Another little prompt fill from tumblr. The prompt was 'Sam sleeping in the Impala'. Warning for some gory descriptions.
The ceiling fan twitches overhead, making its final slow circles in the dark. Everything is quiet, except for Dean's soft snores and the occasional car passing by outside, a hush like waves as its tires scrape the asphalt. Sam focuses on these things, as well as the dull pain of his thumb bothering the scar on his palm. If he doesn't, he'll have to look to his left where Jess's skin is blackened and flaking. He refuses to look, but he can feel her smile, made crooked by the incoming wisdom teeth which had bothered her in the months before she died.
Sam pulls the thin motel sheets up to his chin and rolls to the right. Dean is sweaty and sleep-warm, his arm dangling over the side of his bed. Sam wonders how he does it. How did he relearn to sleep after forty years in Hell?
Sam isn't sure when he last slept. Dreams and wakefulness are to difficult to tell apart these days.
"Baby, what is it?" Jess asks. He feels her hand on his shoulder, scolding hot and brittle.
Not real, Sam reminds himself. If it's not real, why does she feel no different to anything else in the room? Stranger things have happened than the dead coming back.
He allows himself a peek, regrets it instantly. There's only a small tuft of her blonde, feather-soft curls still clinging to her cracked, raw scalp. One of her eyes is gone, the eyelid welded to her cheek. The other gazes down at him, soft and blue.
"It was agony," she tells him. "I couldn't move, couldn't even scream. I could just burn. And you just watched."
"I didn't know," Sam says, voice scratchy and barely there. He's about to say more, but he immediately shuts himself up. Not real. There's no one here for him to beg forgiveness, just the broken pieces of his mind leaking out in front of his eyes. He doesn't owe his madness any excuses.
He presses firm on his cracked palm, eyes squeezed shut. When he opens them again, Jessica is gone, but he can still smell burned hair and flesh in the room.
Dean shifts on the other bed, rolling over and away from Sam.
"He doesn't need you," Lucifer says. "You're a liability, really. He's trying to save the world, again, but he's got to look after you and your scrambled brains. He wants to pack up that overcompensation of a car and leave you here."
Why doesn't he, then? Sam wants to argue, but he knows he can't reply. He shouldn't even be listening. But Lucifer is in his head, he is Sam. He knows everything Sam knows. Two halves made whole.
"He doesn't because your dad beat it into him," the Devil says, and Sam knows it's the truth. He's only honest if he knows it will hurt. "John Winchester brainwashed that kid. Look out for Sammy, even if it kills him."
"Shut up," Sam hisses at the dark. He sits upright, his shirt clings to his sweat-beaded skin. Warm, wet and sticky. A lot like blood. He won't turn the light on for fear of what he'll see.
The room is empty again, just two beds and an expanse of darkness surrounding them. Sam can see the Impala dozing in the parking lot outside, her metal coat shiny with dew. Sam can't sleep in here, not when there are so many shadows waiting to rise up and bite him. He reaches out to the bedside table and grabs the keys, his hand trembles and he can't still it no matter how hard he tries. He tiptoes to the door, trying to ignore the swarm of spiders underfoot.
The room's door handle opens its mouth wide and tries to sink its teeth into him, but Sam grips it by the muzzle and turns. It's a hot summer, the concrete pavement is dry and cracked, the dust clings to the bottom of his sweaty feet.
He can hear his father yelling at him, stomping boots drawing nearer. "Did I say you could leave? Get the fuck back in here! Or else you can stay gone! Don't come back!"
Sam hops into the car's backseat and slams the door, shutting in the quiet. He glances through the window and finds nothing there, just more sleeping cars under the golden streetlights. Sam lowers himself into the leather, limbs bent uncomfortably to fit. Once, he could stretch out from head to toe and still not take up all the space. He wishes he could go back to that, when things were simpler. When the world didn't end every other week and he didn't have a head full of Hell.
Sam traces his fingers along the door and finds the grooves of his and Dean's names, then the head and rifle of a little green soldier, MIA in the ashtray. He breathes in a lungful of air and tastes aftershave, the extra onions on Dean's burger, the dust from one of Bobby's books.
He closes his eyes, and curls up on the silence.
They can't get him here.
Hopefully I can get on with my unfinished fics soon. In the meantime, I hope you enjoyed this. Reviews are appreciated!