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You’re fine, you’re fine, you’re fine.
It’s become somewhat of a motto for Sam over the past two days. Ten years.
He doesn’t know anymore. He’s lost and confused because Darkness is a concept, and how do you kill a concept (one that’s older than Death, older than God), but there’s a sickening feeling of history being played back on a loop. You’re fine tastes old and familiar at the back of his throat.
He tells Dean with shaking hands and wild eyes. It got him, but he fixed it and he’s okay, Dean, he’s really okay, he swears he is. He didn’t screw up this time.
That too-clean smell of the hospital lingers, clings to him underneath the stench of blood and sweat and holy fire.
The Impala leaves scorch marks in its wake as it burns through mile after mile. It scars the earth with tire tracks, and Sam wonders how much ground he and Dean have covered together. How much ground is still ahead?
The earth isn’t flat, and time isn’t either, but he wants Dean to stop barreling down the road like he's doing, because Hell if it doesn’t feel like they’re nearing the end. And his brother will not plunge off the edge with him into the empty. He can’t.
If there’s anything left for him to offer this world that’s as sick as he is, it’s keeping Dean in it. One good man among all the ruin, not even to pick up the pieces, just to prove that being broken doesn’t mean it’s over.
Dean would have a shit-fit if he found out Sam is thinking like that, and not without a valid reason. Making peace with dying is the same as rolling over and letting it happen. They can’t have that; they can’t go through this without each other. There’s no option of quitting, and that’s what dying (and staying dead) is.
But it’s not. It’s not.
You’re fine, you’re fine, you’re fine.
He’s been running on autopilot for the past forty-eight hours, only let his guard down in that chapel—and in return he’d been given horrific, spine-chilling visions of torture, and hadn’t that been fun? —and now everything is starting to set in.
His mind refuses to ease on the breaks, keeps taking him back to those moments alone in that supply closet, blood splattered over his mouth, promising Dean he was fine even after they had both agreed to be honest. The dim light from his phone, his surroundings blurred because he hadn’t been able to stop himself from crying after hanging up. And he’d cried hard.
It always comes back to this: the inevitable impurity of his soul and blood in his mouth. Always blood in his mouth.
The memory of metallic heat on his tongue twists his stomach and he fumbles for Dean’s shoulder. Pull over, pull over now, he’s going to be sick--
Asphalt under his feet, head in his palms, elbows digging into his knees. Jesus, Mary—which Mary, which Mother, he never knew either-- I love you, save souls—
Save his, burn mine—
He’s hopeless.
All the King’s horses and all the King’s men could tell him they would put him back together, and he would scrape together enough fragments of himself just to laugh. Don’t waste your time fixing a monster. Not when he would do this all over again if it meant saving his brother. He’d rip this world apart if he had to. He would throw himself and all his shattered remnants into the void if it meant Dean stood half a chance.
Dean’s got a fistful of the back of his shirt, holding him up.
“You’re alright, Sammy,” he says. “You’re fine.”
You’re fine, you’re fine, you’re fine.
Sam chokes, gags, and brings up nothing. You can’t puke up subatomic sin, can’t baptize or purge it away. You can burn it off the surface, but it’s still there underneath it all. He’s stuck.
He wipes a trembling hand over his mouth and sits back, leans into his brother’s touch as long as he can before it’s gone, before Dean lets go.
They’ve both grown up; they’d been forced into the positions of men since they were children. They shouldn’t need each other like this—the self-sacrifice and the holy water and raising (razing) Hell and Heaven for the sole purpose of never having to go through this alone.
But they’d never gotten to be boys. They had been overexposed and underdeveloped all at once. They fight tooth and nail, unapologetic and relentless. They kill and slaughter and bleed out without an ounce of regret, and yet they hold onto one another so tight because they’d never been taught how to stop. They are coldblooded and brutal, they are touch-starved and desperate. They have nothing but a beat-up car, a box of old cassette tapes, a bunker full of ghosts, and each other.
He’d held up on his own; he’d pulled through in that torn-up town. He’d saved himself, saved others, and it had felt good and right. But he wouldn’t be fooling anyone if he says he hadn’t been scared without Dean.
He folds himself into his seat, shuts the door behind him, and wishes he could make himself smaller. He wants nothing more than to hide.
“Dean,” he croaks, “I—“
“I know.” Dean puts the car into drive and pulls onto the road. He spares a glance at Sam, eyes clouded and dark. “Get some shut-eye when we get home, okay?”
It ends up not working out like that-- because it never does, for one, and because there’s a bloodied and bruised angel sprawled out on the floor in the middle of the library.
Dean has always been more of a soldier in his surly attitude and affinity for throwing punches, but that’s not where being a soldier ends, and it’s not where Dean ends, either. He’s strategic, sure—he’s spent hours in the war room, studying maps and going through their weapon inventory and methodically cleaning gun after gun—but it's the quick gut instincts Dean is able to act on that make him such a good hunter. Dean can think on his feet better than Sam could ever hope to. Dean isn’t preoccupied with details; he takes in the big picture all at once and dives in headfirst.
And that’s why, when the two of them find Cas lying on the floor, drenched in sweat and bleeding, it’s Dean who acts first.
There’s a distant ringing in his ears, but he can hear Dean’s frantic tone over it. He watches Dean, dazed, as he checks Cas for any major injuries, and he can’t take it all in the way Dean can. He gets lost amidst the details: Dean’s fingers, rough and calloused and somehow so delicate, running through Cas's hair and taking his jaw in his hands; the radiation of worry and heartbreak that nearly knocks Sam off his feet; Cas’s eyes, barely responsive and bloodshot.
Sam had never learned the man’s name, but he sees his face clear as day now. Bloodshot eyes like Cas’s, but full of rage and fear, and the creeping of black veining over his skin. His body, not even peaceful in death, crumpled on the floor of the hospital room.
You and me, we’re dead. We’re just taking our sweet time about it.
He’d scorched himself with holy fire, he’s fine, he’s fine, he’s fine, and yet the man's words still ring true in his head.
He hasn’t moved and he doesn’t think he’s able to, but he can’t stand here useless, not when he’d promised Dean that they would work together. He can’t let Dean take all this weight.
Dean has hauled Cas to his feet when Sam finally manages, “What can I do?”
Dean looks Sam up and down, suspicion evident in his expression, and Sam doesn’t blame him. He’d been dry-heaving by the side of the road twenty minutes ago; he hasn’t had a lot of time to reboot.
“Find him something to put on,” Dean says. “I’m gonna get him cleaned up.”
Sam nods, starts down the hall. He can do that, he’s sure he can. It’s simple and straightforward, and it means he doesn’t have to be around when Dean stitches up the wounds on Cas’s body. This is fine, he can do this.
You’re fine, you’re fine, you’re fine.
“And, hey, Sam?” Dean calls after him, and he turns. The anxiety on Dean’s face is unacceptable. Sam needs to pull himself together so that can stop. “Same goes for you. Don’t forfeit taking care of yourself.”
That’s more complicated, but he’ll give it a shot.
Sam sits with Cas in one of the chairs by the couch, giving the angel space while still providing the comfort of someone keeping him company. Things were different back then, before, but now so much has been tainted and twisted up, and he’s afraid to get too close.
Cas is layered in things remarkably Dean in nature; a pair of sweats on his trembling legs, a ratty Black Sabbath t-shirt, all swaddled tight in Dean’s bathrobe. He’s cleaner now, a little less beat-up, too, thanks to Dean’s field-surgeon level skills at stitching up and disinfecting wounds.
Dean is somewhere wrapping up his ribs, and Sam’s been left to sit vigil. And it’s okay, he can do it, it’s just—
Cas keeps looking at him like he knows.
“I’m sorry,” Sam murmurs into the open air, not expecting a response, not feeling he deserves one.
“You couldn’t have known Rowena would do this.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Sam protests, hearing the break in the last word and hoping Cas is out of it enough to miss it. “I shouldn’t have pulled you into it. It was our mess, Dean’s and mine—“
“Any mess of the Winchesters’ becomes my mess.” He looks so frail, so miserable and sad, but there’s no regret or dishonesty in his voice, no matter how rasping or tired. “You’re not to blame for this. It was my choice, just as it always has been and always will be. I will never stop choosing you two.”
Sam’s gaze drops, settles on the floor in front of him. He’s not sure how much of this he can take; facing one more casualty from another of his mistakes, one who stares with unblinking eyes that mirror the Nile filling with blood, one who settles into the couch cushions and burrows into the pillows. One who wears his brother’s clothes because they fit him better and they’re more comfortable, and the natural aroma of gunpowder and whiskey is what he calls home, as opposed to Sam's sharp scent of pine trees and blood.
Jesus, Jesus, he’s really fucked up this time, unequivocally and irreversibly. Is there an endless stock of forgiveness in Dean and Castiel’s souls? How else can they both forgive him for this? How can they find it in themselves to love him, to care for him and exonerate him at every turn, when he can’t even do those things for himself?
“What happened to you, Sam?”
Cas would worry about him right now, even though he’s the one in the tangled web of a curse, shaking feverishly on the couch, wrapped up in Dean bathrobe, and Sam can’t, he can’t do this, he—
You’re fine, you’re fine, you’re fine.
“It’s all taken care of, I’m fine.”
It feels like a lie.
Sam checks for black veins that may be jutting out of his skin when he's in the shower. They continue to show up in the peripherals of his vision, making him jump, but they disappear when he tries to look closer.
Fuck, he’s not allowed to go crazy again. They can’t afford that, not right now, not when everything wrong and evil in the world feels suspended in mid-air, ready to drop at any second. They’ve got to be ready; he’s got to be ready. He’ll be there.
His heart won’t slow down and the quick succession of beats against his sternum is making him dizzy. His stomach floats somewhere around his collarbones, and his brain can’t seem to decide if it wants him to vomit or not.
He plants one hand on the shower wall, sticks two fingers down his throat, doubles over the drain and retches hard. Nothing.
He sways, grips the wall harder, but it’s slippery with water from the showerhead and he hits the floor with his knees. Presses his forehead to the tiled wall. Lets the water beat down his back. Thinks about praying and remembers where that got him last time. Closes his eyes and thinks about nothing instead.
The Darkness crawls across the backs of his eyelids, alive and spider-like, sprouting like tree branches.
He doesn’t realize how long he’s had the water running until Dean picks the lock on the bathroom door and bursts in.
“Jesus, Sammy,” he mutters, and ties the towel around Sam’s waist as he hauls him out of the shower, all instinctual fraternal protection and no actual frustration. “You gotta go lie down.”
Sam is sopping wet still, leaving wet footprints down the hallway as Dean guides him to his room. His clothes become damp when he puts them on and he can’t find control over his shuddering body, and he wants to crumble in his brother’s hands like clay. He thinks he might.
“It’s gone,” Dean assures him, and Sam is thirty-two and centuries and ten years old all at once, and it’s humiliating to still be so fragile, so liable to break. “It’s gone, it’s not in you anymore, you’re okay.”
You’re fine, you’re—
A strangled no wrenches from him and that’s it, it’s over, he’s crying and Dean’s sitting there stunned because they aren’t supposed to do that.
“Sam…”
“Don’t, don’t, just—“ He’s never been able to let tears fall silently the way Dean can, hasn’t ever figured out how to keep his face blank as everything else falls apart. No, when he cries, it’s with his whole body; deep, shuddering sobs that rip through his lungs and draw too much blood into his head, and the tears are graceless and hot as they drip down his face contorted in utter anguish, and God, it’s ugly, and he doesn’t want Dean to look at him.
And Dean doesn’t look. He puts one arm around Sam’s broad shoulders and brings his free hand to the back of Sam’s head, drawing him close because this is his job at the end of the day. Not slicing through monsters or going face-to-face with an absent God and all His angels, no. It’s always been like this, always been “look out for Sammy” above all else. Whether Sam should need it after thirty odd years doesn’t matter. He does need it, and there won’t ever come a moment where Dean will stop giving. He’d steal stars for him in a heartbeat, eclipse the sun and live by moonlight if Sam said he felt safer in the dark.
“I’ve got you,” he says, and when Sam’s breath starts coming out in stutters and gasps, he holds him tighter. “You’re safe.”
Hell could freeze over before Sam loses trust in his brother. His fear begins to subside.
“Shouldn’t have left you alone out there,” Dean mutters, and Sam swats half-heartedly at his chest.
“Shut up, I told you to go. And it turned out okay.” It’s reassuring to say it aloud to someone; to say yes, things got sour, he was scared, he thought he would die, and he still managed to pull through despite everything.
That’s been a theme his whole life, he thinks. You could tack that on to the end of any sentence in his story. ‘Despite everything.’
You’re fine, despite everything.
That feels closer to the truth.
They put Cas in chains, but the robe stays pulled around him to compensate. Dean forces them both to eat even though Cas doesn’t technically need to and Sam still feels prone to being sick at any given moment.
“You’ll thank me when you try it,” Dean says from his spot in front of the stove, gesturing at them with a wooden spoon. “This stuff is magic, I swear."
“Tomato and rice hold no supernatural properties,” Cas objects, and Sam cracks a smile.
They’re sitting side by side at the kitchen table, Cas watching Dean with a kind of tenderness that Sam won’t even try to understand (won’t even think about whether Cas looks at him that way). He’s scratched the surface and he gets the gist of it; he’s not going to pry deeper. Cas and Dean… that part of all this isn’t his business.
“You’re too quiet, Sammy.”
“I’m alright.”
Better than he was, at least. The area around his eyes is still splotchy and red from crying, and there are still minute tremors in his hands, but the rest of the shakiness has dissipated and he’s fastened a cap on the anxiety stirring in his chest. He’s contained again, even if only slightly.
And besides—
Dean moves away from the stove for a moment to lean over the table, palms Cas’s forehead for signs of fever, and Cas leans into his touch, bright eyes fluttering closed—
this isn’t about him.
Dean watches them both eat while nursing a cup of black coffee, no doubt to stay awake during the night so he can keep an eye on them both. He worries at his lower lip until it’s red and bleeding at one of the corners, and Cas reaches across with a cuffed hand to smack Dean on the arm.
“Stop that,” he says, “and eat something.”
“I’m not hungry.”
“Dean, come on—“ Sam starts.
“No.”
“Dean.” Cas and Sam repeat in unison, using the no-nonsense tone that drives Dean up the wall.
Sure enough, Dean grumbles and pushes away from the table, muttering how this isn’t fair, it’s late and he hasn’t had a drink, and why does he have to be stuck in a bunker with these two mythic bitches, and Sam and Cas make shadows of grins into the wood grain of the table. But Dean comes back and plunks down with his own bowl of tomato rice soup, some of the tension in his shoulders fading, and that’s a win.
Sam tries to sleep that night, tries for some sense of normalcy. But when he wakes in a cold sweat he's sure that it’s gotten him again, and he’s out of his bed and down the hallway before he can think. He isn’t processing any of his surroundings, none except the white walls and the sound of his bare feet on linoleum. And because it’s the only thing his mind wants to do lately, it decides to fuck with him.
Never mind that the bunker is quiet and peaceful, his brother and their angel sound asleep, because he’s not there anymore. He’s alone in a hospital and the insanity burns slow and agonizing in his skull. There are bodies made to be rag dolls as they lie sprawled on the floor. Everything is bloody, and wrong, and that reaper’s voice rakes through him like cicadas shrieking in the trees, and—
you’re fine, you’re fine you’re fine you’refineyou’refineyou’refineyou’refineyou’re—
His knees hit the bathroom tile and he vomits red and black and smoke and ash and he tastes it, there’s holy fire on his tongue, and Jesus Christ is anybody listening is anybody out there why won’t someone help he can’t do this he can’t he can’t and God dammit, he isn’t fine!
“Sam, Sam! Please, look at me!”
He hadn’t known he’d been screaming. His throat is raw and tears streak his cheeks (can’t he stop crying? He needs to stop fucking crying), and he raises his head to find two sets of eyes. Green and blue, darkened with weariness that sinks down to their bones, but golden. Warm.
Sam’s focus gets lost in the smattering of freckles on the bridge of Dean’s nose. He does that a lot. Getting lost in the details. “I don’t—I’m—I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to—“
“You didn’t wake us,” Cas says. “I don’t sleep, and Dean refuses to take care of himself.”
“Wow, Cas, thanks for the drive-by.”
He reorients himself enough to form coherent lies. “I’m okay, it was just a nightmare, I just—what happened in that hospital, it… I think it messed me up.”
“Understatement,” Dean notes bluntly, but not without concern.
“No, I’m good, I’m okay, and we need to be focusing on Cas right now—“
“Not at this hour, you don’t.” Cas touches Sam’s elbow, encouraging him to untangle himself from the toilet and get to his feet. “It would be impossible to try and find a cure for this spell now, and I have no doubt we can figure this all out in the morning-- after you recover.”
Sam shakes his head, but Cas is sitting him down on the rim of the tub, tucking his hair behind his ears and combing through the tangles, while Dean runs a damp cloth over Sam's face to break through the sweat and tears and saliva.
“We gotta help Cas,” Sam pleads, practically delirious from lack of sleep and general distress, grabbing at Dean’s arm and tugging him close. “Dean, we—we have to fix it, it’s my fault and we have to—“
“Not your fault,” Dean and Cas cut Sam short, firm and gruff and tender too, and Sam goes quiet.
It’s a snug fit having three grown men on a couch, but none of them mind. Dean has Sam and Cas wrapped up in blankets to ward off chills, panic and curse-induced alike, and Dirty Dancing plays on low volume on the television.
“I hate this movie,” Dean groans.
“Don’t lie, you love Patrick Swayze.”
“Hey, no, not fair, Cas. No mind reading. None, especially not at one in the fucking morning.”
It’s hard not to be drawn into the lure of sleep, even with the looming threat of nightmares. Sam struggles to keep his eyes open.
“Both of you rest.” Cas’s eyes are a little less bloodshot, but he’s still worn down and pale.
“Only if you do,” Sam bargains, because sleep isn’t something you forget how to do, and Cas was human only two years ago even if it feels like lifetimes have passed since then.
Dean’s out like a light, curled up under a quilt and nestled into Cas’s shoulder, looking peaceful despite the permanent crease in his brow.
Sam is less quick to get comfortable.
“This is okay?” He asks. There have to be boundaries, and he’s feeling for them blindly, afraid of overstepping because Cas was Dean’s before he was theirs. He’ll always be Dean’s, first and foremost. And that’s fine (you’re fine you’re fine you’re fine); with all the times Dean put him as the priority, Sam is fine with coming second for this.
“Yes,” Cas insists, and when Sam still doesn’t move, he adds, “this isn’t a one-way street, you know. And you two don’t need to be taking turns.”
Embarrassment has pink inching up his neck. “Cas, I'm sorry."
“It’s alright,” Cas assures, pulls him in under his free arm. At the movement, Dean shifts in his sleep, throws one leg over them, and stills once more. Sam allows himself a small grin and settles into Cas’s hold on him.
“We’ll fix it,” Sam promises quietly. “I’ll fix it.”
“Just rest,” Cas tells him again. “Right now, we’re all just going to rest.”
Sam waits for Cas’s breathing to even out before he lets his own eyes close.