’ army to help me fry an egg.”

The brothers chuckle briefly, and Cas just sits there. Dean starts to explain (“I was using my sarcastic voice, Cas”) but ends up just doffing an imaginary hat and leaving to the kitchen. 

“Anyway,” Cas says, smoothing his coat over his knees, “I wanted to wait for you to wake up to heal you. In case you wondered why—”

“Yeah, thanks,” Sam says. He looks up, intending to smile at the angel, but he blanches instead. 

Lucifer stands behind Cas, a red-hot fire poker in hand. Sam’s stomach drops beneath him so fast he gets dizzy. 

“Sam?” Cas looks concerned, standing up. “Dean!” he calls to the kitchen. 

Sam feels like his lungs have frozen. Lucifer smiles wickedly and, with a flourish of his wrist, drives the poker right through Cas’s chest. Blood explodes outward, splattering everywhere. Sam squeezes his eyes shut and tells himself it isn’t real. It isn’t. It can’t be—

“Hey!” Dean’s gruff voice pulls Sam out of his spiral. “Take a breath, dingus.”

Sam opens his eyes tentatively, but Lucifer is right next to him and his forked tongue dances over sharp teeth and Cas has empty eyes and red blood and even though Dean kneels before him, raw eggs discarded on the table, all Sam can think of is innards and eyeballs and the beige walls of the ward—

“You’re okay, Sam,” says Dean, and his voice is so gentle that Sam almost believes him. 

Without opening his eyes, Sam sucks in a breath, holds it, and exhales. With Dean’s soft encouragement, he keeps breathing until his pulse has descended its fluttering climb and his head no longer buzzes with static. 

“You good?”

Sam fiddles with the bandage on his hand, suddenly wishing he could disappear. “I’m good,” he exhales. He opens his eyes slowly, expecting carnage, but Cas is whole and unbloodied, and Dean is right in front of him. Lucifer lounges on Cas’s empty chair, twirling a knife through his fingers, and Sam tries to focus on his brother. 

“Okay, when can we do the switch?” Dean asks, looking back at the angel. 

“You know,” Lucifer says. “This whole plan to get me out of you, it ain’t it.”

Sam meets Lucifer’s eyes. “Shut up,” he says. Lucifer holds his hands up defensively, the beginnings of a smirk twisting his lips. 

But then, if Lucifer hears him, so do Dean and Cas. 

“What?” Dean furrows his eyebrows, trying in vain to see what Sam is seeing. 

“Damn looney,” Lucifer says. “You’re never going to be rid of me. I am in you, Sam. In fact, we’re practically the same—”

“Stop,” Sam whispers. “Shut up.”

Cas sits next to Sam and attempts to put a hand on his arm, but his overcoat is just the right shade of beige and his teeth are just the right shade of white and it’s like Sam is back in the ward, unable to escape or distract from the Devil cackling in his brain. 

Sam covers his head, the bandage on his palm too geometric, too perfect. Faintly, he hears Dean mutter “Crap!” and feels hands grasping at him, trying to get him to stand up. Lucifer laughs, louder and louder, wrapping his promise of pure, unbidden evil around Sam’s skull until he can barely think. He is helpless, too weak to fight, too scared to move, until the bandage on his palm catches his eye. 

The perfectly taped lines are too straight, too white, too clinical. Sam latches onto the bandage and tugs at the edge of it experimentally, then rips into it. Suddenly desperate, he scrabbles at the gauze, tearing and unwrapping until his hand is bare. The stitches are dark against his skin. 

Dean snatches his wrist. “What the hell are you doing?!”

“Too perfect,” Sam whispers. “It was…” 

“You’re like a junkie,” Lucifer observes. “Addicted to reality, so close but so, so far.” 

Sam traces the stitches, then pushes down, hard. The pain sears through Sam’s hand, sending streaks of electricity through his wrist and fingers. It’s sharp and jolting and unpleasant, but the exact opposite of the cottony feeling from the ward. It clears the fog, Lucifer flickering in and out. 

“Hey!” Dean grabs both hands. “Stop!”

Sam looks up with wild eyes. “He’s disappearing,” he gasps. “He’s—”

Lucifer chortles, cockroaches skittering through his hair. “I’m not going anywhere.”

With a cry, Sam throws himself forward, bashing his knees into his injured ribs. The pain seizes his lungs and travels through him at lightning speed, fast and hot and thoroughly horrible, but Lucifer flickers and flickers and finally dissipates with a last rolling cackle echoing in Sam’s mind. 

Dean and Cas are quick to restrain him, holding him up and his hands behind his back. Sam doesn’t fight. He feels exhausted, but victorious. 

“Okay, what the hell just happened? Why did you—why did you hurt yourself?” Dean demands, green eyes flashing. 

“It made him leave,” Sam says, dropping his head. “It made him leave.” He can feel very real blood slipping down his fingers. 

“Cas, is your mojo up and running?”

“Dean…” Cas’s voice is hesitant. “It is.”

“So what’s the problem?”

“We haven’t done something like this before. I’m not sure how, exactly, to proceed.” 

Dean and Cas are two inches apart, steel blue meeting forest green. 

“Then do your best,” Dean hisses, clutching Sam tighter. “Do what you can.”

Cas lets Sam’s left arm go and steps away. “Of course, Dean.”

Dean half-carries Sam through the hallways of the Bunker with the angel trailing behind. They stop outside the dungeon door. Sam’s hair flops in front of his eyes, but he sees the door with its heavy handle and suddenly wonders if he’ll be left alone, locked in with the Devil again. 

Cas puts a comforting hand on Dean’s shoulder, and pushes open the door. The vamp is tied up on a chair in the center of the room, chains wrapped around and around and eventually leading to a ring cemented in the floor. Blood coats the vampire’s sharp teeth. 

“Well, hello there,” it says, smiling like a tiger. “Nice to meet the other one. Sam, is it?”

Sam lifts his head. Lucifer does his best Irish jig right next to the vamp, making stupid faces. “Yeah, I’m Sam.”

Dean glares at the vampire. Placing a chair opposite the creature and plopping Sam down, Dean says to the vamp, “Okay, child-eater, time to suffer.”

Cas rolls up a sleeve, and stands next to Sam. “Are you alright?”

Sam nods. “Do it.” Lucifer smirks and disappears, eyes smoking red in the air. 

The angel’s eyes glow a steady blue as he reaches a hand out. Sam feels Cas’s grace swirl through his head, jumbling things around and shoving metaphorical books back on shelves. Suddenly, it swooshes in a wave, scooping up a bit of what feels like Jell-o, scraping the insides of Sam’s skull. He can’t help the sharp inhale at the odd experience, not quite pain but not comfortable in any way. Dean grips his uninjured hand, in a rare display of something like fear. 

Cas’s grace withdraws with the scoop of Sam’s mind, phasing through the front of his brain. The sensation is that of someone pushing hard spaghetti through a strainer. A strangled exhale leaves Sam. He opens his eyes, but blue and black and red and white and beige swirl before his eyes in a nauseatingly intoxicating spiral. He tilts forward, pressing the heels of his hands into his eyes. Maybe the colours will go away. 

Cas sends the scoop of Sam’s mind into the skull of the vampire, glowing blue pulsing at his eyes, lips, fingers. The vampire screams, likely feeling the same strain as Sam did, but Sam doesn’t care. His head finally feels…silent. The colours ebb slowly away, leaving his vision clearer than it’s been in months. 

“Sam?” Dean’s voice is almost a whisper, hope edging the word.

“I…I think it worked,” Sam says, his hands shaking. “He’s…everything’s…gone.”

Dean inhales, the breath catching. “It worked. Cas, you did it!”

The brothers look up. The vampire huddles in the chair, eyes darting around to phantoms unseen by anyone else. 

Cas’s eyes fade back to their regular blue. “I did it,” he says, smiling. 

Then he collapses, boneless against the floor. 

Chapter Text

Dean bolts over to where Cas is already stirring, eyelids fluttering as he hoists himself to sitting. Sam watches Dean slip a gentle arm round the angel’s shoulders, other hand subtly taking his pulse against his wrist. 

“I’m alright, Dean,” says the angel. “I…overworked myself. My ‘mojo’ needs to recharge.” He accompanies his words with singular air quotes. 

Dean laughs, somewhat giddy. “Okay, let’s get you both up.” He supports Cas to standing, and only comes back to Sam once he’s made sure that Cas is steady. 

Sam chooses to keep his commentary to himself. 

“Sam?” 

“Yeah, I’m good,” Sam says, and stands up from his chair, ignoring the slight wave of dizziness. He’s tired. His hand and ribs still beat along with his heart, but he can only see and hear what’s there. Lucifer, it seems, is gone for good. There are no innards lying around, no spiders or maggots or anything other than Dean, Cas, and a vamp in the dungeon. 

“Okay,” Dean says with a broad smile. “It’s about lunchtime. Anyone want pizza?”

“Put broccoli on it,” Sam says, leaning against the doorframe. “I’m going to take a nap.”

Cas says, “I think I will sit down as well.”

Dean slings an arm around Sam and Cas. “You two can sit down for as long as you want today. You deserve it.”

The three exit the dungeon, leaving the vampire in darkness and chains. Sam doesn’t even feel guilty. He feels almost…reborn. His head is so blessedly quiet, so peaceful, that he almost falls asleep while walking. 

Dean catches him. “Woah, man. Hey, here’s your room.” 

He helps Sam take off his shoes. Sam fumbles with the white hospital clothes, still wearing them from the previous night. He wants them off, burned, salted, whatever. Sam never wants to see white or beige again. 

“I got you,” Dean says, helping him swap the white clothes for a soft grey T-shirt and sweatpants. “Just sleep.” 

Sam curls up under the dark blue blanket on his bed. It’s midnight blue, pretty and warm and far away. He drifts off to Dean’s hand gently carding through his hair, and the silence in his head lulling him to sleep. 

… 

“Psst, hey.”

Sam jolts awake, woken from a dream of red smoking eyes and sharp teeth and too much laughter, too much blood. Rubbing his eyes, his vision focuses on Dean, who holds a plate out. Rosemary toast, with a smiley face in butter. 

“Did you…make that?” Sam asks, breaking into a smile. 

“Yup!” Dean says proudly. “Bone apple teeth, mein bruder.” 

“Why…what’s going on? How long was I out?” Sam takes the plate and a bite of the toast, chewing slowly. The Devil’s laughter from his dream still crawls up his spine.

“Dude, it’s eleven o’clock in the morning. The next morning. Sam, you slept for like, twelve hours.” 

“Holy—”

“Yeah, dude!” 

The brothers grin at each other, buoyed by the victory. Part of Sam feels ridiculous being so happy about sleep, but it’s what he’s wanted for what seems like forever. Even if Lucifer still laughs in his dreams, they are that—dreams. 

“So how’s Cas?” Sam bites off the butter smiley face.

“He’s good,” says Dean. “He sat at the table and read Homer for basically as long as you were sleeping. But he says he feels a lot better, now.”

“Now we just have to deal with the vamp?”

Dean scratches his head awkwardly. “Uh…it’s dead. No worries.”

Sam fixes him with a look. “What did you do?”

Dean looks down. “I…I tried—I felt—I was just—”

“What?”

“I was just so angry, Sam.” Dean fiddles with the hem of his shirt. “Seeing you like that—in the ward—and knowing that I couldn’t—couldn't do anything—”

“I don’t blame you,” interrupts Sam. “You did your best to help. It was—it was no one’s fault, alright? And it’s over now, anyway. I’m—I’ll be okay.”

Dean claps a hand over Sam’s knee, and for a moment they just breathe, they just exist. 

“So, vamp’s dead, beheaded, burned, nothing but dust,” Dean says brightly. “How are you doing?”

Setting the plate aside, Sam runs a careful hand over his palm. The stitches are bumpy and sore, and the dried blood is kind of gross, but it’s real. “I’m good,” he says. “I—I need time, but I’m good.”

“Let me clean that,” Dean says, nodding to his palm. “I’ll get the kit.”

“No, I got it,” says Sam. “Let me do it, please.”

Dean pauses, halfway out the door. “Okay.” He leaves for the kitchen, whistling ‘Jock Stuart.’

Sam gets up and rinses the blood off his wound, then shuffles through the various bathroom drawers until he finds Dean’s faded bandana. Wrapping it securely around his hand, Sam takes a deep breath. The day stretches before him, and people that love him are there with him. He is safe in the Bunker, safe with his brother and Castiel. He is free.

… 

Later that day, the three of them play board games and watch movies and have fun. Dean refuses to let Sam drink any alcohol (“Your organs need recovery, not more damage!”) and Cas has no clue how Monopoly works (“This is false money, Dean, with no actual financial value.”), but it’s a wonderful, wonderful day. Dean notices his bandana snug around Sam’s hand, and smiles brighter than Sam’s ever seen. 

They eat cold pizza for dinner and watch every Harry Potter movie, and even though Dean grumbles throughout each one Sam can tell he enjoys it. Cas wraps Dean in a red blanket when he falls asleep and keeps himself pressed against him for the rest of the fourth movie, and Sam pretends not to notice. 

Somehow through the eighth movie, everyone decides to change into pyjamas, and Dean convinces Cas to wear a shark onesie. Sam wears his soft grey one and Dean wears midnight blue, and the ache in Sam’s hand and ribs dulls down til he doesn’t even notice it. 

His head is so very silent, and so very peaceful. The Bunker is warm and yellow-lit, and nothing is white, and nothing is beige—not even Cas’s coat, which he had turned black with a wave of his hand. 

Sam feels a little quiet, a little happy, a little relieved. 

Sam feels so very far from empty.

(Hope it wis swell, a wantit tae put thon fuckin bastard Crowley (love him) i thare but couldnae figure oot hou, maybe al make another story sometime keep tunit for it, give me thon sweet sweet validation an some prompts gin ye want, thanks for readin! ♡ a feel bad not acknowledging comments beyond ma brain so if ye are kind enough to leave one, i'll likely reply♡♡♡)