Chapter Text
The grass is shivering in Stull Cemetery. The strands are huddled together, matted, like the flat weave of a kitchen floor mat. The few headless trees around them are marked with yellow tape. Probably going to be cut down and hauled away in a few days. There’s a ladybug crawling over the toe of Sam’s shoe, defiant spot of color amid the monotone of this noonday.
He tips his foot so the bug rolls off and crawls away. Run while you still can.
He takes his hands out of his pockets. Not a tremor to be seen. Not for him, not for Cas. They are both completely still, as if bound and fastened to metal braces. They have locked their bodies into the rigidty of fearlessness. They will not reveal the fact that their blood has been replaced with rivers of screaming.
Sam hands Cas the knife after he’s slit his own palm. They let the red drops hit the salt circle, falling with all the weight of stone commandments. Thou shalt not.
Thou shalt not put any other gods before me. The Devil is getting a face to face with them before they even consider the idea of sitting down with God.
Thou shalt not take the Lord’s name in vain. They use the tongue of divinity for a spell to bring them to the mire of Hell.
Thou shalt not covet. For a second Sam wishes that he were wherever Dean is. It would hurt less than this. He doesn’t know exactly where Dean is but he’s sure of that.
Cas drifts closer to him. Sam takes his hand without looking. He memorizes what it feels like to hold something real and pulsing and alive. Before those words become foreign postcards from a country he’ll never see again. There’s no way that they’re going to be able to emerge from the Cage. If in body, then not in soul. If in body and soul, then not in mind. No one strolls into the lion’s den and sits in the center of its fat tongue and does not get bitten, chewed, digested, and dissolved.
Cas says the spell is going to work. He says it out of love, the way he says everything, because that’s who he is. Sam goes for a different approach; he’s already started grieving the life he’s sure is about to taken from him. The ground hasn’t even started to shake before Sam says a mental farewell to the miserable cold November air and the dry ugliness of the cemetery around them. A soiled leaf is a thing of beauty when you’re headed into a place where the only texture you’ll know is being force-fed your own intestines.
The cemetery disappears. Red, so dark its black and blue, replaces it.
Then Dean is standing there, wearing his favorite flannel shirt and the jeans he sewed back pockets onto himself. You need pockets as a hunter, Sammy. Lots of them. Can never have too many. Dean smiles, runs a hand through his hair, and grips the back of his neck in that little familiar gesture of exhaustion. What, it’s been a long day. I wasn’t the one drooling in my sleep, ‘kay?
Cas steps forward and Dean’s arm shoots out. He grabs the angel’s collar and slams his forehead into his nose. Blood squirts out of the crooked nostrils and then Dean drops his jaw open and hooks his teeth into the side of Cas’ cheek. He maintains eye contact with Sam as he pulls the skin off Cas’ face with his front teeth.
Sam wets his lips. “This isn’t going to work on me. I know your tricks, Lucifer. Don’t forget that.”
Dean shimmers away like the smoke from a summer day barbeque. Lucifer’s fifteen heads and thirteen wings pop out one after the other. Sam glances over to see Cas standing there, features complete and untouched. In the angel’s right hand is his angel blade; drawn on instinct, Sam assumes, and not for any measure of actual violence. Down here it’s as good as caressing Lucifer with a feather.
“I know you, too, Sam.” Lucifer coos from the black crow head. “Very well. Intimately, you might say. I’m sure you haven’t forgotten that, either.”
Cas shifts his body slightly, positioning himself to be more in front of Sam. “We need to know where the realm of Death is,” he says loudly. Sam can’t see his expression clearly from this angle, but he doesn’t hear a single reverb of hesitation in his words. He knows, without looking, that Cas has become the warrior. The soldier. The shield and sword.
Lucifer clucks and leans over the angel, his goat hooves stroking Cas’ hair. “My baby brother. You’ve always been a peculiar thing. To think you could come here and simply query me might be your most absurd action yet.” His serpentine brows raise and nod at Sam. “Besides bringing me my favorite girl again. You know I’ve missed you. I really have.”
“We’re going to be gone before you know it.” Sam forces himself forward, walking the two steps necessary to be next to Cas. It feels like a Sahara has suddenly spanned between his heels. His throat is so dry breathing becomes agonizing. Lucifer is watching him take those two labored steps with a glee so tangible it radiates through the air like tripled thunder. “Give us the name and how to get there.”
“Poor little Sammy. Never quite the hero you imagined yourself to be.” Lucifer spins in a half circle. His tarantula limbs smack Cas away, and Sam jolts out to grab Cas’ hand, only to be slapped against what feels like iron bars. They’re crawling into his spine.
The long, wet lizard tongue from Lucifer’s chameleon head washes over his forehead. “You hate yourself for coming here, but you hate more the fact that you want to be here. You’re sick inside, and you think that’s the most hideous thing about you. It’s really the most beautiful.”
Sam grabs the tongue and twists it around his arm three times before jerking on it, hard. Lucifer’s chameleon yelps and he stumbles back.
“I want my brother back,” Sam spits, pulling the iron bar out of his left shoulder and twirling it in his hands. It’s not real iron; it’s not even anything at all. Nothing here is true or solid. But holding his hands in a fist gives him a feeling of power. “And you’re going to help me get him back or-”
“Or what? You’ll come for another conjugal visit?” Lucifer’s piranha teeth morph into a wide grin. The smell of open sores drifts out from his mouth. “You’ll woo me into helping you?”
Sam feels vomit rushing through him head to toe. He tries to say something and his lips fall off like burnt pie crusts.
A thud echoes through the space and a small flashing dot of white appears at the side. Cas is hurling his body at Lucifer’s form like a child throwing rocks at a skyscraper. He’s leaping up, then climbing up the dragon tail, using his angel blade like an ice axe to help him scale higher.
Sam uses the distraction to pull the flask of holy fire from his pocket. It’s less than the size of his finger-the only amount they could bring without endangering Cas–but it should still sting. Like being stabbed with a rusty nail, Cas had described it. He will react, and in his anger he might be more willing to talk. Even just for a few seconds.
Before Sam can light it, though, he hears Cas gurgling. The strangled sound of the trachea being crushed. Then there’s a flash of those black shoes Cas always wears, just a wink at the corner of the piranha’s mouth before Lucifer swallows the last of the angel.
Sam lights the bottle and swings his arm back. The tiniest Moltovo cocktail in the world goes flying through the living shadows and then flashes orange and cerculean against the piranha’s jaw. Lucifer kicks up three donkey legs and bends over, vomiting out Cas along with three whale hearts and five lamb skulls.
Cas scrambles to his feet, batting away Sam’s attempt to help him. “I’m fine,” he gasps. “Are you..?”
“Okay.” It’s the first words they’ve said to each other since being in the Cage.
Lucifer roars and Sam’s kneecaps jump right out of his skin and scamper away, shrieking. Cas’ earlobes begin to extend and coil around his neck in a noose of his own flesh. He looks at Sam, signaling with his eyes as his face grows blue from the self-hanging. Sam collapses to the ground–or the flatness below that resembles ground–and tries to find something to hold onto. With nothing in reach he grits his teeth and then yanks his own forearm out and rams it into Lucifer’s vulture claw. No sword can hurt Lucifer here but Sam? Sam is a weapon of himself. His body is a true vessel. It can be bruised, and therefore can inflict the same pain it is capable of receiving.
“Sammy! Good to see you’re still full of spunk!” Lucifer rattles back and forth, a swaying planet-sized pendulum. “I always admired your spirit, did I ever tell you that? You made me feel things I never thought possible. I couldn’t have asked for a better man– Castiel. You pest,” he snaps, suddenly turning and snatching something- someone -from behind him. “Heaven’s most stubborn abortion. Do you really think your–ahhh!”
Sam drives his other forearm down into the second vulture claw, pining part of Lucifer down. He doesn’t know how he managed to do it with neither arms nor hands anymore, but the physics of this place have never answered well to the logic of the mind.
For the first time Lucifer emits a hiss. He feels the sting. He’s angry.
He’s right where they want him to be.
“So you want to go sightseeing in Valmordius?” he growls. “Why don’t you let me take you there? Why don’t you beg me, Sammy? I love the way you used to say my name. ”
Lucifer’s raven wings unfolds and Cas comes tumbling down, landing at Sam’s chin with a splat. Sam moves to go to him an then discovers that his hip bones have risen and impaled him into the ground. He can’t budge at all; he can’t touch the trenchcoat shaped lump that is Cas. It has to be him–all of him, and not just a shell of skin.
Cas rolls over and Sam exhales to see that he looks to be in one piece. He nods at Sam, eyes wide in some wild glint of hope. Valmordius . They have a name. They need to rile Lucifer up more; enough that he’s gloating, ranting. Revealing.
Lucifer’s forked tongue flicks at Cas’ chin. “I could get Dean for you. Gift-wrapped, even. You’ll never surive in Valmordius without me.” Roaches skitter off the tip of his tongue and crawl into Cas’ eyes, swelling the skin around his retinas. “I’ll be nice and good I promise. I won’t touch any other humans.”
“We don’t need you,” Sam rasps, trying to lift his torso forever. His spine is ripping. His brain is burning with the most explicit pain he’s ever felt. “Y-you’ve been out of comission too long. You probably don’t even remember the way. You’ll just slow us down.”
Get him furious, Cas had said. Lucifer’s weakness is his ego. He’ll boast about the times he’s gone to the realm of Death before. That’s the information we need.
Cas grunts in acknowledgement. His eyes are purple and oozing with roach larva but he speaks anyways. “You aren’t the archangel you once were, Lucifer. You’ve been locked up too long.”
Lucifer grins and thousands of dung beetles come clattering out from the gaps between his tiger teeth. “I’m the Lightbringer. I’m the only one who can even get close to Death.” He dips his wart-covered forehead against Cas’. “You need me. You’re just afraid to admit it.”
Sam opens his mouth only to find his mouth has vanished. The spell. When the time is up, Cas said that they would start to disappear, their bodies being transported back to earth. He tries to reach for Cas but his shoulder is gone, too.
No . They need more time. Just thirty seconds more.
Cas’ legs flash out of view just as Lucifer tries to stomp on them. Lucifer looks baffled for a second, then he turns to Cas and says something Sam cannot hear because his ears have flickered away. He can’t do anything. He can only watch Cas’ lips move– do they? --before suddenly his mouth is full of dry, bitter, November grass.
The sky is staring at him. He can see feel its eyes boring into his pores as he scrambles to his feet–then pulls off his socks and shoes to count his toes. He unbuckles his pants to feel his knees–still there–and the hipbone–present as well. His fingers rush to his back, counting the bumpy ridges of his spine. There’s no gap in his skeleton, no crevice, no limb unaccounted for. He blinks and brings his hands up to his face. Plucks at his nostrils and lips and eyelids and earlobes. Nothing feels wet with blood. He’s back.
He’s back . Oh god. Cas . He pulls his pants up, simulatenously drenched in horror and fear. Is Cas back with him? Has he been watching Sam frantically tugging at his own body like some ragdoll that’s just been brought to life?
When he looks around, though, Cas is there, a few paces away, back turned to him. Sam gets the feeling that Cas probably recalibrated himself much faster and then stepped away to give Sam some space to adjust to the return. He feels humiliated that his fragility was so apparent. He feels grateful in a way he’ll never be able to admit.
“Cas? You okay?” Sam walks over, stumbling on the small dip in the ground and giving himself a scare that the earth is caving in again. He’s being sent back to the Cage. No, he’s not. He’s in this graveyard, and Cas is turning to face him with crestfallen defeat and saying they didn’t find out the way to Valmordius, and Sam is patting his shoulder on instinct and words are coming out of his mouth automatically: words like it’s okay and let’s get out of here .
And then his leg muscles move, entirely on their own, and carry his torso across the street and place him inside the car: in the driver’s seat, neck lining up to the skeleton of the seat cushions. Sam opens his mouth and breathes cautiously.
He’s not in the Cage. He’s not .
His fingertips are buzzing like an entire beehive is underneath his fingernails.
He shuts his eyes and the world clatters to a stop. I’m not in the Cage. I’m not.
When he lifts the curtains of his eyelids the audience comes back into focus. Cas. Cas. Lucifer. You need me. You’re just afraid to admit it. Yes. No. Yes.
Sam swallows hard. His throat stings like vinegar on a raw wound. He reaches into his pocket and pulls out his wallet, fumbling with the tight creases until he gets out the piece of paper he hasn’t had to use in more than a year.
The one he’s never stop carrying around since Gadreel–since then. The creases are stitched into the fabric of the sigil, forming the lines are starkly as the blood-blotted ink. You don’t need to worry about this happening again, Cas had said when they worked on creating the sigil back then while Sam was still recovering from the possession. Not to you or anyone you care about. Sam has used the sigil off and on since then; sometimes after a particularly close encounter with hostile angels; sometimes just after a nightmare that felt real enough to glow across his skin.
He goes for his pocketknife now and opens the hem of his palm. He lets the first three drops of blood hit the sigil on the paper before releasing the clench of his ribs. The Enochian runes do not light up. He isn’t housing any angelic bodies.
Then he turns to Cas, who has remained wordless this entire time. Who has been watching him.
Sam flips the handle of the knife around. He tries to meet the angel’s gaze squarely–confidently–and say “your turn” without shaking.
Cas’ eyes widen, surprise swelling to the surface of his expression before it’s quickly replaced by acceptance.
He pulls his arm back before Cas takes the knife. He thinks of Dean sitting there in that same place, rolling his eyes and sighing that one time Sam made him do the sigil test. Do you think an angel would possess me when I’ve got this Mark? Whatever, just let me do it so you’ll quit being a baby. There. Happy now?
Sam closes his fingers around the pocketknife now, snapping the collapsible blade back in place. “I-I-sorry, I-didn’t-you don’t need to do it.” Shame rolls up the back of his neck. He’s the one who can’t tell the night apart from the day. He’s the one who has to bleed in order to outline reality. He shouldn’t infect others with his yellow-eyed insanity.
“Let me.” Cas leans over and gently tugs the pocketknife out of Sam’s grip. He lifts the paper with the sigil from the crack between the two seats where it’s fallen. Sam pretends not to care, not to stare relentlessly as Cas’ blood falls and the seeps into the paper.
The sigil stays cold.
Cas lets another drop fall, and glances up at him, as if wanting to doubly confirm what they’re seeing.
They’re not possessed. Lucifer isn’t here.
Sam turns to face the windshield because his cheeks are on fire. He panicked for nothing. He told himself he saw his best friend say yes just seconds before they were pulled out. He dreamed up a disaster when all along the earth was still and the waters untouched. He is chasing a prey that doesn’t exist.
And yet his knees can’t stop bobbing up and down. He drives despite Cas’ protest to let him take over. He drives because the leather of the steering wheel has grown over his knuckles and he can’t lift them even if he wanted to. Lucifer’s scent clogs his nostrils and he has to breathe through his lips, noisily, obviously. The low-hanging branches of the tree-lined road are all talking about him. They whisper yes yes yes and his chest pounds against his flesh, bruising no no never.
Somehow they arrive back at the cabin. Sam doesn’t remember the drive home. He feels Cas firmly plying at his fingertips, untangling him from his cemented position in the driver’s seat. The front door bangs behind him and then their footsteps are crossing the living room of the cabin.
The ground glitters with the reverberation of hordes, all coming after him.
He looks up and Cas is handing him a mug of hibiscus tea.
“You.” Sam can’t quite get the words around the swelling of his tongue. He pushes his stiff lips into a whistle and blows on the hot tea. After a few sips he puts the mug down and rests his hands on his knees. He watches the reflection in the polished wooden table in front of him. Cas comes to sit down on the sofa beside him. The angel hovers there, half a second away from asking if Sam’s okay.
You need me. You’re just afraid to admit it.
Sam closes his eyes. Please. Stop. He begs his mind to stop lying to himself.
It didn’t happen like that. It didn’t.
There is a terrible, yawning feeling in his gut, growing wider and wider every second. He’s going to fall inside it and disappear forever.
“You.” He licks his lips. They feel crusty. Dry. “Tell me I’m wrong.” Please . “Tell me I’m crazy.”
Cas’ response is immediate. Soft. “What do you mean, Sam? What do you need?”
He feels Cas slipping a hand on his shoulder and it hurts. Like he’s massaging thistles into his skin. Sam shrugs the touch off out of instinct. “Tell me you didn’t say yes.”
Nothing moves beside him. Cas has become so still the molecules in the air seem to pass through him.
The abyss in Sam’s stomach laughs.
“Tell me you didn’t say yes,” he repeats hoarsely.
Cas twitches a finger. Sam flinches like he’s been struck by a hammer.
“I didn’t finish giving my consent.” The words come out in Cas’ voice.
“You.” Sam opens his eyes and turns to look at the angel. “ You .” He says that word with all the strength of an unspoken paragraph and he knows that Cas understand, even though Sam can’t read the expression on Cas’ face, or even see any of his feature beyond the simmering haze of fury building in the back of his eyes.
“Yes.” Cas dips his head slightly.
You need me. You just don’t want to admit it. Yes.
Sam looks away. His forehead itches. He wants to slam his skull against Cas’. His toes are curled into themselves so tightly that his muscles are cramping in agony. “I-I need to be alone,” he manages to get out. “Just-give me an hour or so. I’ll text you when I-I have to be alone right now.”
The sofa shifts as Cas gets up.
There’s the sound of keys and door handle turning.
Then nothing.
Sam releases his body in a long, crooked shriek.
He falls off the couch, face-first into the rainbow patterned yarn carpet. It smells like cat hair and the bottom of shoes. He grabs at it, yanking it out of the neatly tucked corners of the floorboards and stuffing it into his mouth as his body ripples. His spine aches and his fingers fumble and he pulls out the saliva-soaked rug from between his jaws just in time to vomit a string of curses and Cas’ name and that morning’s toast with jam and butter.
Reality booms through his ears like thunder. Cas said yes . One second-one millisecond more-and that would have been Lucifer sitting on the sofa and handing him hibiscus tea. It doesn’t matter that the consent was not complete, that the possession didn’t happen. Cas intended to give the invitation. He will always be the one who tried to open the door Sam’s past, present, and future has been sacrificed to keep closed.
Sam crawls through his own pool of vomit and into the kitchen. He pulls himself up and snatches the knife off the counter. Tilts his head up and holds the blade to his throat. Blood would feel warm as it cascaded down his shirt. Blood would feel kind, understanding. Welcoming.
Don’t let me hurt anyone.
Including yourself.
He’d promised Cas he wouldn’t. But Cas isn’t here to stop him. Cas isn’t the one who broke the vow they gave each other not to let Lucifer in.
Cas isn’t here. He’s going to have to be his own deterrent.
Sam exhales as hard as he can, emptying his lungs of air. Then he hurls the knife away, sending it clattering into the kitchen sink. He staggers away and down the hall, pausing to vomit again. In the scramble to clean up the puddle he peels off his own shirt and then ends up in his room, pulling every piece of clothes he owns out of the closet.
Poor little Sammy. Never quite the hero you imagined yourself to be.
Sam finds a pair of scissors in the bottom of his sock drawer and cuts a hole in a gray bath towel so he can put it over his head and breathe. He lays on top of the mattress and stares at the discolored patches of wood in the ceiling, the parts where the weather has tarnished the gradient hue.
Lucifer snuggles over and puts a webbed hand on his chest. Right over the sternum.
Sam picks up the scissors and cuts through the webbing between his fingers. Lucifer whimpers as the green blood gushes out, and then Sam is standing barefoot in the bathroom, clumps of his own hair in his hands.
Lucifer strokes the back of his head. My favorite girl. He kisses the nape of Sam’s neck with incisors.
Sam turns on the shower and lets the water run until the tub is overflowing and the soles of his feet are scorched from the hot water. Steam clouds the mirror, erasing any visage of himself. That helps. He wraps his arms around his waist and chokes on the murky air. Sam. Samuel Winchester. I am Samuel Winchester. I am not in the Cage. I am flooding my bathroom.
He yelps and switches the water off.
He goes to get some towels to sop up the spillage and ends up standing in the middle of the forest wearing hiking boots and a down jacket. He’s breathing. Check. Okay. He’s unhurt. Check. Okay. The sun is tipping his face up, holding him by the chin, wagging his head back and forth.
I didn’t finish giving my consent.
“You’re so stupid,” Sam says aloud. He hears his own voice and it sparks a torrent of joy through his trembling body. His voice, no one else’s. “You’re so fucking stupid. You’re such an idiot. Stupid.”
He doesn’t know if he’s talking to himself or Cas or both.
A small squeak from behind him makes him uproot his legs and move. A cat or a lion or a cobra is stuck in the winterberry bushes. It has the belly of a pregnant or diseased animal. He untangles it from the thorny coil and holds it close to his chest.
Listen to my heartbeat. Can you confirm that I’m alive?
The creature responds telepathically. Yes. You are having an existence.
Sam walks back to the cabin and goes through the doors of a vet where a nurse is explaining that his cat has worms. The nurse is giving him medication and instructions and then there’s the weight of a small body in his arms again and he stares into it’s dark brown eyes and says what kind of world do you live in where the world is so small it does not even need to rest on your shoulder.
A world of dynamite.
It goes off.
Sam finds himself back on the floor of his bedroom, convulsing, shaking, shrapnel cutting into every inch of skin. He wants to die he wants to die he wants to die right here and now. Of course his wishes are never granted and instead he gets his face washed in cat slobber. Probably worm-infected slobber.
He sits up and the cat’s eyes are glowing in the dark. He faces the creature and whispers “demon child”.
The cat does not seem bothered by the name. Atlas , Sam thinks, and is disappointed to find the cat does not speak back to his mind the way it did before. I wish I had your strong shoulders, Atlas.
He feeds the cat some medicine and cleans his room and then writes “deter” one hundred times in Enochian all over his body in permanent marker. His body is a parcel and he delivers it on the doorstep of the woods. Beetles and slow-rising mud and late-falling snow collect on his skin and he imagines ripping his arm out of his socket and biting down hard into the biceps and orange juice comes oozing out.
You need me. Yes. You. I’ve missed you.
“Dean,” he croaks into the morning drool on his pillow. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”
Atlas meows and Sam looks up to see Lucifer scooping the animal’s eyes out with a teaspoon. Sam throws the bedside lamp across the room and then his hands are blue and covered in stardust. He’s stumbling back indoors and throwing logs on the cold fireplace. The tree bark crackles as smoke rises up and Atlas purrs against his hip bone.
“I’m not in the Cage,” Sam informs the cat. He gets down to eye level with the creature, stomach flat on the wooden floor. “I’m not in the Cage,” he shouts until his eyes blur and Atlas crawls away, uninterested.
Sam tucks his arms around his body like chains. His nails dig deep, steel biting into flesh, leaving half moon shapes down his sides. He chews on the inside of his cheek and everything tastes like burning ice. “Cas?” He lifts his head a few inches off the ground. “Cas, where are you?”
The world shivers, alone. He thinks he might be disintegrating, and he wonders if the universe will catch the final specks of his existence. If the purring cogs of time will remember the strands of hair he dropped on the carpet of history. If Cas will read traces of his soul in that waning hour between night’s last fever and the first sweat of dawn.
Cas isn’t here. He misses him first, his brother second. It makes him feel sick to the bone.
Dean is dead. No, he isn’t. You have no proof that he is.
Is someone dead if they stop existing in your life?
You didn’t keep him alive, Sammy. You weren’t strong enough.
Sam bites down hard, cutting off Lucifer’s tongue. He tastes copper and sweet blood around his own gums.
“I never gave up,” he tells Atlas. “I’m still looking for you, Dean. Me and Cas, we both are.”
Atlas blinks and his eyeballs come rolling out like a bag of marbles spilled across the floor.
“Please just come home.” Sam's fingers grow and stretch across the dirt, long as maple tree roots. He touches the soft slope of the phone’s body. The screen lights up like the blinding aurora from a dying god. “Please come home.”
“Sam?” Someone speaks from the tapestry of clouds. “Sam, are you alright?”
It’s not God. It’s not his brother. He inches closer to the radiating rectangle. “Who are you? Where are you?”
There’s a slight pause. A cumulus cloud trots away in the intermediate. “In a parking lot near Panera Bread. Do you need help? Did something happen?”
Sam glances around. There’s no sky above or forest below. He’s huddled in the corner of the bedroom, half a dozen shirts sprawled over his knees. Across from him the bookshelf sags, two pieces disconnected and open books dangling off the edge. A Siamese cat with a terribly bloated stomach is perched on the bedside table. A faint smell of burning wood is coming from the other room, and as Sam wobbles to his feet and goes to investigate he finds the fireplace is crackling. The fireplace, which they haven’t even lit before. He’d been meaning to clear it out in time for Christmas with Jody and the girls. Jody and the girls. Cas.
“Cas ,” he breathes into the phone. “Oh god, what-” his tongue sticks to the roof of his mouth. “What did-where are you?”
“In a parking lot near Panera Bread.”
Right, he already said that. Sam winces, feeling the back of his head and trying to remember why there’s dirt under his fingernails and a knife lying in the middle of the sink and a pile of wet towels under the table. “Cas, I-” his eyes fall to his body as his fingers lift the hem of his shirt. No open wound, but the fingernail marks are still red. “Cas, just-come back.”
The hesitation at the other end of the line is brief. “Are you certain? I can give you a few more days of space if that makes you more comfortable.”
Days? “Cas what are you-when’s the last you heard from me?”
A paper bag rustles. “Seventy hours ago.”
Three days. Three fucking days. His stomach growls suddenly, loudly, and Sam winces. “Yeah, I-I want you to come back.” He braces an arm around his gnawing insides. “Wait, have you been sitting in a parking lot for three days?”
“No, no. I was…nearby. I was waiting to hear from you. You said you would message me when…when I should return.”
The Cage. Cas admitting that he’d tried to say yes. Sam asking to be alone.
Sam pinches the bridge of his nose and exhales. There’s movement at his heels and he jumps in alarm, only to see the Siamese rubbing against his calves. He apparently also adopted an infested stray during this three-day episode. “Atlas,” he murmurs, bending down to stroke it between the ears. “I called you Atlas.”
“Who is Atlas?” comes Cas’ voice and Sam realizes he’s still on the phone.
“Oh-um-nothing-just-come back, Cas.” He blinks hard, a rush of frigid breeze suddenly enveloping him. “Come home.”
“Okay.”
Sam pushes the phone away after the call is over and wrings his hands. He remembers snatches of the past three days-the engulfing suffocation, the desperation to escape his body, this cage of skin-the way even hot showers made his teeth chatter-the anger, bleeding through his swollen gums as he screamed at Lucifer, at Cas, at God, at himself. At Dean.
Atlas meows persistently at his feet. Hungrily.
Okay. Sam. Get your head back on your fucking neck . The first thing he does is feed the cat from a bag of organic cat food still sitting in a Pets For Us shopping bag on the kitchen table. He must’ve taken Atlas to the vet; he vaguely recalls being in a car at some point and talking to a lady dressed in paper pink.
The rest comes back to him when he showers, tumbling down all at once with the waterfall of steam. All the hallucinations, the wood-chopping, the cat rescue, the furniture destruction, the scrangly hair cut-thank god he didn’t chomp off much-the knife, the desire deep down in the core of his marrow to cut himself away until nothing remained of his paper bag body, fit only to hold something else.
He takes a second, and then third shower. His skin feels so clean it hurts.
Then he busies himself with trying to set the cabin back in order before Cas gets there. The laundry and puddles are easy enough; the bookshelf takes longer than expected to put back together, and he’s barely finished repositioning it in place before he hears the truck driving up.
When Cas comes in the door Sam hurries to try and stand tall and straighten his shirt. Like he’s a spouse who’s just been caught cheating. He tries to think of something meaningful to say, something more poignant than “I’m sorry”, and he ends up just fumbling through syllables as Cas rushes over and ghosts his hands over him.
“Sam, are you okay? Have you been hurt anywhere? Did anyone hurt you?”
Sam shakes his head. “I’m fine, Cas. I-I should have called you earlier. I didn’t mean to worry you.”
Cas looks calm, his expression almost too placating. “It’s alright.” His eyes drift briefly around the room. He must be noticing the remnants of wreckage around them but he makes no comment. “I’m glad that you’re unharmed.” He pauses and then bends down to pet Atlas’ head. The Siamese purrs under the soft strokes of Cas’ fingers but the angel is frowning. His fingertips start to glow and then the brilliance fades. “I’ve healed his worms. He is healthy now.”
“Thanks. I-I found him.” While having a meltdown in the woods. “I think he’s a stray.”
A fond smile appears on Cas’ face. “I think he and Bartholomew will enjoy each other’s company.” He looks up, and for the first time Sam sees him. Really sees him. His cheekbones are protruding, the veins of his neck standing out more starkly than before. He looks like he’s lost twenty pounds in the last seventy-two hours.
“Cas.” Sam touches his elbow gently. “You need to maintain your weight.”
Cas glances at him and there’s a flash of some unreadable emotion before his eyes illuminate and the lines of his body fill out a bit more. He looks more physically stable now. Sam has no idea where his mind is, though; what was he doing for the past three days? Where did he stay? And of course why the fuck the ever living fuck did you try to say yes you stupid idiot goddamn-
“You went-uh-shopping?” Sam gestures weakly to the Panera Bread paper bag in Cas’ hand.
“Oh.” Cas makes a face like he’s just realized what he’s been holding this entire time. “It’s for you. I thought you might not have much appetite…” he looks a bit sheepish. “I was just going to leave it on the porch. I wanted to make sure you were eating. I wasn’t going to intrude on your space.”
Sam looks inside the bag and sees a Mediterranean Veggie sandwich and a peach and blueberry smoothie. He bites the tip of his tongue because after all the many ways he’s unraveled in the past seventy-two hours, he’s not going to be caught crying over his favorite Panera Bread order. “Thank you,” he manages to squeeze out.
“I’m going to take a nap,” Cas says evenly and then he’s gone off down the hall towards the bathroom. Probably going to fill the bathtub and snore at the bottom of the warm, soapy water, and Sam wishes for a second that he had gills and fins and could just sleep through a drowning, too.
Instead he puts on his socks and shoes-the soles of his feet are crisscrossed with scratches from his barefoot lunatic walk-and then a scarf and coat and beanie on top of it all. He takes care to dress warmly, with preparation, so he’s not bolting into the wilderness the way he knows he did sometime in the past three days. His insides are rearranged and placed in tidy order now. He’s not going to unspool.
He goes outside and picks up a fallen acorn in his hand to keep himself from digging his nails into his palm. There are hardly any leaves left on the deciduous trees around them, so he makes a game out of counting the few stragglers. The ones who look at the chasm of winter and believe they will finally be the first ones to defy its demands.
Valmordius.
The word hums in his mind like the relentless sputter of a broken car engine. That’s all they got for their weeks of planning and anxiety and the endless century it seems they were in the Cage and the three days of forever since. It’s like driving across the continent to pick up half a glass of water from a gas station bathroom.
The three p.m. sun drifts into his eyes and he drops his head for a second, shielding himself from the glare. He notices a rut in the dirt at his left and follows the trail of shoe-flattened grass to a small clearing in front of a young fir tree. From here he can clearly see their cabin through the eaves of dark green leaves. He can see the pitiful remains of their garden; the slanted angle the truck is parked at; the chipped corner tile of the roof he’s been meaning to fix.
He can see their home.
He should go back. Sit down and talk to Cas.
When he turns around, though, his foot gets stuck in a dip in the earth. He pulls himself free for a split second only to tumble down deeper into what looks like a man-sized hole. Manhole. Heh . Dusting his hands off and standing to his feet, he looks around as the rest of the surface dirt crumbles and realizes that he can only be in the middle of a grave. In the middle of the forest. That he doesn’t remember digging.
Because he wasn’t the one who carved it out of the ground.
He sees it before his mind catches up and makes sense of it: a pile of beige in the corner–Cas’ trenchcoat. A dog-eared book: Sense and Sensiblity. Cas has been reading through all of Austen’s works lately. A flat, black charging portable charging bank for a phone. A blanket from the back of the truck.
Have you been sitting in a parking lot for three days? No, no, I was…nearby.
Sam climbs out of the trench and sits back on his heels, pushing air out between pursed lips.
I was waiting to hear from you. You said you would message me.
He pushes himself up to his feet and turns around to go back to the cabin only to bump right into Cas.
The angel stands there, not looking at him but at the hollow ditch at their feet. His hair is still wet from the bath. He’s wearing a bathrobe over a jumper and jogging pants. “I didn’t want to go too far,” he says, staring at the overturned soil. “I was afraid you might…I was afraid for you. You wanted space, and I respect that. But I could not bear if anything happened to you.” He lifts his head now, eyes dark and haunted with guilt. “I should have been there. If I had not done what I’d done, you would have let me be there.”
Sam assumes that Cas has seen the residual damage in the house and pieced together that some kind of breakdown has ensued over the past few days. “I don’t-I don’t know if that was the reason, I don’t-” he smooths a hand over his face. “I thought I was seeing Lucifer, I-I haven’t lost control of reality like that since-” since the last time I returned from the Cage.
Cas seems to read his mind. “That was due to my actions, too.”
“You know that I’ve never held that against you.”
Cas puts his hands in his pockets and looks up at the arch of the tree beside them. “Sometimes I wish you did,” he says, so quietly Sam’s not sure he’s meant to hear it. He knows the feeling intimately; to be punished by another’s hatred is much easier than having to go through the excruciating process of trying to pardon yourself.
Sam watches the wind rustle the patches of green above them. It’s easier this way. Not having to face Cas when he drops the question, and more importantly, when the angel answers. “When did you decide to say yes?”
Cas is looking at him. Sam can feel it. “You do not have to forgive me, Samuel. I know what I put at risk by making that choice. I knew full well the betrayal, the dangers, the cost, the risk of untold human suffering. I knew I would lose you and yet I made the decision anyways.”
Sam keeps staring at the canopy above. “You didn’t answer my question.” If Cas had been planning to consent all along, from the moment they started working on the plan, he’s going to shatter something. Mostly likely himself.
There’s the sound of feet scuffling back and forth then, “when Lucifer said the name.”
“Valmordius.” Sam lowers his head. “You’d heard it before?”
Cas nods. “There were legends about it, passed among all the angel ranks. It was a place more guarded and forbidden than Eden. Rumor was only an archangel’s blade could open the door.” He wets his lips. There’s no shame on his face, just a look of resolute defeat. “Lucifer could have helped you find Dean. He was the only one who could bring you to the realm of Death.”
“And then what? He wouldn’t have just let you go.” Sam moves closer, scrutinizing Cas’ expression for any trace of remorse and finding none. “Do you even know if you can-if you can be possessed by an archangel?”
“Does it matter?”
“Yeah, Cas, yeah, it matters . What were you thinking?”
“I was thinking you could have your brother back.” Cas locks his gaze onto Sam with unwavering conviction. “Lucifer is the key to getting Dean back.”
Sam laughs, so sudden and loudly that birds scatter above. He can’t believe it. “Lucifer? You were gonna let the Devil walk free so that-” his shoulders drop abruptly “-no, you were going to let the Devil into our lives, our house, our home-” my bed my arms my morning breakfast routines and afternoon tv schedule “-because you think that’s the only way to get into Valmordius? We would have found another way, Cas!”
“What way?” he returns, just as sharp. “Another three or four months of waiting on a miracle when we could have answered our own prayers?”
“You getting possessed by Lucifer is not a fucking miracle,” Sam throws back. “Where would that even leave you?”
“Useful.” Cas steps forward, shoulders squared back. “I would be useful . For once.”
Sam stops. He squints for a second, like that will give him any greater clarity. “U-u-useful?” he sputters. “Do you really think-Cas, what-I don’t care if you’re useful, Cas. I just need you to be here .”
“ I need to be useful!” Cas shouts, stabbing at his chest with a pointed finger. “I am meant to serve. I am the rock and the catapult, I am the blood you spill to win the battle, I am the decoy that distracts the enemy so the true warriors can rush in.” His eyes are wide and bulging; he’s talking so hard and fast there’s saliva at the corners of his mouth and yet he doesn’t stop to wipe it away. “I need to do something, Sam, anything to be of use to you, because otherwise what in my Father’s name am I?”
He pauses, and Sam’s eyes must give away his shock because the fury immediately evaporates from Cas. His hand falls down to his side and he turns away slightly, shoulders still heaving up and down. “So, no, I did not consider what would happen if Lucifer possessed me. All I knew was that it could bring back Dean. With Dean’s return you would be happy, you would be at peace, which is what you deserve. And-”
“You’re a champion Mario Kart player,” Sam blurts out.
It gets Cas to face him again. “What?”
“You said you don’t know who you are if you’re not useful.” Sam moves in, reaching for Cas’ hands. He hasn’t touched anyone or been touched in three days. To hold someone else’s fingers against his exhausted skin feels more welcoming than he’d ever imagined it’d be. “You’re a great Mario Kart champion. You’re a half decent cook but a lousy gardener. You’re a professional knitter. You’re a mediocre dancer, but what you lack in technical skills you make up for in enthusiasm. You’re an incredible hunter and the best research partner on the planet. You’re the most selfless angel I know. You’re a good friend, Cas. My best friend.”
Cas’ eyes search Sam’s questioningly, as if trying to process everything that’s just been said. Then he steps back slightly. There’s this haunted look on his face like he’s waiting for a mountain to fall on his head and flatten him. “You’re allowed to be angry with me.”
“Yeah. Yeah, I know.” Sam looks down at their tangled fingers. “But I can be angry at someone and still love them.” He’s done it a thousand times with Dean. With his father.
It feels different this time, though. His anger is being acknowledged. It’s being given a seat at the table instead of loitering on the back steps outside.
Cas doesn’t say anything. He closes his eyes for a moment and then nods. It isn’t enough of a conversation–not for everything they still have to talk through–but it’s enough for now. They’re already exhausted from this much. They go back to the cabin together by some unspoken unanimous decision.
They aren’t holding hands anymore but their bodies are tipped towards each other, like two pieces of an arch that’s been cracked down the middle.
That night Sam wakes up and finds Cas’ side of the bed empty. It isn’t unusual; the angel rarely stays in one location all night. If he’s not burrowing himself in his crater outside then he’s probably smug in one of the designated-for-napping kitchen cupboards.
Sam moves in the dark towards the window. The silhouette of moonlight pours uneven strips of white across the forest. The Macedonian flag is waving in the corner of the garden, so that confirms Cas’ location. He watches the sleepy trod of the rustling branches for a minute before turning back to bed.
Then something glints from over his right shoulder.
He spins around to see Cas standing by the window frame.
Eyes bright red pearls.
Forked tongue painting a pitchfork in the fog circle of glass.
Sam stumbles back, scraping the skin of his heel on the bedpost.
The Macedonian flag is unmoved, the hard yellow lines still grinning at him.
He watches the window religiously until sunlight comes pouring in, warm and disgusting.
The days after his breakdown drip down like frozen molasses. Cas refuses to do any research on Valmordius until “we’ve recovered from what happened” and Sam doesn’t miss the intentional plural, the attempt to place himself in the same pile of steaming wreckage that Sam’s in.
Sam doesn’t know where to even begin processing the fact that he spent three days spiraling, or that Cas spent three days waiting to be told he could come home. Or that they made it into the Cage and back out in one piece at all. It feels like five different planets have collided and his head is never not spinning. He can’t sleep. He can’t stand being awake. Every sensation is a burn or bruise.
One circumstantial difference is that the pet population in the house has doubled: Bartholomew is back from its vacation at Jody’s, and they are surprisingly loathe to befriend Atlas. Sam tries to coax the two cats into becoming a friendship by assembling a new, larger scratching post for them, which they both immediately ignore. Eventually Cas puts Atlas in one coat pocket and Bartholomew in the other, and suddenly the cats become sworn comrades in arms.
Figures. Atlas is his rescue and yet he doesn’t pay Sam any attention when he calls. The only time Atlas shows any interest in is when Sam’s working on the fireplace. Atlas sits there, ears perked up and eyes rapt in attention as Sam clears the old log husks away and then gets covered in soot trying to unclog the chimney.
“You think this is funny, huh?” Sam wags a blackened finger at the Siamese. “Be my guest. Laugh away.”
Atlas meows and trots after him towards the water faucet outside. Sam is one foot out the door when he sees that Cas is already there, washing off some garden tools. Sam quickly withdraws, peeling his body back inside the house.
“ What ,” he whispers to Atlas’ critical eyebrows. “I’m not avoiding him. Go scratch a cardboard box or something.”
It’s not hard to create distance from someone you share a living space with. Sam did it for most of his adolescent years, trying to reduce conversations with his father down to the minimum lest there be a blowout that Dean would try to get in the middle of. Then over the past decade of hunting with his brother there’s been plenty of periods of silent sulking. Dean could never hold out as long as Sam; he’d be the first one to pester for attention, for some kind of argument, anything over deliberate quiet.
But Cas is different.
For the past four days he hasn’t talked to Sam beyond checking in on him. He doesn’t stand within an arm’s length of Sam unless Sam moves in closer. In fact he seems exceptionally cautious about any kind of physical contact, to the point where he puts food on the table instead of directly handing it to him.
Sam’s noticed. He can’t help it. He’s cataloguing every action, and lack thereof, to put the pieces of the mosaic together.
They went on a hunt yesterday at Sam’s plea to do something out of the house-just a simple salt and burn-and Cas put the salt rounds on the car seat rather than place them in Sam’s outstretched hand. They share the same bed some nights and Cas lies so close to the edge of his side that he’s practically dangling off. Cas has stopped their nightly wash-and-dry dishes routine and instead has started washing the plates early in the morning so that by breakfast there’s none left for Sam to do.
The mosaic makes a perfect picture. Sam understands. He doesn’t hold it against him. Sam can hardly tolerate the excruciating horror of his own being. Cas saw Sam-the real him, the one cowering in front of Lucifer’s taunts-and there’s more need for pretenses or forced kindness. No need to paint florescent colors over a cracked wall with irreparable water damage.
In the back of his mind Sam has always known that Cas knew -after all he absorbed his Hell memories from the first time he was in the Cage-but it’s never taken the center of the stage the way it has now. Sam feels like a dissected corpse lying open on a metal tray, sheet peeled back. Even if someone is merciful enough to cover him again the sight cannot be erased or forgotten.
Why don’t you beg me, Sammy? I love the way you used to say my name.
Sometimes just being the same room as Cas, and the very knowledge of what Cas knows, is enough to make him nauseous. He tries to keep down at least one meal a day, for nutrients sake. He eats his meals alone when he can, but then Cas worries about him and tells him to eat in the dining room where it’s warmer and Sam forces himself to chew through the sandwiches and salad and not feel like his flesh is melting off every time Cas’ head turns in his direction.
When Sam can’t sleep he thinks of all the ways he could destroy this body. He paints mental portraits instead of ripping off the bamboo gloves and scratching the thin skin around his eyes. He thinks of Cas smiting him, palm to the forehead, the hot ripe stench of his soul filling the air before fizzling out. Lucifer could still possess a smoldering skin suit, though. Then to the wood chipper he’d go. The bloody specks would fly like fireworks. Celebration. The last horror of the world has ended. Children would sleep peacefully and stars would link arms and make necklaces around the sun.
Sometimes the thought of his destruction calms him down enough to even fall asleep.
Then on the morning of the sixth day post breakdown, Cas does something deviant.
He pulls up a chair and sits directly in front of Sam. They’ve maintained the stretch of the table’s distance between each other ever since the Cage. “Sam.” Cas looks at him with firm sincerity. “I have something that I believe can help you.”
Smite me? Please? “What is it?”
Cas pulls out something from his pocket and puts it on the table next to the plate of toast. He pushes it a little closer when Sam bends down to inspect it. “You need to push it past the cranium. When my left retina is bloated you’ll know that it’s in far enough.”
It’s a long, metal pin, about the length of Sam’s forearm. There’s dried blood, or rust, at the sharp end.
All of three seconds past before Sam registers where he’s seen the object before. The puncture wounds on Cas’ forehead months ago. When he first found the angel again after Dean died. Sam jumps back in his seat, fast enough that the chair legs squeak half an inch across the wooden floor. “What the fuck,” he breathes, hard. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to-what the fuck ?”
Cas frowns. “I don’t understand.”
“Why-” Sam puts a hand over his chest. He’s breathing too fast. He counts backwards in his head, focusing on the air entering and exiting through his nostrils. “Why are you giving me this?”
“To help you.” Cas gets that wrinkled-brow expression, the way he looks when he doesn’t understand some internet slang that Claire is explaining. “You have a hard time being around me because you don’t trust that Lucifer isn’t possessing me. By using this to ‘hack’ me, as you call it, you will access the most primal parts of my being. You will have no doubt that I am alone in this body.” He pauses, then adds, “I can be in a circle of holy fire if that helps you feel safer, too. You know that archangels cannot pass through that.”
Sam gets up from the table. The partially-chewed toast crust in his mouth sticks like wet clay against his teeth. He cups his hands against the back of his head and tries, really tries , to keep inhaling and exhaling on rhythm. He paces around the kitchen counter and faces the stove. Find a point to fixate on. Don’t think. Find. Fixate .
There’s a bit of scrambled egg on the side of the burner, a yellow crumble like a discarded sun.
Somehow it makes everything so much worse.
His hands fly to his face instinctively, too slow to mute the gasp from his lips and then he’s crying, wondering why he’s so loud, so fucking loud , and his body shrinks on itself and he’s stumbling over to find something to lean against before he collapses. He wobbles to where Cas is sitting and manages to crumble back into his own chair, head bowed to Cas’ lap; he tries to open his mouth wider and stuff the sobs back in but they tumble out, hard and fast as flowing rapids.
Cas moves, slightly-Sam can feel the shift under his sweating forehead-and Sam can’t hear him above the sound of his own crying and gasping breaths and he tries to calm down enough to make out what Cas is saying and finally figures it out after forty seconds.
“Can I touch you?”
Can I touch you. He’s asking for permission . Realization breaks over him like a wave.
“Yes,” Sam chokes out, fresh tears burning his eyes. “ Yes .”
He thinks if someone doesn’t touch him right now he’s going to vanish forever. If someone doesn’t acknowledge the existence of his skin it’s going to fall right off his bones.
Cas’ arms wrap him so close to his chest Sam can feel the ridges of his ribs against the side of his shoulder.
“Tighter,” Sam whispers. “Hold me tighter.” And Cas does, and it feels like he’s being squeezed out of a tunnel into the light. He braces his forehead against Cas’ shoulder, breathing, breathing, and the air comes back inside his lungs like a prodigal son and he tells it I’m sorry for making you wait outside, come here, sit down, I’ve been waiting to tell you how much you mean to me.
He doesn’t think he can bear facing Cas right now so even as the tears slow he stays there in his arms, half off his seat, half crawled into his lap, chin in the crook of his arm. Cas’ fingers are moving through the side of his hair in gentle strokes. “I thought you couldn’t stand to be near me,” Sam finally says. “I thought-you saw me in the Cage. You saw him .”
“Sam-” his voice cracks and cuts off. He buries his face in the back of his neck. “I would never -”
Sam closes his eyes, letting the last tears slip free.
“I saw you,” Cas says, softly. “I saw you in the Cage standing up to your tormentor and not backing down. I saw the bravest person I know doing the bravest thing I’ve ever seen.”
Sam doesn’t know what to say to that. He doesn’t know how to explain the feeling of being suddenly newborn on a Wednesday morning at age thirty-one. The feeling of being told a wound is not a wound; in fact it is a ribbon of silk, weaving the victories of your life together. Of being told that you are exactly as strong as you told yourself you could never, ever be.
He burrows deeper into Cas. Lets him tuck his hair behind his ear and press his cheek to the back of his head.
At some point his back starts to cramp from the awkward position and Sam also wants to clean up the snot from his face without using Cas’ sleeve as a napkin, so they unwrap themselves and straighten up. Sam blows his nose loudly and Cas sits there, still staring at the metal pin between the breakfast plates.
“I don’t need this, Cas.” Sam picks it up carefully. He doesn’t even know why Cas kept it-maybe to remember Hannah, or some other self-loathing entrenched logic-but he gives it back to him anyways. “For one, I’ve never doubted what you said. I trust you. And two, I would never choose to hurt you. Ever.”
Cas fiddles with the dried blood end of the pick. “But you and I…something has changed.” He says it quietly, the way you’re afraid to say something and make it become real. “I thought surety could fix that.” He wets his lips and pauses. “I didn’t touch you because I thought I wasn’t… allowed to anymore. I didn’t know what you felt about me after what I’d done, about-”
“Us.” Sam realizes that heading into hell right after making a commitment to love someone was probably one of the worst timings as far as relationships go. “Cas, I-”
“You are not beholden to your word,” Cas says quickly. His jaw stifens and he’s wearing that calm expression of deference that he had when he first came back after three days. “You agreed to something that you didn’t fully understand, you are free from any duty-”
“Hey, hey, hey. Don’t speak my mind for me.” Sam leans his head on one palm and breathes out. He finally feels like his lungs are back in place again. “Cas, I didn’t-I’m not going to pretend things are going to be the same for me. Or you. We both went through a really scary, traumatic experience, and there’s going to changes in our bodies and psychology because of that. Things that don’t normally bother us might set us off, and things we used to like doing might just annoy us now, and viceversa.”
Cas nods. “You may change the way you feel about people, too.”
“Cas. Look at me.” Sam gestures for him to tip his chin up. “I want to be in a queerplatonic relationship with you. I want to love you and stand by you no matter what happens. I do.”
Cas bows his head, smiling on one side of his face just as sunlight washes acros the table. He looks half-lit in a halo of dawn, eyes shining with either tears or the sun in his eyes. “I do, too.”
There’s a joke in the back of Sam’s mind about how it sounds like they’re married now, but he keeps it to himself. They’re far from the altar, anyways. He’s sitting here with a plate of cold toast and an old torture pin on the table, and by his feet two cats are meowing impatiently to be fed and there are lumps of uncleared snow blocking the view from the window. Everything is blotted in faint colors or dull shadows, and he’s in the middle of it all, pulling Cas closer and kissing the side of his head before standing up to do the dishes. He gets out a new sponge, the one with orange stripes that was on sale last week. Cas gets up and comes over beside him at the sink, drying cloth in hand. The water runs from the tap, soft and rushing, and Sam feels the soap suds warm on the back of his hand; the gentle squeak of Cas' towel drying the surface of the plates; the hum of the earth rotating slowly around them.