Written for the following prompt: "Sam never wakes up after Cas tears his wall down. Godstiel, showing what he believes to be compassion, lets Dean and Bobby go. They return to Sioux Falls and take care of a catatonic Sam, first in the panic room, then upstairs, and finally, eventually, Bobby convinces Dean that Sam needs - deserves- better care than they can provide. The long-term care facility is nice enough, Dean supposes. Sam opens his eyes for the first time in months, though he's clearly still not home."
There's a fly on the wall. A sound like something caught in a fan, slightly off. Spiderweb wings, fragile as tissue paper, stroking the air. Like Lucifer's fingers, sometimes.
Fly in the buttermilk, shoo fly, shoo.
He doesn't know about buttermilk. Weeping flesh, flies like that. Nibbling, tickling sticky skin, unexpected sensation coating the pain. Doesn't help, though.
He wonders if the wall itches where those threadlike feet brush it.
The fly catches fire, tiniest puff of smoke, and he sighs. He's pretty sure now that doesn't belong.
"Hi, Sammy." Sam looks at him like he always does, big, blank eyes; says nothing. Not blinking as much as'd be normal. "Finished my shift. Thought I'd come say hi."
Dean reaches for one of Sam's big hands, careful with his nails. The skin is near-translucent, fat melted away, knobby bone and thin cords of tendon visible beneath. Sam's hand lies limp in his grasp, unmoving. Always unmoving. All Sam's done so far is turn his head, blink those empty eyes too slow, too seldom. Breathe on his own.
At least he's awake now.
"Talked to Bobby today. He's doing well. Said to say hi."
Blink, blink.
Dean strokes his thumb over the bird bones of Sam's hand, traces ridges and valleys, remembers. "You always were too skinny. All that rabbit food, I guess. Never could fatten you up." Guilt floods his chest, hot and familiar, a welcome anchor in this strange, unsettling world of fluorescent lights and mop buckets. "Always tried, though. Remember that one Thanksgiving? You were, I dunno, eight or nine maybe. Think we were in Wisconsin somewhere. Anyway, I stole all the fixings from that sketchy corner store down the street. Didn't tell you that, of course. You were self-righteous as hell, even then." Dean chuckles. "Didn't know what I was doing, either. Put it all in the oven - remember that one? Reeked of old grease. You could smell it from the bedroom. Anyway, it was the first time I turned the oven on. Caught fire pretty quick; burnt all the food. Ended up eating ravioli out of a can. And you were always such a good kid, Sammy. Easy, least when Dad wasn't there. You just looked up at me with those big puppy eyes, never could say no to them, and said, 'It's ok, Dean. Don't think I like turkey, anyway.' And you put your hand on mine and squeezed it just a little, and then your eyes went wide and you dropped your fork, and you asked me, all quiet and serious, if maybe the oven was haunted."
Something hot pricks the corner of Dean's eyes, but he smiles. It fades as realization settles heavy on his mind. "Guess you were nine, then, if you knew about that stuff."
He leans back in the chair and closes his eyes, his thumb continuing its circular path along Sam's hand. Snatches of memory, painful this time, burst against the back of his eyelids. Christmas paper, mounds of gifts, someone else's house. Lights flash blue and red, racing toward the tripped alarm as he strolls away, cool as you please - Believe that you belong, and they will, too, Dad says. But Dad, he wants to say, what if I just can't, anymore? Too big a lie for believing - and heads back toward Sam. Girl presents, they turn out to be, but Sam doesn't mind, not really. Kid always did see too much. Then Dad's journal - Why, Dad? Never left it behind before. Did you want him to find it? - and Sam, Sam….
"You know I went back and got it, Sammy. Could never have left it behind like that."
Sam doesn't answer. Dean's not sure he would have, even if he were all the way here. Not sure he'd want him to.
A nurse comes in, tells him that visiting hours are over. He leans down and kisses Sam's temple. "Be back tomorrow, Sammy. Love you."
Sam's eyes are wide, so close, and Dean can see himself reflected in Sam's pupils. He breathes in deep the scent of his brother and fingers the cord at his throat. Hopes it'll be enough to carry him over, knows it probably won't.
"Sorry it's a bit chilly, Sam." Chilly, chilly echoes along the damp, crumbling walls, over and over in the cavernous maw of this new incarnation of their cage. One finger, gentle, strokes his cheek, burns cold into his jawbone, his teeth, and they crack, shatter in the fluctuating pulse of ice on hot blood.
The finger traces over his chin, behind his ear, breaking bone like glass with barest pressure. He's numb, he's burning, and he knows he'd be screaming if his throat weren't gaping like a fish's dead mouth where Lucifer's fingernails played earlier. Sam hadn't known you could cauterize with cold.
Michael lingers in the corner, always silent, always watching, his pupils the same shade of black whether Lucifer chooses torment or tenderness. Lucifer never pays him any mind, but Sam sees the other angel move sometimes, sees him shudder and stroke himself raw when Lucifer takes his pleasure from Sam. He's wondered more than once if that's why they were chosen.
Not today, though. Lucifer promised. "I always keep my promises, Sam. Why couldn't you?" And then he's Dean, green eyes wide and flashing, demon blood ripe on the fingers that breach Sam's mouth. "Bloodsucking freak," he whispers. "Not you anymore."
Not you, not you.
The green-eyed man comes back with the sun. He knows the man's name, knows it should matter, used to matter. The man smells like soap, like gun oil and something a little musty he thinks he might have recognized before.
He says something, holds a spoonful of food to Sam's mouth, but dust motes flit in the beam from the window, and how can Sam tell him his lips are sewn shut, that Lucifer's dancing now with the dust, red-stained thread trailing behind him, twirling in the speckled light.
He'd laugh if he could remember how.
Sam isn't moving, he's barely breathing, but for once the stillness is relief, because at least he's not arching and twisting and screaming like his body wants to rip in half. Bobby looks at Dean, clearly reluctant, says, "Maybe he needs more help than we can give."
Dean wants to refuse. He has been refusing, as Bobby's repeated himself for weeks. Now he's not sure. Sam's disintegrating before their eyes, wasting away like a shriveled orange, and for the first time Dean considers the voice in his head that whispers that Sammy is gone.
Those first few days in the panic room had been the easiest, in a way, because Sam was quiet but hope was fresh, and the passing moments felt like waiting. Now his brother's stretched like a corpse on the guest bed upstairs, just as quiet, but the clock that ticks from its perch on the wall fills Dean's ears like the rush of graveyard dirt on a coffin.
"There's a place a few towns over that's hiring. Maintenance staff, mostly. They're equipped to handle people like Sam."
People like Sam.
Dean vomits in the corner.
The blood that drips from the welts on his back crystallizes at Lucifer's touch, piercing his skin like the stinging ants that swarmed his legs at that picnic he had with Dean, once. He thinks of the sun, the grass, can't remember their colors, sees them red and ravenous black, knows that's not right. He tries to remember the scent of the breeze, but all he can smell is sulfur and rot and burning flesh, and the air that swarms his face is hot with Lucifer's breath.
Sam's going, leaving; his face is flushed at their father's words and his hands shake as he packs his bag, but Dean's seen that look, that set to his shoulders, and knows Sam won't return. He tries to speak, to beg, to remind Sam of what they have, but his throat is too tight and his lips are sealed shut and the door slams loud at his brother's back, and all he can think is what about us?
Again, the green-eyed man comes back. Every morning, every night, and Sam's a little surprised to find that time has settled into recognizable rhythms. Lucifer's across the room, drawing lewd pictures with the blood he tapped from Sam's throat this morning, but when the spoon touches his lips this time, his mouth falls open, something cool and creamy drips inside, and he swallows.
The man seems pleased. Scared. Sam can't tell. He knows eyes, how to read them, knows lust and amusement and the cold drip of hate, but these eyes are green and inscrutable.
"That's good, Sam. Real good." Sam blinks and can't hear the rest, because the sounds that the green-eyed man has been making since that first morning he opened his eyes have shaped themselves back into words. He'd forgotten about words.
"Dad's on a hunting trip." No, Dean. Yes, Dean.
"I can cope without you." No. No.
"It's my job, right? Watch after my pain-in-the-ass little brother."
You're my big brother, there's nothing I wouldn't do for you.
Yes, Dean.
Yes.
The man is green and black, sweat and metal and tangled sheets, the smell of sex without ripping apart, and Sam squints at him, wonders.
The man notices, and the smile he makes fills Sam's chest with something hot and buoyant. "Keep that up, Sammy, eating and pulling those famous bitch-faces, and we'll have you home in no time."
Home.
The black gleam of painted metal. Leather warm on his hands. Eyes framed by shallow crows' feet in laughter, in worry, in the glare of the sun. Soft spikes of hair just barely long enough to grab when he wants that mouth on his own. Sweet breath, sweet sleep, not alone, no. Not alone.
His lips when he parts them creak like hinges, like a rusty door-frame long out of use, and his tongue lies thick in his mouth and stumbles on the edge of his teeth. He works it, loosens it, patient and determined, because his mind may be split like a blood-spattered canyon, may rattle like wind on an empty lot, but there's a rope now, a bridge, thin but steady, and he yanks himself over it hand by hand until the last bit of strength has ebbed through his fingers and he reaches inside, refuses surrender, and breathes.
"Dean."