A/N- trigger warnings for hallucinations/ unreality, read with caution if that stuff might bother you
"This is all in your head, you know, Sam. Every last bit of it. Dean says its not, but only because I'm making him. Everything since you 'escaped' from me? Lies. All lies. You've never left me, Sam. You haven't yet and you never will. Why are you still trying to kid yourself?"
Sam jerked awake suddenly and completely, heart racing and sweat streaming down his face. His breathing was rapid and erratic, gasping for breath like a drowning man. It took a moment for his eyes to adjust to the darkness, and another minute or so after that for the shadows to stop morphing and contorting and closing in on him.
Sam got to his feet shakily and attempted to make his way to the bathroom, but lost his balance when he had only crossed about half the distance. His body hit the ground with a muffled thud and he froze, listening for any signs that the noise had awakened Dean. A muffled groan sounded from Dean's bed, but it wasn't his brother whose face emerged from under the blankets.
The skin of the horrifyingly familiar face of none other than Lucifer, blistered and peeling yet still completely recognizable, stared back at him.
"What's wrong, Sammy-poo? Have a bad dream? Need mommy to sing you back to sleep, chase away the monsters under the bed?" Sam scrambled backwards, slamming his head into the edge of the table behind him. Bright stars danced across his vision, but he blinked them away, shaking his head furiously.
"You're not real. You're not here. You're not, you're not, you're-" Sam pulled himself to his feet and bolted into the bathroom, the door to which was thankfully only a few feet away.
Sam's fingers were shaking so badly he could barely latch the lock, but he managed it. Lucifer continued yelling to him- "you can't hide in there forever, Sammy dearest, why are you even trying? Your silly little escape attempts are funny though, I will admit." Lucifer's voice was quickly drowned out, though, by the snarling and barking of what could only be… dogs? No. Hellhounds.
Sam pressed himself against the door, trying in vain to keep out the massive hounds that would surely tear him to shreds in a matter of seconds. He could hear their snarling, feel their claws scraping through the thin particle-board door, smell the reek of death still on their breath from their previous meal.
He knew he should be used to it by now- he'd be killed in some horrible, drawn out way, then be brought straight back to the Cage for it all to begin again. He should be used to it, but each time was just as horrible as the first, if not worse.
There was a mirror hanging over the sink. Sam caught a glimpse of his own reflection, horrifically distorted to have blood pouring from his nose, mouth, and blind, yellow, unseeing eyes. He reached over to slam his fist into it, repeatedly, until his own blood had become just as free-flowing as that in his altered reflection.
The door finally snapped and splintered and crashed inward, and the dogs were there, surrounding him, invisible but he could tell exactly where each one was. There were three of them, circling him, far too large for the tiny hotel bathroom, smothering him, enclosing him, trapping him, killing him slowly this time-
"-my! Sam! Hey! You gotta snap out of it, man, come on!"
And then they were gone, they were all gone, there were no dogs, no Lucifer, no threat to his immediate wellbeing. Only Dean, kneeling next to him looking about two seconds from panicking- and how had Sam ended up on the bathroom floor, anyway?
"… Dean." Sam mumbled, "He- he was- I-" Sam slowly became aware of the throbbing in the knuckles of his right hand, and a dull ache settling in for a particularly painful headache. He was still shaking, his breathing even more strained than it had been before.
"You're okay, Sammy. You're safe. Whatever you saw, it wasn't real." Sam nodded, willing himself to believe that Dean was telling the truth. "Can you sit up?" Sam nodded and moved his arms to push himself off the tiled floor, but he was so shaky and weak that he thudded back down to the floor, hitting his head sharply against the unforgiving floor.
"Hey, it's okay, man, I'll help you-" Part of Sam wanted to resist, but a more rational part knew that he needed Dean's assistance if he wanted to get off of the bathroom floor anytime soon.
Dean half-lifted Sam to his feet, with more ease than he should have been able to. Sam had lost weight, he knew that, but sometimes the realization that he was practically turning into a walking skeleton dawned on him with sudden clarity.
"I'm gonna sit you here so I can fix up your hand, okay?" Sam nodded and let Dean settle him onto the closed lid of the toilet, resting his battered hand on the counter. "I need to go get the first aid kit, you're not going to pass out in the next thirty seconds, are you?" Sam shook his head and Dean left his line of sight, engulfed by the darkness of the room's bedroom area.
"You don't think he's actually coming back, do you?" the voice was coming from behind him, a breathy whisper into his ear. "No, baby brother's become too much of a burden and he's leaving. He's leaving you, can't you hear him packing up his things?" Yes, of course Dean was leaving, why would he possibly want to stay with someone as confused and messed up as Sam?
A zipper slid closed, somewhere in the darkness. "I think I left it in the car, I'll be right back, Sammy." Dean's words hardly registered, the voice in his ear continuing,
"See, there's his excuse. 'Oh, it's in the car.' It's not in the car, Sam. He's leaving. He's leaving you right now and you should go stop him if you ever want to see him again. This is your last chance." The words rang true, somewhere in his mind, because Sam somehow found the energy and balance to race out of the bathroom, through the hotel room, and out the open door.
And there was the car, and Dean was getting in, and he was going to leave he was going to leave he was going to leave Sam all alone.
Dean turned around to see Sam hurdling toward him, and a moment later Sam's entire weight sandwiched Dean between himself and the car.
"Sammy what the hell are you doing? Is something wrong? Did something happen?" Dean shoved Sam off of him, placing a hand on his shoulder and forcing him to make eye contact.
"N-no. I'm good. You weren't- It's nothing. He said… No, it doesn't matter." Dean stared closely at him for a few more seconds, and it was under his scrutinizing eye that Sam's nerves returned to reality enough to realize that he had just walked through broken glass in only his socks.
"C'mon, let's go back inside. It's like 2 AM, and you're still bleeding." Sam nodded, limping stiffly back towards their hotel room, leaning against Dean for support
It was only once Sam was re-seated on the toilet lid and Dean had popped open the first aid kit that the older asked again,
"Why'd you come running outside? What could he say that would make you do this?" It was clear that Dean meant the entire incident, not only running outside in a panic. Sam tried to shrug the question off, but Dean had paused with tweezers and an alcohol-soaked cotton ball a few inches above Sam's hand and was clearly waiting for an actual answer this time.
"He said you were… leaving. That when you went out to the car you were going to leave, because I'm so much of a burden on you now. And apparently you weren't. Leaving, I mean. But even if you were, I wouldn't really blame you. I'm a wreck." Sam was rarely so blunt when it came to his own self-doubt and shortcomings, but it was the middle of the night and he was about five seconds from having a complete breakdown by this point.
"Sammy, I need you to listen to me, okay? I'm not leaving you. Not now, not ever. You're my brother and I love you and I would never do that to you. And I'm pretty sure Dad would rise from the grave to kill me himself if I did." It was a weak attempt at a joke, but that wasn't what Sam had paid attention to. It had been years since Dean had said 'I love you' so casually, like it was an obvious fact.
"I- I know that now. I do. But when he's here, when he's making me see things… It's not just the hallucinations, it's like every word he says, it's true, he makes it seem logical and rational and like obviously he's telling the truth, so I'd better do what he says before you-" Sam's words were cut off when Dean carefully pulled a small sliver of glass from the back of his hand, causing him to hiss in pain. Dean took the opportunity to say,
"Sammy, look at me." Sam slowly lifted his head to meet Dean's eyes. "I am not going anywhere. Until the end, or until you say you don't want me around, I'm here. Actually, hell, even if you said you didn't want me here I'd probably still hang around because you're my baby brother and I'm not leaving you alone." Dean broke eye contact after a moment to continue working on Sam's hand, but Sam kept staring, taking in his brother's appearance much closer than he usually bothered to.
Dean looked exhausted- Sam knew that was mostly his fault, considering how rough his past few weeks had been. His brother's jaw was dusted with stubble and there were bruise-dark circles under his eyes. His hair was tousled from sleep and there were a few scars, usually invisible but a slightly lighter color than the rest of his face at such close proximity.
"This is gonna sting." Dean said, before dabbing Sam's hand with a liquid that did, indeed, sting. A lot. Dean winced in sympathy, mumbling "sorry" before reaching for a roll of bandage and some gauze.
Sam recognized that Dean was treating him like he was much younger, like he had fallen and scraped his knee on the playground and Dean was his parent, patching him up with more caution than was necessary just because he cared. Sam half-expected Dean to press his lips to the bandage and 'kiss it better', but pushed the notion away- even when he was half-delusional, Sam could tell that that idea was crazy.
"Okay, that's it I think- does it feel like there's any more glass in there?" Sam shook his head and got to his feet, not looking forward to the next few hours- he was too shaken up to have any chance of getting back to sleep, meaning he'd have to lay in bed and pretend until at least six AM.
"Is he still… here?" Sam's hallucination had shaken Dean up more than usual, and he was still concerned rather than allowing the whole issue to be swept under the rug.
"No, he's gone." Sam chose not to mention that the ceiling had been distorted to be made of flesh, pulsing and dripping blood that never seemed to reach the floor. "'Night, Dean." Sam said bluntly, getting into his bed and rolling over to face the wall.
"You sure you're okay?" Sam listened to the sounds of Dean cleaning up the first aid kit and turning out the bathroom light.
"For now, yeah. Be better if the ceiling wasn't bleeding, but I'm not being pursued by hellhounds at the moment, so I'll take what I can get, I guess." Instead of Dean getting into his own bed, the edge of Sam's sagged down as Dean seated himself on it.
"Look at me for a sec?" Sam rolled onto his back, confused. "The ceiling is fine. No blood."
"Dean, I know, It just looks-"
"Listen. There's no blood. Look closer at it. Really close." Sam did as instructed, trying to ignore the pulsing of exposed muscle over his head. He pictured what a normal ceiling looked like. Tried to imagine away the gore. Blinked a few times, hoping the illusion would fade.
After about five minutes, it finally did. "It's gone." He mumbled, "Just a ceiling." Dean rested a hand on his shoulder for a moment, then ran it through Sam's hair.
"See, it's gone because it's not real. Me? I'm real. You're stuck with me. Because I'm real, Sammy." And it was true- with Dean in such close proximity, the idea of thinking any of his hallucinations were true seemed completely ridiculous. "Want me to stay?" Sam nodded and moved over, making more room for Dean next to him.
They were both too large for sharing a double bed to be very comfortable, but they managed. It had been years, since they were little probably, since Dean had offered to stay close to keep the nightmares away. It worked, though- with his head nuzzled under Dean's chin and their limbs lightly intertwined, Sam was able to keep himself completely rooted in reality, at least for one night.